Finding Our Way

From the balcony

I am back at the Banff Centre for the second session of the Leadership Academy. I certainly experience re-entry as I have to re-acclimatize to this retreat, to being away from work and family, to learn about leadership.

I have spent the year completing a leadership practicum as have the other participants. I completed many of the objectives to improve my leadership knowledge and skills.  Many I did not.  I had many discussions with my program mentor.  I had many with my program buddy.  And I say to everyone, that you should set your own goals, find a mentor, and find a buddy, inside or outside of a program such as this one.

As part of this practicum, I attempted to do some reading on leadership.  I would like to share with you two poignant passages that I discovered from the book Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time by Margaret Wheatley. I have chosen them as they speak to an "ancient new story" to which we need to listen and which we need to tell.  Please leave comments about what you think about these passages.

In this first passage, she describes leadership within the current "machine story", one propagated around the world by organizations from Western society:

Trying to be an effective leader in this machine story is especially exhausting.  He or she is leading a group of lifeless, empty automatons who are just waiting to be filled with vision and direction and intelligence.  The leader is responsible for providing everything:  the organizational mission and values, the organizational structure, the plans, the supervision.  The leader must also figure out, through clever use of incentives or coercives, how to pump energy into this lifeless mass.  Once the pump is primed, he must rush hither and yon to make sure that everyone is clanking along in the same direction, at the established speed, with no diversions.  It is the role of the leader to provide the organizing energy for a system that is believed to have no internal capabilities for self-creation, self-organization, or self-correction.

This view is certain juxtaposition to the "natural" beauty of Banff and the "ancient new story" which Margaret Wheatley outlines in this second passage. In this story that we have known from ancient times, "life's cycles" are inevitable and that we must embrace them.

In the new story, we discover a world where life gives birth to itself using two powerful forces: the need to be free to create one's self and the need to reach out for relationships with others.  These forces never disappear from life.  Even if we deny them, we can't ever extinguish them.  They are always active, even in the most repressive human organizations.  Life can never stop asserting its need to create itself, and life never stops searching for connections.

Upon my return, I will add the book to the instructor resource library.  I recommend you take the time to read it.

Science 14 Final Exam Review

Project Overview: 

The Science 14 Final Exam was identified as an exam in need of review and revision. A team was assembled to work with the curriculum group on this project.

Exam Reviewer: classifies items and offers insight into an item's validity as subject matter expert

• Celia Herodek
• Neil Summers
• Alix MacDonald
• Penny Marcotte
• Lee Murray
• Lynda Newton
• Danielle Dore
• Lindsay Bonenfant
• Jennifer Chang

Instructional Designer: creates and populates blueprint, identifies gaps and excesses in blueprint

• Lindsay Bonenfant

Exam Reviewers classified the items from the Science 14 Final Exam. The items were classified according to:
Understandings: (Knowledge, Comprehension and Application, and Higher Mental Activity)
Performance Standard: Standard of Excellence or Acceptable Standard

The Instructional Designer created a new blueprint for Science 14 to reflect the outcomes from the Science 14 Program of Study. The Exam Review team met on June 13 for a working session to classify the items according to outcome. You can see the Exam Reviewers working hard in the shot below. We had good discussion around the blueprint and decided on the amount of multiple choice and numerical response questions. Science 14 will no longer have written response on the final exam.

Blueprint:

Next Steps:
 The ID will populate the new blueprint based on the outcome classification provided by the exam reviewers. Once the gaps in the blueprint are identified, the ID will report to the Exam Review Team and Item Writers will write items to fit the gaps in the blueprint.

A very big thank you to the Exam Reviewers for giving their time and expertise to the project, and for classifying the items. Thank you very much to the Instructional Designer for creating a new blueprint and for populating it with the information provided by the Exam Reviewers.

The Science 14 Final Exam will be completed by the end of this semester. For more information on this and other projects please visit the Foundational Curriculum Website.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Maureen Stewart.

Tips on Using Technology in Virtual and Physical Classrooms

The eLearning Guild had published an extensive guide with tips on using technology in virtual and physical classrooms. I know some people are a little weary when they hear the word technology and having to add this onto their already large workload. I am going to summarize some of these tips that I found somewhat applicable to us here in the department.

Using virtual classroom features effectively

·         Prepare and practice, it may take some time to get used to teaching in a different format, so practice beforehand with a co-worker or friend

·         Ask for some kind of response every 5 minutes; this could be a poll, thumbs up, response to question, etc.

·         Wait until you have a break in the content and then respond to questions in batches

·         Kick off your virtual course with an icebreaker that uses multiple tools so students try them out and get somewhat familiar at this point

·         Since the learning curve is large for facilitators with these new tools, provide more time for training facilitators

·         Verbalize any keyboard and mouse activity, as participants may not be able to easily see what you are doing

·         Practice, practice, practice, and it still won’t be perfect, just make sure you have a couple backup plans just in case

Tips for instructional design and presentation skills in the classroom

·         Script questions

·         Improve the quality of the visuals you use

·         Limit on slide text and put the details in a separate handout file

·         Virtual class sizes should be smaller (20-30 participants)

·         In virtual classrooms, motivation, visuals, and interactivity are critical as participants are taking the learning in their own distraction filled environments

·         Plan on some coaching and training even for the best physical classroom facilitators

·         For small groups (20-30) try welcoming each person individually as he or she enters the virtual classroom

·         At the beginning of the course, describe how to be an active participant and use the text chats  and polls

·         Having a second display showing what a student would see may be helpful for the facilitator

Pros and cons of the virtual classroom

·         A challenge in a virtual classroom is keeping participants from multitasking

·         Validate that tasks and learning objectives are best taught using a virtual classroom. Weigh the cost and benefit of developing for a virtual classroom versus a self-paced online learning or physical classroom.

·         Have a dedicated help desk phone number for participants and have that person on call during the entire class

·         Check in with participants from time to time to ensure they are seeing what’s being brought up on the screen

Pros and Cons of physical and blended classrooms

·         Try creating several short presentations and recommend a sequence for viewing the presentations

·         Add questions to your presentation for your audience to respond immediately and also questions for them to think about prior to meeting synchronously

·         When you ask a question in a virtual classroom, each learner has the opportunity to respond simultaneously, which is an advantage to a traditional classroom where some participants take over discussions

·         Blending synchronous interactive virtual classes with asynchronous peer to peer collaboration results in the richest learning experience

iPad App Research Workshop

Want to know more? See this document to see our top three picks in each area. Please post your app suggestions in the comment box so we can start an app discussion.

Tweeting an event live

Once again, Bow Valley College and NorQuest College, were pleased to host the two-day Upgrading Online Conference for adult education programs, their faculty, and administration. The theme of our third annual conference remained "Best Practices in Upgrading Online," including best practices in "Instruction and Learning" and "Development or Administration."

This year we were also pleased to be able to live Tweet the webinars, as a way to interact with a wider audience in the online adult education field.


What is live Tweeting? All it involves is posting information on our Twitter account in real-time - while we are participating in the webinars. The information can be quotes from the webinar presenter, tips that are shared, links to websites and other resources relevant to the webinar topic, questions or comments.

Why Tweet live? One reason to Tweet at all is to connect with others who are interested in the same topics you are interested in. As conference organizers, we were promoting both our conference and the topics that the speakers were presenting on by tweeting in real time. Besides promotion, we were able to have conversations with participants even though they are at a distance. This became really important when it turned out we had a bad link on our website. We were able to update participants as soon as we found out, as illustrated below.

Who can live Tweet? Anyone really. We had a whole team of volunteers who took the time to share what they were learning in a webinar and post it to our Upgrading Online Twitter account (@UOconference). We were a group of newbies, some of us feeling excited and others feeling rather nervous about this endeavour,  but each willing to experiment with this new-to-us medium and add our own style.

On top of that, we had our partner @NorQuest College helping us spread the word by live Tweeting from their organization’s account.

And that wasn’t all. Some other participants, who were not connected with the conference organization, also live tweeted their insight. This gave us, as conference hosts, the opportunity to retweet them or engage in a conversation about the information they shared.

Want to try live Tweeting? As this was such a successful part of our conference, we will certainly need more volunteers to help us Tweet at the UOconference in 2014. Here are a few pointers to get you started:

• Research your presenter before you tweet, including knowing his/her background, twitter account handle if they have one, and other pertinent information.
• Find suitable hashtags before the presentation. Others may come to mind during the presentation, but it's good to have some appropriate ones on hand.
• Have a snipping tool or phone on your camera ready, so you can take a picture of any slide you want to tweet about [ensure in advance that the presenter is ok with images of slides being tweeted]
• It is helpful to have two computer screens: one to watch the conference and one to Tweet.

Are you new to Twitter? Here are some of the basics:

• A handle is the Twitter username; it starts with the “at” sign @. Our handle is @UOconference.
• A hashtag is a search tool; it starts with the pound sign #. Our hashtag is #UOconference. By typing a hashtag into the Twitter search you can find all Tweets sent by anybody on Twitter that use that hashtag. Some of the other hashtags that are relevant to the conference are #elearning (elearning), #adulted (adult education),  #abpse (Alberta post-secondary education), and #edtech (educational technology).
• Twitter, the microblog site, is increasingly being used as a collaborative learning tool in many educational settings. Here is an overview of Twitter in Adult Education and here is a collection of Twitter tutorials for teachers.

Ministerial Order on Student Learning

On May 6, 2013 a new Ministerial Order on Student Learning was signed by the Education Minister Jeff Johnson.  The link to the document is http://education.alberta.ca/department/policy/standards/goals.aspx

This document articulates well the changes anticipated in the Education Act and marks a significant departure from what the former Minister of Education, David Hancock, called “Industrial Education”.

This Ministerial Order sets the stage for curriculum development and teaching standards in the province.  Given our efforts in continuous improvement of instructional practices, curriculum development and learning outcomes, the Order is an important reference point for the CEFL.

 

Some points of note:

•          The emphasis is on education and not the school; on the learner not the system; competencies over content; inquiry/discovery/application rather than dissemination of information; and on technology to support creating/sharing knowledge rather than supporting teaching.

•          Interdisciplinary learning is emphasized.

•          Students are viewed as engaged thinkers who can think critically and creatively, reflect, explore, experiment, innovate, collaborate, work as part of a team, and who see no limit to what can be learned.

•          Students are ethical citizens who can act beyond self-interest, commited to democratic ideals, contributes to the world, engages with diversity, can take care of themselves in the psycho-social-spiritual-health domains.

•          Students are confident, resilient, respect others, can take risk, make decisions, and have the courage to dream.

The Order sets out four major outcomes of K-12 education. All students will be enabled to achieve the following outcomes:

1.         Be engaged things and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit

2.         Strive for engagement and personal excellence in their learning journey

3.         Employ literacy and numeracy to construct and communicate meaning, and,

4.         Discover, develop and apply competencies across subject and discipline areas for learning, work and life.

As a department, we have many examples of what the Ministerial Order is aiming to create already in practice.  Part of the evolution of the CEFL is to take examples and to generalize those efforts across all of our functional areas: Literacy and Essential Skills, Senior High, Rural Initiatives, Curriculum and Testing, and, Assessing and Advising.

I would like each coordinator to create an opportunity to discuss what the Ministerial Order, the Education Act, and the new directions for education in Alberta mean for our instructional practices, how we evaluate and place students, student outcomes, the development of curriculum and curriculum support materials and so forth.

Keith

Share the Wealth and Other Gems

Without really telling me much other than "you'll enjoy this.. it's funny", Iba left an innocuous blue case with a CD in it on my desk.  I finally took it home and popped it into my computer and to my amazement it was JibJab... now I love JibJab and thought that Iba, displaying her technical prowess, recorded a JibJab video for me... I didn't really  know why she wouldn't send me the link but it was nice to receive.

So settling back, a brought my cup of tea up for a sip as the opening JibJab icon faded and Lee and Jenny leapt onto the scree... I nearly had a scalding incident! I had no idea that so many people were so creative and... nimble!

I was laughing so hard that my daughter came over just as Iba and I began our Olympic Routine.. I totally lost it in laughter while Jordan watched with a mixture of disbelief and humour.

Thank you to the clever producers! What a treat to just roll with laughter!

This is an example of what can happen in classrooms too.  Some of the work by Penny and others to bring the IPads to life in creating new ways of learning, engage students in their own learning process by finding new paths for expression and for discovery. The possibilities are many and with the creativity demonstrated by instructors, I know that adult learning will be redefined through the efforts and work of the CEFL.

Keith