jcummings's blog

This posting is intended to establish a common tag for Connect entries related to the upcoming ELI 2008 Annual Meeting, Connecting and Reflecting: Preparing Learners for Life 2.0. The conference is scheduled for January 28-30, 2008, at the Hyatt Regency San Antonio-Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas.

When posting content from or related to the conference in Connect, please be sure to tag it with:

ELIAnnual08

This will ensure your content appears on the Connect page for the event and is available to the larger community sharing ideas and reflections related to the conference.

Joan Lippincott, associate executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, contributed a video interview to the ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session, Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for A Rapidly Changing World. Here's her description of it:

"My daughter, Meg Lippincott, a sophomore at Vassar College, has been working at her college library reference desk and occasionally sharing some observations with me about how students seek information for their academic work.  I interviewed her for a brief video for the ELI Focus Session on net savvy students.  Her friend Jan Zhan, a student at University of Maryland, did the camera work.  Meg discusses some aspects of information literacy, the way she learned to use some math software, and her definition of a 'net savvy student.'"  --Joan Lippincott

I'm making this entry to establish the common tag for event content from the ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session, "Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for a Rapidly Changing World." All participants developing blog entries, posting photos, creating podcasts, etc., from the focus session are encouraged to tag their entries in Connect with:

ELI07NetSavvySession

This will ensure those entries are aggregated on the event page created by the tag.

If you would like to submit content but don't already have a Connect account, please see the Connect FAQ, which provides directions to do so.

[When initially posted, the audio file of this interview had some technical problems that hindered listening to it. Those issues have been addressed in the new file, which is attached below. - JSC]

In another interview related to the ELI 07 Spring Focus Session, Immersive Learning Environments: New Paths to Interaction and Engagement, I spoke with Gary Bertoline, Distinguished Professor in Computer Graphics and Assistant Dean at Purdue University. We discussed Gary's project parlor and concurrent session topic for the focus session, The Impact of Computer-Simulated Haptic Force Feedback on Learning.

Over the course of our conversation, Gary explains that "computer-simulated haptic force feedback" refers to providing physical response to learners through computer simulations, essentially allowing them to feel forces in a simulation that they would otherwise have to infer. He then provides a brief overview of the research that demonstrates how such feedback enhances learning outcomes in science, technology, and math education and reviews its potential to support teaching and learning in other disciplines.

We're about a week from the ELI 2007 Spring Focus Session, Immersive Learning Environments: New Paths for Interaction and Engagement. As usual, I'm interviewing some of the presenters scheduled for the event to get an advanced sense for the issues they plan to address at the focus session.

In this interview, I talk with Sarah Robbins, a TA Instructor in English at Ball State University, about her experiences in teaching classes in the immersive learning environment Second Life. I ask her about the teaching and learning objectives that led her to try to teach in Second Life, as well as the level of technical expertise she feels is or isn't necessary to teach in that online space. We also discuss the benefits she has found that students derive from learning in Second Life, as well as the benefits she has realized as a developing faculty member by teaching in an immersive learning environment.

The ELI 2007 Spring Focus Session, Immersive Learning Environments: New Paths to Interaction and Engagement, is scheduled for March 27-28 at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation on the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Speaker interviews and presentation audio for this event will be posted to the Connect site under the following tag:

ELI_07_SpringFocusSession

Any participants who blog or podcast the focus session are asked to use this tag when posting to the Connect site so we can aggregate all of the posts from the session and provide easy access to them.

In my final preconference interview before the ELI 2007 Annual Meeting, I talk with Bryan Alexander, Director of Research for the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE). Alexander is presenting the 3:00-4:00 PM featured session on Monday, January 22; his topic is "First-Generation Ubiquitous Computing: Social, Mobile, and Gamelike."

Our conversation starts with Alexander explaining what NITLE is and what it does, and how his role as research director allows him to explore emerging trends in teaching, learning, and technology. He then discusses some examples of how gaming, social software, and mobile technologies are converging to create the ubiquitous computing environment of which he speaks. Alexander also highlights the implications this developing environment holds for higher education, as well as the importance of gaining and maintaining historical perspective on these changes.

For more information about NITLE, please see http://www.nitle.org.

Continuing my preconference interview series for the 2007 ELI Annual Meeting, I spoke with Rachel Smith and Cyprien Lomas on Friday, January 12, about their upcoming featured session at the conference.

Smith is Director of Special Projects and Publications for the New Media Consortium (NMC), while Lomas serves as an ELI Scholar in Residence and Director of the Learning Centre in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. Their featured session will take place from 4:30-5:30 PM on Monday, January 22, and they will be joined in conducting the session by Larry Johnson, CEO of NMC, and Diana Obinger, EDUCAUSE Vice President and ELI Director.

In the interview, Smith provides some background on NMC while Lomas reviews the key aspects of the partnership between NMC and ELI around the development of the Horizon Report.  Smith and Lomas also explain the report's approach to highlighting emerging technologies likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression. Finally, each of them discusses the finding from the 2007 Horizon Report they find the most compelling.

The 2007 Horizon Report will be released publicly at the 2007 ELI Annual Meeting.

I interviewed Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, on some of the ideas behind his upcoming keynote address at the 2007 ELI Annual Meeting. Dede will conduct the general session scheduled for 8:00-9:30 AM on Tuesday, January 23; his topic will be "Emerging Educational Technologies and Neomillennial Learning Styles."

In this discussion, Dede explains the concept and key characteristics of "neomillennials." He also highlights the transformative effect of emerging immersive learning environments on higher education pedagogy and discusses the importance of faculty development in relation to these developments. Finally, he briefly touches on the National Science Foundation's cyberinfrastructure initiative as a significant topic he won't be able to cover in depth in Atlanta. However, he cites the November 2006 ELI Web Seminar he conducted on the cyberinfrastructure initiative as a resource for those interested in learning more about it.

With the ELI 2007 Annual Meeting fast approaching, I interviewed the University of Dayton's Deborah Bickford and David Wright on the ideas behind their upcoming featured session, "Creating New Spaces for Learning in Community." They will conduct their session on Tuesday, January 23, from 10:00-11:00 AM, along with fellow presenter Bill Dittoe of Educational Facilities Consultants.

My discussion with Bickford and Wright focused on the factors that motivated the University of Dayton to focus on learning spaces as a key component of its academic planning and development. They also reviewed the challenges the university encountered in effectively engaging the institutional community in learning space design, as well as the approaches the university took to overcome them. Finally, Bickford and Wright talked about options institutions might consider in assessing the impact of learning spaces on learning.

As part of my continuing series of interviews leading up to the ELI 2007 Annual Meeting, I talked with Kate Wittenberg, Director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia University, or EPIC. She will hold a featured session at the annual meeting on Wed., Jan. 24, from 8:00-9:00 AM entitled “While You Were Out: How Students Are Transforming the World of Information and What It Means for Publishing.”

In the interview, Wittenberg provides a brief overview of the new ways in which students are developing content and using information, and what that means for the development and management of information resources within the university. She also describes EPIC and how its efforts in digital content development reflect current and emerging trends in student creation and use of online content.

 

In preparation for the ELI 2007 Annual Meeting, I interviewed recent North Carolina State University graduate Carie Windham on the issues behind her upcoming annual meeting featured session, "Father Google and Mother IM: Confessions of a Net Gen Learner," scheduled for Tuesday, January 23, from 1:30-2:30 PM, Eastern.

Windham's session will take a look at how the Net Generation views and uses technology, and what those views and uses mean for higher education. In addition to summarizing some of the key points in her presentation, the interview allowed Windham to discuss relevant issues she won't get a chance to cover during her session.

ELI will post the full audio from keynote and featured sessions after the conference, so check back to hear more from this Net Gen learner about teaching, learning, technology, and the Net Generation.

I'm using this blog posting to establish common tags for the upcoming 2007 ELI Annual Meeting, which will take place January 22-24, 2007, at the Omni Hotel-CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Participants and others interested in blogging or posting information related to the 2007 annual meeting are encouraged to tag their entries with the ones linked to this posting:

• ELI2007
• ELIAnnualMtg2007

For ELI's upcoming fall focus session on the role of assessment in supporting teaching and learning with technology, I interviewed Dr. Marilee Bresciani, Associate Professor of Postsecondary Education Leadership at San Diego State University.

In the interview, Dr. Bresciani defines outcomes-based assessment and shares her views on its application to teaching and learning with technology. Dr. Bresciani also discusses the keys for designing and implementing outcomes-based assessment for a given institution.

If you're interested in learning more about outcomes-based assessment, please see Dr. Bresciani's ELI Web Symposium presentation, How Do You Know What Your Students Are Learning?

Look for the proceedings from the ELI 2006 Fall Focus Session, Supporting Learning with Technology: Assessment's Role, via the focus session Web site. The proceedings should be available by the end of September.

Peggy Maki, former Senior Scholar and Director of Assessment at the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), will conduct an ELI Web seminar on Sept. 15, 2006, regarding assessing student learning in technology-based learning environments.

However, Dr. Maki's work is also relevant to the ELI 2006 Fall Focus Session, Supporting Learning with Technology: Assessment's Role, which will be held from Sept. 11-12, 2006. To make sure focus session participants have the opportunity to benefit from her thinking on this topic, Dr. Maki kindly agreed to participate in the attached audio interview.

For more information about Dr. Maki's upcoming ELI Web seminar, please visit the event page at http://www.educause.edu/eliweb069. Look for the proceedings from the ELI 2006 Fall Focus Session at http://www.educause.edu/eli063.