To help us create a section of the LIS site on Curricular Technology, I thought it would be good to see how other institutions publish comparable information. What we are currently calling “curricular technology” is described in various ways including “instructional technology“, “educational technology,” “academic technology,” and “technologies for teaching, learning and research.” What all of these labels have in common is seems to be the use of technology in education.
Posts Tagged ‘research’
Review of Technology in Education Sites
September 30th, 2009 by Alex ChapinSurveys and Focus Groups
September 14th, 2009 by Alex ChapinClearly both surveys and focus groups are important tools for gathering information about a particular population. Usually surveys are used first, to a get general sense of the population. Surveys are then followed by focus groups that get more in depth information.
However a case can be made for reversing this order and starting with focus groups first, followed by surveys (see: “Use of Focus Groups in Survey Item Development“, The Qualitative Report, Nassar and Borders, March, 2002). Focus groups can often help to define survey questions or inform how questions are phrased. This can be particularly important for technology surveys, helping to couch questions in terms that those surveyed can understand.
Meeting Notes 2009-09-01
September 2nd, 2009 by Alex ChapinThis meeting focused on brainstorming about the use of curricular technologies at Middlebury in terms of:
- What we know about how faculty/students are using curricular technologies now
- What we need to verify about their technology usage
- What we don’t know about what faculty/students want or need in terms of curricular technologies now and/or in the future
Reseach: Twitter plugins for WordPress
August 17th, 2009 by Alex ChapinThe Helpdesk received a request for a WordPress Twitter plugin. If we decide it would be good to have such a plugin, what kind of functionality would useful for the Midd community. See:
http://blueprintds.com/2009/01/19/top-twitter-wordpress-plugin-roundup/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2007/04/10-best-twitter-tools-for-wordpress-blogs/
Research: What is exported from a WordPress blog?
August 6th, 2009 by Alex ChapinWhat gets saved when you export a WordPress blog? I know the format of the export file is XML and that all posts, pages, categories and authors are exported. See:
http://support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/
Not sure if files, sidebar settings, themes or roles can be exported…. There are tools that exist to migrate WordPress blog to other platforms, but not all or perhaps any of them will migrate files…
WordPress to Drupal
There are two main modules for migrating WordPress content to Drupal, see:
http://drupal.org/project/wp2drupal
http://drupal.org/project/wordpress_import/
WP2Drupal interacts directly with the database, whereas Wordpress_Import uses the WXR export file. It is not clear whether these migration modules also migrate WordPress files. There is Drupal code out there for migrating files on a remote server to Drupal, see:
http://bensangeorge.com/2009/06/drupal-bits-migrating-remote-files-in-drupal/
It also looks like Drupal is working on a migration framework, see:
http://drupal.org/project/migrate
Research: FirstClass in Education
August 4th, 2009 by Alex ChapinWellesley College uses FirstClass and its has extensive documentation on how to use it.
Educause Web Seminar on Selecting and Implementing a Course Management System for Your Campus
July 29th, 2009 by Alex ChapinThe Educause Live! series has a web seminar on Selecting and Implementing a Course Management System for Your Campus on August 5th from 1-2 pm.
(Thanks Joy for passing on this link)
Towards a better Features Matrix
July 27th, 2009 by Alex ChapinA common approach to choosing a technology solution is to create a “feature matrix” which lists all the features required and numerical rates or weights each solution’s implementation of that feature. The best solution is then that one with the highest “score.”
For a good critique of this strategy see: CMS Selection – Death to the Features Matrix. This article suggests another approach, that of listing “doubts” regarding the importance of features or a solution’s implementation of a feature.
Research: Support for Unicode, Diacritics and non-Latin-based character sets
July 20th, 2009 by Alex ChapinFor updates on this research topic, see:
لإثسفهىل
Which of our current web applications or apps we are considering support Unicode, diacritics and non-latin based characters sets.
I know Segue supports all of these. I think Moodle does as well. Not sure about MediaWiki, Google Apps, WordPress and Drupal….
Research: Web-based capture
July 17th, 2009 by Alex ChapinWhat technologies are available for web-based capture. By this I mean tools for recording audio and/or video from a web browser. Ideally, such tools would be widgets that can be embedded in any web page or any content management systems via a plugin or module.
It used to be that Horizon Wimba was only reliable way to do this and even this solution was fraught with bugs. More recently the Adobe Flash Media Server (for which we have a license) and its open source counterpart Red5 have the capability to handle media streams from a browser. Pioneering work with these flash technologies for capture include Michegan State University’s ViewPoint and UOC’s LANGblog plugins for WordPress.
I’ve downloaded LANGblog and have set up on our development server, but need help from ETI folks like Adam or Ian to configure to use our FMS…
Research: Surveys at Middlebury
July 17th, 2009 by Alex ChapinWhat’s that latest on surveys at Middlebury? I know we have been having some problems with KeySurvey, and that Ian set up a testing instance of Lime Survey. Would be great if someone could find this out and report back to the group.
As well, is it worthwhile to consider WordPress plugins for surveys. In particular, the PollDaddy plugin looks interesting. I suspect we’ll want to be cautious about these sort of plugins especially given the problems we’ve had with cForms as an obstacle to updating Wordpress
Research: FERPA and Course Assignments
July 17th, 2009 by Alex ChapinWhat exactly does FERPA stipulate with regard to student’s rights? What is the implication of FERPA for course assignments.
Research: What is the best podcasting plugin for WordPress?
July 13th, 2009 by Alex ChapinThe Audio player plugin currently installed on Midd WordPress is pretty good. I believe Adam made some modifications to it so that the audio file it uses is included in the post’s RSS enclosure tag so that RSS readers will download the audio files for that post. For example, see James Morrison’s blog for his International Political Economy course
However there are probably better WordPress plugins for podcasting. Would be curious to know what’s out there and reviews. Best place to start for this sort of research is WordPress Plugin Directory
Research: WordPress Plugin for Displaying Google Docs
July 13th, 2009 by Alex ChapinWouldn’t it be great if Google Docs could be displayed in a blog or other content management system. That way, a bunch of people could collaborate on a text which could be displayed on a blog for others to comment upon. The comments on the blog could help inform the editing of the text.
Is there a WordPress plugin for displaying Google Docs? If so how well does it work? Is it well supported.
Knowledge Exchange
July 10th, 2009 by Alex ChapinSites devoted to knowledge exchange are common in information technology. One particularly good one is stackoverflow.com. This particular site is exceptional for the following reasons:
- Anybody can ask a question or answer a question.
- Logged in users of the site can build a reputation by asking good questions or giving good answers
- Users with high reputations can do more on the site
- Any user (with moderate reputation) can rate an existing question or answer
- Any user (with moderate reputation) can edit an existing question or answer to make either better
- Best rated answers get pushed to the top
We could try to do something similar on this blog. I know I have a bunch of questions I need to find answers too. Some of these questions require a bit of expertise to find answers to, but others probably can be answered with a few google searches.
Information Behavior of Researchers – Myths of a Google Generation
May 15th, 2009 by Judy WattsSubmitted by Judy Watts
A January 2008 report by a research team (CIBER) at University College London for the British Library and JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee that promotes the use of academic IT in the UK, shows that while most young people in the US and UK are completely at home with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information they find on the web. The report ‘Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future’ also shows that traits commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are becoming the norm for all age-groups, from young students through undergraduates to professors. The study warns that young people are dangerously lacking in informations skills and presents the challenges for library and information services in meeting the needs of researchers.
The Executive Summary of the report is a good read (and worth a look just for the cover graphic). You can find the full report here, and more recent publications of the JISC group, e.g., Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World, are listed here.
Meeting Classes – Introducing LIS Resources
September 26th, 2008 by Judy WattsSubmitted by Judy Watts
With 17 class days in September, Librarians will have presented 53 classes. That’s a rate of 3 per day since the beginning of the academic year. Perhaps you can understand why getting these scheduled into rooms with adequate equipment, e.g., smart classrooms with computers for students has us tearing our hair.
First Year Seminars represent the greatest percentage of classes at the beginning of the term. New students need a basic introduction to LIS resources and services. Classes will often be back for in-depth instruction in subject resources when research papers are assigned.
It is interesting to see the range of subjects addressed:
Date — Course — Title — Librarian
4 FYSE 1066 Voices Along the Way (Judy)
4 FYSE 1236 The Malleable Human (Carrie)
8 FYSE 1215 Empires (Brenda)
8 CHEM 0322 Biochemistry of Macromolecules (1) (Carrie)
8 CHEM 0322 Biochemistry of Macromolecules (2) (Carrie)
8 CHEM 0322 Biochemistry of Macromolecules (3) (Carrie)
9 HIST 0600 History Research Seminar (Brenda)
9 HIST 0600 History Research Seminar (Andy)
10 FYSE 1020 Crime & Punishment in America (Andy)
10 FYSE 1253 The Brain in Sickness & in Health (Bryan)
10 FYSE 1048 Ecology and Conservation in Vermont (Carrie)
10 FYSE 1237 What Is Life? (Carrie)
11 FYSE 1062 Brother Can You Spare a Dime? (Andy)
11 FYSE 1248 The Trojan War (Cynthia)
11 FYSE 1249 Food and Choice (Joe)
11 JAPA 0275 Seminar in Japanese (Joy)
11 FYSE 1174 Andy Warhol (Judy)
12 FYSE 1236 The Malleable Human (Carrie)
12 FYSE 1244 Geology of National Parks (Carrie)
15 Hist 0700 Senior World History Seminar (Brenda)
15 Hist 0700 Senior US History Thesis Seminar (Andy)
15 HARC 0214 Art in the Middle Ages (Judy)
16 SOAN 0302 Resch: Ethnography Qual Methods (Jean)
16 PSYC 0202 Research Methods (Bryan)
16 GEOG 0100 Place and Society (Carrie)
17 Econ 0700 Senior Research (Brenda)
17 FYSE 1258 Performing Culture (Judy)
17 FYSE 1244 Geology of National Parks (Carrie)
18 SOAN 0302 Rech: Ethnography Qual Methods (Jean)
18 HIST 0397 The U.S. and the Pacific (Andy)
18 PSYC 0105 Intro. To Psychology (1) (Bryan)
18 PSYC 0105 Intro. To Psychology (2) (Bryan)
18 PSYC 0105 Intro. To Psychology (3) (Bryan)
18 FYSE 1245 Sound: the Aural Ether (Joy)
19 PSYC 0105 Intro. To Psychology (4) (Bryan)
19 PSYC 0105 Intro. To Psychology (5) (Bryan)
19 FYSE 1021 Love & Death (Bryan)
19 FYSE 1236 The Malleable Human (Carrie)
22 GEOL 0400 Senior Thesis Seminar (Carrie)
23 REFWORKS (Brenda)
23 FYSE 1264 Race Difference in 20th C America (Andy)
23 FYSE 1250 Songwriting (Joy)
23 FYSE 1211 Godel, Escher, Bach (Judy)
23 CHEM 0311 Instrumental Analysis (Carrie)
23 HARC 0219 Northern Renaissance Art (Judy)
25 FYSE 1255 The Collapse of Complex Societies (Jean)
25 FYSE 1254 Liberation and Literature (Joy)
25 REFWORKS (Richard)
29 PSYC 0700 Senior Research (Bryan)
29 FYSE 1256 Captains, Kings, Caudillos (Joy)
29 SPAN 0300 Hispanic Literature (Joy)
29 FYSE 1048 Ecology and Conservation in Vermont (Carrie)
30 REFWORKS (Jean)
Basic technology instruction is included in a large percentage of these classes, introduced either by a Technology Liaison or by the Librarian. Classes that involve intensive use of digital media generally schedule classes separately. Some of that activity will be reported at a later date.