Ed Tech as Flattery

1. Ed Tech as Flattery Lanny Arvan (l-arvan@uiuc.edu) Assistant CIO for Educational Technologies, UIUC

2. Imitation as Adaptation • Creativity in bringing in approaches generated by others • Examples we will look at • Just in Time Teaching • Virtual Labs • Student Created Learning Objects • Student Research Projects

3. How do you know what your students do (or don’t) know? How do you get your students ready for class? Some Motivating Questions

4. JITT is It • JITT Homepage http://webphysics.iupui.edu/jitt/jitt.html • Gary Gladding Presentation http://wug.physics.uiuc.edu/courses/presentations/aip_oct01/ • Preflight Content Surveys Online • Live Class Time • Acknowledge Student Responses • Address Areas of Student Weakness • Myth – skip topics students are getting

5. Why JITT is Compelling • Tie student online work to live class • Instructor Orientation • From presentation to response • What the students do/think matters

6. Adapting JITT to Intro Microecon I • Teaching Goals • Bring in current events to make theory more relevant • Get students to read and think about articles before class • Bring the current events into a context familiar for the students

7. Adapting JITT to Intro Microecon II • Components • Article from NY Times posted in WebCT(Password Protected) • Is this ‘Fair Use?’ (Remember for Thurs) • Paragraph Survey Question with Friday Deadline(Password Protected) • Class meets Mon and Wed • 5 points for response • 500 points in the course • Responses copied to Excel for comment • Insert into PowerPoint for Class

8. Adapting JITT to Intro Microecon III • Instructor Obligations • Coming up with the survey question • Reading the student responses • Adjusting content for live class • Necessitates for Instructor • Preparation • Flexibility – Go with the Flow • Promotes Discussion • It’s work, but it’s also fun

9. JITT or Asynchronous Conferencing • If getting all students to initiate is the goal • JITT is preferred • If the goal is dialog and removing the instructor as hub • Asynchronous conferencing is superior

10. Virtual Labs –Example • From Falcon Software (Chemistry) • BioInteractive

11. Animations, Visualization – Appropriate Tools PowerPoint has Animation Quick and Dirty versus Elegant Production Virtual Labs – What Software to Use?

12. Who has used Excel? Excelets Page An Econ Homework Assignment Excel as an Animation Tool

13. Key Elements of a Virtual Lab • Visualization Experiment • Student Controls • Allows What If? Thinking • Assessment • What should the student focus on? • Only incidentally for course credit

14. Student Creations • Better students can make learning objects • Deep learning via open-ended creation • Repurpose in subsequent courses • Lessen instructor burden for content creation • Give content a student feel

15. Student Research/Course Projects • Journal of Undergraduate Research • Architecture Projects UT Austin • Publishing the work online signifies its importance • But there are intellectual property issues

16. Tips and Tricks for Online Projects • Suggest Full Text Sources • Journals by Top Scholars in the Field Aimed at Students(Restricted to UIUC) • Government Sources (Not found by Google) • GAO Reports, Example • Prewriting for Readiness – Use Online Survey Tool • References, Research Questions • Early Deadlines for First Drafts! • Peer Review???

17. Instructor as Research Mentor • Mentoring as in class activity in lieu of other in class activity • What do the other students do? • Mentoring outside of normal class • Do students take the research activity seriously?

18. Conclusion • Don’t start at square one • There are extant approaches to try • Plenty of ways to innovate • If that’s what turns you on • Recurring questions • What do the students do in the approach? • What are they supposed to get out of the activity? • How is it actually playing out? • For them? For you?