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Universities at the Crossroads:Technologies, values and the role of the institution

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Universities at the Crossroads:Technologies, values and the role of the institution

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Objectives are to:

offer clear and understandable descriptions of three current technologies (metaverse, blockchain, artificial intelligence)

discuss how they will impact the traditional role and function of universities

describe the application of the conference themes (inclusion, sustainability, ethics) to these technologies with respect to these roles

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Definition, roles, and potential research issues of the metaverse in education: An artificial intelligence perspective

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Definition, roles, and potential research issues of the metaverse in education: An artificial intelligence perspective

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The metaverse has been recognized as one of the technologies with the greatest potential today. However, the use of the metaverse for educational purposes is seldom discussed. Most educators might be unaware of the features of the metaverse, not to mention the potential applications of this emerging technology. In this position paper, we aim to provide a clear definition of the metaverse. Potential applications and research issues of the metaverse in educational settings are also presented. Moreover, the roles of AI in the metaverse as well as metaverse-based education are discussed. It is expected that, via this paper, researchers from the fields of both computer science and educational technology would have a clear picture of what the metaverse is and how it can be used for educational purposes. More importantly, it is expected that more studies related to metaverse-based education can be reported in the near future.

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The Need for Advocacy and Cultural Competency in the K-12 Digital World

Key Takeaways:
● Access to the Internet and digital devices is a civil right because they are proven to be
necessary for baseline educational opportunities. If students do not have Internet access in a digital society, they cannot have equal educational access.
● History indicates that barriers to accessing an adequate education for students of color are
structural issues rooted in race and class. These foundational barriers must be addressed in
order to understand the multi-dimensional ways digital inequities falter education.
● Community-based initiatives centering advocacy and cultural competency are critical for
providing K-12 low-income students of color with access to the Internet, digital devices,
and digital literacy.
● More research needs to be conducted on digital inequities among K-12, employing a
critical lens to identify gaps in broadband, access, and adoption.

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LibGuides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Free the Textbook: Want to Adopt or Adapt a Textbook?

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Visualizing Indicators of Education for the World (VIEW) provides estimates of two flagship indicators: out-of-school and completion rates. Using multiple data sources in an efficient and transparent way, it calculates time series by country and region and addresses challenges of timeliness and consistency commonly associated with administrative and survey data.

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Visualizing Indicators of Education for the World (VIEW) provides estimates of two flagship indicators: out-of-school and completion rates. Using multiple data sources in an efficient and transparent way, it calculates time series by country and region and addresses challenges of timeliness and consistency commonly associated with administrative and survey data.

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Special Report, October 2021

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This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an
interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This tenth report proposes another set of innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce the report, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University, UK, collaborated with researchers from the
Open University of Catalonia, Spain. A long list of pedagogical innovations was proposed and then pared down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice. Finally, ten sketches of innovative pedagogies were compiled, based on a review of published studies and other sources, and they are summarised below.

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Since its launch, the Online Student Center (OSC) has been an exemplar across campus for other online programs look- ing to build community among their learner populations. Parallel online student centers (i.e., similar format and design) have launched in different programs from different colleges across the University. Requests for access to LDT’s OSC were a main driver in writing this article. One, to first explain what an online student center looks like and the necessary sec- tions and elements within it. Two, highlighting the need for and importance of a student center moderator. And three, discuss and share in our design process, the reasons for our choices, and the outcomes of the final development so that others can benefit from our design experience.

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Learning Theory - What are the established learning theories?
Interactive resource.

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a human being develops cognitively from birth throughout his or her life through four primary stages of development: sensorimotor (0-2)

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and formal operational (11-). assimilition is incorporation of new experiences into existing mental schema

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knowledge is distributed across a network of connections to people and information - learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks

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entertainer and new romantic - the problem of self-judgement in assessment.

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the learning of new forms of activity as they are created

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rather than the mastery of putative stable

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the area of capabilities that learners can exhibit with support from a teacher or peer.

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Learning Theory - What are the established learning theories?

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This Concept Map, created with IHMC CmapTools, has information related to: Learning Theory, zone of proximal development The area of capabilities that learners can exhibit with support from a teacher or peer., organisational learning Nonaka & Takeuchi, Montessori constructivism, Lave & Wenger situated learning, Piaget constructivism, Philosophy Dewey, The church Theology, text & conversation theory An organization is created and defined by communication.

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Teaching Statistics and Math Using Spreadsheet Tutorials and Galapágos Finches

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This tutorial explores how to calculate -values and perform t-tests. Students apply what they learn by comparing the beak size measurements they worked with in the previous tutorial.

Students can complete the first four tabs as homework, then review and complete the final tab ("Exercise") in class.

Estimated Time: One 50-minute class period.

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Teaching Statistics and Math Using Spreadsheet Tutorials and Galapágos Finches

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This playlist can be used to teach several core concepts in math and statistics using standard spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, and actual research on Galapágos finches. It can be used in AP/IB Biology and undergraduate college courses.

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2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report®Teaching and Learning Edition

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2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report®Teaching and Learning Edition

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2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition 4
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, much still feels the same, though in some important ways our thinking and behaviors
may be shifting in anticipation of longer-term changes in the ways we structure our lives and our shared places and spaces. In higher education, these shifts may reflect an evolution from short-term “emergency” or “reactive” modes of offering education during extraordinary circumstances to making strategic and sustainable investments in a future that will be very much unlike our past. As this year’s teaching and Learning Horizon panelists gathered to reflect on current trends and the future of higher education, many of their discussions and nominations suggest that change may be here to stay and that there will be no return to “normal” for many institutions. This report summarizes the results of those discussions and nominations and serves as one vantage point on where our future may be headed. This project was grounded in a modified Delphi methodology that seeks to elevate the collective perspectives and knowledge of a diverse group of experts, and the panelists’ activities were facilitated using tools adapted from the Institute for the Future.

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The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens

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The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens

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The Digital Competence Framework for Citizen (DigComp) provides a common understanding of what digital competence is. The present publication has two main parts: the integrated DigComp 2.2 framework provides more than 250 new examples of knowledge, skills and attitudes that help citizens engage confidently, critically and safely with digital technologies, and new and emerging ones such as systems driven by artificial intelligence (AI). The framework is also made available following the digital accessibility guidelines, as creating accessible digital resources is an important priority today. The second part of the publication gives a snapshot of the existing reference material for DigComp consolidating previously released publications and references.

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A Guide to Librarian, Faculty, and Students

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A Guide to Librarian, Faculty, and Students

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The digital divide in Africa has garnered considerable attention in recent years, with significant attempts being made to close it, especially in the educational sector. We’ve witnessed an increase in Edtech start-ups across the continent, as well as an increase in digital skills training for teachers across the board. However, this has exposed another gap in African teachers’ skill sets: the Digital Pedagogical Skill gap. The gap in teacher education and training is not in the introduction of new digital tools; rather, we have a plethora of educational technologies and digital tools developed to address the needs of the education sector, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic’s impact on the educational sector. However, the gap exists in our ability as teachers to envision how these tools can be utilised, taking into account the learning circumstances they may enable and fostering an environment in which their use results in the desired learning outcomes.

Digital pedagogy experts have stressed that mere acquisition of digital abilities and usage of digital tools in the classroom do not equate to teachers’ digital pedagogical ability. One definition of digital pedagogy is the use of digital tools from a pedagogical perspective, with an emphasis on the influence of the digital tool on learning rather than on the use of digital tools for teaching and learning. Thus, digital pedagogy encompasses the intersection of educational technologies and innovative pedagogies, as well as the ways in which classroom interaction with and through technology can inspire new pedagogies.

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In her blog post, "Digital Pedagogy: Is there too much Technology in the Classroom, for Top Hat, Ford, a computer science faculty member, states that many instructors feel that by using "electronic elements in their teaching, they are practicing digital pedagogy." Ford argues that this couldn't be further from the truth. In order for technology to be incorporated effectively, there needs to be a purpose to it, and it should not be done for its own sake.

Ford uses the example of a blog entry. She asks:

She also argues that if an instructor is "going to implement a new technology or digital component into your classroom, it doesn't mean that students will ultimately feel more connected to the subject and thus learn more." She emphasizes that there is no point of incorporating something into your teaching just for the sake of having it.

She offers three suggestions for effectively incorporating Digital Pedagogy

1. Focus on Collaboration: Employers today feel like the ability to work together is extremely important in employees, therefore when instructors choose technologies that facilitate the development of these skills, it is truly beneficial. This can add a dimension to group work that helps students build the necessary soft skills.

2. Design for inclusion: ensure that the technology being incorporated allows everyone to participate. Be mindful of the digital divide, and that not all of your students are tech savvy.

3. Works Towards Class Participation: Engaging tools work the best.

Her final word of advice is to "Take the time to think about what you are trying to accomplish and look for the best technology fit that is both easy for you and the students to learn and also will help you achieve your goal. "

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Research guides: Digital Pedagogy - A Guide for Librarians, Faculty, and Students: Digital Pedagogy - Best Practices

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In her blog post, "Digital Pedagogy: Is there too much Technology in the Classroom, for Top Hat, Ford, a computer science faculty member, states that many instructors feel that by using "electronic elements in their teaching, they are practicing digital pedagogy." Ford argues that this couldn't be further from the truth.

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Science News Explores publishes news from all fields of science for students from middle school and up, with resources for parents and educators.

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We can save your Tingtun checker data in your browser for a better user experience. Read more

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Supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Culturally Diverse Online Learners

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Supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Culturally Diverse Online Learners

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As the United States and the rest of the world are trying to become more supportive of initiatives designed to support diversity, equity, and inclusion in various walks of life, higher education is also seeking measures to support diversity in higher education. Supporting culturally diverse students is central to the success of higher education institutions as the fabric of education is also changing. Culture has and continues to impact teaching and learning practices in the United States, Australia, The United Kingdom, and several other developed countries around the world (Ramburuth & Tani, 2009). Similarly, Milheim (2017) supported the role of culture in education by stating that, “not only does culture have an impact on the overall classroom experience, but it has also shown to affect learning, motivation, and satisfaction in a course” (p. 1). The elements of all cultures need to be studied and valued in the learning environment, because if they are not acknowledged or considered, there may be negative repercussions in the teaching and learning processes, such as higher attrition rates (Milheim, 2014). Further, Kang and Chang (2016) explained that “overlooking the critical role culture plays in online learning will lead to detrimental educational and psychological consequences” (p. 780). They also posited that if culture is not acknowledged in the online learning environment, students will experience feelings of isolation, frustration, alienation, feelings of being upset, anxiousness, and depression. These feelings may lead to higher attrition rates of online learners.

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Developing Preservice Chemistry Teachers’ Engagement with Sustainability Education through an Online Project-Based Learning Summer Course Program

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Developing Preservice Chemistry Teachers’ Engagement with Sustainability Education through an Online Project-Based Learning Summer Course Program

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Diversity and Social Justice – Faculty Guide (2021 Edition)

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Diversity and Social Justice – Faculty Guide (2021 Edition)

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This book is a compilation of resources from the Spring 2021 LWTech DSJ faculty training. It includes a variety of resources for teaching diversity and social justice in a community and technical college setting. The approach and conceptualization of DSJ education are discussed in the first parts of the book.  The DSJ requirement was organized around 3 categories of learning outcomes, which are the focus of the other parts of the book. A variety of resources and lesson plans are embedded in both. All contributions are used with permission and the original authors have been credited.

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Introduction – Diversity and Social Justice – Faculty Guide (2021 Edition)

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Well-organized curriculum for teachers covering over 1,000 topics. This platform offers an opportunity to integrate lessons into pre-existing Google Classrooms, or to teach directly through the program.  Courses include a specific course on teaching using this program. Self-guided learners can also jump in and follow self-guided classes.

Courses are offered in English.

Great for community members who require a platform as well as curriculum to teach digital literacy, and community members who hope to ramp up personal digital literacy skills.

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Free, flexible and ready-to-use

Adapt our free, video-based lessons for remote or in-classroom teaching

Project-based curriculum

Students leave with a useful project, like a presentation, a resume or a research plan

Skills for school, work and life

Teach the 4 C's: communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking

Connect with Google Classroom

Connect Applied Digital Skills with Google Classroom to import your roster and more

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Digital Teaching Tools - Applied Digital Skills

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Adapt our free, video-based lessons for remote or in-classroom teaching Students leave with a useful project, like a presentation, a resume or a research plan Teach the 4 C's: communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking Connect Applied Digital Skills with Google Classroom to import your roster and more

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Techboomers.com* Un sitio web educativo gratuito que enseña a adultos mayores y usuarios de Internet sin experiencia con conocimientos básicos de informática sobre sitios web. Proporciona una amplia gama de artículos, tutoriales sobre plataformas en línea, herramientas y redes sociales del siglo XXI.
Las lecciones están disponibles en inglés.
Excelente para aprender cómo usar computadoras, tabletas y teléfonos inteligentes, así como aplicaciones y sitios web específicos, y cómo participar en la cultura en línea. Las lecciones son holísticas y brindan orientación desde la descarga hasta la eliminación de aplicaciones.
Visite - https://techboomers.com/

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Techboomers.com: Learn How To Use Websites, Apps, and Devices

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Access over 100 free website and app courses along with thousands of useful articles with the Tips and Tricks you need to take your tech skills to the next level!

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The changing role of students In British higher educationgovernance: Partners,consumers and digital users

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The changing role of students In British higher educationgovernance: Partners,consumers and digital users

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This working paper discusses the changing role of students in British higher education governance over the three societal periods: the welfare state, the market society and the digital economy. Within the past three decades, the student has shifted from a partner with significant involvement in governing universities, to a consumer whose influence reflects in self-interest enacted via choice and consumer rights. Our main argument is that the governing role of students is fundamentally tied to the role of the university in the society and prevailing economic order, and it is therefore changing yet again in the new period of digital economy. We propose an approach to examine student role in HE governance in the new digital economy as ‘governing with data’ and ‘governing of data’. In the first case, students are approached as digital users and data producers to inform university practices.
In the second, they are made liable to various user agreements with digital platform
providers but have no actual influence on decision-making. The paper provides a framework to trace the student role in higher education governance, and the direction of travel for the new student stakeholder as digital user in the contemporary digital economy.

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When evaluating a website based on the information provided, it is important to assess the validity and reliability of the content. Teachers, educators, and administrators will find use in this Website Credibility Lesson Plan, curated by the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University. Created as part of the center's K-12 Outreach program, this lesson plan for Grades 4-8 will help guide students to identify and classify resources for credibility, explain why websites should be evaluated for credibility, evaluate example websites, and share their findings with classmates. For educators, the lesson plan outlines the necessary materials (e.g., a Web Site Evaluation Rubric) and procedures to keep in mind, as well as supplemental resources and extension activities. The lesson plan matches Indiana Academic Standards categorized by grade level, but could be adapted to meet any national or local standards for science, language arts, or social studies.

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Online Learning and Distance Education Resources

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Online Learning and Distance Education Resources

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Personal site for resources in online learning and distance education. It is personal because it contains the resources I have found useful and interesting. It focuses mainly on resources associated with or relevant to universities and colleges. This site is meant as a resource for students, faculty and academic administrators interested in online learning. Hope that policy-makers will drop in from time to time, as it deals with a number of issues that affect government and other funding agencies. The priority for all posts on this site is quality.

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Welcome to my personal site for resources in online learning and distance education. It is personal because it contains the resources I have found useful and interesting. I focus mainly on resources associated with or relevant to universities and colleges. This site is meant as a resource for students, faculty and academic administrators interested in online learning. I also hope that policy-makers will drop in from time to time, as I deal with a number of issues that affect government and other funding agencies. The priority for all posts on this site is quality.

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Tony Bates | Online Learning and Distance Education Resources

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Welcome to my personal site for resources in online learning and distance education. It is personal because it contains the resources I have found useful and interesting. I focus mainly on resources associated with or relevant to universities and colleges. This site is meant as a resource for students, faculty and academic administrators interested in online learning.

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Free for your classroom

Bring out the inner scientist in all your students with our scientifically accurate models and activities. Search below or head over to our NGSS Pathfinder!

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STEM Resource Finder | Concord Consortium

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The STEM Resource Finder is a collection of the Concord Consortium's best resources for science, math, and engineering education. Our curated collections offer lesson plans and units for your class based on these resources. All for free!"

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Create virtual reality experiences for the browser with A-Frame. This Mozilla-supported framework is powerful, open source, and is easy to learn.

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3D Virtual World

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Build Your Virtual Future in the a Custom-Built Metaverse. Virtway's 3D technology provides you with a place to create productive digital spaces.

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Accessible 3D Virtual and Hybrid Event Platform

Easily host immersive virtual and hybrid events that are accessible across devices, no VR headset required!

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Easily host immersive virtual and hybrid events that are accessible across devices, no VR headset required!

At MootUp, our 3D virtual event platform helps you easily host immersive virtual and hybrid events that are accessible from any device, with no virtual reality (VR) headset required! We provide the virtual event platform technology and tools you need for optimum 3D events in the metaverse that meet the needs of various business, marketing, educational, and other industry goals. This virtual experience is sure to mimic, if not top, in-person event solutions! Our virtual environment allows you to see yourself and your peers as personalized avatars, and wander around the digital event platform space and exhibit halls.

Access from any device

Joining is easy through a laptop, desktop, tablet, chromebook, mobile, dial-in by phone, or immersive VR.
VR/AR support includes:

Samsung Gear VR

iPhone

Google Daydream

Oculus Go/Quest/Rift

View/Lenovo Mirage Solo

Microsoft Mixed Reality/Hololens

HTC Vive/Focus

Nreal

Pico

Magic Leap One

Valve Index

Instant audience access

Audience access to our 3D online events platform takes only seconds - simply share a link. The platform is supported by all devices and browsers and offers an immersive experience that provides unrivaled audience engagement. MootUp provides the ability for attendees to have complete control of their experience. MootUp offers custom 3D avatars, a full suite of interactive features, and 3D experiences unmatched in the event industry through customizable venues, or the creation of a digital twin of your favorite real world venue.

There are:

Our Metaverse solutions

Whether you choose a virtual conference, virtual product launch, virtual breakout, virtual exhibition, virtual career fair, virtual office, virtual coworking, or virtual classroom, our virtual technology platform allows you to maximize the benefits of the metaverse for your business. To best fit the type of event that you choose to host, you also have the ability to customize a virtual venue that will create the most memorable experiences for your brand.

Zoom meetings & webinars

Through an integration with Zoom video conferencing, we can help you as the event manager or event planner, along with event speakers and attendees, communicate and interact through visual/audio in a 3D environment.

Speakers can present from the traditional Zoom app directly to the 3D audience in the event environment

Zoom Meeting participants can share their webcam or screen in an immersive environment

You can manage your 3D audience from the Zoom participants list or our vr meeting platform.

Contact Us for 3D Virtual and Hybrid Event Platform Solutions

Level up your next event by providing an immersive virtual event experience with comprehensive features for yourself and your guests in our virtual event space. You don't have to be an experienced event organizer to dominate the 3D platform. At MootUp, we'll give you all the tools you need to host a successful 3D interactive experience.

To learn more about the 3D virtual event platform and hybrid event platform solutions we offer at MootUp, call us today at 347.535.0844, send an email to [email protected], or schedule a demo.

How many users does the platform support?

Thanks to our proprietary Multiverse™️ audience scaling technology, your virtual or hybrid event can theoretically host an unlimited number of attendees. Now it's just up to you to get them there.

How long does it take to create an event?

Rome wasn't built in a day, but with the right planning, you can have your MootUp virtual event or hybrid experience ready to go in as little as 24 hours depending on your design requirements & the features you want. If you need custom-built spaces or specially developed features then it may take a few weeks. For a more accurate estimate, schedule a demo with one of our experts to discuss your event https://mootup.com/bookdemo?ref=faq & its specific requirements

How can my attendees interact with one another?

MootUp was designed from the ground up to solve the problem of low engagement & bored attendees. That's why we're constantly using client feedback to invent new and exciting ways for people to connect like they would at a live event.

Here are just a few solutions we've come up with so far:

* Private or group video and voice chat/ calls with:
- Private audio-zones.
- Spatial audio.
* Text chat.
- can be set up globally or in private zones.
* Direct/ private messaging.
* Gestures such as dances, postures, moods.
* Animations including 2-player animations such as handshakes, high-fives, hugs.

Can my attendees customize their appearance?

When it comes to how people appear in the virtual world, your attendees will have an unparalleled choice of how they want to be represented in the environment. Rather than forcing people to turn on a webcam or be forced to use a static image, they'll be able to experience MootUp as:

* Headshot VR Avatars - if using a VR device
* 3D Avatars/ characters - can be customized using the 1+ billion customization options
* Video Avatars - your camera takes the place of your avatar in the environment
* Hologram Avatars - if using a green screen. MootUp places the user full size head-to-toe in the 3D space

Can we have multiple sessions running at the same time in different spaces?

Whether you need 1 stage or 100, we've got you covered. Just choose the plan that suits your needs and you can host as many concurrent sessions as you want.

Does the platform support tracking? Can we measure user activity during the event?

Thanks to our proprietary Trophio™️ gamification system, you'll be able to access key event metrics like:

*How many users have visited the event and for how long
*How many times a video has been played or an image has been viewed and for how long
*What were the most popular elements of the event
*User-interactions with other users and images, videos, 3D objects

Are the metrics available for download?

The MootUp platform allows you to track, measure, and export event metrics as needed. You just have to define what metrics you want to collect in advance and we'll take care of the rest.

Can I lock my event spaces/ rooms/ world before it starts?

Yes. With MootUp you have full control over who enters your spaces and who doesn't as well as when. For example, you can set a start date for the event and have it automatically open at that date & time.

Does the platform support other languages besides English?

Yes, we support other languages. Languages currently supported are English, French and Spanish for platform menus. However, the platform predominantly uses icons to eliminate the need to translate.

You can upload content to the platform in any language you want.

Bots and AI NPCs can speak/ read content in 50+ languages.

Can MootUp be integrated with other tools?

MootUp integrates with the most popular tools and platforms out there to make sure you deliver the best experience during the most vibrant events.

From 2D and 2.5D platforms to solutions for videos, ads, tracking, analytics, AI, bots, chat, mailing, ticketing, and more.

Some examples are Slack, Zoom, BlueJeans, Intrado, Splash, Hopin...

Are you interested in a specific integration? Let us know.

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Easily host immersive virtual and hybrid events that are accessible across devices, no VR headset required! At MootUp, our 3D virtual event platform helps you easily host immersive virtual and hybrid events that are accessible from any device, with no virtual reality (VR) headset required!

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FRAME makes it easy to come together with your co-workers, students, or audience in an immersive online space, right from the browser.

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Immersive presentations and meetings - right from the browser on desktop, mobile, and VR

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Remote Meetings Redefined

Make meetings fun again with virtual hangout spaces, classes and conferences. For over a decade, leading companies and educators have trusted Second Life for branded social spaces for events and remote meetings.

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Official Site | Second Life - Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality, VR, Avatars, and Free 3D Chat

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Second Life's official website. Second Life is a free 3D virtual world and original metaverse where users can create, connect, and chat with others from around the world using voice and text.

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Virbela has pioneered the first enterprise metaverse, built specifically to solve the challenges of remote collaboration. Work, attend meetings, host events, hold classes, and connect your entire remote workforce, all in virtual spaces that let people feel like they're exactly where they belong.

Learn how Virbela redefines work
Join the World's Most Innovative Companies in the Metaverse

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Virbela: A Virtual World for Work, Education & Events

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We build virtual worlds that bring business and in-person experiences to life online, and enable remote teams to be more connected and productive.

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Edorble started as a cross-platform application for Mac, PC, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift that lets you gather in 3D environments with your peers or colleagues. These environments let you use in-world web browsers, break into small groups, use gestures, and explore. You can either use our pre-made environments, or you or your students can use the Edorble Creator Tools for Unity 3D to design your own 3D environments (see next question).

Now we are transitioning to an open source framework for learning in XR.

Our framework aims to providing Technology & Implementation advice for every aspect of organizing learning in XR; The Virtual Classroom: Where you teach. The Learning Record Store: Where you store the learning actions. The Learning Analytics Platform: Where you analyse the learning actions. The Learning Management System: Where you store and communicate the learning content. The School / Learning Department Administration: Where you manage your learning institution.

Beyond Edorble, We also create custom 3D/VR applications for clients in the education/training space, and we offer in-person and online courses and professional development.

The Edorble Creator Tool is a plugin built on top of Unity 3D, a free piece of software that we think is the best game engine in the world. You can download Unity 3D for free here. We love Unity 3D because it lets you import 3D models created with nearly any 3D creation tool. So you can build a scene with Unity, but you can also import models from Sketchup, Sketchfab, Minecraft, 3DS Max, Blender, Maya, Tinkercad, and many, many more.

Once you download Unity and you've signed up to be an Edorble creator, we'll email you the plug-in you need. This will add a few buttons to Unity 3D that let you quickly publish your creation to Edorble, turning it into a multiplayer, 3D world. Click here to read more.

It's free when self-hosted. We provide service plans to help you with that.

If you want us to design a custom build of Edorble with specific designs, features, or integrations, we also do that as a service.

If you plan to sell the software some of the software we build on, like Unity, have licensing rules you need to take into account.

We are a team of teachers, developers, and artists who feel strongly that online learning should be more personal, playful, and powerful. Our mission is to help schools, teachers, students, and companies leverage 3D/VR technology for creation, communication, and collaboration. We hail from all over the world: Belgium, USA, Russia, Italy, and India. Besides working on Edorble, we also do custom 3D/VR development for projects in the education/training space.

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Edorble: The Open Source Framework for learning in XR

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Edorble started as a cross-platform application for Mac, PC, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift that lets you gather in 3D environments with your peers or colleagues. These environments let you use in-world web browsers, break into small groups, use gestures, and explore.

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CYBER.ORG empowers educators to teach cyber confidently, resulting in students with the skills and passion needed to succeed in the cyber workforce.

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Top 10 IT Issues, 2022: The Higher Education We Deserve

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Top 10 IT Issues, 2022: The Higher Education We Deserve

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The EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues take an optimistic view of how technology can help make the higher education we deserve—through a shared transformational vision and strategy for the institution, a recognition of the need to place students' success at the center, and a sustainable business model that has redefined "the campus."

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The EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues take an optimistic view of how technology can help make the higher education we deserve-through a shared transformational vision and strategy for the institution, a recognition of the need to place students' success at the center, and a sustainable business model that has redefined "the campus."

Credit: © 2021 Steve McCracken

Another leader, a chancellor, said: "The best opportunity is to redefine education right now. What does higher education look like in a post-COVID world?" The leaders we interviewed are not reflexively reacting to the changes in the world and simply watching their institutions adapt in response. Instead, they are redefining the value proposition of higher education by reshaping institutional business models and culture to anticipate and serve the current and emerging needs of learners, communities, and employers. Rather than working to restore the higher education we had, they are creating the higher education we deserve.

What is the higher education we deserve? One leader emphasized transformed teaching and learning: "I believe that we have the opportunity to reconceptualize how it is that we are no longer going to be in front of the classroom but, instead, we're going to be facilitators of knowledge."

Another leader described a more "customer"-focused institution: "Universities are going to have to become increasingly commercially-minded and agile and adjust much more to what students want and to what employers and governments are asking from higher education as well. The successful institutions will be the learning institutions that are able to respond more dynamically and be more agile in terms of their response, compared with those universities that are less reflective, less able to change."

Another president emphasized the need for colleges and universities to differentiate themselves. "One of the criticisms of higher education is that it is excessively homogenous. There is substantially less choice for people who want to engage with higher education than you might expect. We need to start carving out areas of very distinctive expertise and advantage and then plug those, in a modular way, into much bigger programs of work. I think the biggest transformation will be the move away from the cookie-cutter institutions that attempt to be all things to all people toward players who really carve out and dominate more spaces. And I think that's going to be a tricky journey."

Each leader defined the new higher education a bit differently, but all recognized that the higher education we deserve cannot be created without technology. In fact, for the first time ever, most leaders spoke of technology not as a separate set of issues but as a driver and enabler of, and occasional risk to, their strategic agenda.

2022 Top 10 IT Issues

#1. Cyber Everywhere! Are We Prepared?: Developing processes and controls, institutional infrastructure, and institutional workforce skills to protect and secure data and supply-chain integrity

#2. Evolve or Become Extinct: Accelerating digital transformation to improve operational efficiency, agility, and institutional workforce development

#3. Digital Faculty for a Digital Future: Ensuring faculty have the digital fluency to provide creative, equitable, and innovative engagement for students

#4. Learning from COVID-19 to Build a Better Future: Using digitization and digital transformation to produce technology systems that are more student-centric and equity-minded

#5. The Digital versus Brick-and-Mortar Balancing Game: Creating a blended campus to provide digital and physical work and learning spaces

#6. From Digital Scarcity to Digital Abundance: Achieving full, equitable digital access for students by investing in connectivity, tools, and skills

#7. The Shrinking World of Higher Education or an Expanded Opportunity? Developing a technology-enhanced post-pandemic institutional vision and value proposition

#8. Weathering the Shift to the Cloud: Creating a cloud and SaaS strategy that reduces costs and maintains control

#9. Can We Learn from a Crisis? Creating an actionable disaster-preparation plan to capitalize on pandemic-related cultural change and investments

#10. Radical Creativity: Helping students prepare for the future by giving them tools and learning spaces that foster creative practices and collaborations

Shared Vision, Shared Strategy

Credit: © 2021 Steve McCracken

But the foundation work alone is insufficient. Shifts in culture, workforce, and technology need to be focused on a particular outcome. Institutions will be developing a vision and corresponding value proposition for their institution that takes them beyond the pandemic, and they will be harnessing technology to attain that vision (Issue #7).

Student Success as Institutional Success

Credit: © 2021 Steve McCracken

The higher education we deserve is one in which institutions embrace students as their primary customers. No longer can institutions dictate the terms and conditions of students' educational experiences and outcomes. Institutions will be optimizing their offerings to meet students' needs. That includes treating access as an institutional, rather than learner, responsibility (Issue #6), developing services that are designed with the student in mind (Issue #4), designing equitable teaching and learning that works for all individuals, not just those in the "mainstream" (Issues #3, #4, and #6), and focusing on creativity and innovation in teaching as well as learning (Issues #3 and #10).

The Sustainable Business Model

Credit: © 2021 Steve McCracken

The higher education we deserve needs to be able to operate efficiently and manage risks effectively. It needs to be sustainable. Done well, technology can help organizations control and reduce costs, as well as scale beyond their size (Issues #5 and #8).

In the 21st century, we are surrounded by all kinds of risks, and we need to be able to anticipate, prepare for, and manage them. Technology can help mitigate risks to place-based learning and work, and all the pivots that occurred during the pandemic have reduced institutional dependence on the physical campus (Issue #9). Yet technology in the form of data security is also among the top risks in higher education (Issue #1). As long as that remains true, cybersecurity management will remain high on the EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues list.

What is the higher education we deserve? It is the higher education that our learners deserve. How do we get there? By beginning with a shared vision and strategy to achieve a sustainable business model that places students' success at the center of it all.

Additional Resources on the EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues Website

A video summary of the 2022 Top 10 IT Issues

An infographic about the 2022 Top 10 IT Issues

International perspectives on the 2022 Top 10 IT Issues

Corporate perspectives on the 2022 Top 10 IT Issues

The 2022 Top 10 IT Issues presentation at the EDUCAUSE 2021 Annual Conference

2022 Higher Education Trend Watch

2021-2022 EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel Members

Trina Marmarelli

Director
Instructional Technology Services

Reed College

Thomas Trappler

Associate Director
IT Strategic Sourcing

University of California System

President

CAUDIT (Council of Australasian Directors of Information Technology)

Issue #1: Cyber Everywhere! Are We Prepared?
Developing processes and controls, institutional infrastructure, and institutional workforce skills to protect and secure data and supply-chain integrity Michelle Rakoczy, Nina Reignier-Tayar, Thomas Trappler, and Gina White
"What risk level are we willing to assume as institutions to best meet our mission? We're struggling with trying to create the right kind of technical environments to be able to share data and to access it. I'm going to want more information, I'm going to have more people who have it, and the security folks are going to be more concerned because people are getting more clever about getting access to the data, and the risk of us inadvertently sharing data in ways that we shouldn't is very real and significant."

-Ron Anderson, President, Senior Vice Chancellor, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

Cybersecurity threats and incidents are increasing globally and becoming more difficult for users to recognize and for cybersecurity programs to detect. One incident can cause loss of reputation and loss of educational opportunities for students, as well as financial and reputational issues for both the campus and the individuals impacted.

As technology provides more of the foundation on which higher education institutions conduct their core operations, building processes, controls and training that ensure continuity of access and ongoing integrity of those underlying IT products becomes business-critical. Without this, the ability of an institution to function could come to a grinding halt.

To succeed, institutions should not treat cybersecurity as a technical subject. It should be an institutional priority. Cybersecurity is a team sport inside an institution, as well as across the higher education sector in countries, regions, and the world. All of us in our sector need to work together to safeguard our universities.

Challenges in 2022

The pandemic and changing technology architectures are complicating the ability of institutions to provision and secure the supply chain on which institutional infrastructure is so dependent. Additionally, global supply-chain disruptions can have far-reaching effects. For example, computer shipping shortages impact the availability of computing devices, consumer goods, automobiles, cloud computing, and more. Both cloud suppliers and institutions are struggling to obtain newly limited resources.

What were once clear distinctions among hardware, software, cloud, and services and between primary and secondary suppliers continue to blur and overlap to the point where they're no longer distinguishable as separate categories. That raises questions and challenges about identifying the perimeter-or, where institutionally owned and managed technology infrastructure ends. Additionally, the integration between technology run in-house and that run by an external supplier continues to blur boundaries between consumers' responsibilities and suppliers' responsibilities. That, in turn, creates the challenge of clarifying which technology and data components can and should be secured by institutions versus by suppliers versus by end users and, thus, where security risk factors and responsibilities reside. Sometimes suppliers' security and privacy controls may not be as tight as institutions require or realize.

If institutional leaders have not already addressed these risks during the pandemic, they will have to extend cybersecurity policies, processes, training, and other protections to these use cases. Tools like the EDUCAUSE Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit, developed for use across the entire higher education sector, can help clarify institutional security requirements and suppliers' ability to meet them.

Impacts on Culture

Both mindsets and behaviors need to change. All faculty, staff, and students at an institution need to understand their cybersecurity responsibilities and adapt to (often legally mandated) institutional controls and processes that may very well introduce new restrictions and access.

Culture clashes between data preservationists and leaders managing institutional risk and legal exposure may intensify as higher education institutions introduce more conservative records-retention policies and processes. Institutions that can frame data security and privacy protection as partnerships among various stakeholders may see fewer of these and other culture clashes.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Finding and funding cybersecurity staff has gotten harder, as the pre-pandemic shortage of cybersecurity professionals continues and as pandemic-related budget cuts challenge institutions to afford qualified staff. The burden falls on existing staff, who are burned out and overworked. Some cybersecurity tasks can be outsourced, however, to extend staff and/or acquire specialized skills. For example, institutions can hire consultants to perform an information systems security audit, identify gaps, and work with existing staff to develop a plan to prioritize and address the gaps.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

Once institutions have invested in cloud solutions, what institutional leaders think of as "their" IT infrastructure now extends globally and introduces new dependencies and risks. An attack on a supplier can endanger and disable institutional services and data. Another capability that institutions need is business continuity to help anticipate and prepare for such issues.

Transforming Higher Education

Cybersecurity is expensive and challenging and becoming only more of both. Institutions that collaborate to manage cybersecurity can share costs and expertise, both reducing the burden on individual institutions and increasing the level and effectiveness of cybersecurity at institutions of all sizes. We are already seeing promising steps in this direction. The University System of North Dakota is partnering across its institutions and with the state of North Dakota to work collectively with supplier partners and to introduce programs that benefit all. Australasia is partnering regionally, with higher education institutions and the Australian and New Zealand governments, to deliver cybersecurity awareness training and to share the costs of a security operations center (SOC). Institutions in the University of California system are working together to identify and establish agreements with best-in-class IT security tools suppliers.

Issue #2: Evolve or Become Extinct
Accelerating digital transformation to improve operational efficiency, agility, and institutional workforce development
Bella Abrams, Jeremy Anderson, Tiffni Deeb, and Thomas Trappler

"I see a very substantial role for technological transformation. We have to develop processes that we can automate or at least filter using AI, robotics, and things of that nature. There are good examples of processes that are super mission critical, like university admissions, which I think will radically transform in the next five years through use of technology. And if we fail, what we're going to fall on is that our speed to market and our cost of doing business are basically going to be threats to us."

-Tyrone Carlin, Vice Chancellor and President, Southern Cross University, Australia

Technological transformation happens, whether we like it or not, and at an increasingly rapid pace. Effectively managing the complex underlying collection of IT goods and services, and associated integrations, can transform institutional operations, enabling greater efficiency and innovation. Accomplishing this requires a high level of coordination and planning by institutional leadership, including the need to integrate technology and its procurement into the associated strategic planning processes. An impediment to digital transformation in higher education is that processes, services, and use of data often have not been designed but have evolved, without structured thinking about efficiency, effectiveness, and outcomes. Digital transformation entails optimizing and transforming institutional operations, strategic directions, and value proposition through deep and coordinated shifts in culture, workforce, and technology. Dx initiatives begin with a strategic outcome and entail holistic, coordinated efforts. Rather than improving operational efficiency, introducing data governance and integration, or implementing technical solutions as separate, unrelated projects, Dx initiatives may address them collectively to achieve a particular outcome. Many of today's Dx efforts focus on student outcomes and experiences.

While Dx initiatives help attain strategic outcomes, they also increase institutional capabilities, resulting in greater agility, operational efficiency, and staff knowledge and skills. The institution is thus better positioned for even deeper transformations.

Challenges in 2022

The increasingly diverse range of different technologies and IT services, and the need to integrate, will continue to present challenges. Additionally challenging is accomplishing the above while also effectively implementing new hybrid learning and work environments stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Institutions may lack the resources to fund transformative efforts. The coming demographic cliff-a steep drop-off in potential first-time full-time freshmen projected to arrive in 2025 due to the decline in birth rate in the 2008 recession-may further erode enrollment income at US institutions. As the pandemic drags on, its impact on staff members' health compounds the problem. Staff - including leaders - may run out of the ability to reimagine, reinvent, and retool.

While the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in many ways, some approaches and responses have been necessarily rushed and tactical, resulting in fixes that may not scale or have applicability beyond the pandemic. Institutional leaders will need to create a comprehensive strategic plan with elements that can be prioritized and addressed incrementally to balance limited energy and resources with lasting, meaningful outcomes.

Impacts on Culture

Technology changes rapidly, often offering opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Institutional leaders will have to dismantle siloed work in order to achieve institutional excellence. Siloes reflect organizational structure rather than strategic outcomes such as student success or financial health. Processes, guidelines, tools and technologies, and data are often siloed. Shared, strategic outcomes can inspire stakeholders to understand the greater good and the need for establishing common solutions that are equitable, inclusive, and more affordable.

Such adjustments involve change. Change decisions can't be made behind closed doors. They will require dialogue across staff groups and student groups to help all stakeholders understand and agree on goals and feel that they have a hand in choices and timing. Institutional leaders will need to become increasingly comfortable with, and effective at, change agility while also maintaining focus on strategic goals.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Digital transformation requires a new set of skills and competencies across the institutional community. New, needed technology-related skills include strategic sourcing, contract management, supplier relationship management, user experience and design thinking, product management, and enterprise architecture. The entire workforce will need deeper data skills and greater ability to collaborate and partner. Human resources staff and workforce managers will need to become more effective at workforce planning and talent management. If the institution continues to function as a hybrid office-based and work-from-home organization, all staff will also need to gain skills in managing, communicating, collaborating, and working productively in this hybrid work environment.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

While digital transformation depends on technologies and IT capabilities, success arguably depends more on how technologies are chosen and adopted than on which technologies are chosen and adopted. Technology choices should proceed from, not precede, shared agreement on outcomes and functionality. Academic and administrative leaders understand what they want to achieve, but the most effective technology decisions take an institution-wide, rather than department-specific, perspective. Leaders must invite varied staff to the table: technologists to advise on accessibility, interoperability, security, and sustainability; equity experts to assess fairness and impartiality; and IT strategic sourcing experts to effectively manage competitive selection processes and negotiate the most favorable terms.

Transforming Higher Education

Digital transformation may enable institutions to break the classic "iron triangle" rule that says it is possible to maximize only two of the three desirable outcomes: cost, speed, and quality. Dx efforts often involve systems and data integrations, which can lead to both lower costs and better services and experiences. They will provide a holistic view of students, alumni, employees, resources, and more in ways that can result in beneficial outcomes. New architectures increase access to data and resources, which can offer better insights about institutional products and services and enable faster, more accurate decisions.

These changes lay the groundwork to provide students with a more affordable education as well as the skills and credentialing they need to have the work and employment that they desire and to do so at a time that fits their lives.

Issue #3: Digital Faculty for a Digital Future
Ensuring faculty have the digital fluency to provide creative, equitable, and innovative engagement for students Orlando Leon, Dolores Marek, John Murphy, and Shana Sumpter
"COVID has kind of pushed us in this direction of online teaching. Even faculty who are resistant were forced into an environment where they had to use the technology. And I've heard from some faculty that they had no idea how innovative they could be with some of this technology in their classrooms."

-Nathan Brostrom, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, University of California Office of the President

Students expect their higher education institutions to provide a certain level of digital sophistication in delivering learning and services. For many students, the digital medium is their default way to learn, interact, and get things done. Although the pandemic has required even the most technology-averse faculty to adopt digital instruction, they will need help and encouragement to continue to develop their skills in using innovative instructional technologies.

Instructional and pedagogical technologists understand that technology choices need to be made part of the curriculum-development process, not just layered on at the end. Now is an ideal time for faculty to step back and reevaluate their courses and programs through the lenses of delivery mode and technology integration. That takes time. Teaching and learning support center staff can shoulder some of the burden for faculty.

Institutional leaders need to invest more in training, instructional design support, and spaces where faculty can experiment with innovative teaching technologies.

Challenges in 2022

Gaining buy-in from some faculty is one challenge. But the greater problem today is that many faculty are overwhelmed by the intense ongoing demands of the pandemic. Not all faculty who started remote instruction during the pandemic enjoyed it, and some want to revert entirely and permanently to face-to-face teaching.

The uncertainty of the pandemic, plus institutional and governmental approaches to managing it, will also generate ongoing disruption and churn. That's likely to exacerbate burn-out among faculty, staff, and students.

Impacts on Culture

Moving toward a digital future with digital faculty requires infusing digital strategy into the pillars of the institutional strategy and missions. Higher education institutions will need to add digital dimensions to governance structures and processes, which of course should involve faculty and incorporate students' perspectives. Including digitally-savvy faculty on academic leadership teams can help-and so can finding ways to integrate core technology requirements into the tenure and promotion process.

Leaders need to encourage collaboration and partnerships across academic departments and among pedagogical experts, technologists, and faculty. Using collaborative technologies like Slack or Microsoft Teams can foster dialogue and community around how faculty are using technology in their teaching, how they are teaching, and how they are changing the curriculum. Partnerships with businesses can also provide exciting and well-funded opportunities to experiment with teaching and technology.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Faculty need training, of course. Those staff who are leading digital faculty initiatives might design training around a digital competency framework. Training will need to be ongoing to keep up with the speed with which digital tools change.

The mindsets of both faculty and staff will need to shift. To help encourage those shifts, organizational leaders will have to introduce supports such as change management and collaboration incentives for faculty, pedagogical and instructional technologists, and other technology staff.

Many people are feeling depleted now, so as leaders introduce and advocate for change, they should try to find ways of helping faculty and staff attain and maintain emotional equilibrium and well-being.

Leaders will also have to introduce new expectations for digital fluency among faculty in the context of continued adaptations to the changing pandemic situation. This may be an ideal time to change expectations, because many faculty are trying to recalibrate their teaching methods and materials to the pandemic situation and to what they've learned about digital instruction.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

Technologies and capabilities are needed at all layers. A digital teaching and learning future demands robust, equitably delivered infrastructure that has the capacity to move and store digitized datasets, images, music, and videos and that is designed to accommodate remote locations and devices. Policies can help democratize and standardize resources and resource levels across have- and have-not departments to provide students with consistent experiences and to provide faculty with equitable resources and support. Standardizing learning space management can help simplify faculty's use of learning spaces.

Learning analytics can help faculty adapt their teaching to identify and support students quickly and efficiently. Assessment technologies, although often controversial, are maturing, and with the help of learning and assessment advocates, these technologies can become more valid and better safeguard privacy. New consumer-focused artificial intelligence products may appear in the next year or two also. All these technologies will demand careful processes and policies to ensure that they are being used ethically and equitably. Perhaps the most exciting and fun possibilities exist with gaming and extended reality applications.

In all these cases, new technologies will introduce new costs, support requirements, and training needs. Academic leaders will be better off introducing only new technologies that they can fully support. Innovation and exploration can be encouraged at the grassroots level, and then when small pilots are successful, those technologies can be moved to a supported service catalog.

Transforming Higher Education

For institutions that are already adopting digital learning, the transformation is underway. More interesting, perhaps, is to speculate on how higher education institutions that are committed to a campus-based experience will define and develop "digital" faculty. Students will have the greatest influence over the incorporation of digital experiences and learning opportunities into courses and curricula. Will anytime, anywhere learning become an expectation of all students, even those who attend campus-based institutions? If so, when will this happen? Will new generations of faculty be so digitally adept that this issue will lose its relevance?

Most important is to have a digital faculty strategy that is tied to important outcomes. Student success-whether defined as completion, retention, affordability, employability, learning, or all five-is one outcome on which to align a digital faculty strategy. Equity and accessibility must also be incorporated into both outcomes and digital learning strategy. The process of increasing digital fluency will help institutional leaders focus on outcomes, so faculty digital fluency should be addressed in the context of good pedagogical design and measurable learning outcomes.

Issue #4: Learning from COVID-19 to Build a Better Future

Using digitization and digital transformation to produce technology systems that are more student-centric and equity-minded
Wendy Athens, Jared Evans, Dan Mincheff, and Michelle Rakoczy
"We talk about being student ready, so how do we help students become technology ready? Because that's going to be a part of how they're going to receive their education. I think it will put a stronger emphasis on our digital presence. Going back to the ease of use of our website, our student portals, our LMS, all of those things that we're going to lean more heavily on in the future. That will become as important as the brick and mortar. So this definitely is transforming higher education."

-Dan Mincheff, Chief Information Officer, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted almost all facets of higher education. It amplified strengths, demonstrating that effective processes and people can work in a wide variety of situations and scenarios, and it exposed gaps that have long needed to be filled. The pandemic required institutions to focus on core needs and services, strengthening the ones that worked and reinventing the ones that did not. It jump-started digital transformation at many institutions.

During the pandemic institutions returned to first principles and to their primary customers: students. Institutional leaders and faculty learned just how many students lack broadband and devices other than a smartphone. The quick fixes during the pandemic need to give way to comprehensive efforts to ensure that students have sufficient and equitable access to educational resources and opportunities. Technologies like Zoom gave faculty a platform for digital instruction, but faculty need more help truly integrating technology into distance, hybrid, and classroom education. That help needs to take many forms, including pedagogical design, learning space design, and courseware and other instructional technologies.

Students also need more effective technology-mediated advising and support services. As institutional leaders begin to better understand the many extra-academic factors that contribute to students' success, they are introducing and expanding student services ranging from financial aid to mental health services to transportation, child care, and food services. Technology can offer students conveniences such as online scheduling for services, online progress reports and updates, and virtual appointments/meetings.

We have all learned a lot. Institutional leaders need to use their new learnings, processes, and capabilities to permanently change the way they are going to conduct campus business moving forward.

Challenges in 2022

We have entered a new, more complicated phase of the pandemic. Higher education institutions and individuals are trying to achieve something resembling pre-pandemic life while remaining in the midst of a pandemic. This swing back to previous service levels and the ongoing lack of consensus among state and federal leaders effectively prohibit institutional leaders from mandating anything. As a result, two sets of expectations have been established: (1) those established during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., distance learning, remote work, and loosened controls), and (2) the more traditional, pre-pandemic campus-based learning and work. Students, faculty, and staff want to be able to choose among all these options and have a seamless customer experience.

Trying to expand digital services is particularly difficult at this time, however. Reliable planning and provisioning is a challenge as supply-chain irregularities continue, While digital literacy has improved during the pandemic, staff and students need to further develop digital skills to work and learn productively. Yet faculty, staff, and students are tired, stressed, and overwhelmed.

Impacts on Culture

In the first phases of the pandemic, institutions made great progress toward anytime, anywhere working and learning. Now everybody-including students who don't want to leave their homes or dorm rooms to go to class and staff members who want to work at home or want flexible schedules-expects greater adaptability and flexibility. If digital transformation is to be successful, institutional leaders need to step back and reflect on what's been learned and gained, align on desired outcomes, and decide how to move forward with intentionality.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Instructional support and IT staff must provide more training for faculty and staff, to keep them up-to-date and to ensure that they have the skills needed to teach and work securely and effectively beyond the traditional campus. Strong relationships and ongoing communication among IT leaders, staff, faculty, and administrative leaders are essential for technologists to design and deliver great services and for institutions to use technology to its maximal strategic value.

With so many more faculty teaching online, teaching and learning managers and IT support centers may struggle to maintain sufficient staffing levels. The Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provides only point-in-time funding. New strategies to sustain service levels will be needed, such as appointing digital instruction leaders in each academic department to liaise with the support unit and serve as a communication mechanism to get information out and to support conversations about using technology in the classroom.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

Institutions will need technologies that enable access and services, from wherever employees or students are, to support hybrid working and learning. Services need to work just as well for students with limited access to technology or special accessibility requirements. Many institutions are also still searching for a flexible but feasible solution for hybrid learning.

Technology can introduce play into learning. Technologies that support more immersive, interactive, and fun learning-such as extended reality solutions-may offer an online, asynchronous learning experience to augment a completely in-person class. Technologies that can help students build community and connectedness are also important in these often isolating times.

Of course, the infrastructure that supports flexible, fun learning and socializing needs to be just as well-managed and secure as the rest of the institutional digital infrastructure. Disaster recovery and business continuity are part of good management, as is effective supplier relationship management.

Transforming Higher Education

During the pandemic, higher education became an enormous incubator for digital transformation. New possibilities-and expectations-have emerged. As a result, academic leaders and faculty may introduce novel ways to deliver the curriculum and showcase new and exciting ways for students to learn. Flexibility is going to be key moving forward. Faculty have shown students they can switch modes if and as needed. How do they now simplify the process to leverage flexibility as an advantage?

These transformations will put a stronger emphasis on the digital presence of higher education institutions. The digital campus will become as important as the brick-and-mortar campus. The two models will coexist at many institutions, forcing leaders to consider what can be done only on campus and what can be done virtually. The shift of funding to support hybrid campus operations and planning will be as disruptive as the shift, spurred by cloud computing, from capital to operational funding. Many US state funding models are based on physical space and uses of it. That's not going to work under the new paradigm. Finding the right balance between physical and virtual presence for all members of the campus community will be imperative for a successful future.

Issue #5: The Digital versus Brick-and-Mortar Balancing Game
Creating a blended campus to provide digital and physical work and learning spaces Jon Bartelson, LeRoy Butler, Scott Erardi, and Paul Harness
"If we're flexing large-scale lectures and exploring ways to 'flip the classroom' by creating online opportunities that extend and enrich our face-to-face teaching, what does that mean for all the lecture theaters that we have, and what other forms of flexible teaching and student engagement space will we need? And equally, if we're starting to think about change to more blended working practices, what does that mean about the office accommodations and meeting spaces we have on campus? And if we start working differently and release some of that space, what does that afford us in terms of opportunities for repurposing space and thereby reducing the carbon intensity of capital programs on campus?"

-Simon Guy, Professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor Global (International, Digital, Sustainability, Development), Lancaster University, United Kingdom

During the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education leaders, faculty, and staff have learned many things about how to provide a quality educational experience for students. As they have begun to transition back to campus-based activities, many leaders are viewing this as an opportunity to reimagine what the "campus" is and how it works.

For many institutions, such reinvention is imperative because enrollments have declined and likely will continue to decline due to both the pandemic and broader demographic changes. Commuting to or living on campus does not often fit the lives of students when they're balancing family, community, and career commitments with the desire to further their education. Administratively, many institutional teams have gained productivity by working remotely or in hybrid ways.

Options for reimagining the campus include (1) redesigning campus physical spaces to support hybrid learning and work, (2) addressing space crunches by encouraging administrative groups to work remotely and then converting administrative spaces to academic spaces that support learning, research, and scholarship that is better conducted on campus, and/or (3) lowering costs by reducing the physical campus space.

Challenges in 2022

Transforming a campus wisely and well is not a rapid process. As the pandemic drags on, leaders are struggling simply to plan for the next week. But leaders need to begin anticipating the post-pandemic future of their institutions, even as the pandemic continues. Many of them lack reliable information about how many of their current and prospective students will want campus-only, hybrid, or fully online educational experiences. Powerful anecdotes can dominate data, which may lead institutions to overcorrect in one direction or the other.

Impacts on Culture

As a result of the pandemic, students want and expect more opportunities outside of the normal, traditional hours that institutions typically offer. They want weekend, evening, and holiday hours for everything from classes to student services to the library. Many institutional leaders are considering whether to make big bets on technology to change the game at their campuses. Those big bets will have major impacts on institutional culture and the very nature of how constituents get work done. Having fewer students on campus may reduce students' interest in and attendance at campus events and activities. Many faculty want the flexibility of being able to work in a more hybrid way, but they want to do so on their terms, such as retaining their campus offices. Staff may be more willing to adapt to new working spaces and arrangements, but they are anxious about the details and personal impact. For example, many staff expect institutions to fully equip their home working spaces while also keeping their institutional working spaces. Few institutions will be able to afford that level of "both and." So while the possibility of flexibility and saved time from commuting is appealing, leaders will have to listen, prepare, and communicate carefully.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Becoming a fully blended campus will change the way all institutional constituents work and form community. People will need help and training to adapt to and gain mastery with new tools and ways of working and collaborating. Physical and digital space and service planners will need to design physical and virtual spaces and ways of working and teaching in partnership with, and getting significant ongoing input from, students, faculty, and staff.

Human resource leaders should consider new programs to incentivize digitally-savvy job applicants to join the institutional workforce, to help design and also model ways to digitally transform work, instruction, and research. Fully remote work arrangements could be used to further attract these applicants to roles that fit the needs of both the future employee and the institution.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

The biggest challenge may be finding ways of successfully working and learning in a hybrid mode. Meetings, teaching, and other synchronous group activities work best when everyone is online or when everyone is in the same room. Technologists are investing in various technologies that support "dual mode" instruction or meetings; these technologies include additional cameras, screens, audio, and collaboration technologies. Not every effort will work, so technologists often frame the technologies as experiments or pilots and encourage faculty and staff to test various options. Yet the solution is not only a technical one; equally important is re-engineering academic and work processes to enable people to conduct their work in a seamless way regardless of the modality.

Technologies supporting anytime, anywhere access are also in demand. Since the pandemic began, faculty have become more eager to use cloud-based services for research and teaching. Many institutions have greatly expanded wireless capabilities on campus to support the increased number of institutional services and applications that have been digitized and made mobile-friendly.

Transforming Higher Education

The physical campus is unlikely to disappear at most institutions. Rather, the digital campus can offer flexibility in, and alternatives to, how students learn, how faculty teach and engage in research and scholarship, how staff work, and how all constituents form enduring and engaging relationships and communities. As students, faculty, and staff adjust to hybrid learning and work, they will make choices that change the way physical space is used, creating, for example, less need for dormitories or increased demand for fully online classes (and thus reduced demand for physical classrooms). The transformation of higher education may be more evolution than sudden disruption-an evolution shaped by all stakeholders.

Reimagined and transformed ways of working and learning will prepare institutions to serve current and future generations of students, including growing numbers of lifelong learners looking to upskill, reskill, or simply satisfy their curiosity.

Issue #6: From Digital Scarcity to Digital Abundance
Achieving full, equitable digital access for students by investing in connectivity, tools, and skills Steve Burrell and Trina Marmarelli
"Technology is about so much more than just the devices. It's also about the environment in which our students can or cannot access technology."

-Judy Miner, Chancellor, Foothill-DeAnza Community College District

The pandemic made it painfully clear that in the United States, digital voids in both rural and urban areas most adversely affect Black, Latino/Latina, and indigenous people, as well as people with disabilities and people experiencing poverty. The digital divide is about more than access to reliable high-speed internet. Students also need equitable access to devices, software, and the skills required to be successful students and, later, to thrive in the workplace.

The same thinking that got us here won't get us there. Higher education leaders must act on a holistic strategy for equitable digital access and must invest in sustainable ways to provide access in order to avoid inadvertently widening the digital divide. Institutional leaders have a pivotal role to play in reimagining what equity means. Leaders will need to make difficult choices; in some cases, return-on-investment may not be the measure of success.

Challenges in 2022

The flood of funding around infrastructure and the COVID-19 pandemic has created tremendous swirl and confusion about broadband initiatives. Ultimately, this situation will sort itself out, but until then, knowing who is investing what and where can be difficult to determine. In higher education, we need to be careful that we're investing money in areas and people where there is real need even if not necessarily a sustaining market with predictable return on investment.

Another difficulty is the ongoing uncertainty about the course of the pandemic and its impact on institutional operations and on how to ensure that students have the access they need when they need it. As the pandemic has settled in and claimed another academic year, institutional leaders find themselves having to prepare for a much wider range of circumstances than in the initial phases of the pandemic.

Broadening and sustaining access requires software as well as hardware. Software is increasingly licensed annually using operational funding. Additional funding will be needed to bolster operational budgets during a period of increasingly limited resources. Hard decisions and careful fiscal planning are needed to create sustainable digital abundance. Worse than not addressing this issue may be the need to abandon investments later, leaving stakeholders disenfranchised.

Impacts on Culture

Progress on achieving full digital access for students will be held back by existing biases and attitudes about organizational and personal productivity. The idea of working anytime, anywhere has widespread appeal and value, but not all institutional leaders are prepared to adopt it. Similarly, many faculty and academic leaders are entrenched around the idea that certain modalities of teaching and learning are intrinsically better or more effective than others. That must change to serve the "everywhere" learner (and the "anywhere" faculty).

The academic culture of high levels of autonomy for faculty over how they teach their courses, present their information, and engage with their students is in many ways a wonderful thing. But it can also impede achieving fully equitable digital access for students. When faculty are choosing their own technology platforms without considering the broader institutional context, students often have to navigate a convoluted landscape of technology platforms and tools. A shift in the institutional culture toward presenting students with a more streamlined technology toolkit, without compromising pedagogy, could go a long way toward achieving more seamless access for students.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

Additional investments are needed in campus network infrastructure and the highly skilled technical staff to support it. Beyond bandwidth, technologies such as virtual desktops and access to education applications and information independent of place are now a necessity.

Institutions will need IT staff who are able to engage with students to provide them with the technology training and skills that they'll need to be successful.

Technologies such as adaptive learning and augmented reality can remove barriers to learning and open new opportunities for learning, discovery, and experiences. Investments in these technological tools must be matched with investments in people and with rethought processes. Faculty will need to learn about and adapt or adopt new heutagogical methods to make the best use of these technologies. They must be well supported by IT staff who understand not just the technology but also the concepts behind its application to teaching and learning. Collaboration between faculty and staff is also necessary to ensure that digital accessibility is taken into consideration when evaluating and selecting technological tools, so that removing barriers for some students does not inadvertently create new barriers for others.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Implicitly or explicitly, focusing on digital abundance for students puts students, rather than the institution or faculty, at the center of the institution. For that to happen, leaders must focus on creating a student experience that's well thought out, equitable, and cohesive.

Both faculty and staff will need to become more flexible and adaptive in order to respond rapidly to changing circumstances and students' needs. Faculty will need to become adept at remote teaching, learning, collaboration, and advising so that they can confidently revise and improvise in the moment.

Transforming Higher Education

The biggest transformation that institutional stakeholders are seeing now is a much broader collaboration between teaching faculty and the staff who support the curriculum, including academic technologists, instructional designers, and librarians. The most equitable level of access for all happens when faculty and staff are working together to improve the learning experience for students. As a result of this collaboration, faculty understand what other staff at the institution bring to the table, and staff become more involved in the classroom experience, physical or remote, and better understand what that experience is like for students and for faculty.

Increasing access and digital abundance for all students could help differentiate institutions in ways that could increase enrollments. The institutions that can achieve full and equitable digital access for students, often by forging new partnerships and taking prudent risks, will be more likely to survive-and succeed.

Issue #7: The Shrinking World of Higher Education or an Expanded Opportunity?
Developing a technology-enhanced post-pandemic institutional vision and value proposition Steve Burrell, Joanne Kossuth, Joseph Moreau, and Nela Petkovic
"It matters what our students and our alumni do after they leave us. And it matters how they have the experiences that continue to give them the value-and not just in the networks and the conversations and ongoing learning opportunities, but to be able to really contribute, to help solve the problems we have as a society and as a world going forward using the skills we provide them with."

-Joanne Kossuth, Chief Innovation Officer, Mitchell College

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the changes that were already happening in higher education and pushed institutions faster and in new directions. Institutional leaders learned that they could deliver remote teaching and learning to their current students, and now many are ready to serve students across regions, countries, and the world.

Leaders at institutions ready to seize new opportunities are challenging themselves to expand access and increase students' outcomes by leveraging the experience they gained during the pandemic. Technology can help realize these ambitions more quickly and less expensively.

These leaders are also expanding their approaches to digital equity to encompass not only equitable access to connectivity and devices but also equitable access to learning spaces.

The institutions that are able to reassess their mission and strategies, embrace diverse thinking, create partnerships, accelerate their planning cycles, efficiently execute on their plans, and accurately measure the impact will thrive. Institutions that return to the status quo or slacken their pace will quickly fall behind.

Challenges in 2022

We are living in the in-between now. The pandemic continues, and the camaraderie and shared commitment that characterized the initial months of the pandemic has given way to an exhausted slog for many in higher education. For those who simply want to return to the way things were, the talk of permanent changes is frightening and exhausting. Faculty and staff may interpret plans for dual modes of working and teaching as plans to double their workloads. Yet some changes, such as remote work and flexible schedules, will be welcomed by most faculty and staff and in fact may be impossible to discontinue.

Numerous governments gave institutions additional temporary funding during the pandemic to make new investments that would help students and address equity and access issues. Institutional leaders will find it difficult to adjust to reduced funds while sustaining the improvements the support made possible.

Impacts on Culture

If higher education is to expand rather than shrink, people will have to stop viewing change as an occasional, timebound activity that the wily can avoid or subvert. They will have to stop appointing "change agents" as if only a few leaders need to take on that thankless role. Leaders and the workforce alike need to recognize that change is constant and involves everyone and that moments of stasis are brief and not always benign.

Signals of an unhealthy culture in higher education today include widespread agreement with statements like, "this is the way we've always done it," and "this is not what I signed up for." Institutional leaders need to help faculty and staff remember that what they actually signed up for is to serve students. Students' needs and expectations-even who students are-have changed dramatically.

Signs that the culture is adapting include being able to identify the services, processes, and structures that need to be discontinued in order to make way for a new institutional vision and value proposition. Other signs are a willingness on the part of faculty and staff to change the way they think about a sense of place and work and about who the students are.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

But everyone, not just leaders, can and must lead from where they are. That requires investments in human resources, faculty, staff, and students in ways that encourage them to generate new ideas and be part of the solutions. Then leaders need to introduce those potential solutions to the institution, rather than to a specific silo, and allow them to either publicly succeed or publicly fail, because that's how the entire workforce will learn.

Recruitment, talent management, and work locations need to transform before institutions can. Applicants have greater leverage than they've ever had to set the terms of their employment. The current workforce expects more flexibility and options. Managers need to restore and even increase professional development and training to help prepare staff for new work and ways of working.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

Technology leaders must rethink what infrastructure means in many different contexts. The infrastructure higher education needs must work well for remote learners and visitors. It must either extend beyond the campus to ensure that all learners have high-speed broadband access, devices, and spaces conducive to learning or it must adapt institutional services so that they work just as effectively for smartphones without high-speed access.

The new infrastructure needs to encompass digital experiences and interactions with the institution and deliver them as seamlessly and intuitively as, yes, Amazon. The concepts of consumer-focused infrastructure could also be extended to administrative and academic areas, such as the curriculum and the delivery of course materials.

As hard as technologists have worked over the last years and decades to integrate systems with each other, more progress is needed to achieve the levels of flexibility and seamlessness to which leaders aspire. The barriers are no longer technical; they are financial, political, and structural.

Many institutions still lack the tools and information required to make decisions quickly. Institutional leaders should ensure that they have the data and technologies that will enable them to measure the entire student life cycle, to inform decision makers about the effectiveness of new strategies, and to get accurate measures of strategic progress. Such tools include advanced prescriptive analytics for decision making, a well-developed marketing and enrollment management technology stack, and new tools for efficiently coordinating the evolution of curriculum.

Transforming Higher Education

The way higher education certifies learning and graduates is one of the most transformational opportunities. Institutional collaborations that enable students to attain and easily transfer credentials among multiple institutions would be a major advance toward that Amazon-like postsecondary educational experience. Beyond that, employers have been clamoring for clearer information about what graduates know and can do with their education (e.g., competency-based certifications). An associate's, bachelor's, or master's degree is not specific enough to enable employers to evaluate talent for the needs of their companies. If institutions, or the higher education sector as a whole, can clarify learning objectives and accomplishments in ways that advantage graduates and help employers, the value proposition of higher education will increase significantly.

Transformation is attainable, providing institutional leaders have the vision, political will, and ability to change. If not, their institutions may not continue to exist or may exist on the margins and become increasingly irrelevant. This moment matters. Students and alumni need to gain educational experiences and skills that will enable them to immediately contribute to helping solve our societal and world problems going forward.

Issue #8: Weathering the Shift to the Cloud
Creating a cloud and SaaS strategy that reduces costs and maintains control Paul Harness, Shana Sumpter, Thomas Trappler, and Raimund Vogl
"We are transforming the backbone. We now have one cloud-based instance for all our Blackboard use, which was incredibly resilient when we had to move everybody, in the course of a matter of days, to all-online. Our contract required Blackboard and Amazon Web Services to just scale up. We didn't have to run around and buy a bunch of servers and whatnot."

-Mark Hagerott, Chancellor, North Dakota University System

Cloud computing has many potential benefits. When effectively deployed, cloud services can free up existing resources, enable institutions to scale up and down as demand changes (while paying only for the resources they are using), avoid in-house hardware and software expenses, and in some cases, enjoy increased reliability and security.

To realize the potential benefits of cloud computing, institutions need a cohesive strategy focused on effective coordination of the use of cloud services across departments and on effective management of contracts and supplier relationships.

Challenges in 2022

The adoption of SaaS products accelerated during the pandemic as academic and administrative leaders rushed to transition to online learning and remote work. The need to maintain business continuity prevailed over the need to plan and to mitigate risk through appropriate cloud contract terms. The consequences may need to be addressed in 2022.

Now that many institutions have adopted cloud or SaaS solutions, some suppliers are changing licensing models in ways that dramatically increase costs and are leveraging their market dominance to expand their cloud service models into more markets. Institutional leaders are struggling to negotiate affordable prices and sufficient privacy protections. Even those who participate in demand aggregation-in which state systems or even entire regions negotiate as a single bloc-are struggling to realize even modest discounts. As has long been the practice of solution providers, pricing is a black box that varies from contract to contract.

Some institutions are exploring alternative models that bring challenges of their own. For example, some college and university leaders in Germany are considering adopting an on-premises cloud architecture to preserve digital sovereignty, avoid an over-reliance on proprietary systems, mitigate financial risks, and adhere to the emphasis by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on controlling one's digital destiny. But even those institutions usually have to compromise digital sovereignty when it comes to consumer-level storage, productivity, and creativity software because their end users depend on these applications, with no feasible alternative.

General users can be an additional source of challenges. Staff adopting SaaS cloud products for business units quickly learn that these solution providers are rarely willing to customize their products to fit specific processes. Instead, institutional staff need to adapt the ways they work to fit the products.

Individuals may also inadvertently create security and licensing difficulties for an institution. Any individual can easily download software from the web and begin using it, without understanding whether the software is secure or how users' data and identities are being utilized and shared. Department staff may purchase cloud-based software to address business needs, only later learning that it may not meet institutional security requirements or be easily integrated with institutional applications and infrastructure.

Impacts on Culture

The successful adoption of the cloud entails a broad set of implications, ranging from meeting business needs to complying with policy and the law to realizing that the benefits of cloud computing depend on effectively addressing the associated risks. A key way to accomplish a successful cloud adoption is to establish and manage effective cloud contract terms and conditions. Achieving this requires a strong partnership among those in the procurement, cybersecurity, and legal departments, business process owners, and other key stakeholders to ensure that there are clear and equitable terms and conditions in the cloud contract.

In some cases, mindsets need to expand beyond an institutional focus. Leaders committed to operating technologies on-site rather than contracting with solution providers may choose to adopt a collaborative approach and share cloud services delivery across a district system or even a country.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Adopting cloud computing is not just a technical activity; it is also a procurement activity.

To maximize the value and mitigate the risks of cloud computing, IT and/or procurement staff should gain skills in strategic sourcing, cloud contract negotiation, contract management, and supplier relationship management. Purchasers must be able to understand the contract and what they are actually receiving and are committing to.

Researchers using the cloud for very large storage and compute capacity will need significant technical skills, which many possess. Those who don't will need to rely on IT staff in their labs, departments, or the central IT organization for assistance and support.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

The necessary technologies and capabilities differ depending on how an institution is using the cloud. Those institutions that are primarily adopting IaaS (infrastructure as a service) will be using Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. Staff at those institutions will have to adapt their skills and work routine to manage IaaS. On the other hand, institutions using cloud technologies for their own service delivery will need staff with a good understanding of mostly open-source technologies such as OpenStack and Kubernetes and a mindset for agile operations (including continuous integration / continuous deployment).

In all cases, institutions need to have a security and privacy strategy. Endpoint protection platforms, two-factor authentication, and cloud monitoring tools are some of the technologies that IT staff use to protect institutional data and individuals' identities.

Transforming Higher Education

Cloud adoption is still maturing. IT leaders and staff and cloud providers are all still learning and exploring new possibilities. In many ways, cloud computing has exacerbated long-standing tensions over costs and control between institutions and suppliers. Transformation may be an overly ambitious expectation of technology infrastructure and services provisioning. However, the increased agility enabled by the effective deployment of cloud services is significant and may contribute to a foundation for enhanced institutional innovation and efficiency. Agility enables leaders to try something new, fail fast (as needed), and try again until they get it right.

Issue #9: Can We Learn from a Crisis?
Creating an actionable disaster-preparation plan to capitalize on pandemic-related cultural change and investments Joseph Moreau, Michelle Rakoczy, and Shana Sumpter
"We need to be flexible enough to pivot. I don't think this is the last pandemic we're going to see. I think climate change itself is going to produce more pandemics. So, we're going to need to be flexible in that way."

-Jeff Rafn, President, Northeast Technical College

It is usually only after a crisis that we learn the importance of anticipating and preparing for disasters. Although most higher education institutions had disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place before the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders at many of these institutions had not sufficiently rehearsed their plan. The pandemic showed the importance of rehearsal, helped leaders see what facets of their plans were insufficient, and required institutions to invest in new technologies, processes, policies, and working arrangements. The pandemic also showed whether institutions had strong relationships with solution providers and thus could rapidly negotiate affordable additional services and accommodations. Institutional leaders need to take the lessons they've learned over the last eighteen months and repurpose them for an ever-changing environment and for many different types of crises.

Challenges in 2022

Now is the time to adapt the institutional disaster-preparation plan to capitalize on pandemic-related achievements and to prepare for a variety of crises. But institutional staff lack the stamina to accommodate additional work. They are overwhelmed by continuing to live with the pandemic, and many of them long for equilibrium instead of having to constantly adapt as the public health situation morphs.

Impacts on Culture

Adapting disaster recovery and business continuity plans requires institutional leaders to determine their post-pandemic culture and practices so that these plans can be based on normal operations. But what will "normal" be? For many leaders, the answer is obvious: normal builds on pandemic learnings and investments. But many others still expect the post-pandemic normal to mirror the pre-pandemic normal. Updating disaster preparations may force this issue before some leaders are ready to address it.

Whether leaders are ready or not and admit it or not, the pandemic has transformed their institutions. Students found out about their ability to learn independently and remotely. Faculty found out about their ability to teach effectively with remote instruction and to use technology in new ways. Staff found out about their ability to improve both their productivity and their connection to their families while working remotely. Digital transformation got a big boost. Many institutions made gains in student engagement, equity, access, creativity, and innovation. Leaders now need to work with the institutional community to decide what to take forward and how and what to leave behind. These choices will define the institutional culture going forward.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Communication makes everything work better. The lack of communication often contributes to, or even causes, failure. One reason staff have been so successful in managing the pandemic crisis is their relationships and lines of communication. Leaders need to continue that communication and develop those relationships in remote and hybrid working environments, whether those environments become an ongoing fixture of the institution or are only part of a business continuity plan.

The next disaster is always different from the last one. Today, most minds turn to natural disasters or pandemics, but technology-based crises are also possible. With so many systems being hosted off-site, and with technology becoming the foundation of most institutional missions and operations, IT leaders need to ensure that staff have the tools and the relationships they will need in order to address technology-based crises.

Insufficient training was a common flaw in many disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Staff will struggle to adopt a plan that they have not rehearsed or that requires skills and knowledge they lack. Leaders need to determine the training and the practice that people will require and ensure they obtain both.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

Technologists use the concept of the single point of failure-something that, if it fails, stops an entire system from working. This single point is a vulnerability to be avoided. For disaster recovery, the ability to have anytime, anywhere technology infrastructure and services is essential. Cloud technologies, which can offer more redundancy than institutional infrastructure, are very useful in this context.

Leaders might consider broadening the concept of the single point of failure to other institutional operations. Doing so would enable them to be agile in shifting responsibilities to other staff and other locations when the regular staff and locations aren't available. Digitizing information and digitalizing processes can lay the groundwork for anytime, anywhere operations by enabling information and processes to move digitally, rather than physically, through the organization.

Transforming Higher Education

Disaster-preparation plans won't transform higher education, but a transformed higher education will need new disaster-preparation plans. The pandemic caused numerous changes that need to be considered: a remote workforce that may be distributed across a region, a country, or the world; incoming generations of students who were changed by the pandemic; different types of learning environments, whether hybrid, hy-flex, or some other configuration; increased commitment to equity and the ways in which a focus on equity transforms all aspects of the institution; and an emphasis on supporting people empathetically and holistically.

Issue #10: Radical Creativity
Helping students prepare for the future by giving them tools and learning spaces that foster creative practices and collaborations Kati Hågros, Orlando Leon, Trina Marmarelli, and Phil Ventimiglia
"The biggest transformation for higher ed is reconciling what is the goal of higher education. Because for so long, it's been focused on preparing citizens, good citizenship. And we've been talking about, for a long time, preparing students for their career and their life. And so if you're really going to go and teach radical creativity, then you have to come back to that conversation about what is the university's ultimate goal and is it to prepare students for successful careers."

-Phil Ventimiglia, Chief Innovation Officer, Georgia State University

Today's students are facing large, difficult challenges at every level, from the current pandemic to the ongoing issues of climate change to the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Employers complain that colleges and universities aren't preparing students well enough for today's jobs. Future jobs will be even more demanding.

In this changing world with increased automation and with artificial intelligence and machines taking over, our strengths as humans are our abilities to be creative and to find new connections. Institutions need to provide students with these higher-level skills and to prepare them for careers that don't yet exist. In five years, many students will probably be in careers that no one could even conceive of today.

Experiences and learning spaces that will help students foster creative practices and collaborations include multimodal projects, maker spaces, cross-disciplinary projects, internships, and entrepreneurial activities.

Challenges in 2022

Creativity needs space and time, and today's institutions, faculty, staff, and students are short on both. Ideally, the current curricula would emphasize creative, entrepreneurial, and so-called soft skills in addition to more traditional academic learning outcomes. Getting to that point takes time in higher education, and the world is changing much faster than curricula. Related barriers include a shortage of faculty with experience in industry and innovation, not enough physical spaces for activities that need dedicated space, and challenges assessing learning outcomes related to creativity, innovation, and soft skills.

Working outside the curricula to leverage cocurricular opportunities can happen much more quickly, but those efforts don't generally have tangible rewards for either faculty or students, and they are very difficult to scale.

Impacts on Culture

Creative culture supports experiments, failures, and uncertainty. Yet the culture of higher education is not always amenable to failing or to learning incrementally from small experiments. When institutional leaders take risks, they often prefer the "go big or go home" strategy. All too often the result is going home, because real innovation and lasting change tend to be an accumulation of smaller, less exciting, but still intentional advances.

Focusing curricula and learning on radical creativity will require leadership if academic culture is to incorporate creative culture. Institutional leaders will need to encourage and reward collaborations across departmental and even institutional boundaries to enable faculty to broaden the range of learning opportunities that they offer to students. Collaborations needn't be limited to academic areas; those that include IT staff, library staff, and other business areas may be the most fruitful of all.

Helping the Institutional Workforce Succeed

Leaders can't expect faculty to impart radical creativity and staff to contribute unless the leaders themselves have creative and entrepreneurial skills. Too many people still think creativity is a talent rather than a skill that some people master more easily. Faculty and staff need training and opportunities to practice creative skills. They also need encouragement from leadership to partner across academic departments and business units to model flexibility and a collaborative spirit.

Units that employ students can foster creativity by identifying work that will involve students in real-world creative challenges, rather than giving students routine tasks to complete.

Needed Technologies and IT Capabilities

Students need both physical and virtual spaces for collaboration and creative work. Collaboration spaces equipped with big screens and state-of-the-art simulcast and videoconferencing capability can support both face-to-face and virtual collaborations. Maker spaces can enable students to work on creative projects, both academic and personal. Radical creativity might inspire institutional staff to design and develop a maker space 2.0 that builds on the first generation of maker spaces.

Many different tools and technologies could foster creative practices and collaborations. Examples include media creation tools and digital collections to support visual creativity and mixed reality, robotics automation, and programming software for technological creativity.

Faculty can incorporate the productivity, collaboration, and development technologies that employers use into standard coursework to help students gain experience with the tools they will use when they begin working. Similarly, IT staff can use their awareness of new technologies and tools not only to improve IT operations but also to collaborate with faculty in providing students with opportunities for creative exploration.

Transforming Higher Education

Emphasizing radical creativity may prompt leaders to revisit the ultimate goal of higher education. For so long, higher education has focused on preparing citizens. More recently, the conversation has shifted to preparing students for their career and their life. A curriculum that stresses creativity must do so with a shared understanding of how creativity reflects the mission of the institution.

Such a transformation could empower students to act as the creators and the authors of their own futures and could equip them with the skills, ways of thinking, and collaboration opportunities that they need in order to attack the problems that are facing our society and our world. These students would become the architects of our collective future through the creative practices and skills they acquired during their time in higher education.

Reflections and Conclusion

If there is one word describing the trait that institutional and technology leaders will need in 2022, that word may be flexibility. The institutional leaders we spoke with viewed the pandemic as a disaster that jolted higher education out of a set of rigid tendencies. Or as one president put it: "A silver lining coming out of the pandemic is the ability to be flexible, which we've always talked about as delivering anytime, anywhere education. And flexibility has just become that much more real, in my viewpoint."

Flexibility is what students increasingly need and expect. Another president we interviewed emphasized that flexibility must become part of the value proposition for an institution: "Flexibility is going to be the core issue that higher ed is going to have to deal with. We're going to have to be much more flexible and meet students where they are, but also deliver them the in-person experience because the cocurricular, the making friends, the getting to know faculty, the creating of networks is essential to the college experience. But I want flexibility in terms of how it's delivered." Flexibility is also an institutional competency that will help higher education prepare for and respond to climate change and the constellation of disasters that are happening more frequently.

One of the presidents we interviewed noted that while the pandemic is what has pushed institutional culture toward greater flexibility, technology is what has provided the means to achieve it: Another president noted: "We've developed much better capabilities with using technology to deliver education in more flexible and more readily accessible ways. More flexible degrees, more flexible learning opportunities, more flexibility in scheduling. We can serve that [fully online] market better, but we can also take the traditional student and increase the quality and the value of their experience with this transit, with these new technologies and new uses of online and technology-assisted learning."

Warning Signs

Other Versions of the Top 10

Respondents to the IT Issues survey had 17 issues to choose from. The following are the 7 issues, in order of their ranking, that did not make the Top 10 list:

#11. We Should All Belong: Developing culturally relevant digital programming to support all student populations

#12. Where Have All the Applicants Gone?: Using technology to streamline administrative processes and leveraging artificial intelligence to assist the enrollment pipeline

#13. Getting Personal: Leveraging technology and institutional resources in support of differentiated and personalized student experiences

#14. The Digital Revolution of Course Materials: Maturing open educational resources (OER) and courseware to enhance higher education, lower costs, increase equitability, and share resources across institutions

#15. How Technology Can Improve the Curriculum: Using curriculum management tools to create stackable credentials and to simplify and modernize existing programs

#16. Creating a Culture of Care: Expanding the uses of analytics and technologies to address mental health

#17. Which Badge for the Job? Offering ongoing hybrid learning opportunities and creating a common framework for microcredentials to support lifelong learning needs

Respondents rated issues differently, of course, meaning that not everyone's Top 10 IT Issues are the same. Some of those differences are associated with institutional differences. As a result, all of the remaining 7 issues except one made it onto the Top 10 list of an institutional subset (see table 1).

Carnegie Type

Included in Top 10

Not in Top 10

Community Colleges

How Technology Can Improve the Curriculum

Public Master's

Where Have All the Applicants Gone?

We Should All Belong

Getting Personal

Weathering the Shift to the Cloud

Can We Learn from a Crisis?

Radical Creativity

Institutional Approach to Technology Adoption

Included in the Top 10

Not in the Top 10

The issues most likely to be in these other Top 10 lists were Where Have All the Applicants Gone?, Getting Personal, and We Should All Belong. Radical Creativity and Can We Learn from a Crisis? were most frequently replaced by other issues. The Top 10 lists of the very smallest and the very largest institutions retained the original 10 issues, as did public doctoral institutions. Public master's institutions diverged the most from the primary Top 10 list, with three new issues replacing three issues in the primary list.

The only issue that did not appear on the Top 10 list of any type of institution was Creating a Culture of Care. Its average importance for the institutional groupings ranged from 6.37 to 7.02 on a scale from 1 to 10. These relatively low ratings may not indicate that mental health is not an important issue that technology can help address. They may instead suggest that the contributions of technology to improving mental health are nascent. The Early Adopter institutions rated Creating a Culture of Care most highly, whereas the lowest average rating for this issue came from Late Adopter institutions.

It's All About People

Looking at the entire slate of 17 potential IT issues shows a major shift in our panelists' perspectives on what constitutes an "IT Issue." For the first time, the list looks at students as more than learners and as more than customers who need services. The list reveals students as people with rights, dreams, and fears. The panelists responded to the concerns their leaders expressed in our interviews. They shaped IT Issues around creativity (issue #10), equity (issue #11), individual needs and preferences (issue #13), and mental health (issue #16). With the exception of the focus on personalization in issue #13, this is brand-new territory for the panelists and their ideas on the contributions that technology can make to the most pressing challenges and opportunities in higher education.

The Higher Education We Deserve

These days we all are surrounded by difficulties and disasters: the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest, entrenched inequalities, a mental health epidemic, and climate change. As the film director Lisa Joy said, "The world is outpacing our ability to imagine it."Footnote14 But imagine it we must, because every choice we make, every plan we create, embodies our anticipation of tomorrow, the next term, the next year, the next decade. Is the higher education we deserve the one from 10, 50, 100 years ago-or the one yet to come?

Higher education is more than 1,000 years old. Many universities and colleges are older than the countries in which they're located. Maintaining this legacy can be a huge burden, but many of us are devoted to honoring what has come before us. Surely there is a reason that "we've always done it this way." If our institutions have lasted this long, then surely we must continue always doing it that way.

But those of us in higher education owe a greater debt to the future than we do to the past. Our learners need us to prepare them for the future, not the past. We are obligated to help every student who aspires to attain a degree as the basis for a better life. Now is the time to create the higher education they-and we-deserve.

Acknowledgments

Many people at EDUCAUSE make the Top 10 IT Issues report and resources possible each year. I'm grateful to Gerry Bayne for his clever summary videos, to Thomas Rosa for his accurate, timely, and thorough data summaries, and to Connie Ferger, Marc Stith, and my other marketing colleagues for their help in thinking through and reviewing the draft themes and narratives about the issues. Teddy Diggs makes revising and reviewing the article drafts easy and always makes the article so much better. Jamie Reeves is my partner in all things IT Issues; this work would simply not be possible without her help and guidance.

Notes

1. Each year the IT Issues initiative kicks off with about two dozen interviews of the IT Issues panelists' presidents, chancellors, provosts, CBOs, and other senior-most institutional leaders. We ask them to talk about the most pressing and strategic issues, challenges, and opportunities their institutions are facing, now and in the near future. Our panelists use the summaries of those conversations to identify how technology can contribute to the most important priorities for higher education.

2. Once a year, members of the EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel select a slate of 15-20 topics they believe will be the most important IT-related issues facing higher education institutions. EDUCAUSE members receive a survey with those issues and are asked to prioritize them. The 10 issues with the highest-priority scores become the Top 10 IT Issues. This methodology also enables EDUCAUSE to determine the Top 10 IT Issues among various types of institutions. For 2022, 14,017 email invitations to complete the survey were sent to EDUCAUSE members, and 717 (5.1%) completed the survey. Where multiple representatives from a single institution completed the survey, we selected the response from the representative in the highest-ranking position to determine the Top 10 IT Issues. The final Top 10 IT Issues list is thus based on the responses of 395 US-based respondents.

3. D. Christopher Brooks and Jacqueline Bichsel, "EDUCAUSE and CUPA-HR QuickPoll Results: The Misalignment of Preferences and Realities for Remote Work," EDUCAUSE Review, September 10, 2021; Tanya Joosten, Nicole Weber, Margaret Baker, Abigail Schletzbaum, and Abby McGuire, Planning for a Blended Future: A Research-Driven Guide for Educators (Every Learner Everywhere, 2021).

4. EDUCAUSE has materials to help institutions jumpstart their own awareness campaigns.

5. D. Christopher Brooks, Eric Jacobsen, Mark Kimionakis, and Tom Grundig, "Endpoint Detection and Response at Boston University: An EDUCAUSE Research Case Study" (EDUCAUSE, August 11, 2021); "7 Things You Should Know About Endpoint Detection and Response" (EDUCAUSE, May 25, 2021.

6. Brooks and Bichsel, "EDUCAUSE and CUPA-HR QuickPoll Results."

Susan Grajek is Vice President, Partnerships, Communities, and Research, for EDUCAUSE.

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what are the top it issues in higher education?

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Top 10 IT Issues, 2022: The Higher Education We Deserve

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The EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues take an optimistic view of how technology can help make the higher education we deserve-through a shared transformational vision and strategy for the institution, a recognition of the need to place students' success at the center, and a sustainable business model that has redefined "the campus."

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An open source taxonomy for the future of education. Mapping the learning and talent innovation landscape.

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Why we did this

Education is a complex sector, combining important social, economic, cultural, intellectual and personal factors and operating at global, national, local and personal levels. However, information and data about education and the innovation that is occuring throughout the system is fragmented and anchored in its local environment, making cooperation across contexts difficult, thus hindering material innovation in the sector.

We have been building, investing and mapping innovation in education for decades and have had the opportunity to work with entrepreneurs, educators, institutions and governments globally. One of the constant themes arising from our engagements and conversations with each of these stakeholders is the difficulty in accessing, understanding and learning from innovations undertaken elsewhere.

The Global Learning Landscape provides common structure and language for identifying, tracking and making sense of the complexity and volume of innovation happening in education all around the world by providing a well-defined, robust, accessible and community enabled taxonomy.

Using a common framework will support the discovery of, and access to innovation initiatives, provide opportunities for collaboration and benchmarking, reduce barriers to innovation and allow analysis and trend mapping within or across innovation clusters. Licenced under Creative Commons and as an open source project, the taxonomy is available for anyone to support their own work in education innovation. The global community can track and contribute to the taxonomy's ongoing development via GitHub.

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Why we did this Education is a complex sector, combining important social, economic, cultural, intellectual and personal factors and operating at global, national, local and personal levels. However, information and data about education and the innovation that is occuring throughout the system is fragmented and anchored in its local environment, making cooperation across contexts difficult, thus hindering material innovation in the sector.

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Enabling learning communities

Find tools, programs, and resources to help promote equity and build inclusive and innovative learning communities.

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Enabling learning communities | Facebook for Education

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Learning communities are using Facebook's programs, tools, and products to build supportive connections, improve economic outcomes, and grow knowledge.

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The Urgency of Digital Literacy for Generation Z Students in Chemistry Learning

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The Urgency of Digital Literacy for Generation Z Students in Chemistry Learning

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It can be concluded that digital literacy is needed in chemistry learning by focusing on the needs of Generation Z students in accessing the Internet as a medium to access or find information related to education. In chemistry learning, digital technology can help improve chemistry teaching quality in technical, cognitive, and social aspects. Also, digital technology has become necessary in chemistry learning because it can help students learn better with various ICT-enabled features that can motivate under- standing of chemistry concepts and reduce cognitive memory load when studying ICT-based chemistry. This research aims to provide solutions in chemistry learning and improve the quality of chemistry learning, especially using ICT as a medium that can increase students' knowledge and learning experience. This research's limitation focuses on the need for adequate digital literacy for Generation Z students in ICT as chemistry learning media. Next, the researcher suggests integrating technology into curriculum and instructional activities so that teachers understand how to use technol- ogy as an instructional tool in all disciplines.

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The Effects of Various Modes of Online Learning on Learning Results

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The Effects of Various Modes of Online Learning on Learning Results

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Lofi music streams for studying, working, and relaxing.

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AI is revolutionizing education - eCampus News

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Artificial intelligence will accelerate the evolution of teaching and learning. Overall, AI should allow students to get personalized instruction and teachers to have more free time to prepare classes and update their information.

While it's still too early to evaluate the extent of the change in the quality and scope of instruction that AI might achieve, what is certain is that it will cause a revolution. That is because educational systems around the world remain rooted in the foundations established in the 1800s. Most of all, AI will crush the idea that all students must learn in the same place, in the same way, and at the same speed.

Kai-fu Lee, an AI expert, has described the current education system as an " educational assembly line," in which children advance from class to class without paying too much attention to differences in terms of learning, personal preferences, and abilities.

The role of AI will be to trigger a veritable revolution of the very idea of what constitutes education.

To better grasp the depth of this revolution, consider that for more than three thousand years, ships traveling in the Mediterranean were propelled by human power, transmitted to the water by oars, or by the wind, playing with sails. And it took weeks for trade to move from North Africa to Rome, or from Alexandria to Crete. The invention of the steam engine changed all that. Trips that took weeks now took days, becoming safer and cheaper. And steam power allowed for powers like Great Britain, Germany or even the United States, which did not have a shore on the Mediterranean, to dominate that region, dealing a fatal economic blow to the peoples who had thrived thanks to the land routes to China, such as the Silk Road.

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Hosni Zaouali, CEO & Chief Innovation Designer, Tech-AdaptiKa

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AI is revolutionizing education - eCampus News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Artificial intelligence will accelerate the evolution of teaching and learning. Overall, AI should allow students to get personalized instruction and teachers to have more free time to prepare classes and update their information. While it's still too early to evaluate the extent of the change in the quality and scope of instruction that AI might achieve, what is certain is that it will cause a revolution.

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HOW TO CREATE ANIMATED VIDEOS TO COMMUNICATE SCIENCE

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HOW TO CREATE ANIMATED VIDEOS TO COMMUNICATE SCIENCE

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Environmentalists looking for new ways to engage others with their work may enjoy this science communications training from UK-based forest ecologist Tom Ovenden. In this tutorial series, Ovenden teaches viewers how to create storytelling animations that help distill sci-comm topics for a wider audience. Videos discuss animation tools (e.g., Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects Adobe Premiere Pro, and RStudio), highlight the key aspects of animation, and provide step-by-step visuals and examples. Ovenden created these videos with novice illustrators in mind, providing digestible lessons without assuming prior training or knowledge. Readers can enjoy the entire tutorial by scrolling down the page and watching videos in order. Alternatively, viewers with some background knowledge can check out the video descriptions and tags (noting the software used) to focus on topics of interest. The videos are also posted as a playlist ("SciComm: Animation Training for Scientists") on Ovenden's YouTube channel

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In this introductory video, we go over some of the basics of animating a line graph in After Effects. We start off in R Studio where we import our data (the code and data used in this tutorial are both downloadable for free on the left), do some basic data wrangling, create a line graph using ggplot (a figure in R) and then export this figure as an EPS file. Then, we import this figure into After Effects and use it as a template to demonstrate some of the basic tools that we can use in After Effects to make a simple, but effective animation.

Some of the basic skills we cover in this video include making new shape layers in After Effects, changing the dimensions, colours, style and outlines of these shapes and then how to animate them using the 'trim paths' effect and keyframes, which do all the animation 'heavy lifting' in After Effects.

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In this introductory video, we go over some of the basics of animating a line graph in After Effects. We start off in R Studio where we import our data (the code and data used in this tutorial are both downloadable for free on the left), do some basic data wrangling, create a line graph using ggplot (a figure in R) and then export this figure as an EPS file.

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PROPERLY Share Your Screen in a Microsoft Teams Meeting (For BEST Experience!)

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PROPERLY Share Your Screen in a Microsoft Teams Meeting (For BEST Experience!)

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PROPERLY Share Your Screen in a Microsoft Teams Meeting (For BEST Experience!)

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion (Part 1)

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion (Part 1)

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Five Online Discussion Ideas to Apply Learning
Five ideas to structure a discussion to help learners apply what they have learned:

#Hashtag that Photo Safari

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Guessing Game

Forced Analogy

Flawed Design

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion, Part 1

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In part 1, we’ll explore activities to structure an online discussion to encourage learners to apply the concepts they have learned in class.

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion (Part 2)

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion (Part 2)

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Four Online Discussion Ideas to Explore Concepts Through Divergent Thinking
The four online discussion structures described in this article to assist learners in exploring concepts through divergent thinking are:

Sticky Note Party

Wisdom of Crowds

Lotus Diagram

Mash-Up

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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*This is a five-part series.
Four Online Discussion Ideas to Explore Concepts Through Divergent Thinking

In the last installment of this article series,I described five ideas for structuring online discussions when the aim is to encourage learners to apply concepts that they have learned, mostly by recognizing examples or generating them.

In this and the next article, I will describe ideas for structuring an online discussion when the goal is for learners to further explore a concept studied in class. I subdivided the ideas into two categories: Some are useful when the goal is for learners to engage in divergent thinking, in other words, when they are generating ideas and expanding the range of solutions or brainstorming (this article). The second set is useful when the aim is for learners to engage in convergent thinking, to gain a deeper and richer (and common) understanding of a concept (the next article).

The four online discussion structures described in this article to assist learners in exploring concepts through divergent thinking are:

Sticky Note Party

Description: Sometimes called affinity mapping, this favorite activity of design thinking practitioners is an effective way to harness a team's brainstorming capacity. This discussion requires the use of a virtual collaborative pinboard, something like Google's Jamboard, Padlet, Lino, Wakelet, Pinside, Scrumblr, or if your organization has access to it, Miro. The process starts with each learner independently brainstorming responses to a prompt. They write one idea per sticky note and pile them in one location on the collaborative board. Then, each learner presents one idea to the team in a live session. If anyone else has a similar idea, they place their sticky note on top of the speaker's note, in one pile. Once each person has had a turn, they present their second idea, and so on around the team until everyone's sticky notes have been presented. As a third step, the group looks at the ideas on the board and discusses whether they can categorize the piles of ideas. Sometimes, groups will choose to group similar ideas together into a concept map. Sometimes, they will choose to represent their ideas into a Venn diagram, a flowchart, a hierarchy, or some other way that captures the main ideas and their relationships. The group then summarizes and presents the results of their brainstorm, either visually or in a written format. There can be a gallery walk where teams investigate and comment on the outcome of other teams' efforts.

Tips: Unlike small group activities where smaller teams are better than larger ones, this activity can accommodate groups of up to 10 learners easily. Ideally, learners will be able to meet for a live discussion while having access to their pinboard. However, with a bit of adjustment, it is possible to do this activity asynchronously, where learners leave richer explanations of their ideas on sticky notes and teams propose the categories they see emerging from the sticky notes on a text-based discussion forum before they go ahead and move the sticky notes to form categories. In an asynchronous format, clear instructions are essential.

Example: (Education course). What can we do to make our classroom more equitable for all learners? In your group, brainstorm ideas and hone your collective wisdom into five concrete suggestions. Start by individually generating a minimum of five ideas on your team's pinboard (post one idea per sticky note). Then, meet as a group to discuss all the ideas and group them into categories. Write your team's top five suggestions on the class's discussion board. Read the other team's posts and acknowledge your favorite idea that your team had not thought about (i.e., post a response to that team's post describing which idea caught your interest as the best idea and why you wish you had thought of it yourself by explaining why you think it will be effective).

Variations: There are several ways to vary this activity based on the parameters of the brainstorming exercise. Here are a few examples.

Build a Checklist. In this activity, the group uses the power of brainstorming to create a checklist for doing a particular task (for example, they could create a checklist of the steps required to build a website for a client, or for DNA polymerase to replicate genetic material). A checklist is a useful exercise because it forces the team to bring to the surface and discuss each component of the larger task, their order, and their importance. First, each person brainstorms the steps of a process individually, capturing each step on a sticky note. Then the team uses the shared pinboard to create a linear flowchart of the process, discussing which ought to be the first step, the second, and so on, negotiating the sequence and even presence of each step. As a final step, the group may discuss the importance of each step, weighing each one with a score, and removing the ones deemed less important for a shorter checklist.

Force Field Analysis. This type of brainstorm aims to identify the forces acting upon "something" to cause it to change. Teammates first brainstorm all the forces acting upon the object that cause change. Then they repeat the exercise brainstorming factors that are preventing change. On each of their sticky note, they add a value that represents the strength of that force, usually on a scale from 1 to 5. The pinboard is represented with the object in the middle and the forces for and against change on either side of it. The process proceeds as the activity described above (i.e., each person presents one sticky note, a discussion ensues, and after each person has presented their ideas, the team categorizes the group's responses). As an example, a prompt might ask learners to classify the forces acting on individuals in their decisions to get vaccinated.

SWOT Analysis. This well-known business tool asks the group to brainstorm ideas about the strengths (S) of an organization (or a concept), its weaknesses (W), opportunities (O) for its future, and threats (T) to its survival. Individuals first write each idea on one sticky note. Then the team pools everyone's ideas on a shared SWOT chart (on a collaborative virtual pinboard), first discussing each person's ideas for strengths identifying categories of ideas that emerge. The team then moves on to weaknesses, opportunities, and then threats. Other than a business course where this format could easily be applied, with a bit of imagination an activity like this could be adapted in other courses such as chemistry, where learners must do a SWOT analysis of a type of chemical bond, or in a biology course learners might analyze the case for placing an animal on the endangered species list.

Fishbone Analysis. Another way to structure the brainstorm and its resulting analysis is to use the well-known Fishbone Diagram (see the resources cited under More Information below for templates). In a Fishbone Analysis, teams brainstorm the causes of a situation or problem. They organize them into six main fishbones that stem off the fish's backbone. Each fishbone can be further developed into sub-causes which represent minor causes. This diagram helps people see causes and effects. It could be used, for example, when learners investigate what led to the development of a particular policy (its societal, political, financial, and other causes).

More Information: Barkley et al. (2005); Digital Society School (n.d.-a); Gamestorming (n.d.-a, n.d.-b, n.d.-c); IAF Methods (n.d.); IDEO.org (n.d.-b); MediaLAB Amsterdam (n.d.)

Wisdom of Crowds

Description: This type of discussion is helpful when a group wants to prioritize ideas generated by its members. This type of discussion starts like the Sticky Note Party, where each participant generates at least one idea in response to a prompt. Then, each member of the team examines the range of responses and ranks them. The team then looks at the team-ranked responses and discusses the top ideas. Two variations on how to conduct this activity are described below. It can be done as a whole class or in smaller groups.

Tips: This discussion activity can be combined with others like Case Study, Role Play, or Debate (which will all be described in Article 3 of this series).
Variations:
Example: (Biology course). Should Monsanto be allowed to distribute the GMO Golden Rice to developing countries, free of charge? Golden rice is a genetically modified rice variety that produces vitamin A, a nutrient deficient in the diet of people living in many developing countries. One half of the class will be assigned to the Pro team, the other half to the Con team. Each person must research the topic and provide at least three arguments to support their team's position. The team should then discuss all brainstormed ideas, rank them, and select the top three. Write one post fleshing out your team's three chosen arguments.

Dotmocracy. When conducted in a face-to-face context, dotmocracy starts with each idea written on a sheet of paper posted on the walls around the room. Then, participants are given a set of colored sticker dots - red, yellow, and green. Participants go around the room, read the statement on each sheet of paper, and add a dot - green if they support the idea, yellow if they are lukewarm, red if they oppose the idea. Once everyone has added their dots, it is easy to see which idea is most supported, which idea is most controversial (has support and opposition) and which ones leave people indifferent. A discussion can follow from this visual summary of the class's input. In a virtual environment, there are several ways to conduct such an interactive "gallery walk." The first is to use a collaborative document such as Google Slides where each learner posts one idea on one slide. Then, learners review each slide and post a colored dot. The results trigger a conversation about the ideas, as they would in a face-to-face activity. The second way to proceed is to use a dedicated app, such as Dotstorming. Such app allows each person to post their ideas but have additional features to manage the voting, such as hiding the dots until everyone has voted to prevent "group-think," giving each learner a limited number of voting dots (e.g., asking everyone to choose their top three ideas), and sorting the ideas by the number of votes for ease of analysis.

25/10 Crowd Sourcing. This way of triggering conversation was suggested as part of the Liberating Structures toolset. In the face-to-face version, each participant writes a bold idea in response to a prompt on an index card. They mill around the room and exchange the card five times so that the authorship is lost. Then, they read the card in their hand and on the back rate the merit of the idea on a scale from 1-5. Participants repeat the steps outlined above four more times. At the end, the five ratings are summed, and each idea ranked. The top five ideas are further discussed. In an online environment, participants can each (anonymously) add one idea on a slide using Google Slides. Participants then go to Google's Random Number Generator to generate five random numbers - the number of the five slides they will review and rate (i.e., if the random number generator provides the number 6, then the learners should review the sixth slide of the Google Slides document). Each learner reads her assigned slide and leaves a rating, from 1 to 5, in the Speaker Notes at the bottom of the slide. At the end, the ratings of each slide are tallied, the ideas ranked, the results presented on the text-based discussion board where the discussion can continue.

More Information: Diceman (n.d.); Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2013)

Lotus Diagram

Description: A Lotus Diagram is a collaborative concept mapping activity. It is useful when the goal is to make evident all concepts related to a central one. A subset of learners is assigned to start the concept map, placing the concept under investigation in the middle and adding related concepts that "flower out" from the central one. Then, a second group of learners each take one of the secondary ideas and repeat the process, using those ideas as their central ones and fleshing them out by identifying and drawing their linked concepts. The resulting concept map will have three levels of concepts arising from the central one. For a fuller exploration, it is possible to repeat these steps another time, adding a fourth level of concepts. Optionally, another group of learners can be tasked with capturing relationships between concepts on the concept map, irrespective of their "level." There are a plethora of online tools that can be used for collaborative concept mapping from the presentation tool Prezi to the dedicated Bubbl.us, Coggle, Creately, Diagrams.net, GitMind, GroupMap, Milanote, Mindly, Mindmeister, Mindomo, MindMup, Sketchboard, and Wisemapping, to list just a few.

Tips: Learners need clear expectations in a concept mapping activity. For example, instructors may wish to specify that each learner must add a minimum of five concepts to the concept map. Note that concept mapping exercises are wonderful "pre- and post-" activities, where the concept map developed before a concept is studied captures the learners' existing knowledge and can serve as a springboard for the lesson. Learners fill in the concept map after the lesson to visualize (and gain awareness of) how their learning has grown.

Example: (Research Methods course). Develop a three-layered concept map of the concept of Quantitative Analysis that we studied in Module 4. Learners assigned to Group 1 should each add five related concepts to the central one of quantitative analysis. Learners in Group 2 should each select one secondary concept and flesh it out by adding five related concepts that stem from it. Once the map is complete, identify one concept you think is missing from this diagram (or that you think is erroneously present or is misplaced) and describe what it is and where it belongs. Submit your revised map, with your addition and a short description of your reasoning, on the discussion board.

More Information: Digital Society School (n.d.-b); Janse (2019); Miro.com (n.a.); State Library of Victoria (n.d.); Tarr (n.d.)

Mash-up

Description: This activity, also a favorite of design thinkers, is used for creative problem solving. It involves taking the insights and solutions developed in one context and adapting and adopting it in another context where a similar problem needs solving. One real-world success story of using this technique is an engineer who transformed the scary MRI scanner experience of children by making it similar to an amusement park ride on a pirate ship (IDEA.org, n.d.; Kelley & Kelley, 2014). To do a mash-up, teams start by defining the features of the problem they wish to address (e.g., how can we make an MRI scanner experience more enjoyable for children?). Then, the team brainstorms industries or contexts where this problem has been solved (e.g., an amusement park). For the top choice, the team brainstorms how the problem has been addressed (e.g., gamified environment, colorful theme-based design, sights and sounds that fit into a story or adventure, tasks the kids must complete, reward for participating, etc.). Finally, the team discusses how some of these inspirations could be used to solve the initial problem (e.g., transform the MRI scanner into a pirate ship, provide a narrative of an adventure, and ask kids to count the number of times the pirates beat on a drum-to integrate the MRI's sounds as part of the play). All this can be done using Sticky Note Party methods and pinboards.

Tips: Since this activity can be quite open-ended, it is important for learners to be clear about the process. Instructors may wish to provide a worked example or demonstrate how to do it in class before letting learners do it in their teams.

Example: (Nutrition course). In your group, propose a healthy school lunch program. Brainstorm some of the problems with current lunch programs, then identify an industry that has solved your chosen problem and brainstorm the features of its programs. Finally, use these inspirations to propose solutions. For example, you might try to answer the question, "What might a farmer's market version of a cafeteria look like?" (idea inspired from IDEO.org (n.d.-c)). Describe your best innovative team solution in a post.

Since it may be difficult to see how this online discussion structure could be applied to disciplines that do not take place in the human realm, here is another example.

Example: (Molecular Biology course). RNA translation of the genetic code could be written as a program code, with recursive steps ( repeat steps 1 to X until Y) and logic decision trees ( if X then Y otherwise Z). First, write the process of RNA translation as a program code. Don't worry about exact programming language-focus on the logical steps. Then look for inefficiencies in the code. How is the way in which it is done in nature different from the way in which you would program it from a purely programming perspective? Identify the ways in which the natural process is inefficient and propose ways in which it could be improved. Comment on two of your peer's responses by identifying what could be the implications of their proposed "process improvements" for the cell.

More Information: Ahlstrom and Hyper Island (n.d.); Digital Society School (n.d.-c); IDEO.org (n.d.-a, n.d.-c)
Part 1: Five Online Discussion Ideas to Apply Learning
Dr. Annie Prud'homme-Généreux is the director of continuing studies at Capilano University. She is a past recipient of the National Association of Biology Teachers' Four-Year College/University Teaching Innovation Award. She has been teaching in a blended format for over 15 years and is currently completing a master of education in open, digital and distance education. References Part 2: Four Online Discussion Ideas to Explore Concepts Through Divergent Thinking
Part 3: Seven Online Discussion Ideas to Explore Concepts through Convergent Thinking
Part 4: Five Online Discussion Ideas to Foster Metacognition
Part 5: Online Discussion Ideas - Multimedia and Resources
In the next article, I will describe tools for structuring online discussions that encourage learners to explore the concept in greater depth through means of convergent thinking.

Ahlstrom, M., & Hyper Island. (n.d.). Mash-Up Innovation. https://toolbox.hyperisland.com/mash-up-innovation

Barkley, E. F., Cross, K. P., & Major, C. H. (2005). Collaborative Learning Techniques. Jossey-Bass.

Diceman, J. (n.d.). Dotmocracy - Dot Voting Tips and Resources. Retrieved February 3, 2021 from https://dotmocracy.org/

Digital Society School. (n.d.-a). Fishbone Diagram. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved January 30, 2021 from https://toolkits.dss.cloud/design/method-card/fishbone-diagram-2/

Digital Society School. (n.d.-b). Lotus Blossom. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved January 30, 2021 from https://toolkits.dss.cloud/design/method-card/lotus-blossom-2/

Digital Society School. (n.d.-c). Mash-Up. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved January 30, 2021 from https://toolkits.dss.cloud/design/method-card/mash-up/

Gamestorming. (n.d.-a). Build a Checklist. Retrieved February 2, 2021 from https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/build-a-checklist

Gamestorming. (n.d.-b). Force Field Analysis. Retrieved February 2, 2021 from https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/force-field-analysis-pzx0xc

Gamestorming. (n.d.-c). SWOT Analysis. https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/swot-analysis

IAF Methods. (n.d.). Fishbone Analysis. https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/fishbone-analysis

IDEA.org. (n.d., February 6, 2021). From Design Thinking to Creative Confidence. IDEO.org. https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/from-design-thinking-to-creative-confidence

IDEO.org. (n.d.-a). Analogous Inspiration. Retrieved February 2, 2021 from https://www.designkit.org/methods/6

IDEO.org. (n.d.-b). Find Themes. Retrieved February 02, 2021 from https://www.designkit.org/methods/find-themes

IDEO.org. (n.d.-c). Mash-Ups. https://www.designkit.org/methods/mash-ups

Janse, B. (2019). Lotus Diagram. Retrieved February 6, 2021 from https://www.toolshero.com/creativity/lotus-diagram/

Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2014). Creative Confidence. Williams Collins.

Lipmanowicz, H., & McCandless, K. (2013). The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures. Liberating Structures Press. http://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls/

MediaLAB Amsterdam. (n.d.). Fishbone Diagram. Retrieved February 2, 2021 from https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/fishbone-diagram

Miro.com. (n.a.). Lotus Diagram Template for Create Teams. Retrieved February 6, 2021 from https://miro.com/templates/lotus-diagram/

State Library of Victoria. (n.d.). Generating Questions - Lotus Diagram. Retrieved February 6, 2021 from http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/teachers/generating-questions-lotus-diagram

Tarr, R. (n.d.). Lotus diagram templates for essay planning. Retrieved February 6, 2021 from https://www.classtools.net/blog/lotus-diagram-template-for-essay-planning/

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion, Part Two

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Four ideas for structuring an online discussion when the goal is for learners to further explore a concept studied in class.

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion (Part 3)

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion (Part 3)

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Seven Online Discussion Ideas to Explore Concepts through Convergent Thinking.
In this article, the ideas for structuring an online discussion when the goal is for learners to explore a concept through convergent thinking are:

Report on Live Discussion

Give One, Take One

Role Play

Jigsaw

Case Study

Round Robin

3CQ Model

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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*This is a five-part series. Each Monday, we will be publishing the next consecutive part of the article series.
Seven Online Discussion Ideas to Explore Concepts through Convergent Thinking

In this five-part article series, we look at ideas for structuring an online discussion. These inspirations were chosen because they address concerns that discussion forums need to give learners options in the way they participate, in the way they give each learner the opportunity to contribute something unique that is worth reading (i.e. the responses are not repetitive), and learners have an opportunity to express themselves and form communities (Schultz et al., 2020).

In the first article, we looked at ideas for structuring an online discussion that can help learners apply concepts. In the second article, we surveyed structures that can help learners explore concepts through divergent thinking, opening up new ideas and possibilities. In this third article, we will explore structures to help learners explore conceptswhen the goal is convergent thinking, so each learner gains a deeper, richer understanding of a concept and aligns with a common understanding.

In this article, the ideas for structuring an online discussion when the goal is for learners to explore a concept through convergent thinking are:

Report on Live Discussion

Description: Sometimes, the best way to have a discussion is in a "live" format where peers can respond to one another in real time. This format addresses learner concerns about the challenges of reading emotion cues in a text-based discussion. It starts in small groups where learners meet virtually for a live discussion. This works well when each learner has something personal to share, for example, past experiences that might inform and enrich the discussion. It builds community with team members learning about and from one another. This live step is followed by each learner writing their take-away lesson from the conversation and posting it on the text-based discussion board. Learners can review the post of another person in their group and reflect on how their take-home message differs from their peer's, or they can be instructed to compare and contrast the themes explored by theirs and another group.

Tips: The benefit of this format is that learners can read one another's expressions in addressing the topic. It is what builds community. However, this is also the drawback of this format. Instructors should be mindful to select topics that are not too controversial or sensitive, because learners are not protected by the relative anonymity of the text-based discussion board.

Example: (Project Management course). Think of situations where you have experienced a project being managed effectively and one where the project was not so well managed. What were elements of communication that contributed to the project management being done well or not well? Discuss your experiences in your small group and write up a short, one-paragraph post where you capture the "lessons learned" about what is important to do in maintaining effective communication in a project management context. Review the posts of peers in other groups and find two additional characteristics of effective communication to add to your own take-away in a follow-up post.

More Information: Berry and Kowal (2019, June 19, 2020)

Give One, Take One

Description: This format is helpful when the goal is for learners to explore their understanding of a topic or their values. The activity starts with a prompt. Each learner can be assigned three to five statements that could be a response to that prompt (representing different perspectives), or they may generate three to five of their own statements. The learner takes time to reflect on the degree to which they agree with each one. Then, learners pair up, expressing the degree to which they support each statement and why. Learners should then exchange one statement. The goal is for each learner to improve their hand, ending up with statements with which they strongly agree. The process is repeated three times. Then, learners get together in groups of four, share the statements they have accumulated, and agree on five statements that the whole team holds to be true. The team posts their response and reviews the conclusions reached by each team.

Tips: One way to keep the statements of each learner visible and exchangeable is to use a collaborative document such as a Google Slides or a Google Jamboard. Each "slide" or "pinboard" shows each learner's five statements. Learners can begin the process by composing five statements, or they may use Google's Random Number Generator to obtain five numbers which they match to a document where 40+ statements have been numbered and prepared by the instructor. Another (fun) way to randomly assign statements to each learner is to enter the statements in the free Wheel of Names website, and learners "spin the wheel" five times to obtain a randomly assigned set of five statements. Instructors will need to organize the paired workgroups, for example, numbering each learner and asking them to reach out to their pair to discuss and exchange their statements.

Example: (Science 101 course). What is science? Use Google's Random Number generator to obtain five numbers between 1 and 40. Then, go to the shared document "40 Statements on the Nature of Science" to collect the five statements that match your numbers. Copy and paste them to your assigned pinboard on Google Jamboard. Each learner will now have a different set of five statements on their pinboard. Evaluate your five statements. Which ones do you agree with? Which ones do not ring true? Why? On Day 2, reach out to your paired teammate (look up the Wiki for your assigned teammate). Use the chat function of the LMS to discuss which of your five statements you might be willing to exchange. You must exchange one statement. The goal is to obtain five statements on your pinboard that you agree with. On Day 3, meet with your second paired teammate and repeat the process. On Day 4, repeat the process again with your third assigned paired teammate. Finally, on Days 5 and 6, meet with your Quad team, combine your 20 statements, and choose your team's top 5 statements. Write a post that describes your team's definition of science, based on your five statements. Review two other teams' definitions and post and respond to questions about their final definition (Activity inspired by Cobern and Loving (1998)).

Variations: What's powerful about this activity is that it forces learners to rank their beliefs and understanding about a concept. There are other ways to achieve this outcome.

In this activity, learners are given a list of statements, diagrams, names of concepts, problem sets, or questions (i.e., the "cards") and are asked to categorize them. They are not told the categories-they must define them. They may print each "card" and physically sort them into piles using an organizing framework of their choice. Or, they may do it digitally, moving sticky notes with "cards" on a pinboard. Once each learner has completed this task independently, they write a post where they share the categories they created to sort the statements and list each "card" that fell under each category. Learners then notice differences between their sorting strategy and/or categorization of specific "cards" and discuss the underlying rationale for their decision, furthering their understanding of the concepts.
One way to intuitively understand this activity (used by Kimberly Tanner in her workshops, personal communication) is to use cards with pictures of superheroes. People with no knowledge of superheroes may classify them based on superficial characteristics such as whether they have a cape or whether they are human- or animal-looking. Superhero aficionados, meanwhile, may use underlying knowledge of whether the superhero belongs in the Marvel or DC Comic Universe to classify the cards. Smith et al. (2013) used this activity to draw out learners' superficial or deep understanding of biological concepts by asking them to classify questions from problem sets extracted from textbooks. Novice learners used cues from the question wording to identify the strategy they should use to solve the problem; meanwhile, more expert learners used deeper understanding of the concepts underlying the problem to choose a strategy.

More Information: Cobern (1991); Cobern and Loving (2020); Cobern and Loving (1998); IDEO.org (n.d.); Ritchhart and Church (2020); Smith et al. (2013)

Role Play

Description: Real-world scenarios are often complex and require analysis from multiple perspectives. That's when a role play can be effective. In this type of discussion, each learner is assigned, or proposes and then takes on, the role of a stakeholder in a scenario. Learners research the person's motives, values, goals, the impact of different choices, position, arguments, and respond to the prompt in that voice. Because the arguments advanced are those of the character and not the learner, learners may feel more comfortable exploring and debating controversial ideas in this format. Learners should "stay in role" when responding to their peers' posts to recreate a real-world scenario as much as possible.

Tips: Instructors must choose whether to assign roles or let learners choose their own. The advantage of assigning the roles is that it ensures each perspective that the instructor wants analyzed is covered and it also authorizes learners to argue more forcefully for that role's position without fear of judgement from their peer. The advantage of allowing learners to select their role is that it can lead to greater engagement and may introduce voices and perspectives the instructors had not thought to include.
Variations:
Example: (Politics course). Do governments have a responsibility to safeguard the health of their population? Apply your view to the government's response to the obesity epidemic. Select someone who might have a say on this issue (e.g., an elected representative, a health care practitioner, a religious leader, a stock market analyst, a CEO of a company, an academic who is a constitutional expert, a lawyer, etc.), research their perspective, and craft a post that mirrors how this person would see the role of government in the health of populations. Be sure to state your position and make your arguments in support of that position clear. Also respond to two stakeholder's posts, in the voice of your chosen role.

Debate. A debate is a form of role play where there are two main roles: a group of individuals in favor of something and a group of individuals opposed to it.

Six Thinking Hats. Based on a well-known business book, the six thinking hats is a method of investigating a situation from different perspectives. In this discussion, learners are grouped in teams of six and are each person is assigned a "thinking hat." This is the persona or perspective they will take on in analyzing the scenario.
Blue Hat (Leader). This person is the leader of the group and must take into consideration all perspectives to come to a decision.

White Hat (Thinking). This is the role of the person who is analyzing the problem from a rational or intellectual perspective. Think: "What would Spock, of Star trek, say or do?"

Red Hat (Feeling). This person must present the emotional perspective on the problem. What are some of the fears or passions that people are likely to experience in this situation?

Green Hat (Creativity). This person is tasked with coming up with innovative ways to tackle the situation.

Yellow Hat (Positivity). This person is a Pollyanna, always focusing on the benefits and merits of ideas suggested by others.

Black Hat (Cautious). The role of this person is to identify the potential drawbacks or challenges of proceeding with a course of action or decision.

Hot Seat. In this variation, learners take turns adopting the persona of a famous person studied in class and answering questions posted by their peers from that person's perspective. For example, in a literature class, three learners each week might be assigned to be the author of the book read in class and to answer peer questions about the book, its intentions, context, characters, and inspirations from the point of view of the author. These learners may need to research before answering questions. Learners rotate "in the hot seat" throughout a course.

Superheroes. Proposed by Noffs and Guerra-Martinez (April 10, 2020) in a Faculty Focus article, this method requires learners to take on the persona of a well known hero or villain and apply that lens in responding to the prompt (e.g., what would Iron Man think of this proposal and what sort of memo would he send to the Avengers?) This can lead to humorous, in-character responses that motivate learner engagement.

Love Letters / Break Up letters. A twist on the debate, this format asks learners to write a love letter to a concept they embrace or a break-up letter to a concept they oppose. Then, the group reads these letters and tries to find commonalities in the ways people respond to each concept.

More Information: Barkley et al. (2005); Berry and Kowal (2019); De Bono (1985); deNoyelles et al. (2014); Digital Society School (n.d.); Ho (February 19, 2020); ION Professional eLearning Programs (n.d.); Kelly (March 7, 2014); Noffs and Guerra-Martinez (April 10, 2020); Ritchhart and Church (2020); Zeiger (n.d.)

Jigsaw

Description: A jigsaw is an effective way to structure teamwork because it gives each learner distinctive expertise that is needed by a team to solve a problem. The activity begins by assigning learners to groups that are tasked with becoming "experts" in a specific aspect of the problem. If the instructor wants to ensure that learners consider specific factors in their analysis of the problem, they may assign resources that tackle them and give learners guiding questions to help them consider, as a group, how these factors might affect the problem to be solved.

The second step is to form new teams that are composed of members of each of the expert teams formed in the first step of this activity. Each learner shares what they learned in the first group that might be pertinent to solving the problem, considers the tensions between the solutions proposed by each expert, and solves the problem. Since teams depend on each learner's expertise, peer pressure encourages learners to be accountable. This method works best for solving complex problems for which there is not a "right answer" and teams often select different solutions.

Tips: Instructors will want to consider which spheres of knowledge are important in solving the problem. This informs the creation of the first "expert" teams. Typically, four or five domains of knowledge are best, since this will form teams of four or five learners in the second teams to solve the problem-an optimal number for teamwork of this sort.
Variations:
Example: (Engineering course). What would a lifetime cost/benefit analysis of gasoline-powered cars, compared to electric cars, reveal? Which car would you recommend to the public if they considered all the evidence? First, you will be assigned to a small expert group that must research one aspect of this question-one group will investigate the carbon footprint of manufacturing each model of car, the other group will investigate the carbon footprint of using these two car models over 10 years of operation, another group will investigate other environmental costs of manufacturing each model (e.g., mining, water resources), and the last group will investigate political, commercial, economic, and workforce implications and pressures affecting the manufacturing of each type of car. Each team should refer to the resources provided on the assignment sheet and work together to answer the guiding questions. Then, you will form new teams composed of one expert from each of the initial teams. Share what you learned in your expert group and together decide which type of car you would recommend and why. Write a short op ed piece for a newspaper and post to the discussion board. As a team, respond to one other team's op ed as a letter to the editor, commenting on the other team's decisions and why you agree or disagree with their analysis and conclusion.

Library Roulette. You may recall that one of the critiques that learners made of online discussion forums is that if each learner reads the same information, they are likely to come to the same conclusions in the discussion (Schultz et al., 2020). To breathe a bit of variety in the conversation, and to practice research literacy and critical thinking skills, learners can be tasked with finding resources to research a topic and then bring that information to the discussion (rather than assigning the same readings to everyone). This isn't a jigsaw per se, because the different expertise are not deliberately organized by the instructor, but it requires each learner to become informed from different sources, which will result in slightly different understandings and perspectives, and therefore different responses to the prompt.

More Information: Barkley et al. (2005); Schultz et al. (2020)

Case Study

Description: Case studies are narratives about challenges encountered in the real world that learners tackle and attempt to solve. A discussion board can be used for collaborative exchange of ideas and negotiation about how best to proceed or it can be used for small groups to post their chosen solution and discuss the rationale that led to each team proceeding in a different direction.

Tips: Instructors can write a case study using information from the community (for example, interviewing a local business or using a story from the local newspaper and linking it to concepts learned in class). There are also several free or open-sourced case databases for the use of educators. These include the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (over 700 science cases), The PBL Clearinghouse (with Problem-Based Learning cases in topics ranging from accounting to education to aviation science), MERLOT Business Cases, The MIT Management Sloan School Case Studies, The UBC Open Case Studies (growing collection with cases in topics ranging from social justice to civil engineering), Case It! (cases solved using a free virtual molecular biology laboratory), Health Care Case Studies, and World's Best Case Studies (video-based cases in topics including consumer goods, technology and services), to name but a few. Science instructors may also write a case study by providing a real-world scenario and tying the underlying phenomenon to an interactive simulation as a way for learners to play with the data, such as those available through PhET and The King's Centre for Visualization in Science.

Example: (Environmental Sciences course). More and more carbon-sequestration companies are popping up around the world. The goal of these companies is to capture the CO ₂ released in the air by industrial processes. A Squamish, British Columbia start-up company has recently attracted a lot of attention for its way of doing it. In your group, investigate the technique that it uses, analyze its effectiveness and the scale of its impact on CO ₂ in the air, compare it to the impact of other techniques that aim to have a similar effect, and study the unintended by-products or consequences of this techniques. Then, draft a memo that advises the BC Minister of the Environment on whether she should support tax-breaks for this and/other companies that claim to remove carbon from the air. How big should the tax-breaks be, if supported, and why? Be sure to provide the rationale in support of your position, since the Minister will have to defend the decision publicly, if she chooses to follow your recommendations. Finally, read the memo from two other teams and critique their arguments.

More Information: Koehler et al. (2020); Seethamraju (2014)

Round Robin

Description: This is a collaborative activity to be done in small groups. Learners take turns moving the discussion along but never provide a complete response. Rather, each member of the group provides a part of the response, leaving the next learner to continue. It may work best for a prompt that involves problem solving or the design of a product. The unpredictability of a learner's response infuses an element of improvisation, flexibility, and reactivity into the activity.

Tips: Learners who post early in the discussion should have a reason to continue to monitor the forum. Perhaps they can critique the final solution or provide alternative directions in which the conversation could have gone.

Example: (Education Course). Using backwards design, create a course syllabus on designing effective online discussion prompts. The first learner should post the learning outcomes. The second learner should develop a set of assessments aligned with learning outcomes for the course proposed by the first learner. Finally, the third learner should propose activities aligned with the previous work. All learners should provide an evaluation of the final work, suggesting at least two improvements.

More Information: Barkley et al. (2005); Berry and Kowal (June 19, 2020); Ho (February 19, 2020)

3CQ Model

Description: The 3CQ Model of discussion (Compliment-Connect-Comment-Question) was developed by Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell, a high school teacher who sought to train her students in effective communication in an online discussion forum. The model provides a structure by which learners may respond to peer posts. It consists of four parts to each response:

Compliment. To acknowledge the contributions of others, Stewart-Mitchell encourages learners to start by praising a specific aspect of the post. A template might direct learners to begin their post with the phrase, "I like that your post..."

Connect. This step is also about building community and connection. It's about relating, on a person level, with what the person said. For example, the learner might write, "I had the same thing happen to me when..." or "I read a similar story in X which..."

Comment. The next step adds to what was said in the post by providing a response to it. It may be a statement of agreement or disagreement. The response may begin with, "What I would add to your post is that..." or "I might come to a different conclusion because..."

Question. The last step is about keeping the conversation going by asking a specific question about the topic under discussion. Ways to state this is to write, "I wonder why..." or "What effect might X have on..."

Tips: This structure can train learners who are new to online discussions about ways to respond effectively. It lends itself to evaluation by means of a rubric and provides learners with clear expectations for their contributions. What it does not provide is a template for the initial post to each prompt-this model provides a template for the response to each original post.

Example: (Statistics course). Mark Twain famously wrote: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Do you agree? Take a position and provide a concrete example to back up your position. Respond to two peers' posts using the 3CQ Model and be sure to respond (also using the 3CQ Model) to anyone who responds to your original post.

More Information: Forster (July 21, 2016); Stewart-Mitchell (n.d.)
Dr. Annie Prud'homme-Généreux is the director of continuing studies at Capilano University. She is a past recipient of the National Association of Biology Teachers' Four-Year College/University Teaching Innovation Award. She has been teaching in a blended format for over 15 years and is currently completing a master of education in open, digital and distance Education. References
In the next article in this series, we will explore ways to structure an online discussion that favor reflection and metacognition.

Barkley, E. F., Cross, K. P., & Major, C. H. (2005). Collaborative Learning Techniques. Jossey-Bass.

Berry, L., & Kowal, K. (2019, May 1). Five new twists for online discussions. Instructional Design. https://ce.uwex.edu/five-new-twists-for-online-discussions/

Berry, L., & Kowal, K. (June 19, 2020). Part Deux: Discussion on the Rocks? Add a Twist of Fresh Alternatives! OLC Innovate 2020, Online. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/olc-innovate-2020-session-page/?session=8131&kwds=discussion

Cobern, W. W. (1991). Introducing teachers to the philosophy of science: The card exchange. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 2(2), 45-46.

Cobern, W. W., & Loving, C. (2020). The Nature of Science Card Exchange: Introducing the Philosophy of Science. In Nature of Science in Science Instruction (pp. 213-222). Springer.

Cobern, W. W., & Loving, C. C. (1998). The card exchange: Introducing the philosophy of science. In The nature of science in science education (pp. 73-82). Springer.

De Bono, E. (1985). Six thinking hats [Book]. Little, Brown. https://ezproxy.capilanou.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat02755a&AN=cul.b144128&site=eds-live&scope=site

deNoyelles, A., Mannheimer Zydney, J., & Chen, B. (2014). Strategies for Creating a Community of Inquiry through Online Asynchronous Discussions. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 10(1).

Digital Society School. (n.d.). Break up / Love letter. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved January 30, 2021 from https://toolkits.dss.cloud/design/method-card/break-uplove-letter/

Forster, S. (July 21, 2016). How to shake up the discussion board in your online class. Mediashift. http://mediashift.org/2016/07/how-to-shake-discussion-board-online-class/

Ho, Y. (February 19, 2020). How to create engaging discussion forums. eLearning Best Practices. https://elearningindustry.com/how-create-engaging-online-discussion-forums

IDEO.org. (n.d.). Card Sort. https://www.designkit.org/methods/card-sort

ION Professional eLearning Programs. (n.d.). Role Playing. University of Illinois Springfield.

Kelly, R. (March 7, 2014). Discussion board assignments: Alternatives to the question-and-answer format. Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-student-engagement/discussion-board-assignments-alternatives-question-answer-format/

Koehler, A. A., Cheng, Z., Fiock, H., Janakiraman, S., & Wang, H. (2020, 2020-12-01). Asynchronous Online Discussions During Case-Based Learning: A Problem-Solving Process [Asynchronous Online Discussions, Case-Based Learning, Problem Solving]. 2020, 24(4). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i4.2332

Noffs, D., & Guerra-Martinez, J. (April 10, 2020). How superheroes can bring your online discussion board to life. Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-student-engagement/how-superheroes-can-bring-your-online-discussion-board-to-life/

Ritchhart, R., & Church, M. (2020). The Power of Making Thinking Visible. Jossey-Bass.

Schultz, B., Nielsen, C., & Sandidge, C. (2020). How to do discussion boards according to students. OLC Accelerate, Online. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/olc-accelerate-2020-session-page/?session=9088&kwds=discussion

Seethamraju, R. (2014, 2014/05/26). Effectiveness of Using Online Discussion Forum for Case Study Analysis. Education Research International, 2014, 589860. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/589860

Smith, J. I., Combs, E. D., Nagami, P. H., Alto, V. M., Goh, H. G., Gourdet, M. A. A., Hough, C. M., Nickell, A. E., Peer, A. G., Coley, J. D., & Tanner, K. D. (2013). Development of the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Conceptual Expertise in Biology. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(4), 628-644. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.13-05-0096

Stewart-Mitchell, J. (n.d.). Making quality comments following the "3C & Q" Model. http://transliteratelibrarians.weebly.com/uploads/3/7/4/2/37427333/publishing_sharing_and_commenting2.pdf

Zeiger, S. (n.d., February 12, 2021). Activities to Spark Discussion in the Classroom. Busy Teacher. https://busyteacher.org/25732-activities-to-spark-discussion-in-the-classroom.html

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21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion, Part Three | Faculty Focus

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This is a five-part series. Each Monday, we will be publishing the next consecutive part of the article series. In this five-part article series, we look at ideas for structuring an online discussion.

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Lifelong learners will want to bookmark this resource. Alison is highly regarded as "one of the world's largest free learning platforms for education and skills training." Launched in Galway, Ireland in 2007, the platform has grown and garnered a worldwide base, with more than 18 million learners across 195 countries. Users should click the green "Sign Up" button in the top-right corner to get started. Then, readers can search for courses by category or type, or try the job-based search engine to find learning opportunities relevant to the user's career goals. Learners can expand vocational skill sets with the health and safety and project management courses, build their business's brand with social media marketing lessons, and explore different interest areas with a broad array of offerings across humanities and STEM disciplines. Though the courses are free, users have paid subscription options that unlock additional features. The website can be viewed in five languages. To switch the default language, click the globe icon in the top-right corner.

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Free Online Courses & Online Learning | Alison

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Introduction to Hybrid Teaching: People, Pedagogy, Politics

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Introduction to Hybrid Teaching: People, Pedagogy, Politics

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This article is part of an edited collection viewing connections among teaching, communities, and politics through the lens of critical digital pedagogy. The complete book is available in paperback and Kindle editions or as a pay-what-you-will screen- or print-ready PDF. Additionally, each of the book's chapters can be read online as open-access articles. Proceeds from the book help continue the mission of Hybrid Pedagogy Inc.

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Teaching is an act of radical care. Our teaching influences the students we work with, the institutions we work within, and the communities we live in. It reflects on the past and considers the present to change the future. Teaching that values and supports individuals within networks of learners builds confidence, connection, and collaboration. To put it more bluntly, teaching that values students as individuals helps them construct their own knowledge and hold agency in their learning.

Letting students create their own view of the world may at first blush sound like neoliberal calls for individualized learning, so it's worth pausing to differentiate these ideas. Today's promise of "individualized" or "personalized" learning is tomorrow's algorithmically determined learning path that buries a student's agency under a mountain of code. That's not what learning looks like, and it's far from personal. When algorithms decide what, how, and when students should learn, those algorithms essentially program the students, as Seymour Papert observes, and school itself becomes "a machine to perform laid-down procedures" (p. 60). Treating students like predictable, procedural machines deprives them of agency, independence, and the opportunity to learn vital skills related to digital literacy and identity. Students who learn how knowledge builds on observations and critical thinking and reliable information can use their skills to understand the world around them and differentiate truthfulness and deceit.

Edward Snowden, reflecting on how he learned to program by himself after schooling generally failed to challenge him, noted that "a computer would wait forever to receive my command but would process it the very moment I hit Enter, no questions asked. No teacher had ever been so patient, yet so responsive. Nowhere else-certainly not at school, and not even at home-had I ever felt so in control." How much control do students exert over their own learning? Do they let curiosity lead them, or does a program expect them to respond to a series of predetermined prompts? When we teach, we make assertions about control and who should have it. When we dictate what students should and should not learn, we dismiss the significance of discovery. And when we let computers chart a path for students, we imply that the programmers know best how to teach. But programming isn't teaching. It's encoding. And that's not what we want done to students.

Nor is it what we want done to society. In " We're Never Going Back to the 1950s," Derek Thompson highlights the growth of niche partitioning of our information sources. He points out that " news -that is, sources of new information, of varying truthiness" has exploded in recent years, creating what he calls "a phalanx of news publishers" at the same time that "Google and Facebook duopolized digital advertising, creating a situation where publishers were multiplying as advertising declined." Our news has become hyper-targeted out of both intention and economic necessity.

Back in the 1950s, it was generally assumed that all of America gathered around the television to watch evening news on abc, cbs, or nbc-for those were the only options for same-day news updates. Having only the "big three" media outlets meant it was harder for a single political mindset to take over a large segment of the population. Harder, because each news outlet had to appeal to a broad segment of society. Today, that scenario feels so distant as to sound counter-intuitive. But at the time, the media existed to vet information, process events, and help people understand what was what. The search for truth-with-a-capital-T gave journalists somewhat of a higher calling.

But today, the "democratization" of media has led not to the freedom of information, but to the populism of news sources. Political forces understand that they no longer need to subject themselves to the scrutiny of journalists charged with representing the people and keeping them informed. Instead, political forces now can create their own media outlets with their own standards for "vetting," thus doing the equivalent with news and information as poisoning a well, ensuring all water coming from the tap is contaminated.

Democratization of the media happened rapidly and generally without the attention, critique, or objection of public or higher education. While others created novel and disturbing ways to capitalize on the attention economy, filter bubbles, and echo chambers, we were off building resource lists and learning modules, teaching one-off classes about Information Fluency with far too little attention paid to ethics beyond copyright rules. (Remember those days?) By focusing on the information, rather than the people, we turned a brewing knowledge crisis into little more than an academic exercise, complete with rote exercises and badges of completion. The one line of defense society has against just this sort of news-media crisis-education-was caught unawares and incapable of protecting itself-or its students, and therefore the public and future society-against the problem.

We need to find new tools to combat the rapid, persistent move toward extreme-conservative presentations of news, media, and truth. And as Kurt Andersen explains, those who seek to entrench the will of the rich at the expense of an informed public and engaged citizenry have been playing "such a long game" (p. 274). We must reorient our approach to hybrid teaching away from technology and toward humanity. We must start seeing hybrid education, blended learning, e-learning, distance education-or any of the other myriad names applied to the combination of a student and technology-as opportunities to build community and care for one another.

Caring for others has never been so vital.

Approach

It's clear by now that threats to a liberating and empowering education are nothing new. It's equally clear that concerns over the public's relative inability to defend itself politically did not start with the latest election, coup, referendum, or summit. Many of the articles included in this book debuted before recent key watershed moments. Yet they all have a relevance to our present moment, suggesting our current conditions have plenty in common with our past. Like Jesse Stommel, Sean Michael Morris, and I said in our introduction to Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Collection, material in this current volume "feels just as timely now as it did when it was written (and even more prescient)" when revisited after time has passed (p. 1). The concerns of critical pedagogy prove persistently relevant.

Through my work with Hybrid Pedagogy over the past five years, I have seen a remarkable (and at times dizzying) variety of approaches to the scholarship of teaching. For some, the scholarship of teaching and learning serves as a chance merely to market themselves and their classroom practices without an attempt to engage and challenge readers. For others, it's an opportunity to share how students have inspired them. And for others, writing about teaching becomes poetic, philosophical, nearly spiritual. I have seen through this variety the many shapes teaching takes and the many ways people come to this work we all share.

This book reflects that variety by avoiding any single point of entry, consistent tone, or uniform approach. The chapters, like their authors, and like our shared pedagogy, promote a more diverse and democratic approach to teaching, learning, and reading. Some authors sound distinctly hopeful and playful-see Brito and Fink, Burtis, Nelson, Morini, and Koh for example. Others challenge us through more somber approaches-see Derk, Goode, Inoue, Bali, and Amidon. Still others allow weariness to stand resolute alongside their optimism-here I think of Morris, Spelic, Melo, Literat, Zeller, and Lockley. Yes, that's a long list of weary authors. But each of those authors presents a heart-felt challenge: We know the work of teaching is difficult; we know our world is challenging; we know the political forces at play work against us. But it is precisely those obstacles which validate the critical importance of our work.

I wish it were in my power to publish a book early in 2021 that could erase the frustrations and hopelessness that spread globally throughout 2020. I wish I could present chapters announcing the fall of black-box algorithms that control the way we shape the minds of future generations. I wish I could point to decisions that protect minority lives and economic futures through the use of classroom technology and critical pedagogy. That, of course, is impossible, and we must continue our unrelenting push forward. So instead, I have included these challenging chapters in the hopes of saying, "I see you. Let's work on this together."

And togetherness, really, is the core of this book. Its three sections-pedagogy, people, and politics-each presume the existence of human connection, that commodity we acutely value after calamity rarifies it. If the pandemic taught us anything, it is the value of human connection and its distinction from technological connectivity. This book gathers together its authors to offer conversational sustenance: wisdom, insight, challenge, and care.

Organization

This volume, in ways serving as part three of a series, extends the work of An Urgency of Teachers and Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Collection by preserving a focus on critical digital pedagogy but here applying it more directly and deliberately toward efforts of resistance and discomfort.

Opening with pedagogy as Part 1, this book perhaps starts in expected territory. But the twist presented by the first chapter (Sean's claim that "technology is not pedagogy" when many of us have spent months hearing that Zoom is the shape of modern education) foreshadows the unsettling nature of much of the work that follows. Sean draws our attention to what's important-not the tools, not the tech, but the teaching. And by separating the wheat from the chaff, Sean provides necessary clarity to carry us through the book. Part 1 continues with a balance between efforts to make meaning as educators and warnings of the dangers/threats pedagogy can pose to students. It is energized by the work of Sherri Spelic, who in the early days of a president's administration highlighted the importance of meaning-making within a senseless society surrounded by political upheaval. Her observations remain helpful years later, as we continue to struggle with public perception of the media. In the subsequent chapter, Martha Fay Burtis presents her concerns for education's technological shortsightedness with her trademark wit, mixing lighthearted optimism with both wonder and worry. Then, Maggie Melo shares an intimate story of erasure that reasserts the urgency of critical pedagogy.

Maggie's chapter leads us perfectly into Part 2, focusing on people. It begins with a challenge: Jesse Stommel discusses the need for trust in education, mostly by pointing out how elusive it can be. Balancing critique with optimism, Amy A. Hasinoff talks about trust and rebuilds connections among learners of all stripes. The discomfort deepens with a lament over contingent labor, with Fisher, Literat, and Kraft each showing us with beauty and grace-and also a bit of snark-the devastating effect academia has on both its students and its faculty. Then, Amanda Licastro shows how deeply vital compassion is and how difficult it can be to nurture in even the most engaged classes. And finally, Asao B. Inoue closes Part 2 by discussing ways our efforts in the classroom might actually contribute to a less-violent world.

Part 3, on politics, opens with a lament from Jessica Zeller that helps us find our ethical and pedagogical centers and continues the momentum established in earlier chapters. Reminding us of the porous boundaries between classroom and politics, Maha Bali, Lee Skallerup Bessette, and Chris Gilliard show us the intricate connections between socio-political situations and educational policies in stark, concrete terms, with attention to race and legislation taking center stage. While keeping a solid theoretical grounding, we next turn to matters usually seen as less-than-serious. Adeline Koh explores the value of play, and Luca Morini looks at forms of learning often labeled "useless"; each in turn sheds light on ways entrenched academics preserve political power. From there, Pat Lockley shares a melancholic lament over bureaucratic decision-making that echoes frustrations from earlier chapters. Pat directs blame toward systemic problems-the same problems then addressed head-on in Audrey Watters' insistent tour de force. Her final chapter leaves us both hyper-aware of problems in today's education system and energized to find better solutions.

Resolution

The need for better solutions to political problems in education becomes critical-in each of the word's meanings-when the entire enterprise is expected to "pivot" online, as it did in early 2020 due to a global health crisis. Using the word "pivot"-which suggests merely the turn of a stationary object-overlooks the sense of direction, movement, and in-process-ness essential to teaching and learning. Classes suddenly required digital tools, home Internet connections, and personal devices to access what previously involved public transportation, lecture halls, and state-subsidized lunches. Suddenly, thoughts of using educational technology went from options to mandates. Nearly overnight, distance education was the only education available. Zoom became ubiquitous. Institutions turned wholesale away from personal connection and exploratory learning toward the use of problematic, dehumanizing delivery models. Calling those changes a "pivot" downplays the disruption they created, both to learning and to living.

Ed-tech often promises pre-packaged solutions and quick fixes to massive challenges-problems like delivering a class online or checking for plagiarism or monitoring attention during testing now have ready-made solutions, we are told, that our institutions can purchase and implement without the involvement-or consent-of teachers and students. These so-called "solutions" strip away the human element from teaching and learning and take control out of the hands of those doing the work of education and place it squarely in the hands (and pocketbooks) of proprietary systems belonging to companies more interested in ownership than in empowerment. We must oppose and resist the widespread, uncritical, high-pressure adoption of educational technology. To make that resistance possible, it helps to have context, perspective, and direction, which together help us better understand the situation's complexity and the shape our response should take.

Addressing complex, dynamic problems requires broad, possibly slow, approaches. When complex problems reach an inflection point, breadth and deliberation can seem irresponsible, adding pressure for rash decisions that sound easy. In this regard, education and politics share challenges as they work to improve people's quality of life, particularly through crisis. And as Barack Obama observes in a reflection on holding office, "in a crisis people needed a story that made sense of their hardships and spoke to their emotions-a morality tale with clear good guys and bad guys and a plot they could easily follow" (ch. 22). In today's political climate, divisive morality tales have sharpened focus on the perceived line between good and bad. The same can be said of today's educational climate, with a line between progressive educators working to improve student autonomy and agency and cutting-edge technologists working to improve automation and student processing. What, then, happened to progressive educators' "story that made sense of their hardships and spoke to their emotions"? What kinds of stories have we told ourselves?

The stories we tell matter. Obama adds: "I found myself wondering whether we'd somehow turned a virtue into a vice; whether, trapped in my own high-mindedness, I'd failed to tell the American people a story they could believe in" (ch. 22). As progressive educators, we can too easily get trapped in our collective high-mindedness, becoming our own vices. Indeed, as Donald Macedo notes in his introduction to Pedagogy of the Oppressed, "educators who misinterpret Freire's notion of dialogical teaching also refuse to link experiences to the politics of culture and critical democracy, thus reducing their pedagogy to a form of middle-class narcissism" (p. 18). In this moment, we must consider the social and political implications of our praxis. We must examine the effects of our work outside our classrooms, both on and offline. Whether education uses technology as a tool of oppression or teachers as a tool for liberation is a conscious choice that we and our institutions must make. Because teaching is always political.

This book was born out of a critical moment in the story of educational technology. That story helps us make sense of how pedagogy, people, and politics influence each other. We see how educators have a responsibility to the people we teach, how education has a responsibility to those who do the teaching, and how teaching itself holds a responsibility to society. That responsibility goes beyond traditional ideas of a civics education or the creation of an "informed citizenry" and into protecting that citizenry. Because as we so vividly saw in 2020, ed-tech, educational institutions, and online platforms will not save us. There's too much inertia carrying us away from agency. Instead, this book aims to unsettle its readers; perhaps some unsettling will do us some good. Because, at the heart of it, education has the power to reinforce or even amplify democracy. By helping students see themselves as empowered members of a larger society, we can do the critical, consciousness-raising work that Paulo Freire calls us to do. Because, as he says, "There is no such thing as a neutral educational process" (p. 219).

Over the past four years-or four decades, as Andersen asserts-we have seen the results of unrestrained and calculated greed running rampant across our society and into our education system. But the impulse to dominate others for selfish gain has no place in a democratic education. Indeed, as he reflected on the outcomes of his first term in office, Obama saw the essential need for:

government policies that raised living standards and improved education enough to temper humanity's baser impulses. Except now I found myself asking whether those impulses-of violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance, the all-too-human desire to beat back our own uncertainty and mortality and sense of insignificance by subordinating others-were too strong for any democracy to permanently contain. (ch. 24)

This one book will not "fix" education any more than one head of state can preserve democracy. Nor will this book solve your institution's problems or even show you how to teach an ethical, democratic, inspiring, liberating class next week. But it can challenge thinking, inspire creativity, focus attention, and provide a sense of hope. Hope that, by attending to the challenges of education and the needs of students, we can chart a path forward that allows education to defy surveillance and authority while empowering students to define their world-and then change it.

Individual chapters from the collection are available from across the open web. The complete book is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions or as a pay-what-you-will screen- or print-ready PDF. Additionally, each of the book's chapters can be read online as open-access articles. Proceeds from the book help continue the mission of Hybrid Pedagogy Inc.

Contents

Part 1 - Pedagogy

1. Technology is Not Pedagogy by Sean Michael Morris

2. Building Castles in the Air by Stephen R. Barnard

3. Pedagogy, Prophecy, Disruption by Ian Derk

4. Slow Interdisciplinarity by Abby Goode

5. The Process of Becoming by Marisol Brito and Alexander Fink

6. Learning to Let Go by Chris Friend

7. Seeking Patterns, Making Meaning by Sherri Spelic

8. Messy and Chaotic Learning by Martha Fay Burtis

9. Pedagogical Violence and Language Dominance by Maggie Melo

Part 2 - People

1. Trust, Agency, and Learning by Jesse Stommel

2. Confessions of a Subversive Student by Leif Nelson

3. Do You Trust Your Students? by Amy A. Hasinoff

4. On Silence by Audrey Watters

5. A Soliloquy on Contingency by Joseph P. Fisher

6. N=1: Inquiry into Happiness and Academic Labor by Ioana Literat

7. From Ph.D. to Poverty by Tiffany Kraft

8. When One Class is Not Enough by Amanda Licastro

9. Assessing so That People Stop Killing Each Other by Asao B. Inoue

Part 3 - Politics

1. Pedagogy as Protest by Jessica Zeller

2. Critical Citizenship for Critical Times by Maha Bali / مها بال

3. Interrogating the Digital Divide by Lee Skallerup Bessette

4. Pedagogy and the Logic of Platforms by Chris Gilliard

5. (dis)Owning Tech by Timothy R. Amidon

6. Education as Bulwark of Uselessness by Luca Morini

7. The Political Power of Play by Adeline Koh

8. Ghost Towns of the Public Good by Pat Lockley

9. Ed-Tech in a Time of Trump by Audrey Watters

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Introduction to Hybrid Teaching: People, Pedagogy, Politics

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Teaching is an act of radical care. Our teaching influences the students we work with, the institutions we work within, and the communities we live in. It reflects on the past and considers the present to change the future. Teaching that values and supports individuals within networks of learners builds confidence, connection, and collaboration.

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Screen Recorder for Guiding Distance Learning: Case Study of Teacher Professional Education Program

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Screen Recorder for Guiding Distance Learning: Case Study of Teacher Professional Education Program

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Abstract—The Covid-19 pandemic has negatively impacted societies in many sectors, including education sector. One of the effectsis that teaching and learning activities cannot be done in campus, thus Teacher Professional Educa-tionor PPG (Pendidikan Profesi Guru) that used to be conducted in campus, should be carried out online by using LMS (Learning Management System) called SIM PKB. The problem is that the students are not familiar with the LMS used, which cause most of them to experience technical problems in the process of the digital learning. This condition requires the class administratorsto guide them in using the LMS. This article discusses the use of a screen recorder application to guide PPG students’ learning. This research was conducted by observing the digital learning activities of PPG students in SIM PKB LMS before and after watching a video tutorial made using screen recorder application. Theresults show that the use of screen recorder is effective in helping class administrators to guide the students in operatingthe LMS. Before the video tutorial was published, there was a virtual meeting with the same objective. However, still, there were so many inquiriesabout particular functions in the LMS. After the video tutorial was given to the students, there wasno more complain regarding technical problems, because the video tutorials can be played repeatedly. Once thevideo downloaded, the students can play it despite theirunstable internet connections. In this case, screen recorders can also save more on the internet quota consumption.

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Screen Recorder for Guiding Distance Learning

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Starlink changes everything. It may be the most important form of learning technology of the century

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Starlink changes everything. It may be the most important form of learning technology of the century

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I was out in my garden in May last year, watching a stream of satellites pass in a line overhead. It was beautiful.Starlink changes everything. In online learning it absolutely changes everything. A global network of satellites delivering high speed broadband means that anyone, anywhere in the world can get high-speed broadband.

There are over 1000 satellites up already. Target is 2027 for thousands more satellites. Why so many? Well, each has a small cone of coverage but it cuts latency. Lasers between satellites travel at the speed of light. This is much faster than optical delivery through cable and allows global distribution with very low latency. Note that this will not wipe out urban networks but is great for rural and low density markets. If you are worried about space debris, their satellites have propulsion, collision software and can be dropped to disintegrate when they come to the end of their life.

Prices at the moment are £89 plus £439 for the dish and speeds at 50-150mbs. However, speeds will soon double and prices will fall. It has over 10,000 users in its US beta program and is also delivering services to users in the UK. You can sign up right now.

How did we get here?

It's less than 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the world-wide web in 1991. There was no broadband 20 years ago from today. It started in the UK on 31 March 2000 and for years it was kilobits then just 2megabits by 2005. 50 megabits was introduced in 2008, 100 by 2010. This was an amazing achievement and has revolutionised play, work and learning.

1G networks were the first, 2G networks added data for things like SMS messages, 3G internet added even more and 4G, what we currently use, much faster internet access that has enabled social media and streaming. With every gear change comes faster and more efficient delivery. 5G delivers much, much higher speed and bandwidth. 4G caps out at 100 megabits per second (Mbps), 5G caps out at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps). That means 5G is x100 faster than 4G technology, theoretically at least.

But what does this Starlink move mean?

To be honest, this is not really about 5G. Starlink is more important than 5G. It allows us to work and learn anywhere. It will allow people to move out of cities. High bandwidth, low latency, reliable internet will change how we work and learn. Its timing is perfect with respect to Covid. Now that we've been through the Great Pause and learnt to work and learn more at home, Starlink accelerates this process.

Rural business

First, It's a great leveller. It delivers high-speed broadband to all rural areas, allowing work to migrate out of the cities, also boosting local businesses. Broadband will. No longer be an urban thing. This is in line with the political demands in countries where populations have voted for less globalisations and urbanisation, in favour for a more geographically, equal distribution of wealth. SpaceX had to reach certain delivery speeds in order to participate in the Federal Communication Commission's up to $16bn Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.

Developing world benefits

More than this, it allows broadband to be delivered to anywhere on the planet. This include the whole of the developing world. This is mind-boggling and may free up the talent in those economies, bringing them into the fold. Anyone can produce anything and sell their talents online. The local becomes global.

Global online learning

Post-Covid, the world will undoubtedly have taken a shift towards online learning in schools, colleges, Universities and the workplace. Forget the conspiracy theories, 5G wireless technology stands for 'fifth generation' cellular technology. Tie this up with Starlink, a low earth orbit network of satellites delivering blistering speeds to everywhere in the world and the engine that is AI, and we have a perfect storm that will transform global, online learning.

SpaceX's satellite internet system will offer still blazingly fast speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. It will offer satellite internet to the entire planet, including remote locations where internet isn't currently available. Its satellites are low enough, and move (not geostationary), to deliver this with no blindspots. That's an astounding leap. A couple of orders of magnitude better and global coverage. In terms of delivery and the user experience in online learning, this means a lot. In short, we can get online. learning anywhere.

We spend a lot of time watching that little circle spinning on our screens. Technically it's called latency, the time taken to find, identify and transfer data. 5G will make this all but disappear. This matters when you're delivering complex online learning, whether it's video, simulations, AI, VR or AR.

The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass, two Stanford academics, is full of juicy research on media in learning. It provides a compelling case, backed up with empirical studies, to show that that people confuse media with real life. This is actually a highly useful confusion: it is what makes movies, television, radio, the web and e-learning work. But their research also supports the case for 5G. 35 psychological studies into the human reaction to media all point towards the simple proposition that people react towards media socially even though, at a conscious level, they believe it is not reasonable to do so. They can't help it. In short, people think that computers are people, which makes online learning work.

Why is this relevant to 5G? Well in real life we live in real time. We don't encounter little spinning circles, except when waiting on a late train or in a queue, and who wants that? Hearteningly, it means that there is no reason why online learning experiences should be any less compelling - any less 'human' in feel - than what we experience in the real world and the classroom. As long as a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules, we will accept it. Read that last part again, 'as long as a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules'. If the media technology fails to conform to these human expectations - we will very much not accept it.

The spell is easily broken. Nass & Reeves showed that unnatural 'pauses' inhibit learning. If the media technology fails to conform to our human expectations - we will NOT accept it. This is a fascinating lesson for online learning. We must learn to design our courseware as if it were being delivered in real-time by real people in a realistic fashion. The effectiveness of the user experience on an emotional level will depend as much on these considerations as on the scriptwriting and graphic design. It all has to work seamlessly, or the illusion of humanity fails. This has huge implications in terms of the use of media and media mix.

A simple finding, that shows we have real life expectations for media, is our dislike of unnatural timing. Slight pauses, waits and unexpected events cause disturbance. Audio-video asynchrony, such as poor lip-synch or jerky low frame-rate video, will result in negative evaluations of the speaker. These problems are cognitively disturbing. They lower learning. All that disappears with 5G.

Streaming will become much easier and almost flawless, allowing online learning to deliver whatever media is necessary at whatever time is optimal for learning. Note that this does not open the floodgates for over-engineered multimedia in learning, Media rich is not necessarily mind-rich. Many see video as the killer app for 5G. It is one but video is rarely enough on its own in learning. It will certainly boost LXP, personalised delivery of any media type.

AI delivered learning will also be easier as realtime calls to cloud-based AI services opens up smart solutions in learning. This opens up a new world for adaptive learning, feedback, chatbots, automated notifications based on xAPI, learning in the workflow. Specifically, it allows access to services, such as OpenAI API to tap into AI on demand. This means smarter, faster and better online learning. We free ourselves from the current presentation of flat, linear experiences. The process, and learning is not an event but a process, will be sensitive to each individual learner. Personalised learning becomes a reality. I mention Starlink in my book AI for Learning.

New user experiences and processes will be possible when we free ourselves from the tyranny of latency and slow speed internet. The promise of blended learning that can deliver great simulations, immersion and whatever one has delivered in the real world or classroom is now possible. New business models will emerge. New forms of learning with full immersion, AI, personalisation will emerge.

Rumours have it that Apple will be offering a 'glasses' or AR device. In any case, wearables, watches and small devices are now everywhere. 5G allows high speed access to and from these devices. This is not just about smartphones, it frees up fast internet speeds to all devices. We can link learning to devices that provide the context for learning. Where are you, what are you doing, then this is what we can do to help. This all becomes possible wherever you are indoors or outdoors, anywhere on the planet.

The great leaps in learning technologies were writing, the alphabet, printing, broadcast media, computers, the internet and now AI and data. But this is the Internet with a difference. It's universal and global. Higher performance and improved efficiency empower new user experiences and connects new industries. This is not about boosting learning. It is about changing the very nature of education and learning. The implications for the poorer regions of the world are obvious, as it could be a great leveller. The tides rise with the gravitational pull of the moon, this is a rising tide that also comes from space, for everyone, one that doesn't ebb.

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Starlink changes everything. It may be the most important form of learning technology of the century

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I was out in my garden in May last year, watching a stream of satellites pass in a line overhead. It was beautiful.Starlink changes everything. In online learning it absolutely changes everything. A global network of satellites delivering high speed broadband means that anyone, anywhere in the world can get high-speed broadband.

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Evaluating videoconferencing systems for the quality of the educational experience

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Evaluating videoconferencing systems for the quality of the educational experience

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This study analyzed four widely used videoconferencing systems: Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, and WhatsApp. Using experiential e-learning as the framework for analysis, this study examined the systems’ general characteristics, learning-related features, and usability. We conducted an analytical evaluation and analyzed system features in regard to their impact on the quality of the online educational experience. The results of this analysis provide guidance for selecting effective videoconferencing systems to support learning. They also offer insights on ways to explore teaching approaches and pedagogies for distance education. This paper offers a set of recommendations as well as suggestions for videoconferencing system improvements.

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Digital Teaching Tools - Applied Digital Skills 

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Digital Teaching Tools - Applied Digital Skills 

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Use creative, video-based lessons in the classroom or remotely to prepare students for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

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Free, flexible and ready-to-use

Adapt our free, video-based lessons for remote or in-classroom teaching

Project-based curriculum

Students leave with a useful project, like a presentation, a resume or a research plan

Skills for school, work and life

Teach the 4 C's: communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking

Connect with Google Classroom

Connect Applied Digital Skills with Google Classroom to import your roster and more

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Digital Teaching Tools - Applied Digital Skills

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Adapt our free, video-based lessons for remote or in-classroom teaching Students leave with a useful project, like a presentation, a resume or a research plan Teach the 4 C's: communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking Connect Applied Digital Skills with Google Classroom to import your roster and more

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Teachers from different walks of life instantly became essential workers, on the frontline, and had to think of new ways to provide quality education in a digital environment.

Whilst presenting a challenge in education, the pandemic has at the same time, caused a paradigm shift in the way students and teachers learn, work and collaborate.

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The Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly represents a major crisis for all industries and sectors, including education.

Teachers from different walks of life instantly became essential workers, on the frontline, and had to think of new ways to provide quality education in a digital environment.

Whilst presenting a challenge in education, the pandemic has at the same time, caused a paradigm shift in the way students and teachers learn, work and collaborate.

Instead of solely focusing on the negatives, we can observe new opportunities to rethink the education system and look to improve the sector's overall sense of community cooperation. Enter Moodle , an online learning platform built in collaboration with its community and designed to empower educators by delivering quality education.

With that in mind, we relook at seven key pillars for quality education that Chad Outten, Founder and CEO of our Certified Premium Moodle Partner My Learning Space shared at MoodleMoot Global Online in July 2020: Resources, Communication, Collaboration, Assessment, Accreditation, Reporting and Accessibility.

Chad paired these seven pillars with the tools and features from the Moodle LMS that support them, to give educators resources to keep providing great learning experiences for their students when shifting to fully online learning.

Resources
In a time where remote learning and working is the new normal, educators need to employ proper digital resources to provide quality education to students. Many times, just appearing at a Zoom meeting and reading from a PowerPoint presentation is going to fall short.

The Moodle LMS enables educators to easily create resources to engage their learners, for example the H5P open source content creation tool. Integrated as a standard activity from Moodle 3.9 onwards, this lets teachers easily create interactive videos and content for their learners to engage with.

The H5P activity is also easy-to-use, as teachers can simply drag and drop the content that they want to present and create their activities in a snap.

Communication
Face-to-face interaction is no longer possible because of Covid-19 for obvious safety reasons.

One of the most distinct changes in the education sector is the shift to the digital classroom, affecting the way students and teachers communicate with one another. To provide an open space to communicate, Moodle has a built-in Forum activity, which serves as a central place where students can ask questions, share ideas, and help each other.

Collaboration
Collaboration in the traditional classroom happens organically. But with the shift online, students and teachers alike have to intentionally find new ways to meet and merge ideas, and many find that web conferencing is their preferred way to interact online.

Moodle was designed with a strong focus on collaborative learning, and that's why it allows the integration of many web conferencing tools: from open source video conferencing tool BigBlueButton, a CertifiedMoodle Integration, to various plugins that support other web conferencing software. These integrations are instrumental for teachers who want to keep all their activities on one platform instead of hopping from one program to another.

Assessment
Conducting all assessments virtually can be a difficult thing for teachers to manage as more and more submissions pile up. Peer-to-peer assessment is a strategy that not only takes some of this work off of the teachers' hands, but is also a fantastic way for learners to consolidate their knowledge.

The Workshop activity in Moodle is designed precisely for that: to have learners assess, grade and give feedback on the work of their peers, using a rubric provided by the teacher.

Accreditation
Even in a remote setting, it's still important for learners to have their work, knowledge and skills accredited in a way that's recognised not only by their own organisation, but also by other educational institutions and employers.

That's the case of Moodle's Badges, that follow the internationally recognised Open Badges standards, which allow teachers to certify their learners' achievements, competences and skills with virtual badges that learners can store and display in a digital backpack. Besides the purpose of accreditation, awarding learners with badges also motivates them to continue their journey and achieve their goals.

Reporting
It has become especially important for teachers today to know if their students are present and engaged in their activities. It was easy in a traditional classroom setting: students turn up in a class, personally interact with their peers and teachers, and perform tasks. Meanwhile, participation and engagement in the digital classroom may be hard to identify. To resolve this issue, Moodle has the Learning Analytics tool, which is programmed to help educators make informed decisions about their learners. It also helps teachers identify failing students and intervene when necessary.

The Learning Analytics API is also built in with a predictive model, which allows teachers to identify which students are at risk of dropping out. The triggers for this model come in many forms such as when students have not accessed their course at any stage, nor written or read the materials given by their teachers. Moodle's Certified Integration Intelliboard also provides powerful data reporting tools to visualise how learners are engaging and behaving in courses.

Accessibility
Lastly, the most important pillar of quality education is accessibility. All the aforementioned pillars would be useless if there's no platform to access them. More often than not, providing accessibility does not mean using only one medium to achieve that. One person may not have the same device as the other, which highlights the importance of making learning platforms accessible to various systems. For this reason, Moodle makes its platform available on different devices such as desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones and tablets.

The Moodle App gives learners and teachers the freedom and flexibility to learn anywhere at any time without being bound to a classroom or an office.

As we continue to navigate the effects of the pandemic, it's important for teachers to continuously seek ways to reinvent the education system for the good of the students. Who knows? Maybe further recognising these pillars and improving existing solutions can make education available for all, even children in underserved communities.

Because as Moodle says, education is a basic human right, not a privilege.

This blog is based on a MoodleMootGlobal Online 2020 presentation by Chad Outten, Founder & CEO of My Learning Space. My Learning Space is a Certified Premium Moodle Partner. To learn more them, visit their Partner Profile.

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7 pillars for quality education online | Moodle

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Teachers from different walks of life instantly became essential workers, on the frontline, and had to think of new ways to provide quality education in a digital environment. Whilst presenting a challenge in education, the pandemic has at the same time, caused a paradigm shift in the way students and teachers learn, work and collaborate.

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What AI Really Does Not Do During An Online Test

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What AI Really Does Not Do During An Online Test

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AI used in live proctoring functions like a smoke detector alerting humans to a possible problem, and then, humans make the decisions, not the technology.

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AI Is Supplemental To Humans In Live Proctoring

Artificial Intelligence-AI. It may sound scary. And it's anything but perfect.

So, when people talk about using AI as part of test and exam proctoring, as part of the system that deters and detects cheating, people get spooked. That's fair. But it's also limiting, and misses the depth of what AI tools do-and better yet, do not do during the monitoring of remote tests.

Let's take a quick look.

At the outset, it's helpful to frame questions about AI in test proctoring with an understanding that what AI tools and techniques are used during a test can vary greatly. The scale can be from no AI tools whatsoever to a robust buffet of indicators that can accurately monitor and analyze everything from background noise to keystroke accuracy and speed and more. Just because a remote test has a proctoring solution does not mean it uses AI.

It's important to also keep in mind that where a specific test is in the range of review and monitoring methods, depends in large measure on what the test-provider, the school, wants. Remote test proctors follow the rules and procedures the schools or professors set, they don't make up their own or use anti-cheating tools that the schools don't want. In other words, if a particular test is using AI, it's certainly because the school asked for it, and likely for good reason.

Understanding AI: What It Is And Does

Understanding that AI and test proctoring are not the same thing and that schools, not proctoring companies, make those calls, let's look quickly at what AI is-what it does.

AI is an information gathering and assessment engine. In that way, it's just like an exam itself, collecting information and scoring it along a set scale. What makes AI different is that it can "learn" from what it gets wrong and what it gets right. AI systems get more and more accurate with use.

That gets us to what AI does not do during remote testing. It does not-and I cannot underscore this enough-decide who is cheating. It does not "flag" some behaviors as cheating and fail a student. It does not have a set score of cheating versus not cheating-look off your screen twice in a minute and you're fine, do it three times and you fail. It simply does not do that.

Here's why: the AI systems used in the test proctoring that we use simply alert humans. Humans make the call. Maybe not every proctoring provider does it that way, but they should.

Let me give an example. If a student is answering complex engineering questions very quickly, faster than 99.5% of all other students, that may be suspicious. It may indicate that they had the questions and answers in advance. It may also indicate that the test-taker is just a well-prepared engineering genius. In this example, an AI system might alert a test proctor to the unusual event but the proctor, and ultimately the test-taker's professor, will determine whether they are a savant or a scallywag.

That last bit is very important. Even if this example student trips the AI alarm on how quickly they answer, and even if a reviewing proctor then alerts the professor, the professor may decide it's fine. Maybe they know the student is, in fact, an academic star. Or they may decide, considering that the student has never attended a single class, that further inquiry is needed. The point is that professors and school staff decide what is or is not misconduct, they decide what to do about it-not AI.

In this way, AI is like a smoke detector in your home. Smarter, yes, but it serves a very similar function. A smoke detector spends all day and all night looking for one thing, when it finds it, an alarm is sounded. But a human then has to decide whether someone left the meatloaf in the oven too long or whether it's time to gather the kids and dogs and get out. Like a smoke detector, AI can alert people to things they may miss. But people do the deciding.

Further, because AI "learns" from what it gets "right," the tools will make fewer errors, sound false alarms less frequently as it does the job. Where old AI systems may have registered an unusual event when someone sneezed, after a few times of being "corrected" by humans, the system will correct itself and no longer highlight sniffling. That's a good thing. We want AI systems-all systems, in fact-to be accurate and get better.

And when you put real people with AI, the synergy can be quite robust. Humans can correct and improve the AI and AI can alert humans to things they may miss. Over the course of the collaboration, humans get better and so does the AI. The dirty secret is that, especially in online proctoring, AI is used just as often to help our proctors get better, as it is used to "catch" cheating.

In proctoring and assessment, there is no "score" by which an AI system will determine cheating. And there is absolutely no system in which any such "AI score" will determine a grade or academic outcome. If schools or professors are trying to use proctoring or AI tools in that way, without human decision-making, they should not. The systems were not designed to do that and likely can't.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the AI systems used during online test proctoring are not ubiquitous, they are often very focused and always only supplemental to humans, not in place of them. While they can detect things that humans may miss, Robocop isn't watching anyone take a test. Big Brother cannot fail you. AI simply does not do that.

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What AI Really Does Not Do During An Online Test

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Artificial Intelligence-AI. It may sound scary. And it's anything but perfect. So, when people talk about using AI as part of test and exam proctoring, as part of the system that deters and detects cheating, people get spooked. That's fair.

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Teacher’s portal

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The Teacher's Portal is designed to help teacher's educate their students about the law. These resources were developed by the ABA Division for Public Education. They include lessons plans, programs, publications and information on professional development.

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This year 2021 more than ever technology is impacting where and how our students learn. In this episode we discuss everything from how the internet has changed the distribution of information to the amount of tech in classrooms. We also talk about Educeri, a large educational app we built for a curriculum development company and how served their business needs while also creating a platform that got their lessons into the hands of even more teachers!

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This year more than ever technology is impacting where and how our students learn. In this episode we discuss everything from how the internet has changed the distribution of information to the amount of tech in classrooms. We also talk about Educeri, a large educational app we built for a curriculum development company and how served their business needs while also creating a platform that got their lessons into the hands of even more teachers!

Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bixly Tech Tuesday. This is Cris here, CEO of Bixly sitting down with Alexandra who works with us here, and I'm going to call for the purposes of this episode, our education extraordinaire. I'll let you expound on that as we jump into questions, but today's topic, we're going to be talking about tech in education and how we've seen technology shift over the years, how it plays into the educational space and how, of course we, as Bixly can help you with that. So Alexandra, how do you see basically technology in the education space shifting and how has it shifted over the last few years, 10 years, whatever?

Well, the basic trend as with almost every other area of our life is that technology is becoming more and more central to what we do in the educational space. Just from starting with hardware, students are using laptops, iPads in the classroom, smart boards and things like this installed in nearly every classroom across the United States. So you're seeing this type of technology and the hardware interface being in the classroom. And then on top of that, right now, because of COVID, so many students are remote learning. And so, that's another layer of technology that we're using, both the laptops and the software that is running behind the scenes whether you're using Zoom or some other platform. Increasingly, just across the board, more than ever before, we are seeing that students are interacting with technology as a core way for them to go through their educational experience.

And then on top of that, it's really being integrated into the curriculum. So, I mean, in my day we had computer classes like Mavis Beacon, and maybe a little bit of basic, but these days students are learning robotics, they're learning electronics. They have the opportunity to learn programming, maybe an elective type course, that sort of thing. And I've even seen specialized high schools that are focused on tech, and that's really exciting as well. And so, not only are we seeing hardware in the classrooms, technology as being integrated into the curriculum and also software being core to the way in which students are experiencing their education, all of this tenfold over time.

Yeah. That makes complete sense. Myself, I have four kids and they all have iPads and they're using these for school and they're doing spelling lessons on them and they're doing educational type games. Again, we had a typing tutor, Mavis Beacon, whatever it was and that was all you really did on a computer. And of course, tablets didn't even exist. So I know, and for me personally, I'm seeing so much more technology being utilized by my kids in their current education than I ever could have dreamed when I was in school.

Yeah, absolutely. And then on top of that, you have the informal education of you to me, MOOCs, YouTube resources, podcasts, people are accessing more information empowered by the internet through just being able to access this stuff online and researching their own areas of interest and that's really exciting for me.

Yeah, because it's not even that formal education. I think even specifically I was doing repairs at my house and it used to be you'd go into some sort of a store like a Sears or whatever, and you may talk with the technician or you go by the Home Depot. Now you can just pull up YouTube and actually educate yourself on how to do your own plumbing or how to do some electrical additions, which when you're dealing with electrical, I recommend hiring a contractor because that can just get dicey. But the point is though education, not only in the formal classroom setting, like we're talking about with your primary grammar school type education, but also just education in general for the mass population has exploded as it's so much easier to get access to all these new avenues of learning.

Yeah, absolutely. And then I think compared to, again, when I was in school, even more so the in-classroom experiences integrated with an online experience. So when you and I were at university, we had a website called Blackboard, which I think a lot of universities use and there are tools like this, the school website and resources online that teachers are frequently using as an extension of the classroom. And these are just more ways in which we are seeing tech impacting the way in which our education is delivered to our students.

Yeah. So I'm trying to think how we can utilize technology within the educational space, because we obviously talked about all the hardware and we've talked about some learning, but very specific custom software type solutions, how we could see those fitting in. And so, I've thought even personally of situations where schools are starting to have to deal with more health requirements and safety standards and that sort of thing. And so, the ability for these schools and these districts to create custom applications that are doing temperature checks or are allowing the students to fill out some kind of a self evaluation on health to see if they're actually ready and prepared to come into the classroom, not only from a mindset standpoint, from a health standpoint.

And so, again, custom software, that's very easy to build out if you need to do something that's different and unique. And we have the ability to do that here at Bixly which is really, really cool.

Yeah, and there's tons of opportunities for custom software, especially as we have mentioned that the classroom is really extending beyond when students are sitting in the classroom, it's really extending onto the platform on the internet. And so, if you're using tools that are online, making sure that they're not an inhibition to your students, that they're not so frustrating to use or clunky and maybe a couple years old, but making sure that they're modern so that it doesn't become a stumbling block for their learning. We really want to make sure that that's streamlined and is as helpful for the student as possible.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And for me, thinking through customers that we've worked with in the past in the education space, similar to medical, there can be certain regulations, things that you're trying to deal with. I say really safety precautions, because if you're talking formal grammar style education, even high school, you're potentially dealing with minors. And there is personally identifiable information that needs to be ensured that it's taken care of in the proper manner. And some of these out of the box type solutions that you might have, some of them may be able to follow those safety protocols, some of them may not.

And depending on your school, your district, even their country that the school is in, building something custom that's going to uniquely fit those parameters and those safety precautions that you have in place is really important. And again, custom software, that's where that comes in. So for us, particularly, I wanted to touch on one actual formal type education project. And it was for a company called DataWORKS that I know you have some connection to. I wanted to talk through that application and then just what did we do for them and what were the unique scenarios that they were coming up against that didn't let them do an out of the box solution?

Yeah, absolutely. So DataWORKS, I actually worked with them before I came to work for Bixly. And so, I can speak a little bit from the client side because I was on their team when we were building the app together. And DataWORKS had a product where they were delivering - they do teacher training - but their main source of business was actually delivering curriculum materials to teachers in classrooms. And they did this via digital download.

It's a relatively small company, very heavily researched-based in cognitive models. And that became the most efficient way for them to deliver that material to teachers, into school districts, into individual schools. They didn't have a big publishing house behind them to basically create big textbooks and that sort of thing, that's a much bigger endeavor,

Right. And this was single type use content?

So you would have a license for an individual teacher or for an individual lesson. And of course, as is natural, as we may do with music that we download or movies that we download, teachers would share it with each other because it's a great resource or even the principal might share it with the entire school. And unfortunately, that was a really big problem for DataWORKS as a business model because technically that is stealing. They weren't really paying for the multiple use licenses like you mentioned.

And being such a small company it was something that we really needed to defend, to be able to make sure that we were getting the proper compensation for the value and the use of that lesson material. And the solution was of course, a SaaS model, software as a service, and being able to put these well researched lessons, this very in depth curriculum behind a secure paywall to make sure that we were getting proper value in, proper payment for the value that we were offering to the teachers and to the schools.

Yeah, because you're trying to utilize a way that the customers or the schools, the teachers that are getting the software that they're able to now have a different way of connecting to the library, but they're still able to get this content. And like you said, still make a profit on the DataWORKS side and follow compliancy the whole way along.

So yeah, I remember it was a pretty involved process and again, it was a shift, nothing that was extremely unique because we've seen this of course, with your Spotify and your Netflix and all these services that are opening up a library, but there was a lot of little quirks that went into making sure that you could have multi-user accounts and have the ability, like you said, to have a safe and secure paywall, to be able to handle subscriptions if you don't run into a payment that happens on time, what happens to the accounts, all that kind of stuff. So it was a really fun, really unique project. And from what I understand, the feedback from the customers has been great and they seem to be utilizing the software very well.

Yeah, yeah. The teachers have loved it since day one. And I think there's always that trade-off where you grumble from being able to feel like you own the lesson to being moved to the software as a service type model, whether we're thinking of Adobe or Microsoft or other companies that have had to face that transition. But I think the advantages of course, that you have access to the entire library of lessons, much like with Netflix, you have access to the entire library of movies that Netflix has on offer as opposed to buying each movie individually. And so, that was actually a really great value add for the teachers. So far we've heard really, really great things. They really enjoy having access to this and being able to pull up a lesson on their smart board and dive right in and work with their students.

That's good. And that's what's so great about working with Bixly is you can come to us with a project idea that may be similar in some ways to another product, it may be completely different and there is a particular need that you have that needs to be fixed. And we don't have to completely reinvent the wheel, which is great. We can look at what other industries are doing, what other verticals are doing. And obviously we're not going to just completely rip off what they're doing, but there's no reason to reinvent the wheel if you don't have to.

And so, in some ways I'm know I'm going to get this wrong, but it's the idea of copying someone is the highest form of flattery in a way. And so, coming to Bixly, we want to talk through the problem that you're facing, lay out a really good solution and then be able to look outside into the larger industry. And again, mimic in ways, things that have already been done to make your project be unique and very specific to what you're trying to do and who you're trying to reach. So if someone is trying to connect with us and they want to talk about the project more, how do they go about doing that?

Well, the best place to do it is to go to bixly.com. There's a couple of things that you can do once you're there. One, you can sign up for our free download, which is going to start setting you on the path for planning out what your custom software might look like. If you're not ready to have those conversations yet, but you want to learn more about how to plan out a custom software project, we have a free digital download, there for you, that will walk you through the process of doing wireframes and writing user stories and that sort of thing.

If you feel like you're ready to dive in and have a conversation, which you do not have to have all of your ducks in a row, that's what the conversation is about. It's exploratory for us to maybe make a few suggestions ...

And it's free.

... and point you in the right direction.

It's free. There's a big button, free consultation on our website and they'll actually be chatting with you and they'll get the CEO touch.

That is correct. For what that is worth.

No, it is good. And I do enjoy talking about projects with our current clients and potential leads. And it's always, like I said, interesting to see how they are thinking that they're going to solve their solution. And then usually I come in with some other idea, and we meet in the middle and everyone walks away in a good place.

Yeah. And so, whether we end up being the right fit for you or not, or we can maybe suggest some third party solutions if we know things that are already out there that might fit your needs, either way, we're completely open and happy to talk to you about finding you the solution that's exactly right.

So thank you so much everyone. I appreciate this time that we're able to spend talking about education in tech. Thank you, Alexandra for your insights. As always, like we said, go check us out on bixly.com and hopefully I will talk with you on one of our free consultations.

Bye everybody.

Bye everyone.

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This year more than ever technology is impacting where and how our students learn. In this episode we discuss everything from how the internet has changed the distribution of information to the amount of tech in classrooms. We also talk about Educeri, a large educational app we built for a curriculum development company and how served their business needs while also creating a platform that got their lessons into the hands of even more teachers!

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Tips for teaching with technology

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by Terry Heick

I'm not crazy about writing this post, mainly because 'integrating technology' into teaching and learning is like adding electricity to architectural design.

Certainly a castle can be retrofitted for it, but ideally the architecture and the electricity are considered together, the electricity illuminating the architecture in flashing, reckless, blue arcs, the walls and ceilings of holding their ground in understanding. The ceiling of each room is built this way because there is electricity to provide central air. Windows are built here and here in this fashion because there are light bulbs instead of candles.

Electricity changes everything. Technology changes everything.

But there are also teachers in classrooms right now that don't have the gift of design-that is, they can't start fresh at audience and purpose: who am I teaching, and why? They are given content in the form of standards, and often given packaged standards in the form of curriculum. The assessment form is out of their hands, and even scheduling and pace with regard to scope-and-sequences and related maps.

For these teachers-maybe it's you?-the ideal is supplanted by reality. You're told to "use technology," but nothing seems built for it. And when you do, what goes well is usually drowned out by the commotion of it all to the point that you're not sure what actual learning is taking place. That's frustrating.

Luckily, there are some things that can be done to mitigate that frustration.
8 Tips For Teachers Frustrated With Technology 1. Smart small.
One app. One activity. One project. Even just giving students a choice-a layered digital document or a handwritten essay, for example. No need to go all-out right away.

See also 25 Of The Best Apps To Promote Creativity In Students
2. Start with what you know.
So when seeking to start small, look to what you already know. Maybe it's digital music. Digital photography. Video editing. Blogging. Social media. Live streaming. Reading apps. Video games. Film. Drones. Virtual reality. Google Earth.

There's got to be something you know well enough to grab a handle and twist around a bit to learn more.
3. Build on the positives.
And when you do so, look for small victories. Everyone was able to sign-in! 2/3 of the students didn't come close to producing anything close to what you thought they could, but six created anything better than you've ever seen from them, Look for small victories, and build on them.
4. Create reasonable standards for success.
If you do the above, you're basically creating standards for success that are reasonable for your students in your classroom with you at the helm. Don't hold yourself to any other standard other than adopting a mindset to try new things, and improving with them every day.
5. Let the students lead the way!
A huge help to teach students is the students themselves. Technology often decenters the teacher in the learning process, which can freak you out at first if you're not seeing the big picture: One of the hopes of any teacher should be that they, over time, need you less and less.
6. Protect the learning from the technology.
Sometimes things will go wrong. Or every day they will. (Remember, things go haywire without technology too; these failures are just often less visible.)

Do your best when planing activities, lessons, units, and projects to protect the learning from the technology. Put another way, the technology can amplify the learning but you should be able to hear the learning without it. Plan a lesson so that if the tech fails, the learning, as much as possible, remains.
7. Focus on student actions, not teacher actions.
This one is simple enough. It's not about you and what you do. What are they doing, and why? How can you help them develop their own standards for quality, so that they are their own harshest and most (lovingly) consistent critics?
8. Think 40/40/40.
Read more about the 40/40/40 rule here, but in short the idea is that if you are thinking big picture-especially if you are able to plan backwards from that big picture-the frustrations in the short-term are less distracting, less meaningful, and ultimately-well, ultimately less frustrating.
Conclusion
Though it can be a challenge at times, in the end remember that just as with all things in regards to your profession, it's not about you. Teaching is one of the most selfless things you can do, requiring constant compromise, sacrifice, recalibration, and flexibility. This means that your 'needs' will often, by design, not be met so that you may meet the needs of others.

When the technology policy in your school doesn't seem like it's headed in the right direction, or when you don't understand the function of an app or the reasoning for a large purchase by the district or how a certain app that everyone loves is any better than the textbook you've used for years, don't take it personally. It's sobering but imminently useful to remember that though you may indeed be correct on any or all of the above, you're (presumably) paid to execute the functions of a teacher as outlined by local school and district policy.

This doesn't excuse you from responding to your own pedagogical instincts as to what's working, what students need, and how you can design and revise designs to meet those needs. That's still, on the most macro level, what you're (presumably) paid to do.

But on a micro-level, the things you do and are asked to do to make that happen aren't always so clear. For all of our perceived inventiveness and sense of progress, technology (as we most commonly consider the word) is extremely new, immature, and unpredictable. More crucially, it is being shoe-horned into systems of learning that aren't designed to accommodate it. That means it's not always going to do what it's supposed to do or sound like it's supposed to sound or produce what it's supposed to produce.

With regard to technology, education has to be in this for the long haul regardless of short-term loss as everything seeks to reconcile itself with everything else, much in the same way that the purpose of education is long-term-it should seek to improve the arc of students' lives and the condition of their communities.

How much work it takes to make that happen is only one part of the timeless struggle of raising human beings.

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8 Tips For Teaching With Technology For Beginners -

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by Terry Heick I'm not crazy about writing this post, mainly because 'integrating technology' into teaching and learning is like adding electricity to architectural design. Certainly a castle can be retrofitted for it, but ideally the architecture and the electricity are considered together, the electricity illuminating the architecture in flashing, reckless, blue arcs, the walls and ceilings of holding their ground in understanding.

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150 science experiments, allowing for enough STEM discoveries to last through spring. These experiments are organized into several categories, including Water Science Activities, Force and Movement Experiments, and Space Science Projects. Many of these activities involve common household objects, perfect for caregivers juggling school-from-home.

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System of Logical Structures in Natural Science-Oriented Curriculum and its Effect on Teaching

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System of Logical Structures in Natural Science-Oriented Curriculum and its Effect on Teaching

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The system of logical structures in natural science- (biologically-, ecologically- and physics-) oriented curriculum is defined as a set of features, which depict the main ideas of a certain topic. Basically, it is a unique model presenting the topic´s key points. Graphical representation of the curriculum logical structure can be provided (implemented) as: a) traditional printed graphic form b) computer (virtual) form. When visualizing the logical structure system of natural science curriculum (including biologically-, ecologically- and physics-oriented school subjects), we mainly use the following structural components: Word maps, Applets, Orientation graphs (transport diagrams), Development diagrams, Venn diagrams, Structurograms, Sequence diagrams and others. This research paper includes a pedagogical experiment to verify the effectiveness of teaching with the use of graphic visualization of the curriculum logical structure.

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Syllabus Language, Teaching Style, and Instructor Self-Perception: Toward Congruence

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Syllabus Language, Teaching Style, and Instructor Self-Perception: Toward Congruence

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As with all language, the words of a syllabus carry emotional associations. Previous literature has not objective-ly measured the emotional associations of syllabus language or explored the relationship between instructors’ teaching style and the emotional associations of syllabus language. Using the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) framework, this article reports baseline measurements for syllabus language, investigates the relationship be-tween Grasha’s teaching styles and instructors’ self-perceived emotional associations with teaching, and compares instructors’ self-perceptions with the emotional associations of their syllabus language. Moderate correlations between teaching PAD scores and Grasha’s teaching style inventory suggest the emotion that may connect with concrete teaching attitudes and behaviors. Crucially, we find that most instructors’ syllabi are incongruent with their teaching self-perceptions on key emotional dimensions. In other words, instructors’ syllabi are not communicating the central emotional associations of their instructor self-perception. Syllabus language can be altered, however, to align more closely with instructor self-perception.

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Abstract

As with all language, the words of a syllabus carry emotional associations. Previous literature has not objective-ly measured the emotional associations of syllabus language or explored the relationship between instructors' teaching style and the emotional associations of syllabus language. Using the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) framework, this article reports baseline measurements for syllabus language, investigates the relationship be-tween Grasha's teaching styles and instructors' self-perceived emotional associations with teaching, and compares instructors' self-perceptions with the emotional associations of their syllabus language. Moderate correlations between teaching PAD scores and Grasha's teaching style inventory suggest the emotion that may connect with concrete teaching attitudes and behaviors. Crucially, we find that most instructors' syllabi are incongruent with their teaching self-perceptions on key emotional dimensions. In other words, instructors' syllabi are not communicating the central emotional associations of their instructor self-perception. Syllabus language can be altered, however, to align more closely with instructor self-perception.

Recommended Citation

Richmann, Christopher; Kurinec, Courtney; and Millsap, Matthew (2020) "Syllabus Language, Teaching Style, and Instructor Self-Perception: Toward Congruence," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 14: No. 2, Article 4.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2020.140204

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Syllabus Language, Teaching Style, and Instructor Self-Perception: Toward Congruence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As with all language, the words of a syllabus carry emotional associations. Previous literature has not objective-ly measured the emotional associations of syllabus language or explored the relationship between instructors' teaching style and the emotional associations of syllabus language.

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How to Use Assistive Technology Remote and Blended Learning

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How to Use Assistive Technology Remote and Blended Learning

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Assistive technology is key to ensuring that all students have access to learning

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When it comes to seeing all students through this time of remote and blended learning, it is crucial to look at the relationship between Instructional Technology (IT), the use of computers, tablets, software, smartboards, the tech tools that enhance the learning environment both in the classroom and at home, Assistive Tech (AT); in which the focus is on identifying the individual needs of students and the specific tools they might require to access the curriculum; and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), in which the focus is removing the systemic barriers to instruction for all students.

During the recent NYC DOE Beyond Access Forum virtual event, David Carroca, Assistive Technology Coordinator-NYCDOE, District 75, and Lindsey Huntley, AAV/AT Speech Supervisor-NYC DOE Center for Assistive Technology, shared strategies, resources, and best practices in regard to assistive technology.

Watch the full session:

A Picture of Support

(Image credit: Future)

"In picture one is Instructional Technology-everyone is treated equally receiving the same devices and programs, but as we can see they still can't access the game, aka curriculum," said Carroca. "They are treated equally but not equitably based on their needs. In picture two, Assistive Tech, the participants can all experience the game/curriculum-here we see a reflection of equity. In picture three, Universal Design for Learning, the systemic barrier or wooden fence is removed and all three students can access the game/curriculum. An important note, sometimes students will not need additional supports if the curriculum is designed with an UDL framework."

The relationship of all three contributes to enhancing the learning experience of students.

One District's Approach

How does the largest school district in the county, serving more than 1.1 million students in over 1,400 schools, handle these challenging times? The NYC DOE has instituted a number of programs and protocols during this time of blended and remote learning to ensure everyone has the tools they need for success. This includes a device distribution with a goal of 1:1 for all students, internet access to all families (devices are LTE-enabled to make use of local hotspots), access to secure video-conference platforms (Zoom, Meet, Teams), and multiple instructional apps. The DOE HelpDesk Support has also been expanded to make sure everything runs smoothly regardless of a student's physical location.

In addition, the Division of Instruction and IT has been working with the Special Education Office to enable device accessibility features and other specialized supports. Accessibility features integrated in computer and tablet operating systems (iPad iOS, Mac OS, Chromebooks and Chrome OS, Microsoft Windows OS) place students with disabilities on an equal footing with their peers. Use of these features allows students to focus on learning. These technologies can be added as student assistive technology on their IEP.

Assistive Technology

Digital learning does not equal curriculum accessibility for all. Assistive technology, by definition, is any item, piece of equipment, or product system that is used to improve a student's functional capabilities.

In the school setting, parents, teachers, and related service providers collaborate to determine the needs of each individual student. Current remote and hybrid changes require creativity. Under the direction of NYC DOE, the central AT teams have partnered with non-DOE AT specialists to conduct in person and remote assessments and to distribute AT and 504-driven equipment to students and families in their homes or alternative locations.

"Low-tech, IT, and UDL should be the first steps considered when a student is having difficulty accessing the curriculum," said Huntley. "After considering the current technologies in place, the school-based team can assess and determine AT supports the students may need. For students with complex needs, an AT assessment can be requested through a central team."

SETT for Success

A best practice when considering AT is the SETT Framework:

S tudent-What is the functional area of concern, special needs related to the concern, and the student's strengths, abilities, and expectations.

E nvironment-Where educators were once looking at the environment of the classroom and school building, they now need to consider the home environment. What are the arrangements and supports available there?

T ask-What specific thing does the student need to be able to do, and what are the functional things actively involved in remote learning.

T oolkit-What can we use to help the student access their curriculum.

AT Toolkit

Some of the resources available to educators to support learning for students with disabilities.

Communication-Augmented and alternative communication is utilized when a student is nonverbal, unintelligible, has limited verbal capability, or doesn't have functional communication. Proloquo2Go, Snap Core First, , LAMP Words for Life, Speak for Yourself, TouchChat + WordPower, and are a few hi-tech tools to help students express themselves using elements such as word boards with image icons and phrases. Some of these tools (such as Snap Core First) have the ability to integrate with an accessible curriculum, so a student can be within the communication system or app and access their curriculum. Some programs, such as LAMP Words for Life, are motor planning and use motor memory to place where word icons are located.

Reading- is a reading app for students with dyslexia, low vision and blindness, while Voice Dream Reader supports various documents such as PDFs, Microsoft Suite, and Google Suite, and is available in multiple languages. Instead of digitized books, Learning Ally uses human voices and can read pictures. (Some students have difficulty comprehending computer-generated voice.) Tar Heel Reader offers simplified digital books for beginning readers. has partnered with NYC DOE to offer nearly a million titles organized by categories such as core curriculum, lexile level, and teacher's college list.

Writing-CO:Writer Universal offers universal access, particularly important during hybrid learning, so if a student is working at school one day and then remote the next, the cloud-based system allows them to continue uninterrupted on alternate devices. Another perk is that a teacher can turn on specific topic-based dictionaries to allow easily generated and predictive language. SnapType Pro is a simple app that uses an iPad's camera to take a picture of a worksheet, instantly creating a digital format so a student can look at the word bank and type directly into the fields. It also allows pen function, dictated answers, and speech-to-text input directly onto the worksheet. , Notability, and Clicker Writer, CrickSoftware Suite with DocsPlus, and Snap&Read Universal are other writing helpers for students with challenges.

Math- is a digital graph paper that helps with organizational issues and challenges with legible writing. Equations can be worked on and then copied into Notes, email, or other documents. , , and Free EquatiO Premium for Teachers are also used.

Accessible Educational Materials (AEM)-AEM are print- and technology-based materials that allow students with print disabilities to access the curriculum. Print disability is a difficulty or inability to read print and digital materials, due to physical, perceptual (for example dyslexia) and visual disability. and are popular resources, but some students may need more robust supports such as access to Bookshare with Capti as an ebook reader or Voice Dream reader.

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How to Use Assistive Technology During Remote and Blended Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When it comes to seeing all students through this time of remote and blended learning, it is crucial to look at the relationship between Instructional Technology (IT), the use of computers, tablets, software, smartboards, the tech tools that enhance the learning environment both in the classroom and at home, Assistive Tech (AT); in which the focus is on identifying the individual needs of students and the specific tools they might require to access the curriculum; and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), in which the focus is removing the systemic barriers to instruction for all students.

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Fact-checking sites for students to research reports, papers, and more.

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Fake news is nothing new. Examples of propaganda, sensationalism, and disinformation are known from as early as the 13th century B.C. But in the age of the internet, fake news spreads in a flash and its influence is unparalleled.

An informed citizenry is essential to a functioning democracy. Use these free fact-checking sites to help your students learn how to distinguish reliable information from false information and think critically about what they read online or in print.

Free Fact-Checking Sites for Students and Teachers

Fake Or Real? How To Self-Check The News And Get The FactsFact-checking sites are a useful tool, but students can also learn to apply the principles of fact checking on their own. Students will learn how to assess and analyze the credibility of any online article or website. Ideal as a preliminary to undertaking a research project.

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Free Fact-Checking Sites for Students and Teachers

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Explore these free fact-checking sites for students and teachers and learn how to distinguish fakes new from real news.

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"In this new world, L'Oréal is focused on facilitating collaboration, communication, and co-creation among our employees, which is why we use Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams."

Etienne Bertin: Chief Information Officer, L'Oréal

"With Microsoft 365, we're offering employees a great suite of tools and enabling more freedom and flexibility in terms of how and where they work."

Zephanie Hardy: Senior Vice President of Employee Technology Experience, U.S. Bank

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Video Conferencing, Meetings, Calling | Microsoft Teams

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"In this new world, L'Oréal is focused on facilitating collaboration, communication, and co-creation among our employees, which is why we use Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams." Etienne Bertin: Chief Information Officer, L'Oréal "With Microsoft 365, we're offering employees a great suite of tools and enabling more freedom and flexibility in terms of how and where they work."

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Grackle is software designed to help make digital files more accessible. It makes sharing files easier and everyone will be able to open and see anything they're sent.

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Grackle is a software designed to help make digital files more accessible. It makes sharing files easier and everyone will be able to open and see anything they're sent.

Grackle Suite is made up of several add-ons that work with Google. These are Grackle Docs, Grackle Sheets, and Grackle Slides. For this reason, Grackle is really useful for an districts or schools that are using G Suite for Education and want to ensure accessibility beyond that platform. That means even those that don't use the Google suite of software will have access.

Grackle will work to make sure everyone can understand a file, including those who require things such as alt-text on images to understand what is being displayed, for example. Grackle also meets many legal requirements for accessibility, but more on that below.

So what is Grackle Suite and how does it work?

What is Grackle Suite?

Grackle Suite is the overarching name for the whole offering. Think of it as Google Drive, and each sub-software as Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Each part is used as an Add-on in Google. So Grackles Docs, works in Google Docs; Grackle Sheets in Google Sheets; and Grackles Slides in - you guessed it - Google Slides.

From a user perspective though, this will just appear to be working within the software. So you'll open Google Docs as usual to create or edit a document, and Grackle will simply be there working within the usual layout.

In addition to accessibility, having a platform such as Grackle can mitigate the risk of OCR (Office of Civil Rights) complaints in non-government institutions, making it ideal for schools. It does this by meeting the legal requirements for Sections 504, 508, ADA, and Title II compliance in the U.S.

How does Grackle work?

Grackle will highlight any potential accessibility issues and offer ways to fix that problem. This includes multiple checks that happen live in a document as it's being created or as it is opened.

Grackle offers the ability to export to different formats so the file can be opened by another software type. For example, you can create a Google Sheet and export that to HTML so that it can be opened by most web browsers on a computer or even smartphone.

You may load an image, for example, but not add any alt-text. If someone with sight issues were to open the file, there would be no text read out as an audio description alternative. Grackle aims to fix this and many similar issues.

While Grackle works within Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, it can also be used in Google Drive for a broad audit of all the files stored there with analysis and reporting.

(Image credit: Grackle)

How does Grackle Docs work?

Grackle Docs will install as an Add-on, which allows you to use it within Google Docs. By doing this, it will automatically carry out 22 different types of check on the document being used.

The user is then walked through the accessibility issues, similar to how running a spell-checker might flow, before being given ways to fix those problems. Since you're working through the issues with a simple click-and-fix style, you can see and eventually recognize common problems. In the longer term then, there should be fewer issues as the user learns to work in a more accessibility-friendly way.

Common issues include: "Headings should be used," "Tables should be tagged or marked for layout only," and "Equations should be described."

How does Grackle Sheets work?

Grackle Sheets works in much the same way, only this time carrying out 12 checks across any work. Table ranges are also automatically defined to ensure the most accessible end result.

Adding alt-text for charts, graphs, or images is made easy. It works across tabs and takes you right to the issue, making it quick and easy to fix problems on even more complex Sheets.

Common examples of tips are "Tables should have headers," "The use of merged cells is not recommended," and "Charts should have alternate text," to name just a few examples.

How does Grackle Slides work?

The Google Slides Add-on of Grackle will perform 13 checks across files while in editing mode. This expands to image-focused issues such as color contrast, fine print, and individual title as well as alternative text. All that should help to make a Slide more visually and audibly accessible to all.

For group presentations, Grackle works well as it retains all the accessibility in live editing situations that Google Sheets supports.

(Image credit: Grackle)

How much does Grackle cost?

The Grackle price is broken down into either monthly or yearly charges. This works on a cost per user basis and includes the entire Grackle Suite with Docs, Sheets, and Slides. You also get email support, unlimited access, and team drive support.

Grackle Suite is either $25 per user per month or $180 per user per year.

However, for education specifically, there is a group-licensing option. This offers unlimited user access across a domain and is charged at a flat $500 fee per year.

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What is Grackle and How Can Districts Use It to Increase Accessibility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Grackle is a software designed to help make digital files more accessible. It makes sharing files easier and everyone will be able to open and see anything they're sent. Grackle Suite is made up of several add-ons that work with Google. These are Grackle Docs, Grackle Sheets, and Grackle Slides.

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How Remote Learning Is Affecting the Future of Classroom Design

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How Remote Learning Is Affecting the Future of Classroom Design

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Classroom design has been forced to adapt to the needs of remote learners and hybrid teaching approaches

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(Image credit: Penn State University)

When it comes to classroom design, the pandemic is responsible for a lot of change.

"It's causing us to rethink how we design everything from a lecture hall to a small classroom," says John Pfeffer, a team member of IT Customer Service at University at Buffalo who is charged with classroom and learning space design, as well as determining future plans as technology changes.

Prior to March, modern classroom design was very focused on creating active learning spaces designed to facilitate all the students in the space being able to collaborate, says Julie Johnston, acting Associate Vice President of Learning Technologies at Indiana University.

Active classroom design prioritizes writable surfaces, moveable chairs, and multiple displays so every student can clearly see the material the teacher is presenting. Since March, there has been an effort to extend that active learning environment to students who are not in the room and make spaces suitable for hyflex and hybrid learning.

Better Acoustics and More Mics

"We've discovered how important acoustics are," Pfeffer says. "When you've got remote students, and local students, they need to be able to hear each other so that they feel like they're part of the same group."

This means more mics, placed not just at the podium but throughout the room so student discussions can be captured.

To do this at her institution, Johnston says, "We are creating audio zones for the student zone versus the instructor zone, and the ability to mute the student zone so that you don't have the ruffling paper when you just want to have the instructor having a conversation and not opening it up to all."

At San Diego State University, leaders have designated hybrid-video class ready rooms as "connected classrooms," says Rebecca Frazee, a faculty member of the Learning Design and Technology Program at the School of Journalism. Frazee, who is also associate director of FLEXspace.org, an online community and resource dedicated to sharing classroom designs, adds an important component of a COVID-safe connected classroom is ceiling-mounted microphones. "They're all over the room and you can pick up the audio really well, but they're also not being touched and handled," Frazee says.

More Cameras and Display Surfaces

The modern classroom features cameras that will track a professor's movement, and offer more camera angles and different perspectives, Pfeffer says.

"Traditionally, the goal is to just capture as much of everything as possible," he says. "Now the goal is going to be more about capturing the individual instructor and the individual students in much greater clarity for the remote students to see. And vice versa, how are those remote students seen? We need to consider ways to show those remote students as well as the content that's being talked about."

These video and audio components in new classrooms are being designed with lecture capture technology in mind for students who may be participating online asynchronously, says Frazee.

Educators anticipate these trends continuing even after the pandemic. "We don't have a crystal ball," Johnston says, "But we do believe that this has the capability of changing what students want and opt for. Thus, having the ability to provide a more improved, quality hybrid experience in our classrooms is the direction we are heading."

Sharing Resources

Educators looking to upgrade learning spaces should tap into the global community that's interested in learning about classroom design, says Frazee. FLEXspace, a favorite of designers, has more than 5,000 members who upload and share their designs from campuses all over the world. "You can take a sort of virtual field trip to see what other campuses are doing," Frazee says.

In addition, Frazee recommends resources such as Educause, Learning By Design Magazine and the Association for Learning Environments, which focuses primarily on K-12 institutions. Still, it's important for universities to look at what's coming up from the K-12 pipeline, says Frazee.

In general, she advises university officials to look at the spaces that have won awards in the past from all these organizations. "I think that's a great way to see some of the innovative thinking that's going on around the world," Frazee says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Remote Learning Is Affecting the Future of Classroom Design

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(Image credit: Penn State University) When it comes to classroom design, the pandemic is responsible for a lot of change. "It's causing us to rethink how we design everything from a lecture hall to a small classroom," says John Pfeffer, a team member of IT Customer Service at University at Buffalo who is charged with classroom and learning space design, as well as determining future plans as technology changes.

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1. Modelling professional practice within the discipline of teaching.

2. Creating engaging learning environments for individuals and groups that support academic & personal growth.

3. Using a variety of teaching & learning strategies.

4. Evaluating learning using a variety of valid & reliable tools & techniques.

5. Working independently and with others to develop and/or adapt learning materials.

6. Using technology to enhance productivity and help students learn.

7. Designing and developing effective curriculum to support student success.

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Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Professor of the 21st Century Framework Modelling professional practice within the discipline of teaching. Creating engaging learning environments for individuals and groups that support academic &a

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30 Ultimate PowerPoint Tips and Tricks for 2020

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Factors Affecting Lecturers Motivation in Using Online Teaching Tools

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Factors Affecting Lecturers Motivation in Using Online Teaching Tools

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Motivation is the drive to will and desire to succeed or achieve something. Motivation in this treatment refers to when the lecturers feel the motivation in using online teaching tools in the classroom. Self-motivation of lecturers to change their teaching styles or methods is one of the problems stated by few researchers. The objective of this paper is to identify the factors that motivate lecturers to use online teaching tools, such as Web 2.0 tools. There are a variety of online teaching tools available to the lecturers. The popular tools are online whiteboard, WordPress, YouTube, Facebook, Edmodo and others. There are not many lecturers who apply the Internet as an alternative to provide access to information that can help to enhance teaching and learning materials. An evaluation of the lecturer's motivation had been completed by 30 lecturers from different subject matter experts. The instruments used were interview sessions and classroom observation, which were used to measure four motivation variables: ease of use, enjoyment, usefulness and self-confidence, based on the ARCS Motivation model. Based on the findings, factors that can affect lecturers’ motivation in using online teaching tools are knowledge, perceptions and skills.

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Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning

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Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning

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- Key Concepts
- Learning Paradigms
- Learning Theories

- Scientific disciplines

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Learning Theory v5 - What are the established learning theories?

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This Concept Map, created with IHMC CmapTools, has information related to: Learning Theory v5, Organisation Kolb, Psychology Vygotsky, Psychology Bloom, Piaget genetic epistemology, Psychology Skinner, Montessori constructivism, Dewey constructivism, radical constructivism Knowledge as mental representation: 1a. Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or by way of communication; 1b.

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The Role and Potential of Interaction in E-Learning

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The Role and Potential of Interaction in E-Learning

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New Horizons on Education Inspired by Information and communication technologies

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New Horizons on Education Inspired by Information and communication technologies

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Designing for Educational Technology to Enhance the Experience of Learners in Distance Education: How Open Educational Resources, Learning Design and Moocs Are Influencing Learning

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Designing for Educational Technology to Enhance the Experience of Learners in Distance Education: How Open Educational Resources, Learning Design and Moocs Are Influencing Learning

# data[].attributes.headline
Learner Autonomy and self-regulation in eLearning

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Learner Autonomy and self-regulation in eLearning

# data[].attributes.headline
The New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension: Rethinking the Reading Achievement Gap 

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The New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension: Rethinking the Reading Achievement Gap 

# data[].attributes.body
Is there an achievement gap for online reading ability based on income inequality that is separate from the achievement gap in traditional, offline reading? This possibility was examined between students in two pseudonymous school districts: West Town (economically advantaged) and East Town (economically challenged; N = 256). Performance-based assessments were used within a simulation of the Internet developed as part of a larger project. A significant gap persisted for online research and comprehension after we conditioned on pretest differences in offline reading, offline writing, and prior knowledge scores. These results suggest that a separate and independent achievement gap existed for online reading, based on income inequality. Current estimates of this gap, which rely solely on measures of offline reading, may under-represent the true nature of the U.S. reading achievement gap in an online age.

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a review of the history and current state of distance, blended, and online learning.

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Technology in Higher Education: Defining the Strategic Leader

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Technology in Higher Education: Defining the Strategic Leader

# data[].attributes.body
Information technology has value because it can support and extend human capability, but its value also depends on people. People make IT work, hence our organizations’ focus on professional development. We work with first-time managers. We work with seasoned professionals. Moreover, as technology changes, as issues ebb and flow, and as institutional directions are refined, the profession and its needs change. Our roles, responsibilities, and competencies must adapt as well. No matter what the issue, we must develop people and their potential.

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The Theory and Practice of Online Learning

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The Theory and Practice of Online Learning

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The revised version of the Theory and Practice of Online Learning, edited by Terry Anderson, brings together recent developments in both the practice and our understanding of online learning.

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Teaching in Blended Learning Environments

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Teaching in Blended Learning Environments

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The context of this book is the growing demand for improved
teaching in higher education. Traditionally, faculty members served as content experts, selecting disciplinary content to be transmit-
ted to students largely through lectures. Unfortunately, most faculty members do so with limited knowledge of pedagogy and appreciation of the value and growing importance of engagement in a community of inquiry. This book provides a coherent and comprehensive practical view of teaching in higher education that provides a map of the future in terms of integrating face-to-face and online learning.

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Discover affordable, simple-to-adapt OER course materials that improve learning.

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Lumen Learning | Open for student success

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Guy Krueger, Lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric, The University of Mississippi

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Lumen Learning | Online Materials & Resources for Higher Ed

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Lumen Learning offers affordable digital courseware & professional development resources to enhance effective teaching and increase student success. Explore our 50+ college courses today!

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These are ideal for faculty, librarians, and instructional designers who are new to OER or need a refresher on basic concepts related to finding, adapting, and teaching with open educational resources.

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During the summer of 2020, CCCOER created a five-week series of OER tutorials. The archives for these sessions are below and are free and open for anyone to use.

These are ideal for faculty, librarians, and instructional designers who are new to OER or need a refresher on basic concepts related to finding, adapting, and teaching with open educational resources.
Featured image by UzbekIL from Pixabay modified by Liz Yata

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the summer of 2020, CCCOER created a five-week series of OER tutorials. The archives for these sessions are below and are free and open for anyone to use. These are ideal for faculty, librarians, and instructional designers who are new to OER or need a refresher on basic concepts related to finding, adapting, and teaching with open educational resources.

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What the Edtech Industry Should Know About the Worst Parts of Remote Learning | EdSurge News

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The first time my mom interacted with an iPad was this August, when her 5-year-old grandson-my nephew-brought it home from school. Gus is a kindergartener, and his parents don't have the luxury of being able to work from home, so my recently retired mother has become his education supervisor. She didn't have a Gmail account, let alone familiarity with Google Classroom. Our family has become an ad hoc over-the-phone IT support unit. A spare bedroom-our family's "teacher's lounge"-has a wall covered with Post-it notes with login credentials, a mobile whiteboard schedule and a count-to-100 handmade poster. The dining room table has been repurposed as the classroom.

Our scenario isn't unique; it's playing out in millions of households across the nation. My family is fortunate to be able to accommodate and support the new paradigm of distance learning. But that's not the case for many others--and we must now understand how to reach all students through this new paradigm, regardless of the circumstance.

In these unprecedented times, the expectations for education technology solutions have never been higher. They must meet the pedagogical standards of experienced educators, and also be easy enough to use by a grandmother and kindergartener at a dining room table. They must elegantly integrate with-yet also stand out from-the myriad other tools schools are juggling. And as budgets shrink in a time of decreasing tax revenue, school leaders are forced to prioritize their "need to haves," over their "nice to haves." The edtech solutions they invest in must address their most critical and pressing problems.

It's an interesting paradox: edtech has never been so prevalent, and yet the need for high-quality, relevant solutions has never been more dire.

I founded LEANLAB Education, an education-innovation lab based in Kansas City, after spending five years in the classroom and developing a fervent belief that the expertise of school communities-parents, students and teachers-is crucial to developing breakthrough edtech solutions. To ensure their voices are heard, we pair promising tools with a network of pilot school communities to collaboratively workshop solutions.

Since COVID-19 hit, we've surveyed more than 700 parents and teachers, and conducted 27 focus groups across Kansas City to understand the most pressing pain points in education. In this new paradigm, what do schools and families really need? Our data revealed three critical areas in need of innovation.

1. Social-Emotional Learning

We're in the middle of a deadly pandemic, an economic downturn, a civil rights movement, and a tumultuous election cycle. It's a hard time to be a human-let alone a child.

Parents, teachers and administrators alike expressed concern for kids' well-being. "Our students may have suffered loss and economic hardships during the past six months of summer break and emergency distance learning," one charter school administrator told us. "We anticipate there being several social and emotional needs as our students return to school, and these needs could be overwhelming to staff."

There's also a clear safety concern as children continue to be confined to their homes. "Students are not always able to check in with trusted adults or peers and have less access to reporting violence/abuse in the home," another charter school administrator told us.

How do we support and innovate around social-emotional learning when we're so high on emotions and so short of socializing? How can we help kids connect with their friends and with trusted adults? How can we support counselors and social workers as they try to meet a higher demand for their services?

2. Family & Caregiver Engagement

Directly behind social-emotional learning, the second biggest pain point we found was family and caregiver engagement. Parents, teachers and administrators all point to communication as an area in need of innovation, and each group offers a unique insight into why the current methods are failing.

Caregivers and teachers alike told us that they want conferences and check-ins to be about more than grades and disciplinary actions. One public school district administrator told us, "I believe if we can change the parent involvement problem, we can increase student achievement and decrease student discipline."

So what prevents parents and teachers from communicating with each other?

There were a variety of reasons offered-which means there are a variety of opportunities for innovation. In the school districts we surveyed, we found some very basic barriers. In lower-income schools, the phone numbers and addresses the school has on file for families aren't always accurate. Language poses another challenge, and not just for parents who aren't English speakers. There are often culture gaps that have to be bridged as well. For example, we found that a parent's education level has a greater impact on their approach to remote learning than their race or socio-economic status. Parents with higher education attainment felt more prepared to support their child at home, more comfortable using edtech tools, and, comparatively, less concerned about their child's educational progress.

Regardless of their circumstances, we found that the adults at home want to be involved, while still maintaining their own jobs and responsibilities. The vast majority of them (73 percent) told us they want to spend 1 to 2 hours each day helping their children with schoolwork.

Parents want to be able to communicate with teachers-but they aren't starting on equal footing. They need more flexible options that allow for more authentic interactions. We need to level the playing field for parents, equip teachers to share robust feedback about a child's progress, and remove barriers to holistic communication.

3. Academic Achievement

In the midst of all this upheaval, we can't forget a very basic principle: academic achievement remains critical for students' future success-as well as schools' survival. For the parents and caregivers that we surveyed, their student's "educational progress" was their chief concern. This was true regardless of income, educational level, race, or geography.

None of us can afford to take a year off without risking long-term negative consequences. Preliminary estimates from NWEA suggest that "students will return in fall 2020 with roughly 70% of the learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year;" and in math, they project students will be "nearly a full year behind what we would observe in normal conditions."

In the districts we surveyed, state testing results indicate a lot of room for improvement, year after year. One charter administrator was particularly concerned about her school's declining scores in English Language Arts, Math, and Science. Though many states have paused testing this year, her school can't afford to lose more ground when testing is resumed."The ability to provide students with engaging activities in these areas would help scores to improve," she said. "These content areas offer lots of career opportunities for our future citizens."

The administrator went on to add that it's not just concern for students' futures that drives the need for innovation; it's concern over the future of the school itself. "Charter schools that do not show significant academic growth face closing and non-renewal of charter. Improvement in scores would allow us to remain a charter school in the Kansas City area," she added.

Adaptability Is Key

If there's any silver lining to working in the education sector during a pandemic, it's that the problems we knew existed all along have been made even more blatantly obvious. Remote learning has only exacerbated the divides among parents, teachers and students, across racial, economic and geographic lines.

But this also means there has been no better time to seize the opportunities and innovate. Adaptability is key. Tools and programs should be just as effective in remote learning as they are in the classroom.

The solutions may not provide immediate relief for my mom and the day-to-day headaches of facilitating at-home kindergarten. But the groundwork we lay now will pay off for years to come.

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What the Edtech Industry Should Know About the Worst Parts of Remote Learning - EdSurge News

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The first time my mom interacted with an iPad was this August, when her 5-year-old grandson-my nephew-brought it home from school. Gus is a kindergartener, and his parents don't have the luxury of being able to work from home, so my recently retired mother has become his education supervisor.

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P2PU’s ongoing notes about content developers, tools, platforms, and organizations who contribute to our ecosystem of courses and learning resources. Live at: https://p2pu.github.io/notes-on-edtech/

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P2PU's ongoing notes about content developers, tools, platforms, and organizations who contribute to our ecosystem of courses and learning resources. Live at: https://p2pu.github.io/notes-on-edtech/

Organizations who develop content that people have used for learning circles in the past, distinguished by license. Our baseline rule for learning circles is that participants should never have to pay anything to attend, however our long-term vision is that learning circles serve to improve open online learning resources, rather than help institutions justify paying license fees to proprietary vendors.

Open

Course developers that reliably opt for Creative Commons or equivalent open license.

Free

Course developers who generally retain copyright, but offer a useable portion of course materials for free.

Payment

Course developers who charge for access to courses, and whose fees (in the context of learning circles) are generally covered by an institution-wide license at a public library system.

These organizations and initiatives develop openly licensed content that is not compiled as an online course (e.g. database, open textbook). Since learning circle facilitators are not expected to be content experts, we need to ensure that materials are presented in a format that works well for learning circles: 6-8 weeks of 2 hour meetings in small, face-to-face study groups.

Open Textbooks

Databases/Curation Tools

These open source tools can be used to remix and create OER.

Platforms

Supplemental Tools

Organizations with likeminded initiatives.

Tools for bringing OER and other learning resources offline.

http://opensyllabusproject.org/faq/

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/200-universities-just-launched-560-free-online-courses-heres-the-full-list-d9dd13600b04

https://github.com/chili-epfl/FROG/wiki

https://ebookfoundation.org/

https://github.com/tuvtran/project-based-learning

https://haxtheweb.org/components/hax-body/demo/

https://digitallearn.org/ - https://github.com/commercekitchen/cpldl

https://github.com/hakkens

https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/precious-plastic-version-4-%F0%9F%98%AE/

https://preciousplastic.com/en/videos/extra/builder.html

http://www.bridge.org.za/knowledge-hub/psam/post-school-access-map-overview/

http://www.bie.org/about/what_pbl - Project based learning resources

http://studycollaboration.com/ - peer learning

https://github.com/LearningRegistry/LearningRegistry/wiki

Precious plastic - community focussed on recycling - lots of openly licensed resources.

https://learnxinyminutes.com/

http://www.textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Main_Page

https://openlearning.mit.edu/courses-programs/open-learning-library (blend of MITOCW and MITX)

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P2PU's ongoing notes about content developers, tools, platforms, and organizations who contribute to our ecosystem of courses and learning resources. Live at: https://p2pu.github.io/notes-on-edtech/ Organizations who develop content that people have used for learning circles in the past, distinguished by license.

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Fascinating look at life's bigger questions offers a fresh perspective

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Big History examines our past, explains our present, and imagines our future. It's a story about us. An idea that arose from a desire to go beyond specialized and self-contained fields of study to grasp history as a whole. This growing, multi-disciplinary approach is focused on high school students, yet designed for anyone seeking answers to the big questions about the history of our Universe.

The Big History Project is a joint effort between teachers, scholars, scientists, and their supporters to bring a multi-disciplinary approach to knowledge to lifelong learners around the world.

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Big History examines our past, explains our present, and imagines our future. It's a story about us. An idea that arose from a desire to go beyond specialized and self-contained fields of study to grasp history as a whole.

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Aprende conceptos de diferentes áreas de las matemáticas.

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Cursos gratis para Aprender Matemáticas Nuevos Cursos gratis para aprender Matemáticas Geometría Dinámica con GeoGebra (Anti cabrí) Conociendo el Algebra...

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America’s internet wasn’t prepared for online school - The Verge

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It's not uncommon for households in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to lose internet for a full day. The last time it happened, back in the spring, Christina Rothermel-Branham connected herself (a professor at Northeastern State University, teaching online) and her son (a kindergartener at Heritage Elementary, learning online) to the hotspot on her phone. Luckily, nobody had a Zoom call scheduled that day; worksheets and YouTube videos proceeded as planned.

Rothermel-Branham's son is now in first grade. He has multiple Zoom sessions per day and takes online classes through Outschool. She doesn't know what they'll do the next time their house loses service. She hopes her phone's hotspot will be able to handle both of their video calls at once - but she's worried that it won't.

Rothermel-Branham's son is one of the millions of students around the US who are currently taking some (or all) of their classes remotely. That's been the status quo since the spring for many districts, which moved instruction online to limit the spread of COVID-19. The first few weeks of school were difficult for rural families. Teachers struggled to reach disconnected students, using phone calls, social media, and text messages. But they only had to finish the spring, and many hoped that by the start of the new school year in the fall, things would be better.

Rural districts are still scrambling

Almost seven months later, rural districts around the country are still scrambling to accommodate all of their pupils. It's become clear to teachers, administrators, and community members that the digital divide is too big for schools to bridge on their own. The infrastructure needed to teach rural students remotely would require systemic change - it would require government assistance. Months into the pandemic, educators say they still don't have what they need.

Part of the problem for rural areas is income. Just over half of households with annual incomes under $30,000 use broadband internet, according to Pew Research Center. Poverty rates are much higher in non-metro areas than they are in metro areas across the US - and the largest gap, by far, is in the South. And the COVID-19 pandemic, which demolished 113 straight months of job growth, has overwhelmingly impacted low-income minority communities.

The average cost of internet service is $60 per month in the US. And in areas where cable isn't available, some families need to turn to satellite service, which is even more expensive at $100 per month on average. That's a cost not all families can bear, especially during a recession.

But high-speed internet isn't an option even for some households that could afford the service. The Federal Communication Commission's broadband standard is a download speed of at least 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of 3 megabits per second (colloquially, "25/3"). Those speeds, considered to be the minimum needed for a single 4K Netflix stream, are unheard of in some rural areas.

"I was running on the highest speed, but we were having a lag because every school district was on."

Just two-thirds of rural Americans have broadband access, per Pew, compared to three-quarters of urban residents and 79 percent of suburban residents. But it's hard to measure how widespread the service actually is because the FCC's broadband maps are notoriously terrible and classify a ZIP code as "served" if just one home has access.

Laying cables in areas where very few paying customers live isn't an attractive investment option for providers. This is compounded by nature - hills, lakes, rivers, forests, and other terrain can both interfere with wireless signals and present challenges to laying infrastructure in the first place. And these regions can be hard hit by power outages. Trees and leaves interfere with power lines during adverse weather, and since crews prioritize restoring power to the largest groups of customers, areas where the fewest people live are often the last to get service back.

Deloitte estimated in 2017 that modernizing rural broadband across the country would require a $130-$150 billion infrastructure investment. Democrats proposed a $1 billion investment earlier this year, but it did not pass.

Even areas where internet is widespread don't all have the bandwidth to accommodate remote school. Eileen Carter-Campos, a third grade teacher in the Newburgh Enlarged City School District in New York's Hudson Valley region, often finds her internet unusable in the morning due to the high demand from remote classes. Not only is she constantly kicked out of her Google Meet calls, but she sometimes doesn't receive emails from students until the day after they're sent.

In the first week of remote teaching, Carter-Campos says, "There was such an overload that I had to contact Spectrum and was like, 'Can you check my modem?' I wanted to make sure I was running on high speed. I was running on the highest speed, but we were having a lag because every school district was on." Carter-Campos now has to start her classes later in the day, at lower-traffic times.

Other areas are realizing now, thanks to virtual education, just how disconnected their district is. Cilla Green is a music teacher for the Caddo Hills school district in southwest Arkansas. Over half of Green's students don't have internet that allows them to stream - some have satellite, some have bad cable, and none have a high-speed connection. The district, when planning for a blend of online and in-person instruction, was taken by surprise.

"We didn't realize how many of our students did not have that availability."

"We didn't realize how many of our students did not have that availability," Green said. "I thought some of our students should be able to stream and most of them were like 'No, we have internet service through our phones and it's not very good' or 'I have internet service but I can't do any streaming, it's only good for email.'"

Amid all of this, teachers are doing everything they can.

Alex Beene teaches adult education and ACT prep classes in western Tennessee. By his estimate, over 70 percent of households in his area don't have reliable internet access, including around half of Beene's adult students and 15 to 20 percent of his ACT students. He's running ACT classes over Zoom, while his adult education classes are blended; students can schedule appointments to come in one at a time, but lessons are mostly online.

"This is just a huge, earth-shattering event for them," Beene told The Verge. "If you don't have a high-school diploma, you're already at a disadvantage in the workplace. And now you have employers who have sent them home, and they say 'I can finally work on my diploma.' Well, if you don't have that internet access, you can't do that either."

"And the longer they stay out of that environment without eligible internet ... the more behind they become," he added.

Throughout the summer, Beene has been printing out study packets. If students can't pick them up at school, he mails them to their homes. When the students finish their packets, they mail them back for Beene to grade. If they have questions, he'll call them on the phone with a copy of their assignment in hand. He has to be quick, though - some of his students have prepaid smartphone plans with limited minutes.

For students who are very disconnected, Beene has to get even more creative. "I'll go over common math strategies in their everyday lives," he says. "I'll tell them to go through, as they're going to the supermarket, to see an item and figure out sales tax on it. If they have monthly payments, figure out how much interest they're doing. Anything we can do to keep their minds engaged."

Such workarounds seemed feasible as a temporary solution in March. But as online class stretches on, it's become clear to Beene and his colleagues that they can't come close to replacing in-person education.

"Anything we can do to keep their minds engaged."

"This pandemic has taught us that this [broadband] is not something that families need to be without," Beene said. "This needs to be just like water in the year 2020. Every home needs to have it. It needs to be running and plentiful. It's opening our eyes to the fact that we need, for education, to have an infrastructure that allows all of our families to be online."

Schools in Connecticut's Region One district, which services a 275-mile area with approximately 13,000 residents, received some state funding to create hotspots in public places throughout its six municipalities - town halls, libraries, school buildings. In a recent survey of the region, almost half of respondents said they were unhappy with their internet service, and two-thirds said they don't have reliable cell service in their homes.

Students can come to the hotspots, download their assignments, work on those assignments at home, then go back to the hotspots to submit them. They can also participate in live lessons next to the hotspots, from their cars, if necessary.

"This is not desirable," says Lisa Carter, Region One interim superintendent. "We're doing our best to make things work."

That's a sentiment shared by every professional I spoke to. Since March, the Spring Grove Area School District in Pennsylvania has been distributing hotspots to its distance learning students and publicizing a list of locations where students can access public Wi-Fi. But Chris Enck, Spring Grove's IT director, hoped it was temporary. He thought the area would have better access by now.

"This is not something that the educational community's going to solve on its own," said Enck. "We need support from the government." Enck has been waiting for that support, but he says it hasn't come. "I know government doesn't move fast - it's been six months. And my question is: Have we made any progress? It's been six months we've been in that situation. I don't know that we're any further ahead now than we were back on March 13th."

Carter agrees that hotspots aren't enough for the long haul. To keep students engaged, Carter says her district needs the government to step in. It needs guaranteed access.

"Access to broadband should be a public utility. When the telephone first started, it was determined that everyone should have access," Carter said. "The same was true with television and radio broadcasting." Carter believes internet access should be no different. "It's something none of us can live without," she said. "That's an essential ingredient of what we need to communicate with each other as 21st-century people."

Some communities have taken matters into their own hands. A small number of rural areas - around 9 percent - use fiber-optic networks, which are substantially faster than DSL. Northwest ConneCT is an advocacy group committed to bringing such a service to northwest Connecticut - 35 percent of which doesn't have cable service, by the group's estimate.

"If we want robust, reliable internet, we're going to have to do it ourselves."

"We're never going to see wireless communications built out in these areas," said Wayne Hileman, chairman of Northwest ConneCT. "There's no economic incentive for any incumbent provider to come in and do this for us. If we want robust, reliable internet service in our corner of Connecticut, we're going to have to do it ourselves."

Northwest ConneCT has seen a surge of local attention since classes went online. "For the first time people needed true two-way internet in their homes and they were aghast to find out they didn't have it," said Hileman. "They're saying 'I thought I was getting this great service,' and the truth is they're not."

But building that sort of infrastructure at a community level is no easy task. Northwest ConneCT has been at it for over five years. The group initially developed a plan in which communities would contract for construction and ownership of trunk wiring on poles. Connecticut's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), with pressure from cable companies, ruled in May 2018 that an old state statute that granted municipalities free access to utility poles didn't apply to commercial broadband. Northwest ConneCT sued PURA and won in late 2019 after a multiyear court dispute.

The fight is still far from over. Northwest ConneCT is now battling other regulatory hiccups, including one that would bar towns from modifying poles until their owners have deemed them "ready," allowing them to slow-walk and delay the process. Northwest ConneCT is currently working on a bill. It's tried others in the past but hasn't yet gotten one to a vote.

The saga underscores the hurdles involved in expanding high-speed internet access without private sector or larger government support. "Solutions tend to be very expensive, and that's why it requires a lot of work between a lot of players," said Peter Hajdu, CEO of Dura-Line, which designs conduits that help deploy fiber-optic cables in rural areas. "We have to invest more altogether, the private participants, the private corporations like ours, the big service providers, as well as the federal government."

Hajdu added, "It's a really hard job."

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America's internet wasn't prepared for online school

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For some areas of rural America, the internet speeds needed to support distance learning are hard to come by. It's become clear that the digital divide is too big for schools to bridge on their own. Families, teachers, and administrators think governments aren't doing enough.

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The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning | EDUCAUSE

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Well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and universities working to maintain instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic should understand those differences when evaluating this emergency remote teaching.

Credit: frankie's / Shutterstock.com © 2020

Due to the threat of COVID-19, colleges and universities are facing decisions about how to continue teaching and learning while keeping their faculty, staff, and students safe from a public health emergency that is moving fast and not well understood. Many institutions have opted to cancel all face-to-face classes, including labs and other learning experiences, and have mandated that faculty move their courses online to help prevent the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. The list of institutions of higher education making this decision has been growing each day. Institutions of all sizes and types-state colleges and universities, Ivy League institutions, community colleges, and others-are moving their classes online. Bryan Alexander has curated the status of hundreds of institutions.

Moving instruction online can enable the flexibility of teaching and learning anywhere, anytime, but the speed with which this move to online instruction is expected to happen is unprecedented and staggering. Although campus support personnel and teams are usually available to help faculty members learn about and implement online learning, these teams typically support a small pool of faculty interested in teaching online. In the present situation, these individuals and teams will not be able to offer the same level of support to all faculty in such a narrow preparation window. Faculty might feel like instructional MacGyvers, having to improvise quick solutions in less-than-ideal circumstances. No matter how clever a solution might be-and some very clever solutions are emerging-many instructors will understandably find this process stressful.

The temptation to compare online learning to face-to-face instruction in these circumstances will be great. In fact, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education has already called for a "grand experiment" doing exactly that. This is a highly problematic suggestion, however. First and foremost, the politics of any such debate must be acknowledged. "Online learning" will become a politicized term that can take on any number of meanings depending on the argument someone wants to advance. In talking about lessons learned when institutions moved classes online during a shutdown in South Africa, Laura Czerniewicz starts with this very lesson and what happened around the construct of "blended learning" at the time. The idea of blended learning was drawn into political agendas without paying sufficient attention to the fact that institutions would make different decisions and invest differently, resulting in widely varying solutions and results from one institution to another. With some of that hindsight as wisdom, we seek to advance some careful distinctions that we hope can inform the evaluations and reflections that will surely result from this mass move by colleges and universities.

Online learning carries a stigma of being lower quality than face-to-face learning, despite research showing otherwise. These hurried moves online by so many institutions at once could seal the perception of online learning as a weak option, when in truth nobody making the transition to online teaching under these circumstances will truly be designing to take full advantage of the affordances and possibilities of the online format.

Researchers in educational technology, specifically in the subdiscipline of online and distance learning, have carefully defined terms over the years to distinguish between the highly variable design solutions that have been developed and implemented: distance learning, distributed learning, blended learning, online learning, mobile learning, and others. Yet an understanding of the important differences has mostly not diffused beyond the insular world of educational technology and instructional design researchers and professionals. Here, we want to offer an important discussion around the terminology and formally propose a specific term for the type of instruction being delivered in these pressing circumstances: emergency remote teaching.

Many active members of the academic community, including some of us, have been hotly debating the terminology in social media, and "emergency remote teaching" has emerged as a common alternative term used by online education researchers and professional practitioners to draw a clear contrast with what many of us know as high-quality online education. Some readers may take issue with the use of the term "teaching" over choices such as "learning" or "instruction." Rather than debating all of the details of those concepts, we selected "teaching" because of its simple definitions-"the act, practice, or profession of a teacher" and "the concerted sharing of knowledge and experience,"-along with the fact that the first tasks undertaken during emergency changes in delivery mode are those of a teacher/instructor/professor.

Effective Online Education

Online education, including online teaching and learning, has been studied for decades. Numerous research studies, theories, models, standards, and evaluation criteria focus on quality online learning, online teaching, and online course design. What we know from research is that effective online learning results from careful instructional design and planning, using a systematic model for design and development. The design process and the careful consideration of different design decisions have an impact on the quality of the instruction. And it is this careful design process that will be absent in most cases in these emergency shifts.

One of the most comprehensive summaries of research on online learning comes from the book Learning Online: What Research Tells Us about Whether, When and How. The authors identify nine dimensions, each of which has numerous options, highlighting the complexity of the design and decision-making process. The nine dimensions are modality, pacing, student-instructor ratio, pedagogy, instructor role online, student role online, online communication synchrony, role of online assessments, and source of feedback (see "Online learning design options").

Online learning design options (moderating variables)

Within each of these dimensions, there are options. Complicating matters, not all of the options are equally effective. For example, decisions around class size will greatly constrain what strategies you can use. Practice and feedback, for example, are well established in the literature, but it's harder to implement this as class size grows, eventually reaching a point where it's just not possible for an instructor to provide quality feedback. In the case of synchrony, what you choose will really depend on your learners' characteristics and what best meets their needs (adult learners require more flexibility, so asynchronous is usually best, perhaps with optional synchronous sessions, whereas younger learners benefit from the structure of required synchronous sessions).

Research on types of interaction-which includes student-content, student-student, and student-instructor-is one of the more robust bodies of research in online learning. In short, it shows that the presence of each of these types of interaction, when meaningfully integrated, increases the learning outcomes. Thus, careful planning for online learning includes not just identifying the content to cover but also carefully tending to how you're going to support different types of interactions that are important to the learning process. This approach recognizes learning as both a social and a cognitive process, not merely a matter of information transmission.

Those who have built online programs over the years will attest that effective online learning aims to be a learning community and supports learners not just instructionally but with co-curricular engagement and other social supports. Consider how much infrastructure exists around face-to-face education that supports student success: library resources, housing, career services, health services, and so on. Face-to-face education isn't successful because lecturing is good. Lectures are one instructional aspect of an overall ecosystem specifically designed to support learners with formal, informal, and social resources. Ultimately, effective online education requires an investment in an ecosystem of learner supports, which take time to identify and build. Relative to other options, simple online content delivery can be quick and inexpensive, but confusing that with robust online education is akin to confusing lectures with the totality of residential education.

Typical planning, preparation, and development time for a fully online university course is six to nine months before the course is delivered. Faculty are usually more comfortable teaching online by the second or third iteration of their online courses. It will be impossible for every faculty member to suddenly become an expert in online teaching and learning in this current situation, in which lead times range from a single day to a few weeks. While there are resources to which faculty can turn for assistance, the scale of change currently being required on many campuses will stress the systems that provide those resources and most likely will surpass their capacities. Let's face it: many of the online learning experiences that instructors will be able to offer their students will not be fully featured or necessarily well planned, and there's a high probability for suboptimal implementation. We need to recognize that everyone will be doing the best they can, trying to take just the essentials with them as they make a mad dash during the emergency. Thus, the distinction is important between the normal, everyday type of effective online instruction and that which we are doing in a hurry with bare minimum resources and scant time: emergency remote teaching.

Emergency Remote Teaching

In contrast to experiences that are planned from the beginning and designed to be online, emergency remote teaching (ERT) is a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances. It involves the use of fully remote teaching solutions for instruction or education that would otherwise be delivered face-to-face or as blended or hybrid courses and that will return to that format once the crisis or emergency has abated. The primary objective in these circumstances is not to re-create a robust educational ecosystem but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional supports in a manner that is quick to set up and is reliably available during an emergency or crisis. When we understand ERT in this manner, we can start to divorce it from "online learning." There are many examples of other countries responding to school and university closures in a time of crisis by implementing models such as mobile learning, radio, blended learning, or other solutions that are contextually more feasible. For example, in a study on education's role in fragility and emergency situations, the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies examined four case studies. One of those cases was Afghanistan, where education was disrupted by conflict and violence and schools themselves were targets, sometimes because girls were trying to access education. In order to take children off the streets and keep them safe, radio education and DVDs were used to maintain and expand educational access and also were aimed at promoting education for girls.

What becomes apparent as we examine examples of educational planning in crises is that these situations require creative problem solving. We have to be able to think outside standard boxes to generate various possible solutions that help meet the new needs for our learners and communities. In some cases, it might even help us generate some new solutions to intractable problems, such as the dangers girls faced trying to access education in Afghanistan. Thus, it may be tempting to think about ERT as a bare-bones approach to standard instruction. In reality, it is a way of thinking about delivery modes, methods, and media, specifically as they map to rapidly changing needs and limitations in resources, such as faculty support and training.

In the present situation, the campus support teams that are usually available to help faculty members learn about and implement online learning will not be able to offer the same level of support to all faculty who need it. Faculty support teams play a critical role in the learning experiences of students by helping faculty members develop face-to-face or online learning experiences. Current support models might include full-course design support, professional development opportunities, content development, learning management system training and support, and multimedia creation in partnership with faculty experts. Faculty who seek support typically have varying levels of digital fluency and are often accustomed to one-on-one support when experimenting with online tools. The shift to ERT requires that faculty take more control of the course design, development, and implementation process. With the expectation of rapid development of online teaching and learning events and the large number of faculty in need of support, faculty development and support teams must find ways to meet the institutional need to provide instructional continuity while helping faculty develop skills to work and teach in an online environment. As such, institutions must rethink the way instructional support units do their work, at least during a crisis.

The rapid approach necessary for ERT may diminish the quality of the courses delivered. A full-course development project can take months when done properly. The need to "just get it online" is in direct contradiction to the time and effort normally dedicated to developing a quality course. Online courses created in this way should not be mistaken for long-term solutions but accepted as a temporary solution to an immediate problem. Especially concerning is the degree to which the accessibility of learning materials might not be addressed during ERT. This is but one reason that universal design for learning (UDL) should be part of all discussions around teaching and learning. UDL principles focus on the design of learning environments that are flexible, inclusive, and student-centered to ensure that all students can access and learn from the course materials, activities, and assignments.

Evaluating Emergency Remote Teaching

Institutions will certainly want to conduct evaluations of their ERT efforts, but what should they evaluate? First, let's consider what not to evaluate. A common misconception is that comparing a face-to-face course with an online version of the course constitutes a useful evaluation. This type of assessment, known as a media comparison study, provides no real value, for at least three reasons:

First, any medium is simply a way to deliver information, and one medium is not inherently better or worse than any other medium. Second, we need to better understand different media and the way people learn with different media to design effective studies. And, third, there are too many confounding variables in even the best media comparison study for the results to be valid and meaningful.

Researchers who conduct media comparison studies are looking at "the whole unique medium and [giving] little thought to each one's attributes and characteristics, to learner needs, or to psychological learning theories."

Other approaches to evaluation can be useful in this move to ERT. The success of distance and online learning experiences can be measured in a variety of ways, depending on how "success" is defined from a given stakeholder's perspective. From the faculty point of view, student learning outcomes would be of primary interest. Did learners achieve the intended knowledge, skills, and/or attitudes that were the focus of the instructional experience? Attitudinal outcomes are also possibly of interest, for students and for faculty. For students, issues such as interest, motivation, and engagement are directly connected to learner success and so would be possible evaluation foci. For faculty, attitudes toward online instruction and all that it entails can affect the perception of success.

Programmatic outcomes such as course and program completion rates, market reach, faculty time investments, impacts on promotion and tenure processes-all of these are relevant issues related to the offering of distance courses and programs. Finally, implementation resources and strategies are possible areas of evaluation inquiry, such as the reliability of selected technological delivery systems, the provision of and access to learner support systems, support for faculty professional development for online teaching pedagogies and tools, policy and governance issues related to distance program development, and quality assurance. All of these factors can influence the effectiveness of distance and online learning experiences and can serve to inform learning experience design and program development and implementation. These recommended areas of evaluation are for well-planned distance or online learning efforts and may not be appropriate in the case of ERT. Evaluating ERT will require broader questions, especially during initial implementations.

Next, let us recommend where you should focus your evaluation related to ERT efforts. The language of the CIPP model will be used for structure. CIPP is an acronym representing context, inputs, process, and products (see table 1).

Table 1. CIPP evaluation terms

"Assess needs, problems, assets, and opportunities, as well as relevant contextual conditions and dynamics"

"Assess a program's strategy, action plan, staffing arrangements, and budget for feasibility and potential cost-effectiveness to meet targeted needs and achieve goals."

"Monitor, document, assess, and report on the implementation of plans."

"Identify and assess costs and outcomes-intended and unintended, short term and long term."

In the case of ERT, institutions might want to consider evaluation questions such as the following:

Given the need to shift to remote instruction, what internal and external resources were necessary in supporting this transition? What aspects of the context (institutional, social, governmental) affected the feasibility and effectiveness of the transition? (context)

How did the university interactions with students, families, personnel, and local and government stakeholders impact perceived responsiveness to the shift to ERT? (context)

Was the technology infrastructure sufficient to handle the needs of ERT? (input)

Did the campus support staff have sufficient capacity to handle the needs of ERT? (input)

Was our ongoing faculty professional development sufficient to enable ERT? How can we enhance opportunities for immediate and flexible learning demands related to alternative approaches to instruction and learning? (input)

Where did faculty, students, support personnel, and administrators struggle the most with ERT? How can we adapt our processes to respond to such operational challenges in the future? (process)

What were the programmatic outcomes of the ERT initiative (i.e., course completion rates, aggregated grade analyses, etc.)? How can challenges related to these outcomes be addressed in support of the students and faculty impacted by these issues? (product)

How can feedback from learners, faculty, and campus support teams inform ERT needs in the future? (product)

Evaluation of ERT should be more focused on the context, input, and process elements than product (learning). Note that we are not advocating for no evaluation of whether or not learning occurred, or to what extent it occurred, but simply stressing that the urgency of ERT and all that will take to make it happen in a short time frame will be the most critical elements to evaluate during this crisis. This is being recognized by some as a few institutions are beginning to announce changing to pass/fail options rather letter grades during ERT.

Also, given the continued evidence of problems surrounding student evaluations of instruction under typical higher education experiences, we recommend that the standard, end-of-semester teaching evaluations definitely not be counted against faculty members engaged in ERT. If an institution's policy mandates that those evaluations be administered, consider amending the policy, or make sure that the results are clearly qualified with the circumstances of the term or semester.

Final Thoughts

Everyone involved in this abrupt migration to online learning must realize that these crises and disasters also create disruptions to student, staff, and faculty lives, outside their association with the university. So all of this work must be done with the understanding that the move to ERT will likely not be the priority of all those involved. Instructors and administrators are urged to consider that students might not be able to attend to courses immediately. As a result, asynchronous activities might be more reasonable than synchronous ones. Flexibility with deadlines for assignments within courses, course policies, and institutional policies should be considered. For a high-level example, the US Department of Education has relaxed some requirements and policies in the face of COVID-19.

Hopefully the COVID-19 threat will soon be a memory. When it is, we should not simply return to our teaching and learning practices prior to the virus, forgetting about ERT. There likely will be future public health and safety concerns, and in recent years, campuses have been closed due to natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, and the polar vortex. Thus, the possible need for ERT must become part of a faculty member's skill set, as well as professional development programming for any personnel involved in the instructional mission of colleges and universities.

The threat of COVID-19 has presented some unique challenges for institutions of higher education. All parties involved-students, faculty, and staff-are being asked to do extraordinary things regarding course delivery and learning that have not been seen on this scale in the lifetimes of anyone currently involved. Although this situation is stressful, when it is over, institutions will emerge with an opportunity to evaluate how well they were able to implement ERT to maintain continuity of instruction. It is important to avoid the temptation to equate ERT with online learning during those evaluations. With careful planning, officials at every campus can evaluate their efforts, allowing those involved to highlight strengths and identify weaknesses to be better prepared for future needs to implement ERT.

Notes

1. See, for example: "Information for Ohio State University Students, Faculty and Staff," The Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center; "President Eisgruber Updates University on Next Steps Regarding COVID-19 to Ensure Health and Well-Being of the Entire Community," Princeton University; and Everett Community College. ↩

2. "Coronavirus and Higher Education Resources," Bryan Alexander blog, March 17, 2020. ↩

3. Laura Czerniewicz, "What We Learnt from 'Going Online' during University Shutdowns in South Africa," PhilOnEdTech, March 15, 2020. ↩

4. "Teaching," Merriam-Webster. ↩

5. Robert M. Branch and Tonia A. Dousay, "Survey of Instructional Design Models," Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), 2015. ↩

6. Robert M. Bernard, Philip C. Abrami, Eugene Borokhovski, C. Anne Wade, Rana M. Tamim, Michael A. Surkes, and Edward Clement Bethel, "A Meta-Analysis of Three Types of Interaction Treatments in Distance Education," Review of Educational Research 79, no. 3 (2009): 1,243-89. ↩

7. Lynn Davies and Denise Bentrovato, International Institute for Educational Planning (2011). "Understanding Education's Role in Fragility; Synthesis of Four Situational Analyses of Education and Fragility: Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Liberia,"↩

8. See "UDL On Campus," ↩

9. "Guidance for Interruptions of Study Related to Coronavirus (COVID-19)," Federal Student Aid, Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP), March 20, 2020. ↩

10. Elin Johnson, "As Fires Rage, More Campuses Close," InsideHigherEd, October 29, 2019; Jenni Fink, "Florida Universities Cancelling Classes, Closing Campus Ahead of Potential Category 4 Hurricane Dorian," Newsweek, August 29, 2019; and Perry Samson, "The Coronavirus and Class Broadcasts," EDUCAUSE Review, March 3, 2020. ↩

Charles B. Hodges is a Professor of Instructional Technology at Georgia Southern University.

Stephanie Moore is an Assistant Professor of Instructional Design and Technology in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.

Barbara B. Lockee is a Professor of Instructional Design and Technology, and Provost Faculty Fellow, at Virginia Tech.

Torrey Trust is an Associate Professor of Learning Technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

M. Aaron Bond is Senior Director, Professional Development Network and Faculty Digital Fluency at Virginia Tech.

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the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning

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The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning

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Well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and univ

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Remote Schooling Out of Reach for Many Students in West Virginia Without Internet

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Remote Schooling Out of Reach for Many Students in West Virginia Without Internet

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HARTS, W.Va.-Just before 9 a.m., Hollee Blair sat in her boyfriend's Toyota Tacoma in the parking lot of Chapmanville Regional High School and waited for attendance to be taken.

With no broadband internet at home, Ms. Blair, a 17-year-old honors student who plans to study nursing after high school, used her boyfriend's iPhone to connect to the school's Wi-Fi for an hour-long orientation over Zoom.

"I'll...

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Remote Schooling Out of Reach for Many Students in West Virginia Without Internet

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HARTS, W.Va.-Just before 9 a.m., Hollee Blair sat in her boyfriend's Toyota Tacoma in the parking lot of Chapmanville Regional High School and waited for attendance to be taken. With no broadband internet at home, Ms. Blair, a 17-year-old honors student who plans to study nursing after high school, used her boyfriend's iPhone to connect to the school's Wi-Fi for an hour-long orientation over Zoom.

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"Historic" laptop demand leads to shortages ahead of remote school

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"Historic" laptop demand leads to shortages ahead of remote school

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American students are facing a shortage of laptops, particularly low-cost Chromebooks popular in K-8 schools, at the same time that many districts are choosing full-remote or hybrid reopening models.

Why it matters: No device = no education.

Supply and demand: U.S. laptop sales began surging in March, as the pandemic caused both kids and adults to work from home. This came on the heels of manufacturing and distribution slowdowns in China, due to both the annual New Year's holiday closures and then virus-related disruptions.

"Sales have been up 20%-40% every single week," said Stephen Baker, a consumer tech analyst with The NPD Group. "Some of the education channel sales got pulled forward into March and April, but there's been no overall slowdown."

"Not even close." That was the response from Gregg Prendergast, Acer America president, when asked if there will be enough Chromebooks to satisfy remote learning needs at the time of reopening. He adds that demand is "historic," and that just last week Acer received requests for hundreds of thousands of new devices from government officials in both California and Nevada.

Best Buy's website shows 28 models of Chromebooks priced under $400. As of Friday morning, 24 of those models were sold out.

Supply chain shortages aren't just on finished products, but also on internal components like screens, batteries, chassis, and processors. And then there are shipping and port delays, which Prendergast says has caused his company to begin using air freight in some circumstances. He says can save up to three weeks, in part due to a quicker U.S. Customs process.

Many schools in the spring relied on existing device supplies, loaning out older devices. That resulted in much more wear-and-tear, thus accelerating the upgrade/replacement cycle.

Next level: Broadband access remains an educational barrier for many students, even if their school districts managed to source enough and distribute devices.

The bottom line: The device crunch won't subside any time soon, even if schools and parents can afford to foot the bill.
Go deeper... Podcast: Not enough laptops

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The shift to virtual school is causing laptop shortages nationwide

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American students are facing a shortage of laptops, particularly low-cost Chromebooks popular in K-8 schools, at the same time that many districts are choosing full-remote or hybrid reopening models. Why it matters: No device = no education. Supply and demand: U.S. laptop sales began surging in March, as the pandemic caused both kids and adults to work from home.

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'I just worry that they'll be so far behind': Rural families without internet face tough choice on school

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'I just worry that they'll be so far behind': Rural families without internet face tough choice on school

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Beattyville, Ky. - John Ross worries about his children returning to their classrooms this fall with coronavirus cases rising in Kentucky, but he feels he doesn't have much of a choice: His family's limited internet access makes it nearly impossible for the kids to keep up with schoolwork from home.

"They're going to have their education," the father of three in rural Lee County said as he recalled his children's struggles to do their work this spring over a spotty cellphone connection.

Lee County, a community of around 7,000 people deep in the Appalachian Mountains, is one of many rural school districts around the country where the decision over whether to bring students back into classrooms is particularly fraught. As in other places, parents and officials are concerned about the virus, but dramatically limited internet access here also means kids could fall seriously behind if the pandemic keeps them home again.
Back to school and COVID-19: Tips: 7 steps you can take now to lower your internet bill Everything to know as students head back to class
On average, the United States is still seeing about 1,000 deaths a day from the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The country has had more than 5 million confirmed cases and more than 167,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic.

Roughly 3 million students across the United States don't have access to a home internet connection. A third of households with school-age children that do not have home internet cite the expense as the main reason, according to federal Education Department statistics. But in some rural places, a reliable connection can't be had at any price.

The void is especially acute in eastern Kentucky. An AP analysis of census data shows that nearly half of students attending public school in Lee lack home access to broadband.

Many districts have been scrambling to set up paper-based alternatives to online instruction or create WiFi hot spots in school parking lots and other public areas. Kentucky's two largest districts, in Louisville and Lexington, are starting the school year online and have pledged to give mobile hot spots to students who don't have internet at home. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said this week the state is exploring ways to expand internet access in hard-to-reach areas.

But if school starts as scheduled on Aug. 24 in Lee, which serves roughly 800 students, there will be only two public WiFi hot spots in the county: one at the county courthouse, and another at the public library - both near downtown Beattyville, the county seat, and a good distance from the winding, tree-lined roads where most residents live.

Teachers also struggle

Students aren't the only ones who struggled this past spring. Some teachers had to go into their classrooms to get internet access, despite recommendations that they stay home, according to Lee County School Superintendent Sarah Wasson.
Delaying college could cost you: Study says students could lose $90,000 over their lifetime
In an effort to accommodate those without reliable internet, students will submit their work periodically on USB drives. In between, teachers can check in with them over the phone.

The lack of internet access often dovetails with and is likely to reinforce other inequalities. Nationally, those without access are more likely to be students of color, from low-income families or in households with lower parental education levels. In Lee County, for instance, almost half of children live below the poverty line. As the pandemic stretches on, Americans with lower incomes who do have internet may struggle to continue to afford it.

"COVID-19 has shown cracks in the system where people have been left behind," said Lee County Judge Executive Chuck Caudill.

Beattyville Mayor Scott Jackson remembers the fight more than a half-century ago to get clean, running water into the county. Now, he sees the internet as just as important, in order to help create jobs and encourage businesses to move into the empty storefronts on Beattyville's main street.

Internet access has improved for some, as Peoples Rural Telephone, one of few internet service providers in the region, started expanding into the county around four years ago.

But for most residents of the more remote mountain hollers, like Ross' family, the expansion won't arrive in time for the start of school.

In the spring, Ross' children, ages 12, 13, and 15, had to connect their laptops to the mobile hot spot powered by data on his phone. It didn't always work. That meant they often had to complete hard-copy packets without access to online materials.

Ross is able to pay for data with what he earns from occasional construction jobs, but Comcast, AT&T and T-Mobile recently brought back some data caps, which could slow the speed of what little connection families like Ross' have.

In Lee, like many other counties in rural Eastern Kentucky, there have been only a few confirmed coronavirus cases. As a result, some are pushing for school to start in person immediately, but others are more cautious. Ross wants officials to hold off until October in hopes the virus will subside.

Regina Mays, executive secretary to Mayor Jackson, said she and her husband will keep their children at home for the entire upcoming semester - even if the school begins offering in-person classes. She plans on taking them into the office with her a few times a week, so they'll have access to a stable internet connection. Her children didn't get credit for some assignments last spring because of issues with their satellite internet connection.

"I just worry that they'll be so far behind in school and how long it will take for them to get caught back up, and what that means for their future," she said.
Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
Wasson, the superintendent, anticipates a new set of challenges when schools reopen in person: The district does not have a large pool of substitutes or enough staff to fill bus monitor positions.

Still, she would like to return to in-person instruction, with social distancing measures, since she knows the difficulty of learning from home.

"Imagine teaching a kindergartner for the first time how to write their letters and not being with them," Wasson said.

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'I just worry that they'll be so far behind': Rural families without internet face tough choice on school

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Beattyville, Ky. - John Ross worries about his children returning to their classrooms this fall with coronavirus cases rising in Kentucky, but he feels he doesn't have much of a choice: His family's limited internet access makes it nearly impossible for the kids to keep up with schoolwork from home.

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An open source taxonomy for the future of education. Mapping the learning and talent innovation landscape.

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Why we did this

Education is a complex sector, combining important social, economic, cultural, intellectual and personal factors and operating at global, national, local and personal levels. However, information and data about education and the innovation that is occuring throughout the system is fragmented and anchored in its local environment, making cooperation across contexts difficult, thus hindering material innovation in the sector.

We have been building, investing and mapping innovation in education for decades and have had the opportunity to work with entrepreneurs, educators, institutions and governments globally. One of the constant themes arising from our engagements and conversations with each of these stakeholders is the difficulty in accessing, understanding and learning from innovations undertaken elsewhere.

The Global Learning Landscape provides common structure and language for identifying, tracking and making sense of the complexity and volume of innovation happening in education all around the world by providing a well-defined, robust, accessible and community enabled taxonomy.

Using a common framework will support the discovery of, and access to innovation initiatives, provide opportunities for collaboration and benchmarking, reduce barriers to innovation and allow analysis and trend mapping within or across innovation clusters. Licenced under Creative Commons and as an open source project, the taxonomy is available for anyone to support their own work in education innovation. The global community can track and contribute to the taxonomy's ongoing development via GitHub.

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Why we did this Education is a complex sector, combining important social, economic, cultural, intellectual and personal factors and operating at global, national, local and personal levels. However, information and data about education and the innovation that is occuring throughout the system is fragmented and anchored in its local environment, making cooperation across contexts difficult, thus hindering material innovation in the sector.

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INSPIRATION LABORATORIES: SUMMER SCIENCE SERIES

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INSPIRATION LABORATORIES: SUMMER SCIENCE SERIES

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Summer may be winding down, but the opportunity for science exploration is far from over with Inspiration Laboratories' Summer Science Series. The series provides six weeks of materials, covering topics such as biology, geology, and astronomy, and each topic includes multiple lesson plans and experiments. For example, the Biology toolkit provides an "Easy Earthworm Science Experiment" and a summer vegetable soup recipe. The rest of the website provides additional STEM-related content, too. Readers can check out the reading challenges, citizen science experiments, and many other offerings on the Science page. Plus, the Arts & Crafts, Reading, and Recipes pages house activities that stretch beyond STEM subjects. Inspiration Laboratories is the "creative outlet" of Trisha, the author of this blog. Trisha is a lifelong teacher passionate about sharing tools for science education. In her words, "It's never too early to start building a foundation for science skills." Never miss a post by subscribing to the blog via the About page.

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Summer Science Series Archives | Inspiration Laboratories

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Physics is the theme for week 4 of our Summer Science Series with Edventures with Kids. Today we're exploring color and temperature with a fun experiment. ...

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The Futures of learning 1: why must learning content and methods change in the 21st century? - UNESCO Digital Library

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Stateline Daily

Sign up for our daily update - original reporting on state policy, plus the day's five top reads from around the web.

Stateline Weekly

Sign up for our weekly newsletter-our best original reporting and analysis every Monday.

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Stateline Daily Sign up for our daily update - original reporting on state policy, plus the day's five top reads from around the web. Stateline Weekly Sign up for our weekly newsletter-our best original reporting and analysis every Monday.

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Teaching students how to stay safe

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Teaching students how to stay safe online. While 99% of all that happens on the net is positive and safe which is very similar to the real world, educating teens about Internet safety helps keep them safe and enables them to enjoy the riches available to them online.

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Literacy Project

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Engaging, interactive lessons help educators equip their students with the tools to evaluate and interpret the news and to learn how to decide what news and other information to trust, share and act on.

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Engaging, interactive lessons help educators equip their students with the tools to evaluate and interpret the news and to learn how to decide what news and other information to trust, share and act on.

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Students of Color Caught in the Homework Gap

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Students of Color Caught in the Homework Gap

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According to an analysis of data from the 2018 American Community Survey conducted for the Alliance for Excellent Education, National Urban League, UnidosUS, and the National Indian Education Association, millions of households with children under the age of 18 years lack two essential elements for online learning: (1) high-speed home internet service and (2) a computer.

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Choosing the Right Tools for Amplifying Learning Through PBL

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Choosing the Right Tools for Amplifying Learning Through PBL

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As we look to the new school year, with many unknowns when it comes to where learning will take place, we should focus on these considerations first when thinking about the types of lessons and opportunities we will choose and design for our students.

First, what access do our students and their families need and what do they have? Second, are we using digital tools in our classroom that families will be able to help support students if they must learn from home? And third, what types of learning experiences can we create for our students that enable us to work together even when apart? Experiences that promote student choice in learning, leveraging technology where it makes sense, while also making sure that we can support and involve families are good options.

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During the last few months of the 2019-20 school year, we faced a lot of challenges in planning our instruction and making transitions from our classrooms into the virtual learning space. For me, the difficulty was in deciding what tools and strategies to use and knowing whether students had access to devices or their class materials. I wanted to provide meaningful and authentic opportunities that would enable all students to engage in learning, while being mindful of individual circumstances that may have made that difficult at times. We know there is definitely not a shortage of digital tools and options available to us as educators for expanding the how, when and where students learn, however there are a few important things we need to consider, not just now, but always.

As we look to the new school year, with many unknowns when it comes to where learning will take place, we should focus on these considerations first when thinking about the types of lessons and opportunities we will choose and design for our students.

First, what access do our students and their families need and what do they have? Second, are we using digital tools in our classroom that families will be able to help support students if they must learn from home? And third, what types of learning experiences can we create for our students that enable us to work together even when apart? Experiences that promote student choice in learning, leveraging technology where it makes sense, while also making sure that we can support and involve families are good options.

Choose a method not a tool

With school closures, it was an opportunity to try new ideas and tools, or perhaps to bring back some methods that we got away from. Project-based learning (PBL) is something that I believe worked well during this time, regardless of content area, grade level, or teacher experience with PBL in the classroom. I also believe that it will allow for smoother transitions in the event we have to shift throughout the upcoming school year.

According to the PBLWorks, PBL is "a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects." PBL is an iterative process requiring reflection, which makes it a good method to guide students to become more independent learners and to develop a greater motivation for learning. Through PBL, we help students to focus on the process of learning itself and not on a final product that serves as an end to a unit of study and is forgotten.

With PBL, the learning space itself does not matter, it simply requires that we set up guidelines and work through the challenges that may arise as we go. PBL gives students the opportunity to explore their passions, design their own problems or challenges, and have the time to focus more on the process rather than the product of learning. To best prepare students for the future and for navigating what may be a constantly changing look of school this year, we need to offer experiences which promote curiosity, independent learning, and working through productive struggle. PBL is good for this and is also a great option for addressing the 4 C's: critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity.

Tools for PBL

Moving beyond the traditional classroom time and place is easier with technology, and it only takes that first step to begin creating these opportunities for students. In my classroom, we leveraged some digital tools for students to explore global issues and broaden their cultural awareness and global understanding, which led to more meaningful and authentic learning experiences for them. The use of digital tools to connect with other students, educators and experts adds to the authenticity and meaningfulness of the work they are doing.

Through PBL, I have been able to learn more about my students and their interests and to become a learner along with them. While in the physical classroom space, PBL promotes the development of SEL skills, students also become better at collaborating and providing ongoing feedback and support to their peers. However, when not in the same physical space, we need to find ways to foster the development of these same skills.

Tools that we can use:

1.Ideas for PBL: Students can find ideas on Wonderopolis that promote curiosity for learning about new ideas and challenges. With platforms like , educators and students have access to a project library of standards-aligned projects, including rubrics and resources such as documents, videos, and website links, making it easy to get started with a ready-made project or to start from scratch. With the tools available, students can work in real-time with classmates and teachers through the collaboration feed and also build digital portfolios to track their work.

2. Collaborative spaces: , , , LMS such as . With these options, students can work together and interact in the virtual space and will help with the transitions we may need to make in this school year. The use of tools such as these also enables students to share their work with a larger audience, bringing in opportunities for global collaboration through these platforms.

3. Providing feedback: Being able to give students timely and authentic feedback is critical for learning. It is also important that our students be able to provide peer feedback and develop their skills of communicating and collaborating with their classmates. Some of the tools that help this give students the opportunity to build confidence in learning and be able to share through voice or video or combination are , , , and . With Flipgrid, educators can even explore topics in the Disco Library for students to use as a PBL focus and with the features, students have many options for sharing their learning. Through Kialo, students have a space to ask questions, engage in discussions and exchange ideas.

4. Backchannel discussions: Having a space where students can continue to share their ideas beyond the class period is important. Using digital tools for backchannel discussions not only removes the time and space limitations on conversations but also helps students to build essential digital citizenships skills as well. Some tools that are easy to get started with are Backchannelchat, , ! Each of these promote asynchronous as well as synchronous conversations and are good for promoting communication during the learning process.

5. Products of learning: It is important for students to have choices when it comes to sharing what they have learned, especially for creating something to share with a public audience. Leveraging some of the different digital options out there will give students choices such as blogs, infographics, podcasts, videos, and interactive, multimedia class presentations. Students can create a multimedia presentation using and then all students can share their work on a Buncee board, with the ability to comment and give feedback. Using a tool like , students can include additional content such as virtual trips, polls, collaborative discussion boards and more. With options such as or even Screencastify, students can create a video to share what they have learned and use their work as a teachable resource for others.

6. Reflections, revisions and project workflow: It is also important to provide students with a space to work through the different phases of PBL and develop a system for project management and working through feedback. The use of tools like Google Forms to submit ideas, voice recordings within Google documents or Microsoft OneNote are quite helpful. In addition to these, there are larger platforms available for an all-in-one PBL work. is a PBL management system that enables teachers to provide a space for students to design their learning journey. Through Headrush, students have access to task boards, to-do lists, and can create a digital portfolio full of artifacts of their PBL work. Teachers can provide ongoing feedback for students and keep the discussion going regardless of where learning is happening.

Asking students for feedback about the methods we use and the tools we bring into our classroom is also important. One student shared this with me after our recent PBL experience during school closures: "Using different digital tools helped me to really understand and see what school is like in other countries. Being able to connect and ask questions directly to students my own age helped me to sculpt my project in a way unlike anything I have experienced."

It is all about having choices. Promoting student choice and voice through PBL and leveraging the digital tools available will engage students in more authentic and personalized learning experiences regardless of where learning is actually taking place.

For more, see:
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Rachelle Dene Poth is a Foreign Language and STEAM Teacher at Riverview Junior/Senior High in Oakmont, PA. Follow her on Twitter at @rdene915

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Choosing the Right Tools for Amplifying Learning Through PBL | Getting Smart

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During the last few months of the 2019-20 school year, we faced a lot of challenges in planning our instruction and making transitions from our classrooms into the virtual learning space. For me, the difficulty was in deciding what tools and strategies to use and knowing whether students had access to devices or their class materials.

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 Karen V. Jenkins levels the landscape for analysts with KidAlytics

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 Karen V. Jenkins levels the landscape for analysts with KidAlytics

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Karen V. Jenkins is a Chicago based Research Data Expert who represents transformation in the world of education. As the founder of KidAlytics, she is using her extensive skills and education to level the playing field when it comes to technology.

KidAlytics was created to fill the gap when it comes to analytics between grades 8 thru 12. Jenkins has launched the “Social Impact Initiative” to help raise funds for students who wish to attend her camp. Jenkins knows that analytics goes beyond the numbers and is using her platform to spread the word.

Rolling out spoke to Jenkins about KidAlytics, the importance of analytics and the importance of data.

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Karen V. Jenkins is a Chicago based Research Data Expert who represents transformation in the world of education. As the founder of KidAlytics, she is using her extensive skills and education to level the playing field when it comes to technology.

KidAlytics was created to fill the gap when it comes to analytics between grades 8 thru 12. Jenkins has launched the "Social Impact Initiative" to help raise funds for students who wish to attend her camp. Jenkins knows that analytics goes beyond the numbers and is using her platform to spread the word.

Rolling out spoke to Jenkins about KidAlytics, the importance of analytics and the importance of data.
What would you say is the overall importance of analytics?
Analytics is important overall because it is in everything we do. We are producing massive amounts of data daily. Therefore, an increased demand for individuals able to process data to look at strengths and weaknesses with the assistance of software. We are at a point where currently our daily conversations are encrypted with COVID and social justice analysis. Communities need a forward push with tolls and analytics to effectively advocate for their needs.
Why is it important for you to get children involved in the language of analytics?
It is important to get children involved in the language because they are the generation that was born connected to and who has progressed the language of analytics further than any generation before them. Analytics are the footprint of events in this digitally driven 4th Industrial Revolution. It's essential for them to envision the world they will rebuild.
Talk about what inspired you to create KidAlytics?
My inspiration for creating KidAlytics was born from my inquisitive nature of experiencing the world develop and the spaces and places I was not represented in. I saw very few African Americans women in STEM, even less as analysts.
What would you say is the biggest misunderstanding when it comes to the usage and deciphering of these stats.
The biggest misunderstanding is that you have to be techie and know math like Einstein. This is far from true. There are different levels of analyst and disciplines composed of many professionals on teams. Being able to comprehend and plan around analytics and technology to make decisions in how, where, when, and if the data is collected, is an asset.
Talk about "The Social Impact Initiative," what is it meant to do and why is it important?
The Social Impact Initiative is a long term commitment of equity in education to achieve equality across borders. It gives access to those kids who would otherwise not receive this education due to family economics. It's imperative that knowledge is shared collectively and not exclusively.
What is next for you?
In a world full of possibilities, keeping steady on the mission of equity to reimage education. KidAlytics' next move is to provide our curated curriculum globally, especially in areas that lack access.

For more information go to www.kidalytics.com,

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Karen V. Jenkins levels the landscape for analysts with KidAlytics - Rolling Out

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Karen V. Jenkins is a Chicago based Research Data Expert who represents transformation in the world of education. As the founder of KidAlytics, she is using her extensive skills and education to level the playing field when it comes to technology. KidAlytics was created to fill the gap when it comes to analytics between grades 8 thru 12.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mass closures of schools, libraries, and higher education. This was our discussion on how we can use technology to make sure that students, educators, and others can continue to remotely access the collections they need, during lock-down and beyond.

Speakers:
Cory Doctorow - Author of Radicalized and Walkaway, special advisor to the EFF; visiting professor of practice in library science, UNC-Chapel Hill
Chris Freeland - Director of OpenLibraries at the Internet Archive
Lisa Petrides Ph.D. - CEO & Founder of Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME)
Lisa Weaver - Director, Collections & Program Development at Hamilton Public Library
Moderator: Meredith Rose, Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge

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Video: Controlled Digital Lending: Getting Books to Students During the Pandemic & Beyond | Public Knowledge

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mass closures of schools, libraries, and higher education. This was our discussion on how we can use technology to make sure that students, educators, and others can continue to remotely access the collections they need, during lock-down and beyond.

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Through the fog of memory, and despite everything that's happened since, I still vividly remember the last day of school. In the morning, I listened to the Mayor on the radio insisting that the schools would not close. Too many vulnerable children got their only meals at school, he said. Too much of the city's workforce depended on schools for child care. In the afternoon, Emily and I went on our big pandemic shopping run. And then, at 5 p.m. on the dot, I picked up Raffi from his pre-K. The school, our beloved school, was its usual self: lots of parents, lots of kids, everyone in a pretty good mood. As usual, his after-school teachers were exhausted.

"The Mayor doesn't want to close the schools," I said.

"If he doesn't close them, we'll close them," one of the teachers said.

"Attendance is already down," the other teacher said. "People are keeping their kids at home."

That's when I knew the schools were going to close, and soon.

Raffi and I went outside, and he ran to the swings. I talked with some of the other parents. One, a lawyer, said her boss had told her to bring home as much work as she could, as the office was probably going to be closed; another, a computer programmer, had already started working from home. None of us was wearing a mask, but already some of the parents seemed to be keeping their distance from one another. We discussed various contingencies in the event of school closure. Maybe we could set up a parent-run child-care co-op? In any case, we'd see each other on the playgrounds! None of us, I think, had any conception at the time of just how serious this was going to turn out to be.

After half an hour, I managed to extract Raffi from the playground. We picked up his little brother, Ilya, from day care. Then, together, we ambled along the streets of Brooklyn, through beautiful Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, across dangerous Atlantic Avenue, and into the huge Atlantic Yards development, still mostly a construction site, where we live. And that was it: the last day of school. It was Friday, March 13th.

At first, there was just fear: fear that we would get sick; fear that our parents would get sick; fear that society would collapse, like in disaster movies, and people would start attacking one another on the street for groceries.

In the meantime, there was the matter of our kids. Ilya was not yet two, too young to greet the sudden end of full-time day care with anything but joy. We had been dropping him off there for seven months, and he still sometimes cried. Ilya did not ask any questions about why he was staying home.

Raffi, approaching his fifth birthday, was a different story. He had been hearing about the coronavirus for a few weeks now, in part because his teachers at school had begun making everyone very carefully wash their hands. The dance teacher had taught the class how to sneeze into the crook of their elbows. And we, to the best of our ability, had explained to him what the coronavirus was. Because I had done the explaining in Russian, and corona, in Russian, as in many other languages, means "crown," he had translated the name of the virus as "King Germ." When we told him that because of the King Germ he had to stay home from school for a little while, he seemed to take it very much in stride. Who wouldn't trade the stress and rigidity of school for long, contemplative breakfasts followed by hours of "Wild Kratts," "Spider-Man," and a terrible show called "Heroes of Goo Jit Zu"? But, in fact, as it turned out, Raffi craved the structure that school provided, and pretty soon he began, as Emily put it, "to lose his little mind."

The first week after the school closure, Emily and I were both sick. According to later antibody testing, it probably wasn't COVID-19, but it wasn't pleasant, either, and we mostly let the kids watch TV. But even Raffi would eventually grow bored of this and embark on chasing Ilya around the apartment and playing with stuff in the freezer and drawing on the walls. Our apartment was small, and a rental. From the twenty-first floor, we watched the traffic grow thinner and thinner on Atlantic Avenue.

In between sleeping and sweating from fever and yelling at Raffi to stop whatever violent or destructive game he'd now invented, we wondered if we should leave New York. We looked at Airbnb listings near my father's house in Massachusetts. But we didn't want to leave, and, when push came to shove, we couldn't afford it. Then friends who had temporarily left their house in Crown Heights, about a mile from us, asked if we'd like to house-sit. They had two floors and, crucially, a back yard. We said yes right away and moved house a couple of days later. Once we'd put away our groceries, set up the travel crib for the baby, and figured out the Netflix situation on the television, it was time to face our new reality. It was time for distance learning to begin.

What was school? How did it work? Raffi's teacher, Ms. V, had always done her best to send photos and updates, and Raffi, for his part, was actually pretty willing to gossip about his friends: who'd had a time-out, who had not yet learned how to open a bag of potato chips, who had stepped on Raffi's hand (deliberately, he believed) during recess. But how did school turn Raffi into a person, a member of society, someone who sat still for up to fifteen minutes at a time and didn't seem to just randomly start throwing things at people's heads? This part of it was a mystery to us.

On the first day of distance learning, Ms. V sent us the class's daily schedule. From 8:20 to 8:40 A.M., the kids wrote out their names and ate some breakfast. From 8:45 to 9, they had a morning meeting to discuss their feelings, listen to the song of the week, and practice letter sounds. Then they went outside. Then they had "center time activities." And on and on until 2:40 p.m. For the sake of continuity and the kids' continuing enrichment, Ms. V suggested we follow some form of the schedule at home. We agreed to try. Ms. V did this with eighteen kids, every single day. How hard could it be for us to do it with one kid, our own?

It turned out to be impossible. Raffi would sit staring at his assigned task for a minute, but then he'd want to find something in the refrigerator to eat, or to chase after Ilya, or to just run away and hide. When we tried to go outside, as per the schedule, whether to the park down the street or just to the back yard, Raffi claimed not to want to go. Later on, we heard from lots of parents that their Raffi-age kids had this reaction to the lockdown, either from fear or inertia or something else, and had refused to go outside for weeks. But, between the two of them, our kids were just doing too much damage to our friends' house-to their floors, their stairs, their beautiful white couch. We had to get them out. Several times, I simply carried Raffi onto the front stoop in his shirt and socks. Once outside in the cold (it was still, in late March, pretty cold), he would agree to put on shoes and a jacket. Then we would go for a peaceful walk on the eerily empty streets.

We had never lived anywhere so quiet. A residential side street, a back yard-since the kids had been born, these had been our aspiration. But now it was too quiet. People were not hanging out on the corner, nor sitting on their stoops, nor driving around with music playing. One time, a procession of Hasidim drove down our street in vans, blaring music, in celebration of Passover. But aside from that it was just sirens, day and night, taking people down Brooklyn Avenue to Kings County Hospital, or up New York Avenue to Brooklyn Hospital, or along Eastern Parkway to Methodist. In the paper we read about the scenes at these places. We looked at photos of the mobile morgues.

Ms. V's song of the week for those first two weeks was Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds." One of the few things I successfully managed from the school curriculum was to play it over and over again on the Bluetooth speaker. I liked playing the song for Raffi, because, although he wasn't saying anything to this effect, I did suspect that he was scared. Certainly, his parents were. "Don't worry," I would sing to him, "about a thing. / Because every little thing / is gonna be all right." "Stop it, Dada," he would say, because he does not like my singing. I stopped. And, in any case, I wasn't so sure that every little thing was gonna be all right. Every night in the silent house, we heard sirens. Several times those first weeks, the sirens were on our street. Some of our neighbors were disappearing into the maw of the medical system. The father of one of my close friends was in the hospital, on a ventilator.

The reputation of Raffi's school is that it is too strict and academic. But it is also very well managed and welcoming, and Raffi had had a wonderful year there. Ms. V ran a tight ship, but she knew the kids as individuals-what they were good at, and how to motivate them to be their best selves. She knew how to make them feel like they were part of a unit: within a week of being there, Raffi knew the other kids' names, and within a month he knew what a lot of his classmates were like. During our first parent-teacher conference, in the fall, Ms. V went through the required "assessment"-how many letters Raffi knew, how high he could count, which shapes he could identify. We nodded politely, but in truth we did not care. Eventually, she got to the part that interested us: how well Raffi was getting along with other kids. She said that he was doing fine. "There are some kids who come to me and say, 'No one wants to play with me,' " she said. Raffi wasn't like that. We were so relieved.

But now, in the absence of the in-class magic that Ms. V somehow wrought, we were left with the bare bones of the "assessment." Raffi could write an uppercase "A" but not a lowercase one; his "7"s were consistently backward. Every day, we received assignments for letters, counting, reading. Every day, we failed to do them. Raffi just wasn't interested, and, the harder we tried, the more he resisted. Emily and I had by this point split the day in two, with one of us taking the kids while the other "worked." One day, when I had the morning shift, I decided I was going to get Raffi through the first forty minutes of the class schedule no matter what. Through some combination of bribes and punishments and withholding of snacks, plus totally ignoring his brother, I got him to do it. When we were done, I looked up at the clock. It had taken three hours, both of us were exhausted, and Ilya was in tears.

And then there were the Zooms. There were periodic all-class Zooms, some smaller-group Zooms, some Zooms one on one with friends. These turned out to be the most fraught and nerve-racking of all. Sometimes Raffi would sit and talk charmingly with a friend. Other times, he would steal the phone or computer, hang up on his friend, and run into another room and turn on PBS Kids. When it was time for Zoom with his class, he would fidget and make faces; once people started doing cool Zoom backgrounds (one kid was in outer space!), he insisted on making a cool background, also, though our computers were too old to support them. One time, he was behaving so badly that I shut the computer. I thought this was a punishment-tough but fair-but all it taught him was that you could make the whole thing go away. He started shutting the computer whenever he grew bored.

Ms. V was also having a hard time. For the most part, she kept up a brave front, but in one message on our ClassDojo she told us how she was feeling. "I miss seeing you and your children in real life so, so much!" she wrote. "I'm a social being and this sure is a challenge." She promised to come up with a great virtual curriculum. But she didn't know any better than we did what to do with the kids now. This was a situation that no one wanted, that everyone wished would end as soon as possible. Who could get excited about planning a great virtual curriculum when all of us wanted school to just start up again? Everyone was sad, and none of us were allowed to show it, really, because then the kids would know that something was up. But of course the kids already knew.

All of us were in mourning: for our city and its thousands dead, hundreds of thousands out of work; for our school; and, yes, for our year of pre-K. Raffi is a gregarious boy, but he can also be a handful. Some of the kids in his class already had preëxisting friendships. In short, despite Ms. V's assurances, it took a while for us to feel like Raffi was fitting in; by the time March rolled around, we felt that he was. He had friends, and they were adorable, and we were about to enter that golden period of the year when it's nice outside, the sun stays up later, and it's no big deal to make a playdate for the playground or the park because everyone is going to be there anyway, and you as parents can just hang back, relax, and talk a little about grownup things.

Instead of that, we had the King Germ. We had sirens, isolation, death. The only time of day when all of us were happy was when we went to the park, but the park was not without its issues. For the first week and a half of our time in Crown Heights, the playground inside Brower Park was still open, and kids were playing inside it. I repeatedly had to pull the baby, in particular, away from the entrance. Then one day they took down the basketball hoops; a few days later, they finally closed the playground. I was glad they did this. But our world was shrinking.

Alone in that big house, we argued over Raffi's schoolwork. "I don't care if he writes a '7' backward!" Emily kept saying. "He's four years old!" But I didn't want him falling behind and showing up to kindergarten with his backward "7"s when everyone else was already comfortably writing all the way to twenty. And, more social-emotionally, I thought we should at least try to stay tethered to our school, to Ms. V, to his classmates, and doing the homework seemed to me one of the ways we could do so.

We both feared that he would lose interest in school. Emily feared he would lose interest if we pressed him to do the letters and numbers. I feared he would lose interest if he fell behind and grew discouraged. Neither of us had any way of knowing which of us was right.

The last big assignment before spring break was a "report" for Women's History Month. We had failed to do just about every assignment up until then, but this one included a presentation to the class, so I felt that we had no choice but to get it done. For your report, you could talk about a family member or a notable woman from history. Two days before it was due, Raffi and I sat down and read some educational books about Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Amelia Earhart, and Rosa Parks. Raffi waffled a bit, and I asked him whether he wanted to interview his mother or grandmother. When he said no, I pushed him toward Earhart-I felt she had the spirit of adventure and danger that Raffi was into. We read another book that we found online, then watched a couple of short videos.

The next day, Raffi picked out a big stick at the park, brought it home, and made a "sculpture" of Amelia Earhart. It did not in any way resemble a person, much less Amelia Earhart, but I was impressed that he had thought of making a sculpture from a big stick. We also listened to some songs about Earhart. Raffi was fascinated by the fact that she had simply disappeared one day over the Pacific Ocean. He kept asking us if she'd "drowneded." "Probably," we said. He found this to be very interesting information.

The next morning was our big class Zoom. It came during my shift, and I felt great trepidation as it approached. Would Raffi be able to sit through the whole thing? If so, would he be able to keep himself from saying something inappropriate? And how would he react if, as was very likely, someone else had also chosen Amelia Earhart? Would he get mad and slam the computer shut?

Almost every one of the class's eighteen kids showed up to the Zoom. The first boy to present was one of the charismatic leaders of the class. For the women's-history project, he said, he had drawn a squirrel. He showed us the drawing. But it was a demon squirrel, he said. And here were its scary demon ears and its scary demon eyes. He kept going on about the demon squirrel, and it took a while for everyone, including Ms. V, to realize that this had nothing to do with Women's History Month. Finally, she stopped him. "You did an interview with your mom," she said. "Do you remember anything from that?"

The boy thought earnestly for a second and then said, "No."

And on it went. The kids were four and five years old; no one blew us away with their erudition and command of the subject matter. Two kids had chosen Michelle Obama, and two had chosen Rosa Parks, but no one else had chosen Amelia Earhart. Finally, toward the end of the meeting, it was Raffi's turn. Right away he froze up, but Ms. V coaxed it out of him. "What job did Amelia Earhart have?" she asked. "Was she a veterinarian?" "She was a pilot!" Raffi said. And he managed to say that she had crossed the Atlantic Ocean. So far, so good. Ms. V decided to push him just a little bit more. "What is one more thing you can tell us about her?" she said. Raffi thought about it. I was sure he was going to launch into a dark monologue about how she had disappeared one night over the Pacific and died a violent death, but instead the thing that popped into his head was that, when she was little, she had built a ramp in her back yard and ridden down it in a wooden box, showing her early daredevil nature. It had been mentioned in both books we read, as well as in a PBS Kids cartoon he'd seen.

"O.K.," Ms. V said. "Is that something that you want to build in your back yard?" It was a more complicated question than she realized. "I could build it here," Raffi said, of the house where we were staying, "but at our real house where we live there's no room." And then he launched into an amazing monologue about real estate and friendship-about how he was going to ask the construction workers across the street to build us an apartment that would have a view of his friend J's house, because the building they were putting up was going to obstruct our current view of J's house, and Raffi always needed to see J, and also A, because they had been his friends since preschool. When he finally stopped, there was a stunned silence. "Wow," Ms. V said. "Thank you for that." I felt tremendous relief and pride and love; I kissed Raffi on the forehead. We had survived the class-wide Zoom! And I felt like I had just lost about two years of my life.

That day, we got word from our friends that they were coming back to Brooklyn. We were devastated, but, as soon as we got back to our apartment, we found to our surprise that we were happier. It was our crappy stuff, our view of a giant construction site out the window, our weird neighbors. We no longer had to worry about what the kids were doing to the couch, the refrigerator, the floor. "We can eat on this couch, right?" Raffi said. Yes. That couch wasn't ever going to look good again. They could eat on it all they wanted.

I went back to our friends' house one last time with Raffi to clean up. It took all day. Raffi "helped" for a while and then grew bored. I had no choice but to let him watch five straight hours of television. While cleaning, I got word from my friend that his father had died. He was seventy-four years old and had six grandchildren.

Back at our place, with our own dilapidated stuff and our couch that you could eat on, we kept having arguments about the homeschool situation. Emily thought the Zooms were so stressful and the homework so boring that we should drop out and develop our own curriculum. I argued that I was incapable of developing my own curriculum. She accused me of trying to get an A in pre-K. It was true that I wanted an A.

In a moment of desperation, wondering what we should do about Raffi's schooling, I thought of my second-grade teacher in Brookline, Massachusetts, Marcia Lynch. Almost forty years later, I still remembered her class. We sat on the rug instead of at desks and wrote for what seemed like hours in our journals. I never had such an experience again, and I wondered how and why she had done it. Some years before, when I published my first book, she had written to say that she was proud of me, so I had her contact information. I went to my car for some peace and quiet and called her on the phone.

Lynch told me her story. She had grown up in rural southern Massachusetts, not on a pasture but near one; whenever she and her siblings grew bored, their parents would send them outside, and they would go look at the cows. "There wasn't this idea that you needed to entertain kids," she said. "Parents believed that kids would find their own way." She decided to become a teacher and, in the nineteen-seventies, attended Wheelock College, in Boston, for her master's in early-childhood education. The environment there was progressive, even radical. Her professors believed that you could teach the fundaments (reading, math) through just about anything-music, or history, or taking a walk in the woods-that you didn't have to divide them all into separate units. One of Lynch's professors took the class to an abandoned lot in Boston and asked them to try to figure out what had once been there. Lynch found this tremendously exciting-the idea that you could teach people history, archeology, in an abandoned lot.

Lynch's classroom, at the Driscoll School, in Brookline, was a living experiment in education. The belief that kids would find their own way pervaded everything we did there. Ms. Lynch gave us large, black, hardbound notebooks to "journal" in, and we were supposed to write whatever we felt like. As I remember, most of my "journals" were stories about spaceships and monsters engaged in epic battles. But Lynch told me that she could learn a lot from those journals. If kids were going through trouble at home, monsters might be more prevalent in the journals, or perhaps dreams of escape. Lynch could tell if someone was happy or unhappy. And we could tell that she cared about us.

Forty years later, Lynch could still remember most of the kids in our class, and had kept in touch with many of them. She had continued teaching until her retirement, continued having kids sit on the floor and write in journals, even as the over-all direction of schooling in America changed. First, there was No Child Left Behind, and then other tests and standards. Lynch did not think these were evil, exactly. But she did think they ate away at a teacher's time. "There are only so many hours in the day," she said. "If you're spending time to prepare for those tests, then, if you have a teacher in there who is creative, if you have a professional who wants to do things that are exciting, she will not have time to do them."

She decried the push-also countrywide-to have kids reading earlier. "They will read when they're ready to read," she said. "When their minds are ready." She gave the example of teaching kids how to tell time on an analog clock. If you try it with first graders, it won't make a lot of sense to them. But kids in second grade grasp the concept immediately and find it interesting. She noted that teachers generally say that, by the third grade, it is impossible to tell whether a child learned to read in kindergarten or in the second grade.

She gave me some tips on what to do with Raffi. She suggested going around the neighborhood on a "word hunt," writing down words we saw and then puzzling them out once we got home. She suggested having him do an inventory of some objects in our home-our cutlery, for example-and practice his counting that way. She suggested filling up the bath with objects and seeing which floated and which did not, and trying to figure out why.

She said that it was a difficult time to be a kid-not understanding exactly why you can't see your grandparents, and why people on the street don't want to engage with you. She said that it was also, of course, a difficult time to be a parent. She hoped, she said, that Trump would not be elected to a second term.

She said, "I hope someday you look back on this and think, 'I got to spend so much time with them.' " With our kids. " 'Now I never get to spend time with them.' "

On both counts-looking back fondly and not spending any time with them-it sounded like a beautiful dream.

Somehow or other, around the time of that phone call, our situation stabilized. We cut Raffi's schoolwork down to the bare minimum-letters, numbers, name. We cut the Zooms to one per week. And the rest of the time we spent outside in the park: digging for worms, climbing rocks, building "pizzas" out of dirt. Ilya got to follow Raffi around and try to imitate everything he did, including, in recent weeks, talking, which is something he hadn't been doing much before. And Raffi has been feeling much better ever since we and other parents started to feel more relaxed about letting our kids play with one another at the park. On one such playdate, Raffi got an amazing gash in his forehead from a big stick wielded by one of his friends. As I carried him up to the ranger station to get some iodine and a Band-Aid, I felt like he was getting to have a childhood again.

When the protests over the killing of George Floyd began, we went to several, and we watched many more out our window. Raffi's questions since then have ranged from the obvious, based on his extensive TV viewing-"Why are the police acting like bad guys? They're supposed to save the day!"-to the challenging-"Why are some Black people policemen?"-to the terrifying: "Why do the police shoot Black people?" Raffi asked me to show him a picture of the man who was killed, and I pulled up an image of George Floyd on my phone. Then he asked me to show him a picture of another man I had told him about, Eric Garner. I did so, and, together, we looked quietly at the photo.

We have missed school very much during this time-have missed its warmth, its diversity, its sense of a common cause. That is what school is, I've come to understand. It is child care, yes, for parents who need to work. And it is some instruction in reading and writing and math. But, most of all, it is a shared experience-of play, and conflict, and even boredom-overseen by professionals who know what they're doing.

Schools will reopen in the late summer and fall-some online only, some full time, some in a mixed format. I think it will be great for Raffi to get back into the school setting, even if everyone is masked, and socially distanced, and he's not allowed to chew on a pencil before handing it to a classmate. For everyone's safety, I hope they spend as much time as humanly possible outside, and, while I worry about the distance learning during the off days, my hope is that both teachers and parents have learned the hard way what works and what doesn't work for kids at particular ages. Raffi has made his stand against distance learning, and I respect it.

A Guide to the Coronavirus

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Through the fog of memory, and despite everything that's happened since, I still vividly remember the last day of school. In the morning, I listened to the Mayor on the radio insisting that the schools would not close. Too many vulnerable children got their only meals at school, he said.