The inaugural LTI EduCamp was held at UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre on February 18th, 2009. The morning started off with keynote speaker Richard Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at UBC and President of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. He spoke on issues of online freedom and privacy, which are becoming increasingly important for both educators and students. Richard lamented the fact that there has been an explosion of participation online, so that there are now more avenues to inform oneself in an academic context. These avenues have created new concerns over copyright and privacy, ranging from issues of music downloading to the use of RFID in credit cards and drivers’ licenses. Since the changes in technology have been so rapid, lawyers and policymakers are constantly adapting legislation, the provisions of which users need to know. Richard also spoke of the fact that the current political climate has motivated increased data mining, driven by both commercial and governmental needs. Although this process is meant to transform data into information, it is hard to know precisely how this information will be used in the future. For this reason, educators should be careful of where information is stored, particularly when asking students to use third-party applications. The salient issues brought up by Richard created a junction to the next keynote speaker, Brian Lamb, who went on to speak about the use of open technology in education.
Brian, Manager of Emerging Technologies and Digital Content at UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT), made the case for open education. Leaving the moral and ethical arguments usually used to support open education aside, Brian defended the concept and focused on its practical advantages. Using open content in education has various benefits, both in the fact that it decreases the costs of delivery (in some cases eliminating them altogether), augments traditional and new media literacy, and results in the production of genuinely useful public knowledge. Brian used the example of UBC professor Jon Beasley-Murray, who got his students to produce a Wikipedia entry based on a book they were studying in their Spanish Literature class. The professor found that students were highly engaged in the project, adding evidence to the fact that students respond to tasks that are authentic. The ability to share content is at the center of the open education philosophy, and can help institutions become more relevant at an age when they are treated with increasing skepticism. It is on this pragmatic note that Brian ended his keynote address, soon after which the morning sessions took place.
The two concurrent sessions that rounded out the morning dealt with quite different topics – one focused on accessibility in the online environment, while the other took attendees through the essentials of WebCT Vista. In the former, Afsaneh Sharif and Donna Scalzo from CTLT spoke to attendees about their research in making online courses and materials more accessible. Their research focuses on six barriers: sight, hearing, mobility, learning/cognitive, technical, and ESL/cultural. Afsaneh and Donna went on to explain each barrier, and then provided suggestions about how to overcome them. Colourblind students, for example, can be accommodated by using web-safe colours when designing the look and feel of the course. Afsaneh and Donna ended their presentation by talking about their future hopes and initiatives, such as making a wiki called Culturepedia and creating a checklist for improving the online environment. Although there is a long road ahead, it is reassuring to know that accessibility is increasingly taken into account when developing courses.
Meanwhile, in the other morning session, CTLT’s Emily Renoe took attendees through the top 5 survival skills in WebCT Vista: creating a gradable discussion topic, creating a quiz, creating an assignment, using the calendar, and building learning modules/folders. WebCT Vista can be used by instructors as a repository to upload documents and readings or as a webpage where content is organized in different sets of learning modules. Using the learning module approach, instructors can make the site dynamic by using the discussion forum and the quiz and assignment tools. One of the topics that Emily went through was the creation of a quiz; the benefit of creating a quiz in WebCT Vista is that instructors can add feedback to each question. For instance, an instructor can indicate which chapter in the textbook students can read to find the correct answer, or where to go for more information on a certain question. Also, whenever a question is created it gets stored in a database, which instructors can access to reuse questions in future courses.
The afternoon began with a demonstration of voice-to-text transcription tools by Morgan Reid, who works for the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC. While working on his Master’s, Morgan discovered that manually transcribing interviews was a time-consuming and labour-intensive process. He then began looking into a variety of voice-to-text alternatives, the uses of which go well beyond interview transcription. At EduCamp, he demonstrated voice-to-text transcription using the software and hardware that he now makes use of. He then gave the audience a chance to ask questions addressing both the limitations and advantages of the process. Morgan lamented the fact that voice-to-text transcription is a constantly evolving field, but one that is a powerful, time-saving tool even in its current state.
Taking the stage after Morgan was Natasha Boskic from the Faculty of Education, who introduced various techniques to make group work more innovative in an online setting. Since it can sometimes be hard to create a virtual community, group work can help students feel more connected both to one another and to the class material. In a demonstration that got attendees to work with one another, Natasha showed how collaboration can be facilitated by making group work more interactive. In one assignment, the attendees plotted where they were from on a Google Map that was integrated into the WebCT Vista course page. A broader discussion about wikis, social bookmarking tools, and blogs within an online course format took place, with participants noting that distinct evaluation procedures should be worked out when assessing group work.
The other two afternoon sessions introduced attendees to CSS and eportfolios. CTLT’s Nicole Lillo described how Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be used to alter the presentation of a webpage, and how HTML can be thought of as the content. You add content (HTML), and then edit the presentation of the website with CSS. One of the main advantages of using CSS is that users can quickly and easily create a stylesheet for multiple pages. Users can then make changes to the stylesheet (such as changing the font or font colour) and these changes will be reflected on each page of the website. If one were to use HTML, one would have to manually edit each and every page to change the font colour on the whole website – with CSS, you eliminate redundant steps and save yourself valuable time! CSS can be applied to course websites, and Nicole concluded the session by showing attendees how to upload stylesheets onto WebCT Vista.
Following Nicole, CTLT colleague Catherine Paul introduced attendees to the world of eportfolios at UBC. ePortfolios are personalized, online collections of work and reflections that are used to demonstrate key skills and accomplishments for a variety of contexts and time periods. Catherine noted that eportfolios are fundamentally learner centered, and are meant to be a place for self-reflection and assessment. She encouraged attendees to think about the 5 main points of folio thinking: collect, reflect, evaluate, select, and present. Catherine also showed attendees how to set up an eportfolio using the UBC Blogs platform. A benefit of using UBC Blogs, as opposed to another blogging system, is that the data is stored in Canada. Another benefit is that the blogging platform allows users to easily input content online, without needing to know any HTML programming. Catherine also showed users how to password protect certain posts and page, so only select viewers have access to the author’s personal information.
After a day filled with speakers, presentations, and demonstrations, attendees of the inaugural LTI EduCamp came together to discuss what they had learned. Sitting together in a circle, the group engaged in a Campfire Chat led by CTLT’s Cindy Underhill and Emily Renoe. During the dialogue, it became apparent that the ideas introduced at EduCamp had sparked a broader set of debates, particularly those having to do with student engagement and institutional uptake. It is apparent that educational technology, although not new, is generating a vibrant community of practice, which events such as EduCamp are helping invigorate.
Additional information about each of the sessions can be found on the EduCamp wiki: http://ltieducamp09.pbwiki.com/session-resources.
The next EduCamp will be held in September 2009, so keep your eyes open in the late summer for your chance to take part in EduCamp!