Cole W. Camplese

Work Reflection: Importance of Building Something

We make things all the time in this business ... websites, digital bits of stuff, documents, and everything in between. I have found that as my career arc has moved forward (and admidtely upward) the amount of tangible stuff I make has decreased. I post all sorts of stuff quickly all over the place, but I have gotten very bad at pointing to the things I am most proud of and wanted to try and challenge that. I was reminded the other night that I even though I am not making the same kinds of things, I have been heavily involved in new forms of maker behavior the last few years and I feel like I need to reflect on that a bit today.

The other night I had the pleasure of hosting a group of the TLT Faculty Fellows at a dinner. Not all of our current and past Fellows could be there (for all sorts of reasons), but the ones that were there all greeted me with a giant smile, hearty handshakes, and hugs. We spent a few hours having some of the best and uplifting conversations I have had around our shared core values of teaching, research, learning, and technology. It was really what I needed in this moment.

Then today it hit me -- I made that. I wrote a proposal several years ago that was basically laughed at ... "no way faculty will want to hang out with IT people!" I didn't listen. I modeled my ideas after the vision that I discovered a couple of years earlier while visiting the Berkman Center in Boston. I didn't listen. That is the lesson. A lesson I need to start remembering more. There are times that you get to the point where you know too much to challenge the status quo -- you fall into the "that will never work" crew. I need to stop listening -- and I am talking about both to those around me pushing those messages and my own inner voice. I need to remember that not listening can lead to great and unexpected things.

TLT Fellows will play a critical role in the success of many initiatives across ITS. Fellows will become essential to the future of TLT’s network as connecting points of intelligence, insight, energy, and knowledge-sharing. TLT Fellows will help to drive projects from within and to share fresh ideas and skills with the larger Penn State community. In addition to the two Fellow programs contained within this proposal, you will find a request for permanent funding for a related set of projects called Engagement Awards. Our goal for our Fellows is that they further work that we agree upon and help TLT create tangible outcomes that can be shared widely with the teaching and learning community through presentations, publications, and new services.

If you want a recipe for successfully engaging faculty on your campus, you need something like this. This isn't secret sauce or anything as so many people do these kinds of things, but you need to care deeply about more than just the projects. You have to care about the people. This isn't about money, it is about finding ways for people to make deep and meaningful connections -- and trust me, that takes time. As I sat and listened to the group talk and laugh the other night I was struck by a sense of deep satisfaction. A satisfaction that comes from making something, a space that provides an opportunity to do the thing I value most deeply -- connections to each other.

I could write a 12 step program on how to launch something like this, but I can boil it down to one simple thing -- build a team that is so excited by thinking, sharing, and cultivating connections. Killer relationships will follow. Amazing inventions will happen. New forms of teaching practice will emerge. Innovations will go from thought to reality. And "that can't work" will go to, damn this is awesome.

Finding a way to make space for connections is the thing that I am reflecting on today and so that is what you are going to get.

I know this is a miserable post -- I haven't taken the time to write in ages and it shows, but I need to start taking some stock in the things I am building and have built again. All of this is part of a larger eco-system of thought and action ... I should get back to celebrating it and the people who have given so much to help make it real. I'll consider this a step back onto that path.

Fellows Predict Future

Some of the results from the TLT Summer Faculty Fellows are starting to flow out. I can't even tell you how much great stuff came to life working with Stuart Selber, Chris Long, Carla Zembal-Saul, and Ellysa Stern Cahoy! Just an awesome summer.

I'll pull a real post about it together in the coming days (or weeks). For now, a pointer to an article from the TLT site on Cahoy's work written by our own Mary Janzen (who is a killer blogger in her own right). So much of what these four investigated with us this Summer will form the basis fo much of our work the next couple of years.

Cahoy calls the combination of literacy skills she has been investigating "digital literacy." Digital literacy is "a merging of several literacies, including information literacy, technology literacy, media literacy, and visual literacy," she explains, "and also incorporates new skills that students will need to succeed when they graduate and enter the workplace. This includes content creation skills like podcasting, video creation, and blogging. Digital literacies help students learn how to use information ethically to create new works that are collaborative, socially driven, and contain a powerful message."

CogDog Visits PSU

Over the last two days I've been lucky enough to spend time with Alan Levine here at my own campus. Alan decided to make the long drive from a weekend gig in NYC to spend time with a couple of friends -- our CIO and Alan went to high school together! When Alan told me he was coming in, I didn't have to twist his arm too hard to spend some time meeting with people and giving a presentation to a group. We did our usual community as committee approach, set up a wiki, and used twitter to get people to attend. In a matter of days we had over 125 people registered!

The last couple of days have been a real blast letting Alan see lots of stuff going on in and around Teaching and Learning with Technology at PSU. Alan got to hang out with our Educational Gaming Commons team, the Digital Commons group, talking with people about our Informal Learning Spaces, and just getting to know people. I was lucky enough to have Alan over to dinner where we created a new way to visualize information, watched while Alan read my two year old a bedtime story (I guess that is "analog storytelling"), and just had a great time enjoying a Cuizoo inspired homemade, local meal. Last night I was joined by Alan and a couple of other colleagues at Otto's to enjoy another local meal. All in all, the informal parts of his visit have been not only fun, but flat out inspiring to quite a few people on my team and beyond. Alan took some time to blog about it earlier today.

Yesterday afternoon Alan did his 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story to close to packed room in Foster Auditorium in the Penn State Library. One of the things I noticed was that there were lots of new faces in the crowd -- that is really exciting to me! The thing that I loved about the session upon further reflection is just how interesting it was to see the same story told with so many different tools. The funny thing is that my initial thoughts were the opposite -- he should use different stories with each tool, but after thinking about it I started to realize that the tools themselves are somehow linked to the outcome of the story. I was happy to read that my friend and colleague, Chris Long, took something similar from the session ... Chris says it much better than I do.

This is a significant and important insight. It not only forces us to attend to the myriad Web 2.0 modes of digital expression that are open to us, but also, and more significantly, to ask how these modes impact the content we create, engage, critique and experience.

The other thing I am thinking about with this talk is how it works to focus on the notions of storytelling as a real form of discourse. That there is a process to good storytelling that can (and should) be taught. The intensity of the "tool selection portion" is balanced very well with the introduction of the narrative itself. I think it is a talk that requires some post event thinking ... it is so overwhelming at first and then it all starts to settle in. I know that I've had that conversation this morning with several colleagues and it made quite the positive impact. Just as an aside, I was looking around the room and noticed how engaged people were not only with what Alan was saying, but also with how many people were going to the various sites while he was sharing them. Great, great session!

The day wrapped up with a panel conversation that had ETS Faculty Fellows (Chris Long, Carla Zembal-Saul, and Ellsya Cahoy), myself, and Alan -- moderated by our CIO Kevin Morooney. I'd be kidding myself if I didn't feel a bit intimidated to be a member of that group. We had a sweeping conversation related to digital literacy, open education, disaggregation, the Academy, adoption of technology, cultivation of faculty, and so much more. The questions pushed us to answer and expand -- and when you have a couple of educational technologists, a philosopher, a librarian, and an expert in education the conversations got deep. It was a professional highlight for me. The questions and the conversations made the whole thing sparkle in my mind.

I am in love with these kinds of opportunities ... where else can you find such a diverse set of people participating in that kind of depth of conversation on a Tuesday afternoon? It continues to be part of my professional goals to make sure conversations like this continue to happen on our campus. Conversations that challenge us as a community to engage in a meaningful and complex dialogue that can work to move us forward. I continue to be humbled by the people and passion I see around me. I send a huge thank you out to everyone who helped, participated, came, and just enjoyed!

Reflections on Academic Computing

I know I'm not even remotely qualified to do the topic of reflecting on academic computing justice. I am a newbie at all this with less than a dozen years of experience in this environment. Quite frankly I didn't really understand my role in higher education until I came to ETS as the director a little over three years ago. I didn't realize that my work was done to support and promote the scholarship of the academy. I had this strange idea that it was to do what I wanted to do. I guess one thing that has kept me around is that (without even knowing it) somewhere along the line my interests aligned with some of the needs of my environment. Lots of this thinking is coming from participation in Project Bamboo, an initiative designed to think about what research support looks like in the Arts and Humanities. Its made me rethink how we can really engage with non-traditional computing disciplines in important ways.

With that said, I have been thinking very intensely about what it means to return to the notion of academic computing. Not too long ago my parent organization, Information Technology Services, was called the Center for Academic Computing -- the CAC. I still hear faculty ask me if I work in the CAC ... I think the change was made when some folks recognized that we had taken on the overall responsibility for running a bulk of the centralized information technology services -- not just supporting academic computing. Computing used to happen in a lab or in small verticals where faculty were doing new and interesting things with their research. Computing is now just technology and it is everywhere. The verticals are gone ... we live in a flat horizontal world on University campuses just like everyone else out there. Everywhere you turn technology is a part of it -- and our organization (for the most part) provides the infrastructure for that to happen. We do services, and we do them well (IMO). That's not to say we aren't supporting academic computing, but it isn't the overt assumption for us as a whole like our name once implied.

Even in ETS where our mission is to support the appropriate use of technology for teaching and learning we find ourselves in the services business. In many ways I think I want that to stop. I want to explore how our infrastructure is empowering a new stack, one focused on the production of knowledge. I know that sounds a bit crazy when you look around and see a staff built to do design and development ... but when I stand back I see that we are positioned perfectly to extend our reach through a greater investment in supporting intellectual activities. That doesn't mean we stop making things -- on the contrary we may make more things, we just work to expose them at a deeper level to help others connect dots in their practice.

Last summer we invited Dr. Carla Zembal-Saul to be a resident Faculty Fellow. She came here to work with us to explore the Blogs at Penn State as an ePortfolio platform. What we are now left with is an amazingly deeper appreciation for her work, our work, and what the notion of reflective practice is really all about. Her engagement here at ETS was so successful it has pushed me to create a systematic Faculty Fellow program where we will hopefully be able to attract the best minds from across our campus who want to work with smart people doing interesting things. What we hope to do is align faculty scholarship to our areas of interest and expertise. We already have one slot filled for this summer and I am am working on two additional Fellowships that would be hopefully as transformative as Dr. Zembal-Saul's.

What I am imagining is an environment that is built around innovative thought, faculty participation, and a continuous cycle of investigation. If I return to Carla for a second I can share how this works with a real example. We do Hot Teams to investigate emerging technologies and identify ways they can be used to support teaching, learning, and research. We introduce these technologies via pilots and get interested faculty involved with using them in their classrooms. In some cases faculty participate in our Engagement Projects and start to really do interesting things by redesigning learning environments. Some of these faculty push us and ask us really hard questions that require us to work really closely over a period of time -- this can lead to a Fellowship. During the Fellowship we stretch to understand their research and they stretch to understand the affordances of the technology ... we build something new together, test it, and share what we learn locally and nationally. In the case of Carla, we just released the Pack it Up feature for ePortfolios that allow students to submit large quantities of digital evidence from their online ePortfolio in a simple package for program review and general assessment offline. It never would have happened without the collaboration.

So as I reflect on the notion of academic computing I realize we are still participating as we were designed to, but perhaps aren't thinking that way. I may have simply lost sight of how hard it is to put it all together, but when we attack it as a strategic direction some really important things tend to emerge. I am going to be gathering more of the stories about how we are doing really interesting work in support of scholarship and they will be exposed more widely over at the ETS site. For now I'm interested in how you see all this playing out ... are we crazy? Is this is worthy of a get together to discuss? I am also thinking about how to invite those from the outside to be Affiliates of ETS, but that is a post for another day. Thoughts?

Looking in Both Directions

As we start a new semester here at the University I thought it might be important to share some thoughts about how this summer has been different than others for me. My reflections are primarily related to work, but who knows if some personal stuff emerges. This summer has bolted by just as others before it ... the difference I see here is how perspective changing, progressive, proactive, connected, and encouraging this one has been. I've probably worked harder this summer than many in the past -- and that includes the years doing nothing but maintenance, painting, and the other odd jobs I did in high school, college, and during grad school. This summer I moved my thinking in new directions and we tried things as a group within ETS that stretched us and pushed us forward. The results, in my mind, have laid the groundwork for what I hope will become the root of our most substantial progress to date.

My personal and professional tipping point came early in the summer when I traveled to Harvard University and attended the Berkman at 10 event. To say it was transformative would be an understatement. The idea that spending a few days around people who spend their time thinking critically about how the Internet empowers and should promote openness was an amazing opportunity. I walked away from Berkman with a new clarity that I have tried in the subsequent months to embrace in new ways. I am even more focused on the notion that the Internet is a platform that not only provides new affordances, but actually encourages openness, collaboration, and community. Getting to hear people whom I have spent years reading was a thrill ... getting to have dinner with David Weinberger and to engage in real conversations with he and others at our table was a thrill. When I say thrill I don't mean it was like getting to meet a rock star, it was an opportunity to test my own legs as I was working through my own ideas that I feel have been built on their foundations. It left me oddly depressed and so motivated at the same time. It pushed me to want to create an environment like the Berkman Center here at my own Institution that works to create a knowledge community and I am working towards that lofty goal.

Organizationally, the thing that jumps out at me as the biggest move this summer was the opportunity to add Dr. Carla Zembal-Saul to ETS as a resident faculty fellow this summer. I'm not going to recount her work here only because she and the rest of the team did a masterful job of capturing it in the ETS wikispace. Her work, connected to our staff and relationships, have built new opportunities that I think will lead to a real change in the ways faculty and students embrace the notion of reflection as a learning tool. The portfolio work she pushed at us has changed the conversation in our organization and it has forced us to see it as a larger opportunity. It pushed to get our stuff together to the point where we can now point to tangible projects that will see students and faculty engaging in portfolios in a systematic way within at least two colleges on campus. That to me is very exciting. Carla's work has not only inspired us within ETS, it has had an interesting effect on other innovative and open thinking faculty -- they are encouraged to be fellows. I think going forward this has the potential to change our dynamic with faculty across the board and will help us create a sustainable model for engagement that could grow deep roots.

The idea that our local community could come together and create a first rate professional development event that brings together over 100 people is stunning. The fact that it happen is even more incredible to me. The Learning Design Summer Camp represents the change that is happening across our Institution -- there are fresh ideas, fresh faces, and fresh energy that are pushing us all to do a better job at creating shared expectations. The LDSC08 represents the movement that is underway across campus -- one that points to the power of community in a real a sense. This is the real life, meat space, embodiment of web 2.0 ... it is tangible evidence that social networks, if fostered and supported, are real. That Twitter can coalesce real face to face interaction that is both meaningful and lasting. The events leading up to and at the LDSC08 are proof that we can be a force to be reckoned with. What we do with this new found power is the critical question.

There is so much more that went on this Summer that warrants individual posts ... the ones above are the ones I see as having sustainable impact at PSU. We've done quite a bit more -- new versions of Adobe Connect, a new and enhanced publishing platform in the blogs at Penn State, achieved goals with iTunes U that are still unspeakable, built plans for a new graduate student initiative to impact discipline specific activity, put in a half dozen new Digital Commons facilities across our Commonwealth, embarked on a project to impact thousands of composition students, and so much more. It was a good Summer ... We honestly won't know the real impact for months, but things are moving in a great direction. A huge thank you that made it so special to me and who have put their heart and soul into making vision a reality.