Staff Dedication and Appreciation

I looked at the calendarized version of JPNS 1010 and we have gone from being a week and a half behind schedule to being less than 2 days behind schedule. This makes me very excited, particularly since it reminds me that we are quite close to finishing off this new and innovative fully online course. Sure, there will be some revisions--we know to expect those, and in fact already have some in the queue--but nothing like what we've had to accomplish already. Our developers Clark Nielsen, Ken Woodward, Clayton Lantz, and especially Eric Liu have all put up with a lot of stress and pressure, but have shown more dedication that I could have expected, so, fellas, accept my thanks!

Opencourseware at UVSC - Moving Forward?

Today I met with the UVSC IP Office to go over our proposed process to allow for the open licensing of UVSC-owned, faculty authored materials. This is necessary because UVSC has ownership over most faculty-authored materials as provided in UVSC Policy 136: Intellectual Property.

So the process I proposed sets up an "open licensing request form" that a faculty or department submits to IP, IP passes to a review committee, and the review committee makes a recommendation to IP. Signatures happen, and the materials are released under a Creative Commons license.

The IP Office seemed very receptive and supportive of opencourseware, and we concurred that opencourseware is a suitable activity for a university. Now we just have to wait for legal counsel to weigh in, and we hope for a complete implementation by March 2008!

Rapid Prototyping and Instructional Design

Disclaimer: most of my previous posts have been fairly rudimentary and objective; this probably qualifies as my first "real" 'blog entry as it tries to fuse my opinion with some of our recent experiences in IDS.

I and several folks on our team are currently in what Janel would rightly call "crisis mode" for a certain online course we're producing. We have been for the past 10 weeks. It's not a comfortable place to be, and much of the additional stress is my responsibility--in part through miscalculating the length of the project's development cycles, and in part by acquiescing to the instructors' wishes for an "on-time" delivery. However, now I'm beginning to reflect on the course of this project, and in fielding a number of complaints throughout the process I have returned to an article I read some years ago on rapid prototyping in instructional design:

Tripp, S. D., & Bichelmeyer, B. (1990). Rapid protoyping: An alternative instructional design strategy. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 38(1), 31-44.
(You can read a summary of the Tripp Bichelmeyer article here.)

The number-one complaint I've heard from folks on the team (myself included!) is that the scope of the project is not clear, and both the instructor and the instructional designer (me) are asking for changes to the tools and the learning media "mid-stream"--that is, as the students progress. But when I analyze those complaints, they lose a lot of their legitimacy.

Unlike other types of design, instructional design has as its highest priority the effectiveness and usability of the learning media for the outcome of learning. What instructional designers deliver to learners is not a product, but an experience. Unlike other media, effective learning media does not entertain, it engages. Technology-facilitated learning media has the potential of providing maximum return for minimal effort. And yet it is still a fairly a new “art”. Though there are principles and best practices, and though instructional designers likely know more about learning and cognition than ever before, there are no easy formulas for designing instruction, and no instructional design will “fit” all instructors, let alone all learners.

Instructional designers design and produce learning media with the assistance of skilled human resources, such as programmers, graphic designers, videographers, etc. In order to provide the optimum learning experience, instructional designers must evaluate the learning media for usability and effectiveness continually, and as early as possible, with the option of immediately revising, rewriting, recreating, or adding to the learning media in a cyclic pattern. As one cycle proves effective and usable, the next cycle begins, based upon the best-practices of the previous, and so on.

Even as the learning media goes into production, instructors should receive formative feedback from learners in each lesson. Formative feedback provides instructors with information as to whether or the not the students are learning, how efficient that learning is, and whether or not the tools that facilitate the learning are frustrating and over-encumbering. When a learner is over-encumbered by extraneous tasks, such as manipulating the technology, learning is inhibited, if not impossible. Such encumbrances must be eliminated as they are discovered.

Scope, therefore, is something that is only recognizably accurate in hindsight for an instructional designer. Scope is a forecast, not a definition.

This idea of instructional design through rapid prototyping may be most necessary when the learning outcomes are skills-based. If you remove the severe time constraints that we’ve been on, this online course is a perfect example of effective instructional design through rapid prototyping. It is also a perfect example of how it is nearly impossible to define scope all at once; the learners have four skills that they must develop, and each skill is dramatically different in how it’s learned and how it’s practiced. Not only that, but as the learners progress through the course, the learning outcomes change, their needs change, and the tools that will best facilitate their skills must also change.

Is there a point at which an instructional design is complete? Not necessarily. Sometimes we finish a project when we’ve shown that we’ve met our learning objectives, sometimes the conclusion is based on more arbitrary factors. Budget, time, personality conflicts—all of these are capable of providing sufficient justification for the conclusion of any given project. But the point is that we are open, we are zen in the way we accept change, we are focused on the learners their experiences, and we base our success on effectiveness more than efficiency.

And though we in Distance Education pride ourselves in outwitting the limitations of time and space, efficiency must still be a principle concern to any director and any project manager. At the same time the process of rapid prototyping and a focus on the learner's experience will help us take learning media from bad to better to best. I don't think the two are necessarily at odds; by practicing the process we can only learn from experience, and our results can surely become better, faster and more efficient. The pay-off is clear; it's merely the mind-sets that are muddled.

--Jared M. Stein

Report on IDS's End-of-Semester Planning Meeting (End of Summer 2007)

Summer 2007 Accomplishments

We related our semester accomplishments to the IDS unit's primary responsibilities as an arm of UVSC Distance Education:

• Janel - Comm 2300; as online instructor and instructional designer this course has been redesigned/enhanced. (IDS responsibility 1)
• Dorothy - Contributed to course maintenance and redesign, particularly BIT courses. (IDS responsibility 1)
• Clark - Contributed to course maintenance and redesign, especially BIT courses. (IDS responsibility 1)
• Eric - Contributed to course maintenance in Vista. (IDS responsibility 1)
• Golf - Contributed to course maintenance in Vista. (IDS responsibility 1)
• Ken - Contributed to course maintenance in Vista. (IDS responsibility 1)
• Jared - Designed and managed production of JPNS 1010 online (IDS responsibility 1, 3, 4, 6)
• Eric - Developing JPNS 1010 (IDS responsibility 1)
• Eric - Began learning Flash. Of particular use in new JPNS 1010. (IDS responsibility 4, 1)
• Ken - Began learning Flash. Of particular use in new JPNS 1010. (IDS responsibility 4, 1)
• Clark - Developed PHP and MySQL functionalities for Flash-based tools in JPNS 1010 on Moodle. This constitutes a major contribution to innovation for language learning and Moodle. (IDS responsibility 1, 3, 4, 5, possibly 7)
• Marc - Faculty training! (IDS responsibility 5).
• Jared - Faculty training for JPNS 1010, ENGL 2200, BIOL 1010, etc. (IDS responsibility 5)
• Janel - Encouraged faculty use of Vista tools. (IDS responsibility 5)
• Jared - Conducted 3 departmental cross-training sessions (Openlearning, Moodle, PowerPoint). (IDS responsibility 9)
• Marc - Transcoded user authentication credentials in Vista (IDS responsibility 9)
• Clark - Developed and maintained Driver's Ed online functionality. (IDS responsibility 7)
• Jared - Coordinated, managed, and assisted on China video production for COMM 3320. (IDS responsibility 1)
• Cheri - Completed captioning of SOC 1010 TV. (IDS responsibility 1, 2)
• Cheri - Improved approaches to captioning with technology (IDS responsibility 3)
• Dorothy - Transcribed video lectures for captioning (IDS responsibility 1, 2)
• Janel - Coordinated TTIX planning meetings and staff assignments. (IDS responsibility 8)
• Jared - With DE Admin directed and planned TTIX 2007. (IDS responsibility 8)
• All - Assisted in execution of TTIX 2007. (IDS responsibility 8)
• Jared - Presented information and training sessions at TTIX 2007 (IDS responsibilities 7, 8)
• Golf, Eric, Clark - Maintained and updated TTIX, DE, and other web site pages and functions (IDS responsibilities 7, 8, 9)
• Jared - Designed and managed new projects and processes for the unit and the department, e.g. Google Docs & Spreadsheets, planning of Intranet site, DE web site, etc. (IDS responsibility 4, 9)
• Golf - Installed, upgraded, and maintained unit hardware and software. (IDS responsibility 9)
• Golf - Discovered an effective web-cam monitoring system. (IDS responsibility 9)
• Golf and Jared - Set up a G: drive backup system (IDS responsibilities 1, 9)
• Clark - Programmed DE web site interfaces and systems. (IDS responsibility 9)
• Jared - Planned and coordinated opencourseware efforts with UVSC administration and Utah State University. (IDS responsibility 6)

Summer's Objectives

We also examined how well we met our Summer objectives. In general, the conclusive answer was, "Not very well."

• Objective 4 was removed in liu of full participation in DE departmental cross-trainings. Be aware that some of you may be called upon to teach one or more cross-training sessions to satisfy my intents for ongoing teaching and learning in our unit. Cross-trainings should be broad enough to appeal to the entire department, but specialized enough to make them attractive and interesting.
• Objective 6 Was removed from the list. The unit agreed that our pilot of Google Docs & Spreadsheets for project, task and time sheet management is satisfactory.
• Objectives not accomplished were held over for Fall 2007.

IDS Objectives & Measures - Fall 2007

At our end-of-semester planning meeting, IDS discussed the following objectives for Summer semester 2007:

Objective 1

Complete 3 course redesigns (one per ID).

Measure(s):

• Redesigned courses have superior usability over CEversions
• Significant new features of Vista are properly utilized
• Faculty guidance, input, and feedback is implemented
• Instructional Designers' all review redesigned courses

Objective 2

Active engagement in opencourseware/open education movements

Measure(s):

• Official OCWC membership status for UVSC
  
• OCW server running public
  
• 10 OCW courses on server
  
• Faculty buy-in

Objective 3

Publish Online Faculty Orientation Modules on the Web.

Measure(s):

• Relevant DE orientation content available via the Web
  
• Some number of assessments or interactions to gauge effectiveness
  
• Integrate Web content into DE Faculty Orientation process
  

Objective 4

Improve Preparations for TTIX 2008.

Measure(s):

• Early and expanded advertising
• Enhanced proposal submission
• Enhanced conference registration
• Online proposal ratings

Objective 5

Create a Distance Education Intranet system for all units.

Measures:

• Increased access to departmental information.
• Better facilitation of departmental communication.
• Staff/area usage statistics and general feedback.

Leave Policy

Here's the skinny on what IDS employees must do in order to have approval for any leave time:

1. All leave must be approved by your direct supervisor before the date/time of absence. This means you must telephone or e-mail and receive acknowledgment before taking leave. If your direct supervisor is not available, go to the next supervisor in line.
2. Once leave has been approved by your supervisor, you must notify all team members who may be affected by your absence. In particular, this refers to other developers or instructional designers who may be depending on you as a teammember on any given project.

Finally, I expect everyone to adhere to their scheduled hours. As you know, you have great liberty to determine your own work schedule; I just ask that you stick to it. The more you stick to your schedule in general, the more flexibility we will allow for exceptions.

Leave Immediately Prior to New Semester

No time-off requests will be accepted 7 days prior to or following the first day of any new semester, except for special circumstances or emergencies.

The first day of Fall 2007 semester is August 22

IDS Staff Profiles

I've collected brief profiles of most of our staff as a snapshot of our current team:

John Krutsch
Sr. Director, Distance Education
* Oversees the operation of the many varied programs in Distance Education
* Created the PowerTools for WebCT
* Openly shares his technical and academic innovations with the world
* Enjoys birding, camping, and all things sci-fi

Jared M. Stein
Director of Instructional Design Services
* Oversees DE course & technology development
* Created the TETC
* Teaches Web design for MCT
* Likes literature, writing, film, card games, and tea

Janel Mitchell
Instructional Designer
* UVSC Distance Education
* Assists Faculty in designing courses for distance delivery
* Project Manager for DE course production
* Created processes for DE course development
* Likes structure and organization
* Enjoys exercise, gardening and going to lunch with friends

Eric Liu
Web Developer
* Creating Japanese 1010 online course
* Helps manage course developer projects
* Assistant supervisor on WebCT CE to Vista migration
* Maintains a number of DE course web sites
* Likes martial arts, tennis, cooking, food of any kind, drawing, coffee and tea

Clark Nielsen
Web Developer
* Working on LI Registration web site
* Developing Moodle integration of Flash language tools for JPNS 1010
* Created a custom quiz lock for Driver's Ed Moodle course
* Interested in writing, video games, snowboarding, traveling, and animation

Michelle H. Erickson
Specialist / Editor
* Edits courses for delivery via DE mediums
* Involved with closed captioning initiative
* Transcribes courses
* Likes writing, photography, "flipping" houses (joint hobby with hubby)

Natthaphon "Golf" Pipatchotikul
Web Developer
* Maintains online courses
* Researches latest technologies
* Develops online exams
* Likes movies, driving, learning new things, playing basketball, and Thai food.

Yoshihito Endo
Course Developer
*Learning CSS/XHTML/XML
* Working on Web CT CE to VISTA migration
* Helping coordinate the development of the new DE Intranet site.
* Enjoys learning and using new equipment and applications, such as Mimio, for use in IDS.
* Likes to go camping with his family, playing Golf by himself, and messing around with computers (This is a lot of FUN!!).

New Course Proposal Signature & Review Process

A couple of things were clarified this morning in our weekly DE Directors' Meeting regarding new course proposals:

1. Dept Chair/Dean signature. We are going to proceed with seeking dept. chair/dean signatures at the course proposal step, not at the development compensation step. John K. has agreed that electronic signatures will be sufficient. We will need to build these into the online proposal submission and review system.



2. IDS has been charged with previewing all new course proposals in our weekly IDS meeting and making a recommendation for the IDS Director to communicate to the Senior Director. Senior Director will cover any final approval at the deans/VP level. We will need to make this process as streamlined as possible in the online system.

Job Description: Course Developer

This description outlines the responsibilities of IDS's Course Developer position. Currently this is a student part-time position filled by Nattaphon "Golf" Pipatchotikul, Ken Woodward, and Yoshito Endo.

Duties & Responsibilities

1. Format, edit, and prepare learning content and materials as directed by Instructional Design Services project leads and instructional designers


2. Create and maintain online learning materials for Distance Education courses using XHTML, Flash, and CSS


3. Construct & complete hybrids and fully online courses within major Learning Management Systems such as WebCT and Moodle


4. Collaborate with peers and project leads on the development of Web-based applications, systems, and projects


5. Work with the Design Center as directed to create, maintain, and improve the visual design of e-learning materials and objects


6. Research current and emerging e-learning technologies such as: wikis, blogs, collaborative or social networking tools, etc.


7. Assist instructional designers in the assessment and evaluation of the usability and effectiveness of Web sites, educational materials, and learning objects.


8. Contribute to idea generation for DE courses and related IDS projects.


9. Other duties as assigned

Job Description: Web Developer

This description outlines the responsibilities of IDS's Web Developer position. Currently this is a regular part-time position filled by Eric Liu and Clark Nielsen.

Duties & Responsibilities

1. Collaborate with Distance Education directors and Instructional Design Services project leads to create Web-based systems and applications using JavaScript, PHP MySQL, PERL, and other client and server side Web technologies


2. Create innovative online learning materials for Distance Education courses using XHTML, Javascript, Flash, and CSS


3. Assist instructional designers and project leads in the organization and supervision of IDS course developers


4. Design, develop, and maintain Distance Education Web sites, intranet sites, and education-related resource sites under the direction of DE Administration and the Director of IDS.


5. Construct complete hybrid and fully online courses within major Learning Management Systems such as WebCT, Blackboard, and Moodle.


6. Research current and emerging e-learning technologies and applications such as: Moodle, SCORM, Flash, AJAX, Common Cartridge, streaming media, etc


7. Contribute to idea generation for DE courses and related IDS projects.


8. Assist instructional designers in the assessment and evaluation of the usability and effectiveness of Web sites, educational materials, and learning objects.


9. Other duties as assigned

Developer Task Lists and Work Log Policy

Task Lists

This is a reminder that everyone in IDS should stay on top of their Task Lists in Google Docs, and keep it current with ongoing projects, assignments, and tasks.

Two more requests re. task lists:

1. Make sure that your tasks have been cleared with your supervisor _before_ you mark them as a"completed"

2. Always move completed tasks to the "completed" sheet of your task list. This will allow quicker scanning of your current tasks.

Time Card/Work Log

You also should keep your Time Card/Work Log current on Google Docs. This is critical for all PT and hourly employees, and highly recommended for FT employees.

Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2007

Tomorrow we kick-off this year's Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange. We have some extremely stimulating presentations scheduled for June 7th and 8th, and invite you all to attend.

Darren Draper of the Jordan School District will be giving this year's keynote presentation.

TTIX is and always will be an open conference with no admission fee, though pre-registration (at the TTIX web site) is required.

If you need info on parking or location, check out our custom Google Map of the UVSC campus.

Vista 4 to Vista 4 Course Migration Process

I've written a new tutorial detailing how to migrate an existing course from one Blackboard Vista 4 server to another Blackboard Vista 4 server--much like we have to do to 100+ courses before the semester begins in two weeks! This tutorial ain't pretty, but it should do the job.

How to Manually Move a Blackboard Vista 4 Course from One Server to Another

This tutorial is especially relevant if your new Vista 4 server has automated or semi-automated course/section/enrollment management like ours does.

LI Courses for Summer 07 Vista Migration

Because LI courses are not offered in the Summer, make a Vista backup and save it to the "G" drive in the course's 073 folder for storage until Fall.

Current Moodle LMS Usage Policy

UVSC's new open educational resources efforts will be officially published through the Moodle learning management system using the Moodle Open MetaMod. In order to justify maintenance of the Moodle server on campus, we will be asking all instructors who wish to use Moodle to make some or all of their content available as opencourseware under a Creative Commons license.

Instructional Design Services' Primary Responsibilities

These have been condensed or expanded from the previous draft of IDS' Role Statement. Note that Setup and maintenance of DE Web and Intranet servers will be moving to Monty's Operations unit:

1. Design, develop, and maintain Distance Education courses and technology-enhanced learning media


2. Ensure the accessibility of all Distance Education learning materials


3. Investigate, research, test-pilot, and report on new distance education technologies and practices to DE faculty and staff


4. Innovate in the fields of instructional design and educational technology


5. Encourage faculty to engage in effective teaching practices through the use of technology


6. Foster openness of educational resources through OCW participation


7. Present to and collaborate with peer institutions and organizations to foster research, innovation, and best practices


8. Spearhead the TTIX conference


9. Support Distance Education units in the accomplishment of their objectives by developing and maintaining Internet-based workflow solutions such as Web sites and Intranet sites

And, of course...

10. Outwit the limitations of time and space

Notes on Blackboard Vista 4 (AP1) Rebuilds

Based on our collaborative construction of ENGL 2010 IN on Blackboard Vista 4 with App Pack 1 last Tuesday, here are some more guidelines and standards for future rebuilds of courses in Vista:

• Quizzes should be exported from CE and imported into Vista at the first Vista screen.


• Course Content Map setting should be set as follows: Manage Course > Course Menu > General Settings > Course Content Map: Display as drop-down


• All HTML content pages must have appropriate but simplified titles, e.g. "Lesson 1 Objectives and Tasks" rather than "ENGL 2010 - Intermediate Writing - Objectives and Tasks", certainly not "[course_#]: [course_title] - page name"


• Remove all WebCT CE hack hyperlinks to activities, e.g. <a href="#" onclick="discussion('Topic 01: Introductions',190023569)">Topic 01: Introductions</a>


• Begin putting all upfront materilas in a Learning Module on the home page called "Course Orientation"


• Learning Modules (lessons) should also be linked directly from the home page in most cases (use a "Lessons" folder if that makes more organizational sense)


• Learning Module's should have, for example, "Lesson X" for title and "Introduction to Z" for description


• Discussion links should be labeled with a "Discussion:" prefix, e.g. "Discussion: Practice Paraphrase"


• Assignment links should be labeled with an "Assignment x:" prefix, e.g. "Assignment 07: Learning to Paraphrase"


• Create and apply Goals to Learning Modules based on stated objectives. Try to identify objectives in collaboration with instructor if necessary.


• Go through each and every page, assignment, and assessment and create and associate Goals as part of a full revision process. This should be done collaboratively with the instructor.


• Create and use Grading Forms collaboratively with the instructor. This can be sold by demonstrating the efficacy of grading with such forms.

I will eventually compile these into a master document with previous notes and guidelines.

IDS Objectives and Measures for Summer 2007

At our end-of-semester planning meeting, IDS discussed the following objectives for Summer semester 2007:

Objective 1
Complete 3 course redesigns in Blackboard Vista.
Measure(s):

• Redesigned courses have superior usability over CE versions
• Significant new features of Vista are properly utilized
  
• Faculty guidance, input, and feedback is implemented
  
• Instructional Designers' all review redesigned courses
  

Objective 2
Active engagement in opencourseware/open education movements
Measure(s):

• Official OCWC membership status for UVSC
  
• OCW server running public
  
• 10 OCW courses on server
  
• Faculty buy-in

Objective 3
by Janel M
Publish Online Faculty Orientation Modules on the Web.
Measure(s):

• Relevant DE orientation content available via the Web
  
• Some number of assessments or interactions to gauge effectiveness
  
• Integrate Web content into DE Faculty Orientation process
  

Objective 4
Ensure ongoing quality learning experiences for all IDS staff.
Measure(s):

• Monthly 2-3 hour training/dev experience on topic of interest or use to all IDS staff
  
• Each staff member to host 1 (breakfast?) training per year.
• Schedule:
• April - Rick C.
• May - Golf P.
• June - Eric L.
• July - Janel M.
• Aug - Cheri D.
• Sept - Jared S.
• Oct - Marc H.

Objective 5
Create a Distance Education Intranet system for all units .
Measures:

• Increased access to departmental information.
• Better facilitation of departmental communication.
  
• Staff/area usage statistics and general feedback.
  

Objective 6
Begin creation of online task/project/error tracking system, (bugzilla).
Measure(s):

• Project assigned and planned.