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Deliberation Mapping – Shaping Online Discussion

  September 22, 2014

A quick previsualization of what a deliberation map may look like as a viewer scrubs through the timeline. One of the projects I’m most excited about is the Deliberation Mapping project. The general idea is to create a new interface and toolset for professors and students to engage in an online discussion or deliberation in a way that more closely resembles the non-linearity of in-person discussions. Online conversation, in its currently widespread adopted form (with occasional variation) is a linear stacked-reply system. Think your average comment system. Or Facebook. Each thread is placed below the previous based solely on a time hierarchy, with little control given to the participants for shaping the discussion. Every reply is given the same weight as every previous reply. Some commenting systems allow for crowd-sourced relevancy triggers such as the Like button or Up/Downvote button. This works well in terms of allowing a participant to see what posts are most preferred by the participants, but it doesn’t necessarily allow for the original poster to determine which posts are most relevant to the original thought. Thread hijacking can occur frequently where a troll can derail the conversation just for fun. What we’re looking to do is to give both the students and professor a time-based non-linear deliberation map of a conversation. Instead of linear threads, we use nodes. This allows for multi-dimensional replies and cross references. For example, in an in-person conversation with a group you’d listen to multiple comments then reply to all of them … Continue reading

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Interactive Media + The Classroom

  September 22, 2014

We all know the advancement technology has made in the educational field–we all are a part of it!–and the potential it has to revolutionize the traditional method of “learning”. Interactive media is category of mediums set to give some power over to the students. Interactive media consists of a plethora of different ideas and concepts. It can be something as simple as creating a Powerpoint with audio/comments asking questions and reinforcing main ideas and handing it over to a student to go through it with the class; or, it could be something more complex such as a 3D animation of the human body’s internal organs and the affect diseases have on it. This new technology-based style of teaching has expanded over the years. KhanAcademy is one such example of it. They create free, instructional videos for multiple subjects, and they have now grown to the point where they are the primary focal point of classrooms in some schools. Not only can interactive media such as video lectures/teachings help educate and tutor students here, but it also brings education to places that do not have open access to proper schools or teachers. There are many villages in Africa that have charity-sponsored computers and schools, but often times the teachers there are not very educated themselves. In some of these villages, KhanAcademy replaces traditional teaching and allows children and adults to learn about whatever they want–for free. Even here in the United States, there are some classrooms that primarily use KhanAcademy’s instructional … Continue reading

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It’s all about content . . . or is it?

  September 18, 2014 ,

Over the last week I’ve been really busy with one of my projects in particular, which is to produce a series of short videos, featuring both faculty members as well as students, that are designed to shed light on so-called hybrid approaches to teaching and learning. What does that mean? In essence, a hybrid approach to teaching and learning combines on-ground, in-class activities with online activities and discussions. Especially in the last couple of years, more and more attention has been given to this particular educational design, presumably because the explosive developments in digital information technologies and social media applications have had the effect that most of us spend more time online now than in the past. Naturally, academia doesn’t want and also shouldn’t fall behind those developments. That being said, however, there are a number of challenges that need to be considered when blending offline with online education, as put forth by Jesse Stommel, Founder and Director of Hybrid Pedagogy: A Digital Journal on Teaching & Technology: “[The] challenge is not to merely replace (or offer substitutes for) face-to-face instruction, but to find new and innovative ways to engage students in the practice of learning. Hybrid pedagogy does not just describe an easy mixing of on-ground and online learning, but is about bringing the sorts of learning that happen in a physical place and the sorts of learning that happen in a virtual place into a more engaged and dynamic conversation.” (“Hybridity pt. 2: What is Hybrid Pedagogy?”) So, … Continue reading

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Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

  September 18, 2014

One of the projects I am assigned to is to help Dr. Michael Harker work on the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN). The DALN, as we refer to it, is a collection of narratives from all over the world about literacy. This could mean anything from reading, to writing, and even to digital literacy. I have helped with the DALN in the past, (wo)manning tables at conferences, enticing potential storytellers to our table to get them to speak their narratives into a computer. We then store all these narratives at the link above. Anyone can look into the archive. Anyone can use the archive to do any kind of research they may have relating to literacy, or even beyond. This week, I’ve been spending hours uploading narratives to the archive that were sent to us on a drive all the way from Singapore. Many of these are about learning English, but some are about speaking Mandarin, Idioms, and several are about computing. I am the only person on this project. Once I upload the rest of the files from Singapore, I’ll be playing with an IPad 2, trying to figure out a better way to collect narratives at later conferences. Hopefully I’ll have plenty to say about that project in later posts. 🙂 Valerie Robin

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Finding Technology Resources on Campus: Getting Oriented

  September 18, 2014 ,

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts-I am on the “SIF Outreach and Documentation” team. This group was created after I pitched during my SIF interview the idea that communication on GSU’s campus could be improved. I, to my slight embarrassment, realized I had fallen victim to this challenge when, during my interview, I answered the “what would you do with a giant bag of money” question by basically explaining things that are already taking place in The Exchange, and the Digital Aquarium. I had no idea, and to be honest-still don’t have a clear understanding, of what those spaces offer students and faculty. And as I’ve been working with the rest of the SIF O&D team, it is becoming clear why that would be the case. The first task the team has set out to accomplish is creating a collective list of technology spaces on campus ( think computer labs, the digital aquarium, etc) that are open to all students. Once we complete this collection, our team will make some web-based maps, a series of short informational videos, and any other promotional items we may think of along the way as a resource to share with all of GSU. The idea here is that we create a visual, informational advertisement that is consistent across  resources that students, faculty, and staff can utilize to simply familiarize themselves with the resources. In my attempts to collect information for this list-I started to find myself in a vortex of confusion and frustration. Why the heck … Continue reading