Cole W. Camplese

Talking Design with Designers

Day before yesterday my colleague, Allan Gyorke, and I gave a talk to the Instructional Design and Development group at the Penn State World Campus related to Digital Expression. It is a talk I've done before and it really focuses on the platforms PSU has been working to deliver for the last 18 months or so. The talk frames the need by looking relatively deeply at the changing characteristics of our undergraduate resident population -- they are very mobile, very smart, and very plugged into social spaces (read, Facebook). I use a bunch of PSU statistics gathered by our assessment team as well as numbers from the Pew Internet and American Life Project team.

After the warm-up I tend to dive into the tools we are highlighting -- Blogs at Penn State, Podcasts at Penn State, Wikis at Penn State, as well as the Digital Commons initiative and a few others. What made this conversation different was the fact the audience was a group of instructional designer and technologists -- certainly a fun group to talk to. I was struck by how interested most of them seemed to be in the tools and how willing they were to discuss how we might think about using them. I was also struck by how excited many of them got as we continued to talk. It was a very fun hour and a half ... it left me thinking two things -- I would very much like to spend more time with groups of interested designers who are in the midst of creating lots of learning spaces and that I have now done this presentation for about a dozen audiences at Penn State but have failed to deliver it to my own staff. That last point hit me last night as I sat on the back patio with a glass of wine -- talk about having one of those reality check, "duh" moments. That is obviously something I have to do.

The thing about the talk is that it really tries to define one of my core strategies -- enabling opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to engage in the art of digital expression within the context of higher education. One of my goals is to create a platform that provides for supported use of digital tools to not only enhance teaching and learning, but that can creep into everyday life. The other thing it does is illustrates how quickly we are all moving ... two years ago these platforms didn't exist in a coherent way on our campus. The talents of many people have made it a reality.

Being Digital

I really couldn't think of a title for this post ... I wanted to share a quick story about the Digital Commons project we are currently working on. The Digital Commons is an initiative to provide a common set of tools at all locations of Penn State that enable students to create digital artifacts in a supported way. Too often we (we being administrators and instructors) have these expectations that all our students can easily envision and create digital media. I mean if you look at some of the reports that people like Pew Internet and American Life Project provide you may get the picture that every single person under the age of 25 is capable of creating content that will be shared at youtube. While it is true that there are a whole bunch of these kinds of kids running around our campuses it is just as true there are a whole heck of a lot more who can't. Just reality.

The Digital Commons is an attempt to help promote and support the notion of being digital. We work hard to encourage faculty to allow evidence of learning in the form of videos, blog posts, podcasts, and more but when they assign it we just sort of assume the kids will just figure it out. Most of the time these kids do, but they do it on their own machines with substandard software tools and without access to things like digital cameras, green screens, lighting, etc -- and forget about any education as it relates to things like using lighting, production, planning, or even copyright. That's where the Digital Commons comes in -- it provide more than the equipment, it provides a framework. It is a killer project that has potential for real transformation written all over it.

We are working really hard to install five of these studios across the Commonwealth of PA this Summer. That is tough -- there are more factors at play here than are imaginable. Communicating the potential and requirements to each campus is very difficult given the time and geographic challenges. Today we made the first attempt at doing that ... instead of getting in the car and visiting each campus we ate some of our own dogfood and used Adobe Connect Pro (you know, Breeze). We have a killer ACP setup here at University Park so we paired it with a call in line and delivered the hour long briefing to multiple campuses from the comfort of one of our conference rooms. I couldn't be there -- I was scheduled to be off site having a meeting at a local restaurant ... the place had wifi, so I got there early and pulled out the MacBook Pro. I simply plugged in my earphones, fired up the browser, connected to the ACP meeting, and dialed the conference call with Skype. It was nothing short of amazing -- the technology worked and the briefing went exceptionally well. I took a screen cap of the whole thing:

The Digital Commons project is one to watch ... I will be sharing more as it all becomes clear, but this is one that we feel very good about. By providing a common platform at all locations there is so much we can bundle under the overall umbrella. Things are off to a very good, but very demanding start. Stay tuned ...

Social Stuff at PSU

Tomorrow I am presenting to folks from the PSU Libraries. Originally this was going to be a small discussion, but it appears as though it has turned into a bigger deal. The talk will be available via the Libraries use of Media Site Live (Windows Media Player required) so tune if you are at all interested. The talk is tomorrow at 9 AM here on the east coast.

I think I'll probably reuse much of what I did at Maricopa with a little more hands-on demo time. We shall see how it all shakes down. What I am hoping for is an active audience and lots of conversation. Again, we shall see. Should be fun!

My slides are available over at my PSU Blog.

Should We be Worried?

As we race towards the release of our Penn State Blog pilot I am bumping my head into the same question over and over again -- will our students care? This isn't really something I am being asked by people in general, this is one of those nagging questions that one of the various voices in my head is repeating. We all know that students do live fairly digital lives and the fact of the matter is that they are doing it more and more -- especially when it comes to participation in social sites. Not sure if you've heard of MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube but PSU students have. Here's just a couple of data points for you from a November PSU PULSE Survey on social software usage at our University:

• 83% of Penn State students use Facebook (with the number at 90% at the University Park campus)
• 50% of Penn State students report having a MySpace account
• 85% of Penn State students report watching video on YouTube

So if you look at those numbers you can see they are consumers and producers of the digital lifestyle. You might argue that simply watching a video isn't really taking part, but if you consider that about 16% of our students have posted video you see that there is a solid percentage contributing (BTW, at 80,000+ students 16% is a nice number). The results of the survey are not really surprising, but they do paint a very interesting picture for us to build a case for new services and opporutnities at the University -- or do they?

At second glance I have to return to my question of will they show up if we build it. I am fumbling over this specific question and I am obviously going to take a wait and see attitude. Will they come out of their existing spaces to participate? Probably not ... but the better question is if we can come up with reasons to pull them out and participate in our environments. The funny thing is that when I say "our" environment I am actually talking about their space. We want to publish their blogs/media/stuff into their personal webspace so they can actually take it with them when they go. I wonder how Facebook feels when you say, "thanks for the free account, but I'd like to take my stuff with me." I can't imagine they make it all that easy.

Another strange thing going on with all this is the Facebook's CEO recent comments about becoming a publishing giant ... relying on new tools within the FB environment to encourage its users to create and contribute stories. I found it both very interesting and disturbing. I can say from experience that it is very hard to maintain identity at too many places ... in other words, blogging in both the FB and at their other PSU sites may be a lot to ask. They spend a lot of time in the FB -- consider that about 25% report spending five hours or more a week in there! I know from other results that is more than they report spending on homework and is close to half of the typical weekly class load!

So, the question is being asked again in my head -- will our students care? I'd like to know what you all think and I am really interested in seeing what we do about making it important to them. Or should we?

Hidden Gems on PSU Podcasting

As I was browsing through the Podcasts at Penn State analytics data for the week I noticed a huge jump in the number of visits (about 2,000 additional for the week). When I jumped over to the specific page that was getting all the hits I was surprised to see the "Honey Bees in Crisis" podcast being done by Carla Zimbal-Saul and her students. Really well done and pulling in some major attention and traffic. It is well worth a visit!

I am heading to Apple with Carla and some of her colleagues from the PSU College of Education very soon to talk to them about some of the great work that is being done in our College of Ed. Things like this show just how well they are at integrating technology in appropriate ways to support teaching and learning. I'd love to get Carla to do a guest post on the project ... I wonder if she would consider that?

I Hesitate Doing This

Yesterday PSU was in the news twice for our podcasting project. First we were in the Daily Collegian with a relatively well written piece on podcasting lectures. Then in the afternoon, our local CBS affiliate showed up at my office (on 15 minutes notice) to interview me for the same purpose. Both pieces have a little part about students getting out of going to class b/c of the podcast ... we aren't seeing that, but the pilot is still young. At any rate, I woke up this morning to about a dozen or so emails about the TV piece last night -- it was already on youtube.

When I first watched it I realized I have some weight to lose and when I told my wife that the "camera adds 30 pounds" she asked quickly, "how many cameras did they have on you." So, I reluctantly post the piece below and will have to look the other way for weeks when I visit my blog so I don't have to be reminded of it all ... actually I'll probably pull it after enough people make fun of me.

Penn State on iTunes U and Podcasting Talk

I gave a talk at the ITS Forum yesterday with a colleague here at Penn State related to Podcasting and Penn State on iTunes U yesterday. Jimmy V focused on the hard core technology behind making the iTunes U system work in our environment, while I did a more general talk focusing on why we would do podcasting at the Institutional level, an update on the state of podcasting in general, and a full on demo of our iTunes U space. Reaction was fairly positive ... there is a podcast and a videocast of the session being produced -- I'll link that when it is available.

Studiocode

Another Hot Team result from the ETS team ... this one is focused on Studiocode. SC is a software tool that enables an amazing set of video tagging and analysis features. No need for me to describe it all here when you can jump over to the ETS Blog and read about it for yourself. As always with a Hot Team, there is a white paper to download and enjoy.

iTunes U vs Roll Your Own

Yesterday I did a quick post on iTunes U here at Penn State -- really it was a plea for help on meta data management ... but, since we have not really announced iTunes U in a formal way I think it has started an interesting question, what do we do with our own Podcasts at Penn State site now? I had originally posted this as a reply to the comment on yesterday's post, but it got me thinking about the question of iTunes U vs Rolling Your Own ...

It is a good question and one that we are constantly tossing back and forth. On one hand, having developed our own space gives us the opportunity to innovate on our terms -- that is a good thing. On the other hand Apple is good at this stuff and is likely to continue to create new thinking in the space that we may be just playing catch up to. If I did a balanced score card -- not a bad idea -- I think at the moment it would come out tipping towards iTunes U. The lure of not having to maintain and grow yet another service (YAS) for my team is a very attractive alternative.

At the moment the Podcasts at Penn State site does not give us an authenticated podcast space ... in other words, if you post it in our space anyone can see it. That doesn't matter to me, but for the vast majority of faculty that doesn't fly. iTunes U is by nature a secure podcasting platform -- obviously we can control the public v private content, but it is much more like a CMS/LMS toolset. Some have criticized Apple for creating a "walled garden," but in the realities of higher education it is the model people are used to and seemingly prefer. I see a day somewhere in the future where we can open this stuff up, but we aren't there yet.

Our vision for the Podcasts at Penn State site are to move it to a "podcasting hub" of sorts -- a place where faculty, staff, and (eventually) students can go to learn how to podcast, get equipment recommendations, listen to sample podcasts, collect lesson ideas, discuss how they are using podcasts, and other applied things that support the appropriate use of the technology. When our Fall pilot is over, I envision posting the final report there as well. Could it grow into a home for a community of practice? I also see it as a space that will evolve into a directory to highlight the best content at Penn State on iTunes U. I wonder what others would like to see?

Can it be compared to where we all were 10 years ago with the LMS/CMS decisions that we were facing? A lot of people set out to build their own, a lot of people just sort of hung back and waited, and a lot of people went out and bought WebCT, FirstClass, or whatever at the time. I'm not sure it is the same thing, but I have been through the, "let's build our own solution" cycle too many times and with something as potentially complex (and popular) as this I have to ask myself if it is worth it. I would much rather be in the business of inspiring and supporting the appropriate use of technology for teaching and learning and leave the heavy lifting of designing, developing, and supporting enterprise applications to the big boys. At the end of the day I just hate it when something jumps up and bites me in the ass -- for either building or buying. What is the right long term move? Good question ...

Faculty Projects and Engagement Awards

There was an article (subscription required) in the Chronicle today about a Harvard Law professor planning to use SL to host parts of his course -- not a novel idea, but one that shows there are people willing to jump at new opportunities. After reading it, I spent a few minutes bouncing around the professor's blog and found a great pointer to a post showing some of the work in action. It may not be novel, but it sure looks interesting and could lead to some very engaging opportunities. I smell a pilot plan for the Spring.

This leads me to expose a few thoughts we tossed around yesterday as it relates to engaging faculty. Currently we do a thing called the MTO (Multimedia Teaching Object). The idea behind the MTO is that we do a scheduled call for proposals by PSU faculty and then help those that are accepted build a teaching object -- usually a Flash piece or a series of illustrations. There is more to it -- an open sharing license comes to mind -- but for the most part it is a small program that takes some serious resources and staff time. To do something this focused well, you need a host of developers and instructional designers working at break neck pace to produce very small tangible outcomes. It has a tendency to burn people out.

We started talking about how we could take that program and expand and contract it at the same time. So if you jump out a level from a program like that and created a larger umbrella program that you could create many smaller more targeted opportunities (MTO might be one of them) we could become more strategic and agile with our faculty projects -- I started calling it the Engagement Awards. The idea is if we are researching SecondLife, then we could do a targeted Engagement Award Call related specifically to that -- the same could hold true for podcasting, blogging, wikis, and anything else we have running around in our collective heads. That would get us off the Flash treadmill and into a whole host of opportunities to work with faculty. Every project would be connected to a set of outcomes -- a "profile in success" like piece for our webspaces, a white paper, and hopefully an invitation for the faculty members to participate in our annual TLT Symposium. I am not explaining this very well, but the idea is to create targeted opportunities to engage with faculty throughout the year that are more in line with our resources, interests, and capabilities. I could see many of these targeted calls looking at emerging things that I know faculty would be interested in.

Does this make sense and who is doing this in Higher Education that I could benchmark against?