Tag Archives: conference

EYC unConference (Part 3)

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After a wonderful lunch and small talk at the lunch buffet, we had two more sessions at the EYC unConference today. You can read part 1 and part 2 before continuing if you haven’t already done so.

Low budget user testing

Courtney Johnston offered to facilitate a session on user testing and how to do that on a shoe-string budget.

A lot of user testing can be done by using paper and web site mockups. You also do not need hundreds of users, but can often already get an idea when you ask about 6 people to participate in a card-sorting activity or give them a task to complete on a web site. Some professional usability testers may bury their head in the sand when they read these lines, but here were are talking about testing web site for communities that operate on a very low till non-existent budget who cannot afford to have sessions in a usability lab and use awesome, but expensive software and setups to conduct their testing.

Often, even only with a few number of people, you can get an idea of whether a certain navigation works, whether menu items are named logically etc. However, when you only have access to a small number of people, you should be acutely aware of their ICT background to interpret their answers correctly and not make false assumptions and objectifying these.

Getting started with user testing

Courtney Johnston provides tips of how to do low-budget user testing; CC shared by Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

Feeding back to software developers

Tim McNamara offered the last session that I went to for this day of learning more about community involvement online. It was on how to give useful feedback to software developers. That was a dear topic to me as I get frustrated sometimes when people write forum entries or send me emails from which I cannot really make out the problem and try to solve it. It always takes a lot of effort to figure out what the issue might be and how to solve it.

The Google Project Hosting issue tracker is a good example of how to guide users in providing constructive and useful bug reports. When you open a new issue, you don’t just get an empty text box, but depending on your bug report, you can choose a template which then gives a few suggestions of what to include in your bug report. The template for a “user defect report” has the following items:

What steps will reproduce the problem?
Step 1.
Step 2.
Step 3.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

What browser (or hg/svn client) are you using? On what operating system?

As these questions are written directly in the text box, people can’t overlook them. ;-)

I will have to check if we could also add such pre-populated text in Launchpad for people filing Mahara bugs. That would be very useful.

Now what?

Currently, I am still in the processing phase because there was a lot of information today, a number of web sites to check out, things to try out for myself and wrapping my head around. It was great to meet people who create web sites for non-profits and a lot of times use open source. Joomla was talked about quite a bit as a person ran two sessions on it whereas other CMS were hardly mentioned (we should remedy that next time). However, as was pointed out when the Wordle was shown: Drupal sits on top of Joomla and has “brain” right next to it. ;-)

Words shouted out during the closing session of EYC unConference to say what was important

EYC unConference in a Wordle; created by Wellington ICT

A big Thank You to the organizers and volunteers as well as the participants of the unConference who made that day a great learning experience.

EYC unConference (Part 2)

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As written in the previous post on the EYC unConference, everybody could propose a topic for a session and gather people to discuss it. After my initiated session on how to actually get people to use a community web site in which the attendees greatly participated and did not need a lot of facilitating, I went to a similar session. There the focus was on the use of social media, in particular Twitter and Facebook.

Online communities and social media

People saw the purpose of Twitter and Facebook differently and it always came down to finding where the people you want to reach hang out and picking them up from there.

Another important point that was raised was that not everybody is using social media and should not be forced to do so in order to join a community, but they should have alternative means for engagement. though that does not mean that the lowest common denominator should be chosen. It is worthwhile to educate community members about the possibilities of social media and offer them training so that they can become literate in its use.

Despite that, especially established community members should not be forced to go out of their way to continue engaging. Somebody came up with an analogy to a restaurant that was picked up by Joanna McCleod. When regular patrons come to a restaurant, they should not be made to go out again to find a flyer that is being distributed on Lambton Quay in order to be able to dine at that restaurant. They should still be able to just go inside without any detours.

The session attendees agreed that it is about the way of communicating and not necessarily the tool. Twitter and Facebook can change rather quickly in this day and age. So you may have to switch to another service. However, the idea of the social networking will persist. And you should not be afraid to pull the plug and discontinue using a tool when you realize that your community does not take to it. Your efforts can be used elsewhere more productively.

group discussion about using social media with communities

Never mind the nice weather outside. Community's social media use is as good. CC shared by Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

Web accessibility

Robyn Hunt talked about what everybody could do to improve their web sites to embrace accessibility. That does not only mean that people with disabilities can get more out of a web site, but it also means that the web site is improved for everybody as accessible web sites often also include looking at usability issues that might frustrate “regular” users as well.

I know that I have to improve the accessibility of my blog here, e.g. give meaningful alternative text and not just my picture caption and probably improve a whole bunch of other things that are normally hidden to the eye, but help people greatly who use screen readers.

Learning more about accessibility is a project on my ToDo list for which I will have to set aside a time and either participate in a workshop or read relevant texts.

One thing that particularly stuck in my head was that Facebook is not a good page in terms of accessibility because it is quite busy among things. However, when viewed on a smartphone, people with disabilities can participate as the content presented in the smartphone apps is basically clutterfree making it easier to use. Thus, though the service was not changed, a change of device suddenly enables a number of users to finally participate. And the internet offers independence and freedom to a great many people with disabilities as they can now get information that they had previously no access to and they can also engage in online conversations.

I cover the rest of the day in part 3 on the EYC Conference.

EYC unConference (Part 1)

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Today the Engage Your Community unConference, initiated by Wellington ICT, took place at the Rutherford House at Victoria University in Wellington. It was “a day long learning event for community webmasters and others using IT for Wellington’s communities”. On top of that, it was free thanks to its sponsors.

Around 90 people fought the urge to stay outside in the wonderful sunshine and rather warm temperatures to engage with like-minded people in discussions around using the web with communities. Some people had already thought about a topic to present beforehand while others decided on the spot.

I belonged to the latter category. After listening to a number of people shouting out their topics in the opening session, I thought I did not want to bring yet another tool-centered session to the table. Therefore, I decided to offer a session on online community engagement after all the tools had been set up and talk about what happens then, how to get people to participate, and how to keep them interested in the conversation.

Engaging communities online

As I do not have eternal wisdom in that area, but wanted to share my experience as well as tips I had learned at WordCampNZ just a couple of weeks ago, in particular from Suzanne Kendrick on Day 1 and Matt Miller on Day 2 (using his example of story telling to not talk about your business but just something interesting), I started the session also hoping that others would want to share their thoughts.

The group of about 18 participants took to the topic and brought in their own perspectives and community management tips that worked for them. Tim McNamara volunteered to jot down notes. It became clear that people in one community do not all communicate in one space, but that community organizers who want to reach their community, should be present in a number of spaces online and offline to cater to the community. Discussions on Facebook may differ greatly from those in a discussion forum on the community site itself. Sometimes just having a “like” button next to a post already helps to engage those (the majority) who would otherwise not comment.

A great book to read on the topic of online community stewardship is Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John Smith.

Whiteboard notes on the session "Engaging Communities online"

Whiteboard notes thanx to Tim; CC shared by Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

Are you interested in learning more how the day progressed? Continue with part 2 and then part 3.

Best practice: #IOC2010

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The 8th International Online Conference for Teaching and Learning was held from 17-19 March 2010. And it is actually not over yet because the topics can be continued to be discussed in the forums. However, I have not yet ventured into that aspect of the conference as I was still catching up with the presentations and poster sessions. But to back up a little bit:

IOC includes a variety of ways to connect with and learn from colleagues. Each day of the conference features several live online sessions during which you interact with panelists and peers. All sessions are recorded and posted immediately for those who cannot attend live. Asynchronous discussion forums and resource sharing areas — for the collaborative collection of practical teaching ideas, links, handouts and learning objects — are a vital part of this very community-oriented event. The emphasis during IOC is on sharing, networking and generating a universe of ideas that everyone can use immediately in their practice. (Quote from the conference web site)

Altogether there were 25 live sessions of 50 minutes each and 50 poster presentations to choose from. Nancy White kicked off the conference on Wednesday evening with her keynote “Should We Be Using Communities for Learning?” in which she led us on a journey through learning online in various constellations (alone, in a community, and in a network). Dan Porter had taken the job of capturing Nancy’s presentation visually giving it his own angle (when I find out if I can post one of his images, I will do so). As always, Nancy had her audience on their fingertips and engaged the entire time.

Having had to choose from parallel sessions, I was happy that all sessions were recorded so that I could review those that I had missed. Thus, I did not miss any good sessions. :-) Besides Nancy’s, I especially enjoyed the following sessions.

Live presentations

The 6 Bad Habits of Online Learners, and How to Address Them Successfully by Pat Wagner. She introduced us to 6 types of learners and discussed in the group how they can be engaged in online learning to draw out their potential so that they also participate in the course to their benefit. The 6 types are:

  • the passive learner who wants to be entertained
  • the lone-eagle learner who thinks he is the only one doing work
  • the pass-the-test learner who only comes to class for the credit and doesn’t care about anything else
  • the perfect learner who makes himself crazy by trying to do everything perfectly
  • the one-style learner who is stuck in his patterns of learning
  • the competitive learner who sees a challenge in everything and wants to win it

Her presentation showed that we are all familiar with these types of learners and have encountered them aplenty. In order to draw these learners out of their usual behavior, they need to be challenged (not necessarily in a competition though ;-) ) away from their well-trodden ways to face other ways of learning, to see that learning can be fun and rewarding.

Elluminate, which was this conference’s web conferencing tool of choice, lent itself well for presentations that required the participants input. Pat, for example, had prepared slides in which we could put our suggestions of how to get learners out of their comfortable environment. Although the slides usually got overcrowded very quickly, it was still a better way to capture the answers than to have everybody just type into the chat box. With over 100 participants the chat flew by quickly at times and it would have been very difficult to read and discuss the answers. Additionally, Pat put us into groups so that only a certain number of people put their answers onto the whiteboard for each learner type.

The take-home message from her presentation for me is that there is always a way to address each learner to draw out their potential and to avoid bad habits to take place. However, sometimes it is not so easy to spot the styles, as many are in-betweens. Furthermore, there are not just the one-style learners, but also the one-style teachers. Everybody has a preference for teaching that may not be the most suitable way for the learners. Thus, it is important that we also adapt our teaching style and venture off and try out new things.

Maintaining Academic Integrity in Online Classes by Lori McNabb. As this featured presentation was scheduled very late, I only watched the recording but wished I had been there live. Lori’s presentation about cheating and plagiarism was a tour-de-force in learning about crafty ideas for cheating that none of us would have thought about before she mentioned them. Thank goodness, the recording is password-protected for IOC participants. ;-)

She mentioned a study by McCabe, Trevino and Butterfield published in 2001 for which over 50,000 students on 60 campuses were asked about their cheating behavior. The percentage for cut-and-paste plagiarism was at 40%. I am wondering if that percentage is actually not even higher because sometimes students may not be aware that they plagiarize, e.g. because they come from a culture where that is accepted or even the norm or they simply don’t know.

She then brought up three ways of dealing with cheating and plagiarism issues:

  • virtue (promotion) approach: appeal to students to not cheat / plagiarize, have them sign the honor code, etc., have guides available that tell them precisely what academic integrity means, e.g. Ryerson University’s The Illustrated Guide to Academic Integrity, Dalhousie University’s Academic Integrity
  • prevention approach: aid students in their academic writing and researching; for online tests etc. don’t allow copy-and-paste in a browser or the opening of additional windows
  • policing approach: have student papers run through plagiarism detection software

Often, these three approaches may be combined. In the Bachelor in Educational Sciences (BScE) at the University of Luxembourg for example, we use a combination of the virtue and policing approach: students need to submit their papers with a signed honor code for not having plagiarized, and they upload their assignments in Moodle to Ephorus.

Lori also talked about authentication methods that ranged from challenge questions to biometrics all the way to special devices that track noise and movement and switch on a 360° camera if anything is unusual.

Retaining Online Students: Making Connections Outside the Classroom by Anita Crawley. Like in many other presentations, the key message was that students need to be engaged in their learning, but also have the opportunities to meet outside of the classroom which is not always so easily done in an entirely online-based study program. Thus, tools that foster communication – asynchronous and synchronous – are very important. Today’s tools that include blogs, wikis, social networking, instant messaging, web conferencing, virtual reality, and podcasting help facilitators and learners to stay connected.

Educational Social Networking: The Benefits of Social Networking for Education by Steve Hargadon. From his many years of experience as online community initiator and leader, Steve shared his findings with the participants of the usefulness of educational networking and how it can be done successfully. He is, for example, the founder of Classroom 2.0, a network of educators that has been in existence for 3 years (since March 18, 2007) and currently has about 40,000 members. Steve rightly said that “The Internet is becoming a platform for unparalleled initiative, participation, productivity, and creativity.” It is not just about consuming information, but participating and creating your own information and thus gaining knowledge. The tools that are available to us (today) do not have value themselves, but it is always how we use them that will make or break them.

When creating an educational network, Steve advices that you must determine your core goal and fill real needs of the people for whom the network is set up. Furthermore, early adopters need to be supported to get the network off and not have it sitting there without any activity.

Poster presentations

Besides attending the live sessions, I checked out a number of poster presentations. These are redefined when produced for online viewing. Most presenters had opted for a PowerPoint presentation with the occasional screencast. Some presenters uploaded a narrated version of their slides that allowed them not to crowd their slides with only text to read, but to give a mini presentation.

Several presentations expounded on the tools that are available for online learning, and it became apparent that Jing by Techsmith is a tool of choice for many when it comes to screen recordings. The basic version allows you to record up to 5 minutes of video while the pro version has many more features. I use Camtasia for Mac for my recordings, also by Techsmith, and love it’s many features to enhance the screencast.

Conference organization

Some final words on the conference organization. Susann Manning, Kevin Johnson, Jonathan Finkelstein, and their team did a wonderful job organizing this online conference and making it a success. Each session had an experienced moderator, they always gave a brief tech introduction to Elluminate which got shorter and shorter with each presentation as most people had already heard it at least once, and they also provided support throughout the sessions where necessary.

The length of the sessions was very adequate with 50 minutes so that it was also easy to keep the schedule in mind. Some sessions had closed-captioning support which I thought was a fantastic way to make these sessions more accessible to people who either can’t hear well, don’t have speakers or can’t turn them on or also for non-native speakers who may have difficulties with English.

Having Dan’s visual input for Nancy White’s as well as Susann Manning and Kevin Johnson’s session at the end was a great experience for me. I just wished I had two screens. It got a little crowded with 4 Elluminate windows (whiteboard, chat, participants, Dan’s application sharing) and Evernote for taking notes, not even to mention the browser that was open in the background. ;-)

In my opinion, this year’s International Online Conference (I had not participated in previous ones) can serve as a best practice example of how to organize a conference entirely online and how to support it. A second best practice example is the annual LearnTrends conference, which is not only a conference, but a year-around community.

Thank you very much for this great conference!

Debating a sermon about online facilitation in the late night show

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I love conference recordings especially of conferences which I could not attend. Thus, I am very grateful to the conference organizers who decide to record their (keynote) events and make the recordings available to the general public. Such a recent event was eLearning 2010 (#ITC10), the conference of the Instructional Technology Council in Fort Worth, 20-23 February 2010.

The speaker line-up was excellent: Nancy White, Jim Groom, and Jared Stein among others. I particularly liked the following:

  • Nancy White with “Online Facilitation 14 Years On: Where are we headed?”
  • Jim Groom with “A Sermon: ‘For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things?’”
  • John Krutsch Sr. and Jared Stein with “Late Night Learning LIVE!”
  • Carol Spalding and Paul Harrat debating “Colleges Must Monitor Student Social Networking”

Nancy White and Jim Groom did not only have well-thought out arguments, but also presented them in a very engaging and funny way. Where have you ever won chocolate, books or a bottle of wine at a keynote (Nancy White)? Or has a sermon about social media tools been more compelling than Jim Groom’s rendition? Just these two examples show that keynotes do not have to follow the standard set-up, but could and should depart from them. Of course, it helps when the speaker has a great sense of humor and can respond on their toes.

Jared Stein’s and Marc Hugentobler‘s “Late Night Learning LIVE!” touched upon current learning issues with a sarcastic, ironic, humorous tone, interspersed with ads that drove home their points very well.

Carol Spalding and Paul Harrat argued about monitoring student social networking in a friendly though thoroughly researched debate in which the moderator, Michael Catchpole, who has a knack for making people laugh, watched over their allotted times because they could have debated for much longer.

If I had to choose the keynote that I liked best from the recorded events that I watched, I’d definitely go with Nancy White’s presentation. She presented the history of online facilitation, what has changed over the years, and what needs to be done in the future along with a very personal style of presenting that kept me attentive the entire time, and she also tested a couple of new presenter tools incorporating her own learning in real-time.

History & Future of of Online Facilitation

View more presentations from Nancy White.

Update: Nancy’s reflection on her presentation and the Twitter experiment.