Inquiry through Blended Learning

Family Christmas Holiday - December 2011

2012-01-03T18:30:00.001-08:00

Wow, what a wonderful Christmas holiday!!

All of my three sisters and their families were able to join us at the Delta Lodge in the Kananaskis Country for a very active enjoyable week in the mountains.

Our time together was well recorded with photos and videos.

MRU Centennial SoTL Symposium - November 2011

2012-01-03T18:29:00.000-08:00

This is the second time that I've attended this MRU SoTL symposium in Banff on the Remembrance Day long weekend. A wonderful opportunity to attend a conference and spend some time with the family. This year, Kim Lawrence and I facilitated a session on the Role of Mobile Learning in a Pre-Service Teacher Education program. We had a full hour for our session which enabled us to engage the audience in a rich discussion through the use of our Google Doc handout.

COHERE Conference - October 2011

2012-01-03T18:28:00.001-08:00

I helped coordinate the program for this year's COHERE Blended Learning conference. One of the highlights of the conference was the presentation of a Canadian report on Blended Learning. The highlight of the conference for me was the opportunity to visit Guelph and spend some time with Peter and Cathy in Toronto. Of course I captured the visit with some pictures.

Web Portfolio Assignment

2011-11-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

Please give me some feedback on my porfolio :)

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudia Arabia - September 2011

2011-09-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

I was very fortunate to have a second opportunity to visit the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Saudi Arabia in early September and again I took lots of pictures!!

This truly is an amazing institution and I learned a lot from my visit. First, I learned that the current Rector of KFUPM, Dr. Khalid S. Al-Sultan, is a former student who is VERY committed to student engagement. He's currently in the process of building new student residences so that ALL first year students will can spend their first year on campus. And, he's helping build the Dhahran Techno Valley Research Park which will consist of a number of research faciliaties that will provide KFUPM students with co-op practicum and undergraduate research opportunities.

Myself and Dr. Matthew Ohland from Purdue University had been invited to faciliate a series of seminars and workshops for KFUPM's Reporting Week. I keynoted a new session on New Trends in Blended and Mobile Learning and then followed with workshops on Blended Learning in Higher Education and Mobile Learning in Higher Education. All the PowerPoint slides and notes from these sessions are available from the following web site.

Again, I was VERY impressed with KFUPM's hospitality and passion for teaching and learning. I sure hope that I get to return again as I find my visits to be rich learning opportunities for myself - especially around the topic of student engagement on campus - outside of the classroom!!

Southeast Technical Institute - August 2011

2011-09-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

Immediately after arriving back in Calgary from the cottage I had the opportunity to travel to the Southeast Technical Institute in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to facilitate a day long series of workshops for their faculty on technology enhanced learning. I must admit that I was still quite tired from closing up the cottage in Ontario and I wasn't in top shape for these workshops.

I flew to Sioux Falls via Denver Colorado on Monday and had a nice dinner with the workshop organizers from Southeast Technical Institute. They seemed like a really great group of people and I was impressed with all of their faculty members. Definitely a real sense of community at this institution - they were planning an institutional pot luck lunch for the day after my workshops.

For my morning workshop (which began at 8am) - I focused on Student Engagement and Technology Enhanced Learning: What's the Connection? The session went reasonably well except their wireless network had been upgraded over the summer and was not working at 100% capacity so a number of people were having problems accessing the Google Doc notes.

We had sandwiches for lunch and then I spent the afternoon talking about designing for technology enhanced learning environments and the roles of the instructor in such an environment. I was totally exhausted by the end of the day and headed straight to the airport for a flight back to Denver and then Calgary. I think my days as an external workshop facilitator are drawing to a close (the travel is just too tough on my body)

York University - August 2011

2011-09-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

I was very privileged to spend almost an entire week at York University during the month of August and I made sure that I documented my stay with some pictures. In many ways this institution is similar to Mount Royal - as it has a very diverse student population and is currently only accessible by bus. The reason I was at York was to participate in the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning (ABEL) Summer Institute and to provide support for a blended learning initiative for faculty members in the Health Sciences and Business areas.

I arrived in Toronto on Sunday night and had a late dinner with Curt Bonk and Ron Owston. Curt was going to be providing the opening keynote for the ABEL Summer Institute and Ron was over seeing the blended learning initiative at York. I am amazed at the amount of traveling that Curt does - this guy has an incredible amount of energy and enthusiasm for teaching and technology in higher education!!

Personally, I was involved in several sessions at the Summer Institute. On the Monday, I was part of a panel presentation exploring the future of digital technologies an education. Curt moderated the panel and I was joined by Sara Diamond (the President of the Ontario College of Art & Design) and Alex Couros (Associate Professor at the University of Regina). An interesting discussion about the personalization of learning and the use of digital data (learning analytics) in the future.

On the Tuesday, I faciliated a workshop on Design and Implementation in Blended Learning Environments. The focus of the workshop was on the importance of aligning your course learning objectives, assessment activities, in and out of class time, and digital technologies. The Earth actually "shook" during this session due to an earthquake in Virginia :)

I then provided the closing keynote address for the Summer Institute on the Wednesday. The topic of my presentation was on Student Engagement and Web 2.0 in Blended Learning. I attempted to use this session as an opportunity for the participants to reflect on their conference learning and then discuss how they could put it into practice in the upcoming K to 12 school year.

After a bit of a break on Wednesday afternoon - I joined a number of York faculty members from the Health Sciences and Business areas for a one day workshop on blended learning. I provided the opening keynote session on Designing for an inquiry-based approach to blended learning and then I worked with groups of faculty about how to "action" this vision into their own courses for the remainder of the day.

On Thursday night I took the bus and subway to Cathy and Peter's home. Somehow Cathy and I managed to get on the same subway car and we were able to them walk to her house together. I was able to catch up on my course work during the day on Friday and then Peter and I went for a really nice neighbourhood bicycle ride in the afternoon. That evening we drove to the airport to pick up Eric from his flight from Ecuador. He had spent the past couple of weeks helping to build schools in this country with the Me to We organization and I was very excited to hear his stories. I must admit that I did not even recognize him at the Arrival gate as he had his sun glasses on with an Ecuador hat and sweater :)

After a restful sleep - we spent Saturday in downtown Toronto. There were a lot of activies going on including a buskers festival, comics convention, and Toronto Blue Jays game. The main focus though was on Jack Layton's funeral. We were fortunate to catch the beginning of the funeral procession at City Hall - definitely an emotional tribute to a man who "really made a difference" for his family, his political party, and his country!! After the funeral we had lunch at the Maple Leaf Gardens Sports Bar and then headed back to Cathy and Peter's to relax before our early morning Sunday flight back to Calgary :)

Cottage - Summer 2011

2011-09-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

Wowsa,

Definitely some of the best summer weather we have ever had at the cottage. Endless sunny days, not too humid, and the temperature even managed to cool down for pleasant sleeping most nights - check out the pictures!!

Unfortunately, not everyone was able to be at the cottage at the same time this summer - but at least everyone was able to come for at least a short visit. The first week started with a "boys fest" - California and Calgary cousins with no Moms :) Once we had yet more "trees" removed - we got the boat in the water and spent lots and lots of time tubing and wake boarding!! We even managed to squeeze in a visit to the Stewart Park Music Festival although it was too hot and humid to stay very long.

Aunt Beth arrived the second week along with Peter and Cathy for a weekend visit. The great weather just continued on - and we all had a restful and relaxing time together. We also kept the tubing tradition alive along with a visit to Kingston for Queen's campus tour. I wonder if any of the boy cousins will actually attend this family institution? We also discovered a VERY interesting store near Westport - which contains everything (and more) than any cottage could ever want or have :)

We were very sad to see the California family leave but Marie arrived the same day and we turned our attention to "gasoline free" water pursuits such as paddle boarding, windsurfing, row boating, and kayaking. A couple of days later the Brooklyn family arrived and it was wonderful to rediscover the cottage through the eyes of the younger cousins - Benjamin and Noah. We got the wading pool out - along with all the cottage toys, high chairs, rocking chair, wagon, the good olde Rideau Shark soap box car. Now that Charles was present - ping pong with the new table swung into high gear. What an amazing bonus for the cottage along with the new BBQ!! Hey, we even discovered that we can barbeque salmon on a cedar plank with the new BBQ :)

The entire Doland-Richmond clan also arrived next door and we had a wonderful fish fry and fireworks night (courtesy of Uncle Charles). All too soon it was time to put the boat "to bed" for the winter and pull Splash Island and Water Mat out of the water. I must admit that putting away everything was a bit tiring this year - but I sure appreciated all of Marie, Christy, and Charles' help!!

Kayaking Adventure - July 2011

2011-09-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

Wow!!

I've got to give Marie credit for organizing an AMAZING family vacation to British Columbia (lots of pictures).

We began the trip with a kayaking adventure through Gwaii Haanas National Park in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Incredibly beautiful scenery, amazing wildlife, and a wonderful opportunity to learn about the Haida culture. A few nuggets for myself:

First, I did not realize that the Haida had three distinct types of totem poles:

Ceremonial - to celebrate the wealth of a family indicated by the number of potlatch rings
Memorial - to honour a special person what was killed at sea and who's body was not recovered
Mortuary - like a tombstone. An inverted tree with a mortuary box on top with the bones of the dead.

Two, the Haida had the food chain figured out. The killer whale was at the top of the sea, the bear for the land, and the eagle for the sky. There were originally two main clans of Haida people on the Islands - the Eagles and the Ravens.

Three, the logo for Gwaii Haanas National Park is the sea otter and urchin - representing the balanced relationship that these two play for the ecosystem. Once the sea otters were exterminated for their pelts the sea urchin population had no predators and they ate lots of kelp resulting in some areas becoming "deserts" - kelp free.

In terms of the kayaking trip - it was definitely an engaging experience as we had to learn to become "one" with the elements - mainly the rain and the wind. Fortunately, it was not that cold and I think we all kept warm with the constant paddling on the water. This is definitely one family holiday that we'll always remember!!

After finishing our kayaking adventure - we flew to Vancouver where we had a few days to visit the sites and sounds of the city. One of our prime destinations was the University of British Columbia (UBC) to see if the campus would be the "right fit" for Eric. UBC's setting is definitely amazing and it sounds like they have a very impressive undergraduate science program - the only catch is the "cut-off" for acceptance into this program last year was 91% - go Eric go.

We also had a chance to visit Granville Island and Stanley Park before heading back to Calgary - en route to the cottage :)

Teaching and Learning to the Power of Technology - June 2011

2011-09-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

Yahoo, finally the last conference of the 2010 to 2011 academic year and I captured a few photos of my experience on my iTouch.

I sure have been "on the road" A LOT this year!! The final conference was the Teaching and Learning to the Power of Technology Conference at the University of Saskatchewan. I presented the opening keynote session Student Engagement and Blended Learning: What's the Connection? and I thought it went very well.

This was my first time in Saskatoon and I really enjoyed exploring the South Saskatchewan River valley via some great runs!! I was also very impressed with the University of Saskatchewan. It was much larger than I thought and it appears that they are involved in some very progressive programs through their Teaching & Learning Centre (e.g., Learning Communities program).

June 2011 Road Trip

2011-09-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

It was time again for my favourite conference of the year - the Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE) annual conference, which is part of the SSHRC Congress - the largest social science and humanities conference in Canada and I made sure to take lots of photos. The conference was held this year in Fredericton, New Brunswick so we had to catch an early morning plane from Calgary. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I forgot my laptop, which meant I was going to be partially "unplugged" for the trip.

I had visited Fredericton and the University of New Brunswick campus about ten years ago and I had very pleasant memories of my visit. It really is an idea government/university town and might be a great place for one of our boys to go to university. While at the conference I presented a couple of sessions. One on our group work study, Moving to their own beat: Exploring how students use digital technologies to support group work, outside of the classroom. And, one on our education undergraduate study, Investigating the Impact of Student Participation in an Undergraduate Society. From my perspective, both sessions went well and it was fun presenting with other members of our Department of Education & Schooling at Mount Royal University. I was also involved in the Technology and Teacher Education (TATE) pre-conference session but I wasn't able to be part of Jodi Nickel's Portfolios for Self-Assessment session or Zehra Akyol's The Development of a Metacognition Questionnaire in the Context of Online and Blended Communities of Inquiry session. One of my biggest pleasures at the conference was having access to a UNB bicycle which allowed me to opportunities to explore the numerous pathways. A great form of exercise and relaxation!!

After the CSSE conference, I flew to Ottawa for a couple of days at the cottage. They were very productive days as I was able to do quite a bit of spring cleaning with Bill as well as travel to Kingston to pick-up our new windsurfer.

From the cottage, I flew to Washington, DC for the weekend for the Lilly DC Conference on Teaching and Learning. The organizers had asked me to facilitate a closing keynote/workshop session on Blended Learning in Higher Education: Promises and Pitfalls. The conference held at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, which meant another long cab ride. The weather was excellent and I was able to get in a couple of long runs along the old Georgetown railway track during my stay.

I then headed back to the cottage a bit tired but still able to do some more cleaning as well as assemblying the new insurance ping pong table and BBQ :) I finally headed back to Calgary after being away for nearly two weeks (I don't think I'll go for these extended trips in the future :)

Roadtrip - May 2011

2011-05-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

Finally, I'm starting to feel better - it's been a long winter and long cold season for me.

Originally, I didn't have much travel planned for the month of May but a request for a keynote session at the University of Maryland and another one at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario led to an opportunity for an extended road trip and a chance to visit with two of my sisters. The trip began with an all day flight from Calgary to Baltimore. There has been some very bad storms in the American Southeast (tornadoes that had killed a number of people in Alabama) and I was fortunate to be traveling just behind this weather system.

Upon arrival in Baltimore, I was surprised how long the cab ride was to the University of Maryland (located about half way between Baltimore and Washington). The U of M is a public land grant institution that was founded back in 1856. The school mascot is something called a terrepin, which I later discovered is type of turtle :) The weather was beautiful and the grass and trees were VERY green (wet weather). I took the opportunity to go for a long run around campus to admire the colonial (not New England) architecture. I made sure that I took lots of pictures and I was impressed with how the main section of the campus was laid out like the National Mall in Washington (the Library at one end with the Administration building at the other - complete with a reflecting pool in the middle). I had a wonderful set of Maryland crab cakes for dinner and then turned in early for bed.

The noise of TVs in the other rooms woke me up around 4:30am. It took me a moment to "clue in" that today was the Royal Wedding and that people had woken up early to watch William and Kate's wedding on TV. Sigh, I ended up watching some of the ceremony as well. Chris, the Acting Director of the Office of Instructional Technology picked me up around 8am and we headed over to the Student Centre for the University's Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference. This is a one day event that has been held each spring for the past 18 years. For the past five years, the event has been co-sponsored by the Office of Instructional Technology and the Centre for Teaching Excellence. The U of M is just about to begin a blended learning initiative (in the process of selecting faculty champions for the program) and I was the keynote speaker to "kick off" the initiative with my Blended Learning in Higher Education: Promises and Pitfalls session. From my perspective, the session went reasonably well. Most of the audience seemed engaged and a woman from the Centre for Teaching and Learning at John Hopkins University even asked me if I would be interested in repeating the same session next fall for this institution. I spent the rest of the day attending faculty led sessions on engaging students in a blended environment - before, during, and after a physical class session. The idea of a "flipped" or "inverted" class session really seems to be taking hold with a blended approach to teaching and learning. The idea of a flipped class session - is that students receive and digest information "outside of the classroom" and then discuss and apply this information during class time (e.g. labatorials).

At the end of the day, I took a taxi back to the Baltimore airport and managed to catch an early flight to New York to visit with my youngest sister's family. They have two little boys and it sure brought back memories of when our Eric and Alex were young. On Saturday we took a field trip to Coney Island to enjoy one of the amusement parks as well as take in the sights and sounds of the infamous boardwalk (which thankfully they have re-surfaced). We finished the day with an amazing home made pizza dinner - we've got to get one of those pizza stones.

We woke up to another beautiful spring day on Sunday, which we spend in nearby Prospect Park. It was the annual Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and we had a wonderful time viewing and smelling all the spring flower blossoms. After visiting the park with took a stroller tour of the Prospect Park neighbourhood - stopping off for a wonderful Mexican lunch. We were all pretty tired by the time we got back home and we had a quite evening.

Monday morning, we woke up to the news that the Americans had killed Osama bin-Laden in Pakistan and then I got to experience the trip to pre-school before flying onto Toronto and a visit with another one of my sisters. I arrived late afternoon and managed to get a neighbourhood run in before we headed down to the Beaches area for a stroll along the boardwalk and dinner at a very yummy Thai restaurant. We then headed back to the house to watch the Canadian Federal Election results. Some interesting results - the Conservatives got their majority (rats). the NDP became the official opposition (thanks to a bunch of NDP newbees being voted into office in Quebec), the Liberals lost many of their seats, the Bloc Quebecois was reduced to 4 seats (maybe the extinction of this political party).

I was able to sleep in on Tuesday and then get some computer work done before taking the GO train to Hamilton. It was a nice ride along the Lake Ontario waterfront and it brought back memories of the times that I used to take the train back and forth between Kingston and Guelph for university. Peggy French, the eLearning Coordinator for Mohawk College met me at the Hamilton GO Station and provided me with a tour of the Mohawk Campus before dropping me off at my hotel. She returned shortly to take me to the Augusta House Pub for dinner with the rest of the Centre for Teaching and Learning staff. We had a great time together and I had a wonderful rack of lamb for dinner (my tummy felt REAL big when I got back to the hotel).

Mohawk College in the midst of a blended learning initiative and I was keynote speaker for their Learning Exchange: Connections and Collaboration conference, an annual two day spring conference. Fortunately, again my Student Engagement and Blended Learning: What's the Connection? session was well received and I followed up with a Designing for an Inquiry-Based Approach to Learning workshop in the afternoon. Peggy took me out for an amazing dinner at the Thai Memories restaurant. This is one of the best Thai restaurants I have ever visited - the food and decor were both amazing!!

I enjoyed a final night in a hotel (great sleep) and then had an opportunity to enjoy a number of conference sessions on Thursday before flying back to Calgary from the Hamilton Airport on WestJet.

American Educational Research Association Conference: New Orleans - April 2011

2011-04-12T19:25:00.000-07:00

Hmnn, almost two months since I caught the initial cold it was time to head out for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual conference in New Orleans. Thankfully, I think I'm finally getting better - but this really reminds me of the time I developed a viral infection in K-country when the boys were young and I was pulling them both in the Burly behind my bike - scary stuff as it took me months to recover from that virus (at one point - I actually thought I had chronic fatigue syndrome based on the symptoms)!! The conference was a wonderful experience (a bit like a "coming out of the fog" party). Our Triad session (Jim Zimmer, Todd Nickle, and jim Silovs) on Moving to their own beat: Exploring how students use digital technologies to support group work, outside of the classroom was well received. We had a great time exploring City, which was also hosting a French Quarter Music Festival and I finally started to take some pictures and videos again to capture the conference experience. Jodi and I got lots of ideas for our planning and evaluating our new B.Ed. Program and I made sure that I took LOTS of notes!!

Mount Saint Vincent University - Blended Learning Workshops - March 2011

2011-04-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I think I've finally recovered from my winter cold - I even complete the 24km version of the K-country cookie race, the Goat Creek Ski with Marie, and the 20km version of the Lake Louise Loppet. I must admit that I was a little more tired than usual after the Lake Louise Loppet and I headed straight to Alex's last play off game (I think these cold indoor arenas have been tough on my longs). Anyway's, a couple of days later I go to bed with a "tickle" in my throat and I wake up the next morning with the cough/cold (sigh). My energy level goes down hill all week but on Thursday I get up early to fly to Halifax to fa ciliate a one-day Blended Learning workshop at Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU). I really got chilled on the flight and I was tired and sick by the time I reached Halifax. I went out for dinner with the "gang" from the MSVU Teaching and Learning Centre at the hotel restaurant and then went right to bed. Unfortunately, I had a terrible sleep (lots of cold sweats) and I woke up a complete "mess". The day was foggy and wet (reminded me of how much I disliked the one winter we spent at Dalhousie University for our B.Ed. degrees). Somehow I managed to complete the Student Engagement, Web 2.0 and Blended Learning: What's the Connection? workshop in the morning and the Designing for an Inquiry-Based Approach to Learning workshops in the afternoon. Although, I really don't remember much of the experience. I had dinner with Annie and Daniel in the evening to chat about their BOLD research work and then I flew back to Calgary on the Saturday morning - just in time to catch one of Eric's play-off games in another cold arena (I had a real "cold" melt down after this experience).

WestCAST 2011 Conference, Brandon, Manitoba - February 2011

2011-04-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

Still recovering from the "first wave" of my winter 2011 cold, I flew to Brandon, Manitoba during Reading Week for the Western Canadian Association of Student Teachers (WestCAST) annual conference. This is the first time I attended this conference and I didn't realize that the conference is really focused on student teaching :) Fortunately, the focus of our MRU session was on our Education Undergraduate Society (EUS). I was also fortunate that two of our MRU Education students (Sarah and Harrison) also traveled to Brandon to help out with this session.

We've driven past Brandon, Manitoba many times on our way to the cottage in Ontario but this is the first time that I've ever visited the city. I was very impressed - a real sense of community and Brandon has hosted some major sporting events (e.g., World Curling Championships and the Memorial Cup (Canadian Junior Hockey Championships) just last year). Brandon College was founded as a Baptist Church Mission in 1899. In 1938 the Baptist Church could no longer fund the institution and it was first taken over by the City of Brandon and then the Government of Manitoba.

I learned a tremendous amount about Teacher Education Programs from this conference experience. I attended a pre-conference session on teaching placements that was very informative (notes attached) and I really enjoyed Alec Couros session on Open Learning and Teaching. This fellow really "practices what he preaches" and he provided a wonderful session resource in Google Docs.

Next year the conference will be hosted by the University of Calgary and I hope that we can get more MRU students involved with presenting and attending the conference

Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) Conference - February 2011

2011-04-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Well, so much for reflective conference postings this winter. I came down with a "killer" cold in mid-February and I'm still trying to recover (now April).

The first conference I had an opportunity to attend was the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) conference in Edmonton, Alberta. AISI provides substantial grant money to K to 12 schools and universities to study and document "what works". Some folks believe that AISI has helped out tremendously with the professional of K to 12 teaching in Alberta. Many of the initiatives involve using digital technology as a catalyst for transformational change. Dr. Irene Naested, Dr. Jim Zimmer, and I attended this conference on behalf of Mount Royal. None of us were presenting so we were able to listen and take fairly extensive notes during the session. Most of the keynote sessions were also video recorded.

Important Note: About a month after this conference Alberta Education announced it was reducing the funding for all the current AISI grants by 50% due to budget restrictions.

Web Portfolio Feedback

2011-03-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

Please provide me with some feedback on my portfolio :)

Christmas 2010

2011-01-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

Two things seem to happen each year - one, time seems to move faster (where did the year go) and two, I don't have the energy that I used to (always seem to get sick now at the end of the year).

Fortunately, we had organized a family Christmas holiday to North Captiva Island, off the Gulf Coast of Florida. We had an amazing holiday and I made sure to take lots of pictures and videos with my new Canon Power s95 camaera but it was a bit of an epic adventure to get there but it sure was worth the effort.

We all got up at 4:30am on Christmas Day in order to take a taxi to the Calgary Airport. We were all set to go for our 7:00am flight to Toronto but unfortunately two of the stewardesses slept in so our flight was delayed for almost 30 minutes until they arrived. We finally got going and Marie & I sat up front in business class (I finally manged to get a couple of flight upgrades) while the boys were back in the regular seats.

Once in Toronto we made our connection to Fort Myers with no problems due to the fact that our flight was delayed because of connection and mechanical issues. We finally made it to Fort Myers around 7:00pm and fortunately our shuttle bus had waited for us and we were off to the Tarpon Lodge on Pine Island (with a conveniance store stop en route to pick up some dinner). The Manager of the Lodge had waited up for us to arrive and she helped us check into our room in the original 1926 part of the building.

We all had a great sleep and after breakfast we went for a walk to the Marina and the Randell Research Centre about the Calusa Indians who used to live in this area.

University of Regina Trip - December 2010

2011-01-10T07:21:00.000-08:00

One last trip before the end of 2010 :) Thanks to Dr. Vi Maeers, the Director of the Centre of Teaching and Learning, I had an opportunity to spend a couple of days at the University of Regina. I had driven through Regina numerous times en route to the cottage but I had never had the chance to actually visit the city. I was very impressed with the Lake Wascana area - the government buildings, the Science Centre, and the grounds of the University of Regina. The tree lined residential streets surrounding this area were also impressive. It was also interesting to learn that the University will be celebrating its 100 anniversary in 2011 and that it began as a Methodist Church instition - very similar to the history of Mount Royal University. The visit began with a dinner on Sunday night at the local Keg with members of the Teaching and Learning Centre (Cara and Wally) to discuss the series of blended learning workshops that I would be offering. A really wonderful, supportive group. My first workshop was on Student Engagement, Web 2.0, and Blended Learning: What’s the Connection?. From my perspective, this workshop went reasonably well as almost all faculty can relate to the need to engage their students in their learning processes. The majority of participants had laptops for the workshop and I experimented with the use of a Google Docs handout for them to make a collaborative set of notes during my session.

I had a relaxing lunch and a self-guided tour of the University. I was very impressed with how all the major buildings are connected in a circular fashion (including a residence complex and the physical education facilities). This intentional "connection" of physical space really created a sense of campus community.

My second workshop was on Designing for an Inquiry-based Approach to Blended Learning. This workshop did not go quite as smoothly as planned. A couple of issues - first my energy level was not great and second I think I did too many small group "think-pair-share" activities. One of the feedback comments was that this is a great "ice-breaker" activity at the beginning of a workshop but then I should focus on "whole" (rather than small) group discussions. Again, I had the participants working on a common set of notes in a Google Doc handout.

I went for a run in the sub-Arctic weather after my workshop to rejuvenate me. Running through the snow drifts into a very cool wind, in the dark - reminded me of our time in the Western and Eastern Arctic Regions of Canada. Dinner this evening was a Greek restaurant with the Acting Provost and various members of the Dean's Council. It was a relaxing, informal evening and I enjoyed learning that many of the Dean's continue to teach in their administrative roles.

I was impressed that the majority of participants returned for the second day of workshop sessions - as the prediction was for stormy weather. A few of the participants had traveled from outside of Regina (e.g., Moose Jaw and Saskatoon) to attend the sessions (e.g., Instructional Designers with SIAST). I began the second day with a "double-header" workshop - The Roles of a Successful Blended Instructor and Preparing a Blended Course Outline (handout). Good energy and discussion this morning and I'll have to remember how well these two topics work together. Again, a set of collaborative notes for the session were created in Google Docs.

Over the lunch hour I met with Dean's Council and I was so excited from the morning's workshop that I just "blurted out" my excitement rather than trying to understand the blended learning issues that they were wrestling with. As usual, I forgot to listen - seek to understand and then be understood.

I finished my visit to the University of Regina with my workshop on Student Assessment in Blended Courses. Assessment is an issue in any course and the resulting discussion was a good way to wrap up my visit. A final set of collaborative notes were created in Google Docs for this session and then I headed out to the airport to travel back to Calgary. I was a bit worried about the Air Canada flight taking off in the freezing rain but everything worked out fine.

I'm looking forward to returning to Saskatchewan in June 2011 for the Teaching and Learning to (with and through) the power of technology conference.

University of Winnipeg Visit - November 2010

2010-12-20T19:41:00.000-08:00

Phew, seems like I'm always on the road. I had just returned from the MRU Centennial SoTL Symposium in Banff and now it was time to fly to Winnipeg to facilitate a session on Student Engagement and Web 2.0 in Blended Learning for faculty at the University of Winnipeg. I flew in late Sunday afternoon and immediately took a cab downtown to the Holiday Inn. After checking in, I went looking for a restaurant but the downtown core was pretty well "shut down" on a Sunday evening. I finally found a Subway that was open. I had a sandwich made for me and took it up to my hotel room for dinner and some TV.

I had a relatively good sleep and Louis Svenningsen from the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology met me for breakfast at the Hotel where we are able to chat about the U of Winnipeg and the role of blended learning and technology at the institution. The institution is primarily an urban liberal arts undergraduate institution. Lloyd Axworthy, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Canada is now the President of U of Winnipeg and he appears to be focused on issues of urban renewal (lots of new university buildings in the downtown core) and the internationalization of the curriculum (foreign field experiences and placements for the students).

From my perspective, the session went reasonably well. I must remember to speak less and listen more during these sessions in order to encourage and stimulate dialogue amongst the participants. I'll see if I can do a better job tomorrow when I facilitate a similar session online via Adobe Connect Pro with faculty at North Western College in Minnesota.

MRU Centennial SoTL Symposium, Banff, Alberta - November 2010

2010-11-15T20:47:00.000-08:00

Finally, a chance to attend a conference close to home!! I felt very privileged to be part of the Mount Royal Centennial SoTL Symposium that was held at the Banff Park Lodge over the Remembrance Day long weekend. The Symposium began with a series of workshops at Mount Royal in Calgary. I facilitated a session on Systematic Scholarly Inquiry Using Blended Learning Technologies and New Media. This was the first time that I had offered this workshop and I spent a fair bit of time researching this topic and collecting resources (it was great to be able to draw on past conference notes). Since this session was going to take place in a computer lab, I decided to use Google Docs rather than a set of PowerPoint slides. The beauty of using Google Docs is that I was not only able to provide the participants with access to this document but they could contribute to it - throughout the workshop. This really worked well from my perspective as the session was much more of dialogue (conversation) than a one-way monologue from me.

I kinda helped Richard Gale facilitate a Leadership SoTL workshop in the afternoon but to be totally honest - Richard ran this workshop on his own with me as an active participant. One of the participants shared an interesting TED Talk by Simon Sinek on How Great Leaders Inspire Action. Here is another great one from Sir Ken Robson on Creativity in Education that Alex Bruton shared with his Community of Practice on the Future of Education at Mount Royal. After the workshops, I headed home to the family and we drove up to Banff in two cars (me in one and the rest of the gang in another as they were only planning to stay for one night). We had a lovely dinner at the Magpie and Stump and then Alex & I went for a swim in the hotel pool while Marie & Eric relaxed with Law & Order on TV.

We slept in on Remembrance Day and then had a lovely breakfast in the Chinook Room of the hotel, which has a large window overlooking the Bow Valley. After breakfast, we drove to the Banff Centre and then hiked up Tunnel Mountain together on a relatively sunny and warm November day. I used my new iPOD to take a few pictures and videos Summit of Tunnel Mountain, Tree Balancing on Tunnel Mountain, Tunnel Mountain Hiking Trail, Cave & Basin) en route. I must admit that I'm definitely not impressed with the camera on this device and I think I'm going to invest in one of those waterproof digital cameras. Once, we finished the Tunnel Mountain hike we headed down to the Cave & Basin for the brief boardwalk to the hot springs outlet and a look at the tropical fish that were introduced in the mid-60s and have since flourished in the warm water.

Later in the afternoon, the gang drove back to Calgary and I went for a nice run along the Bow River (I'm so happy that my left knee is recovering despite me not keeping up with my stretching and strengthening program). Around 5pm I headed down for the Symposium reception and banquet. I was so excited to see that the buffet dinner featured prime rib (my absolute favourite meat). Unfortunately, I still have not learned to cut my meat in small pieces and to not talk while eating - so I ended up with yet another bolus in my esophagus (e.g., stuck clump of meat). At least this time I could swallow a wee bit of saliva and I thought I could dislodge it by swallowing and patience. Sigh, no movement so eventually I had to walk next door to the Mineral Springs Hospital where they were able to get me to dislodge (vomit) all the meat out of my system through a combination of carbonated soft drinks and a liquid medicine.

I woke up on Friday morning feeling incredibly hung over from my bolus experience. Fortunately, I hit a series of great sessions on collaborative student learning activities that were supported be a series of emerging technologies. I was really impressed with how Katrin Becker and Carol Jefferies modeled the use of collaborative technologies by using the Google Presentation tool to support their sessions, Student Perceptions on the Use of Collaborative Editing Tools in a Freshman Engineering Communications Course and Supporting and Managing Group Work in Engineering Courses With Shared Documents.

I then had a chance to attend a couple more sessions on collaborative learning . One was by Jennifer Locke from the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary on Building Capacity: Learning Along the Way through an Online Collaborative Project and another by Teresa Snow from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia on the Evaluation of a Collaborative Online Note-Taking Project to Enhance Learning in Large Lecture Classes (collaborative learning is definitely becoming a theme in higher education).

After lunch I attended a session by representatives from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario . This Council is funded by the Ontario Government and supports research related to four themes:
1) Participation/Accessibility
2) Educational Quality
3) System Design
4) Accountability

The research publications from all of the studies are available for free online (link) and I sure wish we had this kind of organization in Alberta!!

I finished the afternoon with a run out towards the Cave & Basin and then had a wonderful fondue dinner with my Triad Research Group at the Grizzly House.

I woke up Saturday morning feeling exceptionally rested (the Banff Park Lodge is truly a great conference hotel) and I thoroughly enjoyed our session on Moving to Their Own Beat: Exploring How Students Use Web 2.0 Technologies to Support Group Work, Outside of Class Session. Great energy and from my perspective - great conversation with the audience about our preliminary research findings. Believe it or not, I actually headed out for another run after our session (3 for 3 days with no knee pain - yahoo), enjoyed one last conference meal (the food was superb), and then drove back to Calgary for the "boys" hockey games!!

Sloan-C International Online Learning Conference, Orlando, Florida - November 2010

2010-11-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

I have been to Orlando several times in the past for conferences and I wasn't 100% sure about returning again but the Sloan-C International Online Learning Conference is a special one. This is the conference that Randy and I launched our Blended Learning in Higher Education book in the fall of 2007. It is also the conference where leading researchers in both the K to 12 and higher education sectors present their work. As usual, I took a series of notes, pictures, and even a video to record my visit (this time using my new iPOD 4 - sure wish it had a flash). A couple of conference highlights for me:

Participating in the pre-conference workshop about blended learning: big issues, strategies, and models. It was wonderful to work and learn with a group of passionate educators and researchers on this topic. Hopefully, I can find the link to the PowerPoint slides for this session.

Participating in the The Community of Inquiry Frameworks Ten Years Later panel session - an incredible diversity of approaches and applications

Barbara Means, the lead author for the Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies review of this study. A couple of key findings from this study:

The meta-analysis found that instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction.

Taken as a whole, the findings suggest that the observed advantage of blended learning is a product of redesigning the learning experience, not of the medium per se

And, my own session on Teaching Presence: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry in blended and online environments.

COHERE Conference, Toronto, Ontario - October 2010

2010-10-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

It sure seems like I have been doing a lot of traveling this fall. I had just returned from Saudi Arabia and less than a week later I was off to Toronto for the 4th Annual COHERE Blended Learning Conference at York University and a visit with Cathy and Peter (plus pictures). It sure was nice to be able to take a direct flight from Calgary to Toronto. I arrived around 6pm on Wednesday night and managed to have a nice dinner with the conference organizers at a student pub/restaurant on campus. I had a surprisingly good sleep and woke up on Thursday morning excited/nervous about my opening keynote session on Design and implementation in blended environments: Maintaining high levels of student learning while increasing flexibility. I haven't done a session in Canada for awhile and most of the people in the audience were friends and colleagues. Fortunately, from my perspective, the session went well and I had some positive feedback from some of the participants. And, of course I made sure to take a set of notes for the conference.

I attended a series of "best practices" sessions in the afternoon. Interesting to hear how people are using blogs and discussion forums - very intentionally in their blended learning courses. Late in the afternoon, I tested out my left knee with a couple of circuits around the York Campus. It's a large campus with Tennis Canada and Toronto Track & Field facilities located around the periphery. For dinner, I joined the group from the University of La Verne in Southern California. There were seven of them and it was great to follow-up with them after my one day workshop on their campus - just over a month ago. They sure seem focused on improving the quality of the student experience by increasing their pedagogical and technological knowledge.

On Friday morning, Alan Davis, the President of Empire State College in New York, provided a keynote address on a "presidential" perspective to blended learning. Alan is a former actor who has a tremendous stage presence. After his session, there was a panel presentation from institutional members of COHERE. Two key take-aways for me were the new eLearning plan that York University has developed (the level of detail - especially with regards to costing was amazing) and the online/blended learning strategy that Memorial University has developed (the entire K to 12, college, university, and government system uses Desire2Learn and Newfoundland's vision is to have citizens create a "cradle to grave" portfolio in the D2L system).

The conference ended at noon and I then spent the afternoon in COHERE's annual meeting (Mount Royal is a new member along with Memorial and the University of Regina). We discussed a number of issues and Ron Owston (York University), Jim Greer (U of Saskatchewan), and me, volunteered to coordinate a COHERE blended learning case study. The idea being that each member institution would put forward one blended learning course for us to study during the winter 2011 semester. We might also use a modified version of our Student Engagement and Interactive Technologies survey (combination of the CLASSE and ECAR survey).

Sister Catherine picked me up at York University around 4pm and we headed to her and Peter's home in eastern Toronto. We all felt that we needed some fresh air so we walked down to Queen Street East in the Beach area for a yummy Italian dinner. Impressively, we also walked back home after dinner, which required a bit more effort since it was all up hill.

On Saturday we went for a very nice bike trip through the ravines to the downtown area of Toronto. We had our traditional peameal bacon sandwich for breakfast at St. Lawrence Market and then walked over to the Air Canada Centre to a new sport clothing store to see if I could find a Canadian Team Soccer Jersey for Eric. Unfortunately, no such luck so we walked back along Front Street with a stop in the TD Centre to view a news photographer exhibition (very graphic images from war zones). We then picked up some meat for dinner at the Market and cycled back home along Dundas Street East (Toronto now has a number of designated bike lanes). Back home, we had lunch on the back porch (wonderful to feel the warmth of the autumn sun) and then drove back into the city so that Cathy could get some reference books from OISE (I didn't realize that we she was taking four courses at U of Toronto this fall). Peter and I then drove east to Scarborough so that I could pick up a soccer jersey for Eric at a specialty store (Alex received the giant US Open Tennis Ball that Peter and Charles had picked up in New York, in early September). I then took a last spin on my rented bike. I headed back to the Beach area, where I watched a huge crane lift cabin cruisers and large sail boats out of Lake Ontario for winter dry dockage. We had a wonderful dinner with Ann and Andrew and then all too soon it was time to fly back to Calgary.

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia - October 2010

2010-10-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Wow, talk about an "epic" travel adventure (with pictures). I recently had the opportunity to take a whirlwind trip to Saudi Arabia. My flight departed from Calgary on Saturday night over the Thanksgiving weekend and I landed at Heathrow Airport in London on Sunday morning. The trip was sponsored by the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Damman. They had purchased first class airline tickets for me so I had the opportunity to tryout the new Executive First Class sleeping units on Air Canada (I'll never complain about leg room again).

Unfortunately, my flight was late arriving in London and I had less than 90 minutes to make my Saudi Arabian Airlines connection to Damman. I always stress about airline connections but a concierge from Air Canada was waiting at the gate to personally escort me through airport security, the Saudi ticket counter and right to my departure gate - now that was "first class" service.

There is a nine hour time difference between Damman and Calgary and it was Sunday evening by the time I landed. A student who works in the public relations department from KFUPM was waiting to meet me in the arrivals area and we drove through the desert to Al-Khobar, a sister city of Damman, that is located on the Persian Gulf. We drove through the security gate of the Le Meridian Hotel and after having my bags X-rayed in the lobby, I checked into my room and went right to sleep.

I actually felt reasonably rested when I woke up on Monday and after a buffet breakfast of fresh fruit and croissants a driver met me at the hotel entrance to take me to KFUPM. This university was originally established in 1963 as a technical training institute for the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO). The institution sits on top of an anticline with a large limestone outcrop, somewhat similar to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. KFUPM has built on this Greek metaphor by modeling the library after the Parthenon and constructing it on top of the limestone outcrop.

I arrived at KFUPM at about 8:45am and was informed that my keynote session on New Trends in eLearning would begin at 9:00am. Fortunately, I had my PowerPoint slides on my website, which I was able to quickly download. From my perspective, the session went reasonably well. All of the KFUPM faculty have completed their graduate studies at English speaking universities and all the courses at the university are taught in English - so we were able to engage in a critical discussion about the use of new technologies to support student learning in higher education.

After the session, I had lunch in the faculty cafeteria where I was able to continue the discussion with a group of faculty associated with the institution's teaching and learning centre. Dr. Mustafa, the Director of the eLearning Centre and I then had a chat after lunch. It was wonderful to discover that he is also a geologist and former Chair of the Earth Sciences Department. Later in the afternoon, the driver took me back to the hotel where I was able to have a swim before a buffet seafood dinner. I did a bit of email and school work in the evening but went to bed very early as I could tell the jet lag was beginning to catch up with me.

I had another buffet breakfast to begin the day on Tuesday and then the KFUPM driver shuttled me back to the university. This morning I facilitated a workshop on Blended Learning in Higher Education: Promises and Pitfalls in their new eLearning lab. This was the first time that they had used this lab and it took awhile to set-up the laptops and figure out the sound and projection system. It turn out the presentation podium's computer had Korean rather than English fonts - which made it a bit of a challenge for me to begin my PowerPoint slides. Again, I thought the session went reasonably well. All of the participants had some experience with a blended approach to teaching and they asked some very insightful questions. After the session, I had lunch with another group of faculty members in the cafeteria.

One of these faculty members was a geophysicist who completed his doctoral studies at Carleton University (and still maintains a house in Barrhaven - western Ottawa). He helped arrange a private tour of Saudi ARAMACO exhibition hall, which included a 3-D movie. It really is impressive how the Saudi's have taken control of their natural resources (unlike Alberta). Not only is ARMAMCO now 100% owned by the Saudis but they also own all of their own processing facilities, four super tankers, and now a large interest in a lot of American Gulf Coast refining facilities. The Ghawar oil field is still the largest conventional oil field in the world, and one-quarter of the world's daily oil production comes from Saudi Arabia. The Ghwar field is based on "vuggy" limestone (up to 35% porosity), a gentle anticline, which is capped by a layer of impermeable anhydrite.

After the tour, the driver took my back to the hotel for another swim and buffet dinner. I did some email in the evening and then went to bed early (really trying to pace myself on this trip with lots of sleep, fruit, and vegetables). I checked out in the morning and facilitated the blended learning workshop for a second time on Wednesday morning. This workshop was not as "fresh" as the one on Tuesday and the audience did not seem as engaged as well. One last trip to the faculty cafeteria for lunch and then a final chat with Dr. Mustafa. Sounds like he was generally impressed with my performance and would like me to return in March 2011 for a series of workshops on mobile learning.

I returned to the hotel to pick up my luggage and then another KFUPM student drove me out to the airport where I checked in and had dinner in the Saudi Arabian Airlines first class lounge. It was a LONG trip back to Calgary. The flight first headed south from Damman to the Riyadh and then north to London (a 9 hour journey). I arrived at Heathrow at 6:30am and headed for the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge for breakfast, a shower, and some email. The flight back to Calgary was pretty uneventful and I was a bit tired so I took the opportunity to watch the Avatar movie. I arrived in Calgary around 4:30pm and I was home just after 5pm. The weather was so nice (around 20C) that I decided to finish the trip with a cycle around the Glenmore Reservoir.

University of La Verne - September 2010

2010-09-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

After my weekend in California I am beginning to wonder why if I still enjoy air plane travel?

The weekend began with a flight from Calgary to San Francisco. I attended our Faculty of Teaching and Learning (FoTL) Council Meeting and then took a taxi to the airport. After going through a very long line up for Customs and Security Clearance I made way to the assigned gate only to discover that the flight was delayed because of fog at the San Francisco Airport. The delay extended throughout the afternoon and it wasn't until 4pm until we finally departed. This meant that we arrived in San Francisco at 5:40pm - 10 minutes after my flight to Ontario had departed (the only "on-time" flight out of SFO). Fortunately, there was one last flight to Ontario but it too was delayed and I was only able to get a stand-by ticket. Finally, the plane departed at 9:30pm and arrived in Ontario around 10:30pm but we had to sit on the tarmac for about 30 minutes waiting for a delayed flight to SFO to move out of our assigned boarding area. After another wait for my luggage, I took a taxi to the Claremont Double Tree Hotel where I had a shower and turned off the lights around midnight.

I woke up at 7am and pulled back the blinds to an amazing view of the San Bernadino mountains. Clear blue sky with a temperature of around 75F that eventually rose to 92F throughout the day. I had a nice breakfast buffet and then Gordon, the Dean of the Faculty of Business at the University of La Verne drove me to their conference center. I immediately impressed with the sense of community and passion for teaching at this Institution!! Originally, I had planned on facilitating three separate workshops but the conversations were so rich and productive that I stuck to the Student Engagement, Blended Learning and Web 2.0: What's the Connection? session for the entire day. I learned a tremendous amount from the participants throughout the day and I sure hope that I can stay "in touch" with the faculty members of this institution in the future.

I finished the workshop around 3:30pm and Mike, one of the faculty members, drove me to the Ontario airport where I took a SouthWest Airlines flight to Oakland. Sister Beth met me at the airport and we had a wonderful dinner with her family (John, Christopher, and Jackson) at an Asian-California Fusion restaurant operated by one of Christopher and Jackson's classmates. We headed back to their home in the Walnut Creek after dinner and turned into bed early as I was exhausted from the workshop and they had spent the day in San Jose at the boys' first volleyball tournament.

The sky was overcast when we woke up on Sunday but John had a wonderful pancake breakfast on the go for us. After breakfast, John and I headed out for a great mountain bike ride. We rode around the base of Mount Diablo and then along the pathways in the near by neighbourhoods. I went for a swim in their backyard pool when we returned and then we headed out for Jackson and Christopher's soccer game. The boys' team was down 2-0 at the half but they battled back to a 2-2 tie. John drove me to the Walnut Creek BART station after the game so that I could shuttle back to SFO. I must admit that I was a bit nervous about my return trip to Calgary and all my fears were confirmed at check-in. First, I found out that my United Airlines ticket had been voided because I had missed my Ontario to SFO connection. I had to pay an additional $150 to get back on the flight. Then, once I got through security - sure enough the flight was delayed for an hour making for a very late arrival in Calgary :(

Rockbound Lake Hike - September 2010

2010-09-05T09:03:00.001-07:00

Usually we would be camping in K-country for the Labour Day weekend but a weather forecast of wet and cool weather - dampened our enthusiasm. So . . . we decided on a day hike to Rockbound Lake in Banff National Park with Katja, Larry, and Stefan. Our boys were supposed to join us but unfortunately Alex got a case of food poisoning from a Taco Bell take-out dinner - so he and Eric stayed home for the day :(

Once again, we were incredibly fortunate with the weather. When we arrived at the base of Castle Mountain the sky had turned dark and there were a few drops of rain. I was imagining a wet, wet hike but the clouds moved on and we had mostly a sunny sky for the entire hike. It's an 8.4km hike to Rockbound Lake and the first part of the walk is a bit of a slog along an olde fire road. As you progress the forest begins to thin and you get some great views down into the Bow Valley. The trail then enters an alpine meadow behind Castle Mountain and the sheer rock walls are very impressive. We finished the final switch backs up to Rockbound Lake and found a sunny spot for lunch - surrounded by the natural ampitheatre of rock.

Marie had even purchased a day fishing license for Eric so we took a few casts into the lake but it was very difficult to imagine that there were any fish in the lake as it was so shallow and void of any plant life. We sunned ourselves for awhile on the huge rocks at the base of the Castle Mountain talus slopes and then headed back down the trail for an amazing dinner at the Storm Mountain Lodge :)

Rockwall - Kootenay National Park - August 2010

2010-08-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a weekend - back country camping will never be the same again as you can see from our pictures!! Now that Marie is a Parks Canada employee she is able to book and reserve the Warden's Back Country Cabins in the Western Canadian National Parks. So . . . she booked a couple of cabins in Kootenay National Park and on Friday August 27th we drove to the Paint Pots and hiked up along Tumbling Creek to the Rockwall where we stayed in the Wolverine Pass Cabin. This was an extra bonus as the weather had become very cool and it was snowing by the time we arrived at the cabin and lit a fire in the stove. The next day we awoke to a brilliant blue sky and hiked along the Rockwall, at times through a considerable amount of snow. We then descended to Helmet Creek, where we had a great view of the cascading falls. We opened up the Helmet Creek Wardens Cabin and settled in. Alex and Marie went for a quick dip in the creek (very brave) and then we walked up to the base of the falls where we saw three mountain goats on the steep ledges of the Rockwall. We returned to the cabin for hot chocolate and a warm fire and we were joined in the evening by a couple of graduate students studying primates. The one student is currently studying lemurs in Madagascar for his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto. The clouds descended during the night and on Sunday August 29th we hiked out to the Paint Pots under a dark sky. Fortunately, we could still see the mountain tops and the rain held off until we made it back to the parking lot.

Summer of 2010

2010-08-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

The summer of 2010 began and ended with a "bang" - which we captured with as many pictures as possible!! The boys and I drove to the cottage in Ontario once school was over at the end of June. Once we arrived at the cottage we purchased a used Grew Cutter 181, which we then moved into the boat house while putting the olde boat up on blocks for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, we were able to sell the olde boat to a local marina. Over the course of July family members arrived from all parts of North America and we had a great time tubing, wake boarding, water skiing, fishing, and touring with the new boat. We celebrated my 50th birthday during the first weekend of August and then people started to head home. Unfortunately, we had a severe wind storm during the first week of August, which caused numerous trees to be uprooted. We had an olde oak tree fall on the front roof of our cottage and Ruth & John had several oak trees land heavily on their newly renovated cottage. Christopher captured the storm on video and we were able to cut down the trees and put a large tarp on the roof before we had to drive back to Calgary. En route I somehow managed to get poison ivy on my legs and arms - so I wasn't a very happy camper by the time we arrived home.

American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Conference, Denver, Colorado - May 2010

2010-05-06T07:54:00.001-07:00

I was very privileged to attend the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual conference in Denver, Colorado from April 29^th to May 4, 2010. I had an opportunity to present a paper on Exploring the Connection Between Student Engagement and Technology-Enhanced Assessment Practices that Jim Zimmer and I have been working on for the past couple of years as well as a paper on Revisiting the Graduate Seminar Through Blended Online Learning with Mike Power from Laval University and his graduate student Annie from Dalhousie University. I also chaired a few roundtable sessions that were definitely a time-keeping challenge :)

A few themes that I took away from the conference included the need to:

Re-frame my EDUC2325 course to focus on digital literacies (e.g. reading, writing, and calcuting) rather than just on the technology of the "day"
Learn more about a participatory approach to assessment
Start reading and investigating how social networking systems (SNS) impact students' "identity formation" (in and out of cyberspace)

These emergent themes were heavily influenced by the sessions that I've summarized below. As usual I took an extensive set of notes from the sessions that I attended as well as the usual set of pictures for memories.

Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and the Schools – Allan Collins, Northwestern University

In his keynote presentation for the Technology as an Agent of Change for Teaching and Learning (TACTL) Allan indicated that there have been three eras of education in the United States

1) Apprenticeship – personal, resource intensive, and engaging
2) Schooling – mass oriented, efficient, and bureaucratic
3) Life-long learning – customized, highly interactive, and learner-controlled

He indicated that each era had the following characteristics:

Responsibility:1) parents – 2) state – 3) individuals
Content: 1) practical skills/literacy – 2) basic skills/disciplines – 3) learning to learn/generic skills
Pedagogy: 1) apprenticeship – 2) didacticism – 3) interaction
Assessment: 1) observation – 2) testing – 3) embedded (assessment for learning)
Location: 1) home – 2) school – 3) wherever you are

And, Allan suggests that we need to rethink learning in schools

Not just: How can we improve schools? but to also include new questions:
How can we develop games to teach mathematical reasoning?
How can we make learning technology resources available to more people?
What kind of tools can support people to learn on their own?

The other highlight of the conference for me was a panel presentation on Web 2.0: Research Issues, Results and Future Directions. This panel was composed of Chris Dede, Harvard, Daniel Hickey, Indiana, Diane Jass Ketelhut, Temple, Donald Leu, University of Connecticut.

Chris discussed how technologies can be used to generate knowledge and possibly wisdom. He describes five dimensions of wisdom:

1) cognitive (type of knowledge)
2) practical-experiential (type of knowledge)
3) inter-personal (beyond knowledge)
4) ethical (beyond knowledge)
5) meta-cognition (type of knowledge)

Dan presented the concept of participatory assessment by design – a process of alignment with intended learning outcomes and increasingly formal representations of knowledge. He has developed five stages of participatory assessment:

1) Informal – artifact – reflection
2) Information – activity – reflection
3) Semi-formal – artifact – reflection
4) Formal assessment guidelines
5) Very formal testing guidelines

Diane spoke about how immersive virtual environments can be an agent of change by facilitating the development of identity. Other have suggested that we can possess different “virtual” and “physical” identities and online there is exists the potential for us to have multiple identities.

Finally, Don wrapped up the session with a very provocative presentation that suggested the Internet is a reading comprehension issue, not a technology issue. His New Literacies Research Team have developed a series of Online Reading Comprehension Assessments (ORCA) to help students develop online reading comprehension that is very different than “offline” reading. He is concerned that the “literacy divide” is growing and that it’s important to “re-frame” the Internet as an issue that teachers feel passionate and responsible for (e.g., literacy).

I'm already looking forward to the AERA 2011 conference in New Orleans!!

Sloan Blended Learning Conference, Chicago, Illinois - April 2010

2010-05-05T20:38:00.001-07:00

Once again, I had the opportunity to attend the Sloan Blended Learning Conference in Chicago. This time I facilitated a three hour workshop on Student Assessment in Blended Learning Environments: Using the Community of Inquiry Framework for Design and Implementation. My session was video taped in two parts (part one and part two) and participant feedback about the workshop has been posted to YouTube. I really love this conference for a couple of reasons. One, I get to work with an amazing group of educators and research with a wealth of online and blended teaching experience. Two, I get a chance to visit with Christy and her family in Brooklyn, New York. I made sure I took lots of pictures!!!

My conference notes are not so lengthy this year – as I had my workshop and I participated in a blended learning benchmarking session – which has resulted in a very interesting wiki resource. The conference highlights for me included Joel Hartman’s opening keynote address on the Promise and Practice of Blended Learning and Veronica Diaz’ closing keynote session on Hybrid Learning meets Web 2.0: (re)designing a Hybrid Course with Emerging Technologies for the Net Generation Learner

I really liked how Joel laid out ten key issues for blended learning success:
1. institutional strategy for blended learning (why),
2. systematic approach,
3. faculty development,
4. course design and development support,
5. online student support,
6. online academic services,
7. robust and reliable infrastructure,
8. effective organizational model,
9. pro-active policy development,
10. data collection and assessment

Veronica had an amazing set of slides and I really like how she classified Web 2.0 tools (communicate, collaborative, documentation, generative, interactive), presented Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, and an evaluation framework for blended learning courses.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - Quality in Online Learning Discussion - April 2010

2010-04-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, I have not been very regular in my blog-postings :( This past week I had an opportunity to travel to Seattle for a one day meeting at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about quality in online learning. It was my first time in the Seattle area and I was very impressed with the types of industries in the area (e.g. Boeing, Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft). The current headquarters of the Foundation are located on the east side of Lake Union and I had a nice run along the lake shore (lots of people living on houseboats). I managed to take some photos of my trip and a few notes. The Foundation also set up a wiki where we have been able to share resources and ideas about blended and online learning in North American higher education.

A few course evaluation rubrics that for blended and online courses that I need to further investigate include:

Weekend in San Francisco - December 2009

2009-12-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

I was very fortunate on the way back from the Academic Impressions Conference on Instructional Strategies for Blended Learning to be able to spend the weekend with Beth, John, Christopher, and Jackson in San Francisco. Despite some rain, we had a wonderful weekend exploring downtown San Fran, attending a performance of the musical Wicked, eating an amazing dinner at the Betelnut Restaurant, and watching the boys play a couple of indoor soccer games.

I put a set of photos together from the weekend activities.

Academic Impressions - Instructional Strategies for Blended Learning Conference - Scottsdale, Arizona - December 2009

2009-12-20T08:08:00.000-08:00

Phew, I've just finished my final workshop / conference for the 2009. This certainly has been a busy year for travel and conferences - most of them related to blended learning. I had the opportunity to once again be part of Academic Impression's Instructional Strategies for Blended Learning Conference. This time the conference took place at the Hotel Valley Ho, located in the old downtown area of Scottsdale, Arizona. It was wonderful to be working again with Margaret Riel, Tom Reeves, and Chuck Dziuban. From my perspective, we are an AMAZING team as we have such a wide range of experiences and approaches to blended learning.

Once again, I "kicked off" the workshop with a pre-conference session on Designing Courses for the Needs of Diverse Learners. This time I made a greater effort to focus on the range of diverse learners in higher education and to "draw out" the audience's own experiences about this topic. I'll be VERY curious to see the participants' comments about this session :)

I also closed the first day of the conference with a session on the Roles of Successful Blended/Online Instructors. I could tell that a large portion of the audience was tired and overwhelmed with information - before I began my session - so rather than including the usual think/pair/share and small group activities - I attempted to conduct a "guided" discussion about the key instructor roles and issues encountered in blended/online courses. I used the three components of teaching presence found in the community of inquiry framework (e.g., design & organization, facilitation, direct instruction) and I think that I was able to engage at least some of the audience.

I was also the "closer" for the second day of the conference with my session on Student Engagement and Web 2.0: What's the Connection? Unfortunately, we had been having problems with the hotel's wireless internet connectivity throughout the day - so there was some "pent up" audience frustration about some of the collaborative learning technologies that we were trying to get them to use (e.g. etherpad.com and Google Sites). I figured that I would resort to the same tactics I had used for my closing session on day one but this time I worked extremely hard at trying to get the participants to share their own experiences and strategies for effectively and efficiently using collaborative learning technologies in higher education. I'm not exactly sure how well this session was received by the audience as we had maybe over focused on digital technologies.

Definitely, the main reason I enjoy participating in Academic Impression Conference's is the opportunity to learn from the audience and the other facilitators. The olde saying that "you learn twice when you teach others" certainly wrong true for me again at this conference :) I've put together some "sketchy" conference notes but some of my key take aways from the other facilitators included the following:

From Margaret

A greater apprection for design and implementation of learning circles - model of distributed leadership where a small number of participants collaborate on a set of projects around a theme for a specified period of time to gain deeper knowledge and shared understanding, has a beginning and an end with the outcomes focusing on knowledge building dialogue and circle products (e.g. print publications, websites, reports, graphics or media products)

From Tom

We "assess" people and we "evaluate" things
We learn "with" technology not "from" technology - knowledge needs to be co-constructed, represented, and shared
Teaching is about asking the "right" questions
Learner tasks – move from academic (textbook problems) to authentic (ill-structured problems)
Visible Learning – A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement – John Hattie

Things that make a difference – 10 Effects

Feedback to students .72
Formative evaluation to instructors (feedback from students) .70
Time on task .60
Mastery learning plan .58
Small group learning .49

Dimensions of Effective Assessments

Task-oriented
Challenging
Collaborative
Constructivist
Conversational
Responsive
Reflective Formative

Starting Points for an Evaluation Study

Establish a strong rationale
Identify decisions upfront
Use multiple criteria

From Chuck

Engaging students by understanding - boundary objects, prototype theories, and cognitive models
Generational narratives – a man is more like his times than his father
Convenience is the main reason for students to take an online course or program

Predictors of student success - the three key questions on a student rating of instruction survey

Facilitation of learning
Communication of ideas
Respect and concern for students

Canadian Association of Teacher Education (CATE) Working Conference on Student Field Experiences - Winnipeg, Manitoba - November 2009

2009-12-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

Hmnn . . . looks like I forgot to add a blog posting about the Canadian Association of Teacher Education's (CATE) Working Conference on field experiences for pre-service teacher education programs. This conference was hosted by the University of Manitoba and was held at a hotel in Winnipeg in November, 2009. Dr. Irene Naested, Dr. Jodi Nickel, and myself represented Mount Royal University at the conference. I must admit that I was initially skeptical about the personal value of this working conference as we still have not received the necessary funding ($$$) to proceed with our B.Ed. program at MRU. But . . . the conversations with Education faculty members from across Canada who are deeply engaged in developing, delivering and evaluating field experiences for pre-service teacher education students provided me with some VERY valuable insights that I hope that I'll be able to one day utilize for our own program.

I was the recorder for my workshop roundtable group - so I've actually got a pretty good set of notes from the conference. Some of the key conference "take-aways" that my group identified included:

An increased awareness of diversity of field experiences and teacher education programs across Canada
The importance of sharing what we learned with our colleagues in our home Faculties of Education
Highlighting the importance of “teacher education” research – specifically field supervision as research – increase status
An awareness of language and tensions around field experiences
A recommendation that field experience supervision should be listed under research – rather than service

Next steps for the group include:

Focus of final paper should be on field experiences
4000 word length for the papers
Consider and discuss the assumptions you make in the design of your field experience in your program
Suggest program changes or conceptualization of program – consider or discuss what would count as “evidence” for change in your program (research agenda)
Single-blind peer review (authors don't know who reviewed the papers) – authors of papers review two other papers – focus on improving the quality of the paper – want to create a document that will be useful to our colleagues in teacher education programs
Deadline for publication for CSSE in May 2010 – submit final version of paper by Dec 31st

World Congress on E-Learning - Vancouver, B.C. - October 2009

2009-11-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

Randy Garrison and I had been invited to present a session on Blended Learning at the World Congress on E-Learning in Vancouver. A couple of months before the conference, Randy learned that he had received the Outstanding Leadership Award from the Sloan-C ALN Network. His award presentation was to take place the same time as our E-Learn session. So, I travelled to the conference "solo". Since, I had been away the week previously at the ISSOTL conference, I was only able to attend E-Learn for a short period of time. I flew into Vancouver on Tuesday afternoon and then returned to Calgary on Wednesday evening. Upon arrival, I enjoyed the new Sky-Train line that runs from the airport to downtown. Not only is the cost impressive (only $3.75) but the time to destination is impressive (I didn't realize that the Sky-Train runs underground in the downtown core). Once I had checked into the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel, I went for a very relaxing and enjoyable run through Stanley Park. The fall colours were past their prime but the sun was shining and the smell of the ocean was intoxicating (I tried my best to take a few photos during the run). After the run, I attended the opening reception for the conference and then had a wonderful dinner with Amanda & Jeff, Mike, Petrea, and Jennifer. It was wonderful to catch up on eLearning news from Australia, Laval, and British Columbia. Terry Anderson, from Athabasca University, was the Wednesday morning keynote and it's always interesting to listen to Terry's perspective about networks, groups, and collaborative learning technologies. My session on Blended Learning was after Terry's and I was impressed with the interest and enthusiasm of the audience. I had a number of people follow-up with me after I had finished (potentially some interesting connections and partnerships). Speaking of interesting people, I had a chance to meet with Dr.Narimane Hadj-Hamou Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University, Dubai. Narimane is in the process of establishing an eLearning Advisory Board for her instition and has asked me to be a member!!

International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Annual Conference - Indiana University, Bloomington - October 2009

2009-11-04T17:50:00.000-08:00

Indiana University in Bloomington, home of the National Survey of Student Engagement, birthplace of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), leader in the field of Instructional Systems Design, and member of the Big 10 Conference for Athletics. Finally, I got a chance to visit this institution in order to attend the 5th annual ISSOTL conference. I had contacted Curt Bonk in advance about my visit and he arranged for me to facilitate a workshop on Blended Learning for the Office of Instructional Consulting in the School of Education. I really appreciated the opportunity to have a dialogue with a number of graduate students and faculty about their own experiences and research into blended approaches to learning. In terms of the ISSOTL conference, I must admit that I over extended myself with four presentations: a panel presentation on Canadian Contexts for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, a single paper presentation on Student Engagement and Interactive Learning Technologies, another single paper on Student and Faculty Perceptions of Self, Peer, and Instructor Feedback, and finally another panel presentation on Terms of Engagement: Four Countries, Four Courses, Four Commentaries. All of these sessions were well attended and from my perspective there was a good dialogue about the research topics and issues with the audience. The only issue was that since I was presenting so often - there was minimal opportunities for me to attend other sessions. A couple of highlights for me were a session by Randy Bass and Toru Iyshi about Research-Supported Prescriptions for Developing Highly Effective Learning Groups SoTL 2.0: The Next Ten Years of Technology-Enhanced SoTL and a keynote by Richard Research-Supported Prescriptions for Developing Highly Effective Learning Groups Baraniuk about Research-Supported Prescriptions for Developing Highly Effective Learning Groups Open Access Education and the Textbook of the Future. There were lots of events taking place during our time at IU and I had a chance to attend an outdoor "Pink Concert" to raise awareness of cancer and an NBA pre-season basketball game between the Indianapolis Pacers and San Antonio Spurs. The leaves on the trees were in full autumn colours and I made sure that I took lots of photos and a full set of notes from the conference.

Jossey-Bass Online Teaching & Learning Conference - October 2009

2009-11-04T17:37:00.000-08:00

Randy Garrison and I were asked by Jossey-Bass to be part of their annual online teaching and learning conference. The focus of our session was intended to be on our Blended Learning in Higher Education book that we had published with Jossey-Bass. I was very impressed with the assistance we received to prepare for our session. Both Jonathan Finkelstein from the Learning-Times and Susan Manning provided us with extensive feedback on how to make our session interactive. Text was minimized on all the slides and activities for the audience were designed throughout the presentation. We had several polling activities (e.g., previous experience with blended learning, future predictions about blended learning) and text entry activities (e.g., advantages and challenges of blended learning). During our session, I was impressed with how these activities engaged the audience and how they also used the chat window for further dialogue with each other. The PowerPoint slides from our session are available online as well as a recording of our workshop (unfortunately, you need a logon and password to access the recording).

Elluminate Users Conference - October 2009

2009-11-04T17:32:00.000-08:00

The use of synchronous communication tools such as Elluminate Live! appears to be growing in K to 12 education - especially at the high school level. One of the drivers appears to be students in conventional high schools taking individual courses online in order to complete graduation requirements (e.g. certain course that is only offered once a year or will not fit into the student's existing timetable). Comments from online K to 12 teachers suggest that the synchronous sessions help to establish a sense of online community, which helps increase student motivation and responsibility leading to successful course completion (rather than withdrawal and failure). I had a chance at a recent Elluminate Users Conference to discuss the findings from the pilot study that Mike Power and I conducted on the use of Elluminate Live! to support graduate courses in education. The conference was held at the University of Calgary but I facilitated my session via Elluminate as I was also involved in a Jossey-Bass online conference. The PowerPoint slides from my session are available online and my session emphasized the use of synchronous communication tools in online graduate courses to increase student success and satisfaction, increase teaching flexibility and satisfaction for the faculty, and to potentially increase course revenues and decrease costs from an administrative perspective. I thought the session began on an interactive note by the participants describing how they are using Elluminate Live! in their own courses and programs but then I "hogged" the microphone and "talked at the audience" about our pilot study results with minimal opportunities for Q&A or discussion. From my perspective, Web-conferencing sessions require a fair bit of design and discipline by the facilitator in order to ensure that they are "two way" experiences as without visual cues with the audience - it's all too easy to become a "talking head".

Central Michigan University - Faculty Development Workshops

2009-08-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

What a shock to the system!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After spending three and a half long days in the car driving back to Calgary from the cottage - I almost immediately boarded a plane and flew to Central Michigan University to facilitate a series of faculty development workshops. The fun began about an hour out of Chicago when the pilot indicated that we might have to be diverted to Detroit because of poor weather conditions at O'Hare Airport. Luckily, we caught a break between the lightning and thunder head clouds and we're able to land. It was a bit spooky as we taxied into the gate as there were almost no planes on the ground because of the lightening storms. Upon debarking, the monitors indicated that my flight to Midland, Bay City, Saginaw (Tri-City) Airport was going to be delayed for about an hour and a half. That changed 5 minutes before flight time when a PA announcement indicated that the flight had been cancelled. I booked myself on the next available flight at 7:30pm but again 5 minutes before flight time - an announcement was made that the flight would be delayed until 10pm. And, at 10pm - another announcement that the flight would not leave until 11pm. It was a welcome surprise when the flight did indeed depart at 11pm. It was a short flight but with the time change - I didn't arrive at the MBS Tri-City Airport until 1:30pm. I then had to rent a car and drive an hour to Mt Pleasent in the dark. I checked into the hotel at 2:45am and by 3:00am I was in bed.

It seemed like my head had just hit the pillow when my alarm rang at 7am and I was in full flight. I met briefly with the Jim Theirell, the Director of the Faculty Centre for Innovative Teaching at CMU at 7:30am. I then drove over to campus to get ready to facilitate a session on the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Education for 100 new faculty members. I was surprised how well the session went considering how exhausted I was (keen group of new faculty). I had a 30 minute break and then dove right into my next session on Student Engagement and Web 2.0: What's the Connection? Again, great audience response!! We broke for lunch and I began to feel my energy waning. I had a brief break after lunch before launching into a two hour session for a "seasoned" group of faculty on Blended Learning: So Many Technologies, So Little Time - Which Should I Consider and Which are a Waste of Time? A relatively good session but I could definitely tell that I was not operating on a 100% battery power. I hung around and chatted with faculty for a while before heading back to the hotel and a run through the CMU campus - lots of green space. The humidity was almost a 100% from a tropical hurricane moving up the east coast of Florida and I was still sweating after a long shower. I had a fun dinner at the hotel restaurant with Dan, Sarah and Jim from the Faculty Centre. Afterwards, we attended a wine and cheese reception for the New Faculty in the hotel ballroom but after one beer I literally "hit the wall" and returned to my hotel room for some much needed sleep.

I woke up the next morning still exhausted but managed to muster up enough energy to drive back to CMU and facilitate one final session on Student Engagement and Web 2.0 for the "seasoned" faculty. A really good turnout (everyone from yesterday afternoon's session plus more) and I really enjoyed the discussion and debate about the merits of Web 2.0 technologies during this session. From my perspective, the faculty at CMU are very similar to those at Mount Royal. The majority share a real passion for teaching and there is a rich feeling of collegiality and community on both campuses. After the session, I had lunch with the new faculty. I just loved their enthusiasm and they really energized me - I'm really looking forward to starting the fall semester with my students!!

After lunch, I drove back to the MBS Tri-City Airport and apprehensively waited for my flight to Chicago. The plane took off and landed on time but I still felt uncomfortable entering the O'Hare Airport - it definitely takes time to overcome bad experiences. Much to my delight the Calgary flight took off on time and my trip to CMU ended on a VERY positive note!!!!!!!!!

Summer 2009

2009-08-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's hard to believe that yet another summer is coming to an end - they are just too short in Canada!! I made sure that I captured as many events as possible on film.

I was privileged to be able to spend six weeks at our family cottage in Ontario with Alex and Eric. Unfortunately, Marie was not able to join us as she was focused on writing her doctoral dissertation (although she did manage a trip to China for a conference presentation in July with Eric :)

The cottage is always a great place to relax and unwind and this summer was no exception. The weather was a bit cooler than usual with a fair amount of rain but hey, it was wonderful to smell the fresh clover and view all the wild flowers during my morning runs and bike rides. Alex and I were alone for the first three weeks and we managed to construct a soap box derby car from "scratch", which Alex drove in the Smiths Falls Annual Soap Box Derby. Our inspiration came from observing the Moosefest Soap Box Derby in Dryden, Ontario during our drive from Calgary to the cottage. We also played a fair bit of golf at the local courses but our frustration with the game grew over the summer since our scores continued to get worse with each round we played :(

Christy, Charles, Benjamin and Cathy were able to join us for a week at the cottage (sure was nice to have some company) and we had some great ping pong and card games - along with some fun on Splash Island and the Water Mat in the Rideau Lake. Eric flew to Ottawa after his trip to China and we made a couple of field trips. One, to Montreal to visit Christy, Charles & Benjamin at their rented apartment in downtown Montreal, a couple to Toronto for Argonaut and Blue Jay games at Rodger's Stadium and another one to the Haliburton Highlands to visit Aunt Catherine & Uncle Warren at their cottage and a brief visit with Eric's friend Thomas at his cottage.

The weather finally warmed up for our drive back to Calgary (that is a long road trip) but it sure was cool and wet when we arrived in CowTown. After living the "cottage life" for an extended period of time - I've found the adjustment back to home and work life to be rather challenging (what happened to my patience?). Alex and I are already planning for next summer at the cottage by starting a "new boat fund" (we're saving every penny for a new power boat :)

Canadian Society for the Studies in Education (CSSE) Annual Conference - Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

2009-05-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE) annual conference will be my last "road trip" for the 2008 to 2009 academic year - yahoo!!

Wonderful to be back in Ottawa again and the weather has been incredible!!

I began with a pre-conference meeting for the Technology and Teacher Education (TATE) special interest group. We spent some time sharing resources together and then had a nice dinner at Maxwell's restaurant on Elgin street in Ottawa. TATE has created the following spaces for sharing resources and ideas:

TATE Blog
Username - itcommons
Password - tate-csse

TATE Twitter Area

Once again, I've put together a set of notes for the conference sessions I attended and I've also posted a few pictures of our Mount Royal Education & Schooling gang. Jodi and I ran in a 10km run on Saturday night and Jim Zimmer and I presented our Student Engagement and Interactive Technologies session on Monday morning. Neat to see that Mount Royal has also posted a brief story about our research to the institutional web site. I also was part of a panel session on the use of Wikis in Canadian Pre-Service Teacher Education Programs.

The conference was a great way for our Department to spend some time together, outside of Mount Royal, and I think that everyone in the group enjoyed Ottawa and the CSSE experience!!

Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) Conference - Ottawa, Ontario

2009-05-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

Ever get that feeling that you are TOTALLY over extended -constantly compromising quality for quantity?

Too many conferences, too much travel and too many competing demands on my time!!

Anyways, it was great to be able to visit Ottawa in the spring during the tulip festival. The reason for the trip was to attend the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) annual conference. Fiona Villamar (a student at Mount Royal) and I facilitated a session on our Student Engagement and Interactive Learning Technologies study and Mike Power (from Laval University) and I presented on our Blended Online Learning Design research. The conference was held at the Chateau Laurier Hotel and it was a wonderful experience presenting both sessions in the ballroom with thoughts of all the famous people and former Prime Ministers who have presented in this room.

As usual, I created a set of notes from the conference and here a few of the highlights from my perspective.

George Sieman's Keynote Session and his list of resources.

Phil Ice's session on Using Online Collaborative Document Editors to Enhance Student Satisfaction and Cognitive Presence Outcomes and the introduction of a couple of collaborative online writing tools - Adobe Buzzword and Zoho Writer.

Reaching & Teaching Conference - Calgary, Alberta

2009-05-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

I guess we all have our "off" days :(

I had been invited to facilitate a Blended Learning and Student Engagement: What's the Connection? session for the Reaching & Teaching Annual Conference. This conference is co-organized by the Calgary Professional Development Consortium and the Golden Hills School District. Each year, the conference focuses on a specific theme and this year the topic was technology.

Sigh, I really should have spent more time researching the needs of my audience (K to 12 teachers and administrators). Rather than focusing on an instructional design framework for online blended learning - I really should have focused on the notion of student engagement and how a blended learning approach and technology can be used to foster student success and retention. The BIG problem for me - was that I had been asked to offer the same 90 minute workshop - twice. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. An opportunity to make the same mistake twice - insanity - doing the same thing over again but somehow expecting the results to be different.

Lesson learned - know your audience!!

Hopefully I don't make this mistake again.

Sloan Blended Learning Workshop - Chicago, Illinois

2009-05-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

On the road again . . . .

Third straight week of conferences and travel - I think I'm getting tired of airports :)

This week it was the Sloan Blended Learning Workshop in Lisle, Illinois (a business suburb - just west of Chicago). I arrived on Sunday and had a relaxing afternoon (and swim) at the hotel. In the evening, I went out for a multi-course Italian dinner with in nearby Napier with the other workshop coordinators and instructors.

The Sloan-C Foundation has been involved in supporting online education initiatives in the United States since 1993 and they have sponsored an annual blended learning workshop for the past 6 years. The first workshop was by invitation only and Randy was one of the participants. This year's workshop was designed to have a business and instructional strategy track and I was responsible for facilitating most of the instructional strategy workshops. On Monday, I conducted a four hour workshop on Designing Blended Learning Communities. I had anticipated a group of about 40 participants but I ended up with over 100 people and we ended up moving the workshop into the main auditorium. From my perspective, the workshop was relatively interactive (several opportunities for small and large group discussion) but I sure was exhausted by the end of the day. The next day, I was scheduled to facilitate The Roles of Successful Blended/Online Instructors workshop in the morning and I must admit that my energy level was not "prime". Fortunately, the participants were VERY engaged in this workshop and they really kept the discussion "fresh". It was fascinating to learn how people are using different synchronous and asynchronous communication technologies to "blend" their higher education courses and programs. Montana State University offers an online pre-service teacher education program (only the practicum's have a face-to-face component) and one the faculty members conducts her classes in Second Life (she is Bella Topaz). A faculty member from Red Deer College indicated to me that they are using Horizon Wimba to support their online courses and that one of the advantages of Wimba is that it allows students to connect to the synchronous sessions via telephone if they encounter computer problems (1-800 number).

I was totally exhausted but exhilarated by the end of the conference. Next stop was New York City to visit Christy, Charles and Benjamin in Brooklyn. It was 88F when I landed at La Guardia but by the next day it had cooled off to the mid-60s. Previously, I had only visited New York in the late fall - when all the leaves and flowers had finished so it was amazing to arrive in the "peak" of spring. The vivid green of fresh grass and leaves, all the trees in blossom and the tulips in their prime - I made sure to take lots of pictures!! Christy and I spent a morning in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with her friend Angela and son Oscar. In the afternoon, Christy and Benjamin had a rest while I ran the Circle Road around the perimeter of Prospect Park - what a treat!! Later on, Christy and I took Benjamin to the Music Together class and then we picked up some fixings for a pizza dinner in their apartment. I got to experience more of Benjamin's life on my second day in Brooklyn. We began the morning with a ride on the F Subway Train to Bergen for gym class. Benjamin really enjoys taking the subway and I'm really impressed with his spatial intelligence - he recognizes many key landmarks in his neighbourhood (i.e., the local pie shop, the entrance to the subway and his apartment). Christy was involved in a concert at Polytechnic Prepatory where she teaches violin/viola so she had to leave after lunch but I got a chance for a second run in Prospect Park as their baby-sitter Liz looked after Benjamin while he had his nap. Towards the end of the afternoon, Charles and I headed into Manhattan to see the sights and to buy him a pair of glasses. Phew, lots of people and noise - I was tired by the time we decided to head back to Brooklyn and purchase some Vietnamese baguettes for dinner in the apartment. All to soon, it was time to head back to Calgary and I was fortunate to be able to transfer to early flights so that I arrived home in time for dinner.

American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Conference - San Diego, California

2009-04-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot about the American Educational Research Association annual conference and I finally got the opportunity to experience the event “first hand”. Wow, over 1400 concurrent session blocks with around 15,000 conference delegates.

Irene Naested (the Chair of our Mount Royal Education & Schooling Program) and I touched down in San Diego on Monday April 13^th to sunny skies and warm weather. The reason we were at the conference is that Irene had been invited to participate in a panel session about nine Canadian pre-service teacher education programs that had been sponsored by the Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE). Our session was well received and we made a lot of important contacts while attending the conference.

We stayed at the Manchester Hyatt Hotel on the water front and upon our arrival they provided us with the option of each staying in a 1500 sq. ft. hospitality suite with a Murphy bed. We decided to go for the opportunity and it was wonderful to have lots of space along with a full dining room kitchen and work study. Sigh, the lens of the camera jammed again and I didn’t think that I would be able to take any pictures until I met Ron MacDonald from the University of PEI on the last day of the conference. Ron also has a Canon PowerShot and he explained to me that you just to “tap” the camera body – in order to un-jam the lens (it works). Thus, the trip pictures are very limited.

The number of session options and special interest group (SIG) sessions at the conference was overwhelming. I’ve just highlighted a few in this blog posting but I did try to make a complete set of notes for all the sessions that I attended.

Community of Inquiry as a Theoretical Framework to Foster “Epistemic Engagement” in Online Education – Peter Shea

Online Education – over 20% of all college students, over 1 million K to 12 students
Challenges – technologies evolving, building a plane as it flies – where is the plane going – flight plan
Conceptual frameworks of learning – Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt (2006) – RER

1. Presentational view

· Focus on information transmission

· Visualize abstract concepts

· Myth of immaculate perception

2. Performance tutoring view

· Automated environments that support problem solving

· Increase student-content interaction, transform passive to active learning experiences

· Lack of social context

3. Epistemic engagement view

· Intellectual engagement and interaction

· Engages in questioning, makes connections, validation of knowledge, student-student and student-instructor interaction

· Challenge of reflective learning and co-construction of knowledge – successfully orchestrating (an instructional) dialogue demands sophisticated skills

The Use of Research Circles in Education from Sweden

Democratic knowledge practices
Characteristics

Starting with the participants’ problem
A meeting on equal terms
Mutual knowledge construction
Open and critical attitude
Building knowledge together
Critical reflection
Collective knowledge construction
Documentation – making public

Used as a process in Sweden for political decisions

Epistemology

View of knowledge – non-hierarchal, anti-authoritarian, in essence democratic
Construction of knowledge – interaction, reflection, critical analysis
A critical approach

Notes

No Scholarship of Teaching & Learning SIG at AERA
Roots in participatory action research (PAR) – focus on community development
Issue of action research not being considered “scientifically” viable – quantitative focus of AERA

Research Report: Evaluation of Information and Communication Technology in the Service of Action Research

Learning from and through practice
Disposition – way of thinking
Adaptive expertise versus routine expertise – focus on continual improvement
Cycles of inquiry
Progressive problem solving
Technology – mediate relationships of others either through the creation of conceptual artifacts or visualization of shared cognition
Structure of human activity (Engestrom, 1987) – activity theory – different framework for action research (instruments, rules, division of labour)
Issue of problem finding – developed skill – educated mind – one who knows how to find problems
Focus on “acting” on results of research – not just on dissemination of results

Traditional Textbook vs Student Authored Wikibook - Old Dominion University, Norfolk, West Virginia

Students write their own textbooks
Is having students write their own textbook a credible pedagogy?
8^th semester of implementation
Wikibooks – Foundations of Education and Instructional Assessment
Online and campus-based course
30 hour field observation for the course as well

Virtual School Society (VSS) Conference - Vancouver, BC

2009-04-23T18:12:00.000-07:00

From my perspective, Vancouver on a sunny day is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and I was fortunate enough to enjoy three such days for the Virtual School Society (VSS) Annual Conference. I had been invited to attend the conference in order to facilitate a post-secondary “spotlight session” on the Seven Principles of Good Practice for Online Education. I only had 45 minutes for the session but I’m proud to say that I made it through all seven principles and provided a couple of opportunities for audience interaction (e.g. think/pair/share about the participants’ own principles).

The conference was also a wonderful opportunity to get-together with Amanda Coolidge, who used to be an instructional designer in the Academic Development Centre at Mount Royal. Amanda left Calgary to work with the BBC in Kenya as an instructional designer and great to hear about her stories and adventures.

I must admit that I really enjoyed the “energy” of the participants at the VSS Conference. Simply amazing the wide range of online strategies that are being used to provide rich learning opportunities for K to 12 students. I met a woman who lives in Whistler and snowboards during the day and then runs an outreach high school in the evening. The folks from the Alberta Distance Learning Centre (Ralph Helder and Jerry Poole) shared with me how their group has been “team teaching” with classroom-based teachers to support a wide range of high school subject levels in one class (e.g. Math 10, 12, 14, 16). And, a principal of a virtual school in Kelowna explained to me how they pay their own high school students to develop content for their online courses (e.g. Flash Animations).

As usual I took a series of pictures and notes to capture the conference experience. A couple of the keynotes provided some useful advice for me as an educator and a parent.

Tod Maffin

Parenting

1. Inform your child’s learning space – conducive to cognitive development – no electronic devices in the area – no flickering monitors – the learning environment is key

2. Inform the habits of your children – kids need A LOT of sleep and good healthy food – impacts brain development

3. Inform balance of life

o Focus on just doing one thing in life

o Able to just “be” – many children fear boredom (a space to just “be”) – we lack the ability to “not work” – human being versus human Doing

Ellen Wagner

Eight Simple Rules for Engaging Learners

Capture your students attention - point of focus (Bridge of a lesson plan)
Convince students to care (relevant objectives)
Motivate students to change
Give students choice
Connect students with community
Induce students to participate (students choice to participate)
Enable opportunities for students to contribute
Make your class an experience to remember

And, a few key resources that I hope to use in my own courses are the following:

The Canadian Critical Thinking Consortium

Image Challenger – Activities for Developing Critical Literacy Skills

COOLSchool.ca – develops online K-12 educational material

Education for a Digital World – Online Book from the Commonwealth of Learning

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Hodges University, Florida - Faculty Development Day

2009-03-30T15:49:00.001-07:00

Eric, Alex and I just finished a wonderful week in Florida together. The reason for the trip was that Hodges University in Fort Meyer's had invited me to facilitate their annual Faculty Development Day. Hodges is a non-profit university with a mature student population involved in undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The average class size is approximately 15 students with a "seasoned" group of faculty instructors (all on continuing contracts - no tenure - similar to the Royal Roads University system).

In the morning, I ran my Designing for a Blended Community of Inquiry workshop and in the afternoon, the Roles of a Successful Blended/Online Instructor session. I was VERY impressed with how well both sessions were received. All the faculty participants were active and collaborative participants in the small and large group discussions. One of the librarians, Susan Smith, even blogged both of my sessions.

Beyond, the Faculty Development Day - Eric, Alex and I had a BLAST in Florida (complete pictures). We began our trip in Orlando by picking up our Ford Mustang rental mobile. Our first stop was the Regal Sun Resort in Disney World. We used the resort as a launching pad to explore nearby SeaWorld. We arrived at the park bright and early so that Eric could have a ride on the Kraken Roller Coaster. Unfortunately, our next ride was the Journey to Atlantis (a water log ride) and we spent the rest of the day "soaked". After trying out all the rides we watched the Shamu Believe Show, the Pet's Ahoy Show, the Neptune Circus Show, the Dolphin Show and the Sea Lion and Walrus Show. The boys even had their pictures taken with one of the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horse.

Wednesday March 25th was a special day - Alex's 13th birthday. For your birthday, Disney provides you with free admission to their theme parks and Alex had mapped out a VERY full day. We began the day at EPCOT centre with rides on the GM Test Track, Mission Space, Space World and Soaring. Even met up with Randy Garrison and his daughter Sabrine for lunch at the French Pavilion. Then it was onto Animal Kingdom to see the animals and try out the Dinosaur ride (unfortunately, they had run out of FastPasses for the new Everest Express Roller Coaster Ride). Next it was off to Hollywood Studios to watch the Extreme Vehicle and Indiana Jones Stunt Shows. We finished the day at the Magic Kingdom where we tried out the Indy Race Cars, the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Big Thunder Roller Coaster and Space Mountain (our first and last big line of the day). The evening was completed with a wonderful fireworks display over the Magic Kingdom and a special Birthday dinner at the T-Rex Restaurant in Downtown Disney - what a day!!

We spent the rest of our trip relaxing on beaches in the Fort Meyers area (I'm still learning that even a little sun can burn pasty white skin)

Distributed Learning Symposium - Calgary, Alberta

2009-03-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of being part of keynote panel for the 2009 Distributed Learning Symposium in Calgary, Alberta. The other panel members were George Siemens and Alec Couros. The topic of our keynote was on Personalization, Social Networks, Innovation and Ingenuity. We each had five minutes to speak on the topic and then we responded to questions from the audience via a show of hands and the use of Twitter. From my perspective, it was an interactive experience that was well received by the audience.

A couple of other sessions of interest to me were by Amy Park and Jason Ohler. Amy is a former student of my EDUC3325: Computers in Education course and she is currently teaching at the Calgary Science School. Her session was entitled Engaging “Screenagers” in Academic Rigor. She demonstrated how she engages her junior high students in inquiry-based learning through the construction of video documentaries. Amy also discussed how this process helps students gain 21st Century Skills as outlined by the Metiri Group and how she creates a collaborative learning culture through assessment (extensive use of self, peer, instructor and parent feedback).

Jason was the evening keynote speaker and his session was entitled Beyond Essays: New kids, New Media and New Literacies. He began his session by explaining that teacher's are "door openers" for students. He then discussed how computers are "screasels" (screen + easel). Jason provided an overview to a series of digital literacy action guidelines:

Shift from text-centrism to new media collage
Value writing more than ever (visually differentiated text – VDT)
Adopt art as 4 th , next R
Follow DAOW of literacy (Digital Art Oral Written – Digital Storytelling)
Attitude is the aptitude (“can do” attitude)
Practice private and social literacy
Develop literacy about digital tools
Fluency, not just literacy
Harness both report and story . . . embrace story! (teaching is storytelling)

He went on to provide the following advice for teachers:

Leave clicks, tricks to kids with time
Deputize: guide on side not technician magician
Create learning communities
Provide quality, wisdom
Provide meaningful assessment, feedback

Jason has done a lot of work with children in the area of digital storytelling and he emphasizes that a story core has three key parts

Problem (tension)
Solution (resolution)
Transformation (emergence, rebalancing)

And, that the media development process for a digital story often has 8 steps:

Plan, map, pitch storyboard story
Write 1-2 pages
Speak/record
Add/reserve title page
Add pics
Add citations
Add music
Add transitions

Blended Learning Symposium - Helsinki, Finland

2009-03-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, what an amazing experience!! I was very privileged to spend a week in Finland , courtesy of the University of Helsinki . I was invited to present a keynote session entitled Designing for Blended Communities of Inquiry and my workshop on Passion , Curiousity-Driven Learning and Web 2.0: What's the Connection? for the University's 3rd Annual Blended Learning Symposium.

A few interesting facts about the country of Finland. First, it's sandwiched between Sweden and Russia, which have both had a "heavy" influence on the history of the country. Probably, the first inhabitants were the Sami (Arctic aboriginal people probably distantly related to the Inuit). It sounds like the first Europeans arrived from Eastern Europe (around Hungary). The country was ruled by Swedish Kings for an extended period of time and in 1550 Helsinki was founded by the King of Sweden to compete with Tallinn in Estonia for Baltic Sea Trade. Russia conquered Finland in 1809 and a monumental Empire-style city plan was constructed for Helsinki to showcase the power of Russia and the Tsar. The design architect for many of the buildings was Carl Engel, the same guy who designed many of the major buildings and monuments in St. Petersberg became the first European country to grant women full political rights in 1905 and in 1917 they became independent from the Soviet Union in 1917. The country elected it's first female president, Tarja Halonen, in 2000 and she was re-elected for a second term in 2006. Presently, 86% of the women between the ages of 25 to 55 work outside of the home.

With the current global economic recession Finland is facing pressure to reform some of its socialist traditions. For example, there is discussion about extending the age of retirement from 63 to 65. Education is a key focus for Finland and currently all post-secondary students receive free tuition and an allowance to attend higher education institutions. There is growing pressure though for students to complete their studies in a shorter time period (43% of Finns aged 20 to 29 are studying versus an OECD average of 25%) and for students to take more applied rather than liberal arts degrees.

A couple of conference sessions that stood out for me were Kristiina Kumpulainen's keynote session on learning and the impact of technology and Helena Forssman's talk on Linking Innovation and Learning. Kristiina is the Director of the Cross-disciplinary Initiative for Collaborative Efforts of Research on Learning (CICERO) and she is using Wenger's community of practice framework to guide much of her work. Helena's husband is a senior manager with Nokia so she travels the world. Currently, she is based in Athens, Greece where she help coordinate Virtual Student Innovation Competitions.

I was overwhelmed by the hospitality of the conference organizers and participants and I even learned a few Finnish words:

Kiitos - thank you
Tervetuloa – welcome
Sulautuva opetus – blended learning

Mina and Susannah took time on the weekend to show me the sites of Helsinki and Eeva and Laurii invited me to their home in neighbouring Espoo to enjoy an afternoon of cross-country skiing on the sea ice. I made sure to take lots of pictures of my Finland adventure and I'm hoping that I can stay connected to this educational technology community through my participation in The International Virtual Benchmarking Project.

Calgary City Teacher's Convention - February 2009

2009-03-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

It was a real treat to be able to present a session on Passion, Curiousity-Driven Learning and Web 2.0: What's the Connection? for the Calgary City Teacher's Convention in February, 2009. I learned how easy it is to take bus #18 from Mount Royal College to the Telus Centre and I also learned about the barriers K to 12 teachers encounter when attempting to have their students utilize Web 2.0 tools.

I had a full-house and 75 minutes for the session (I had originally planned for 45 minutes). This provided lots of time for the participants to work in groups on learning activities and issues for my 8 categories of Web 2.0 tools (i.e. social bookmarking, blogs, wikis, social networking tools, synchronous communication tools, media sharing applications, mashups and virtual worlds). I've now got a pretty good handout for this session and I've created a wiki using SHex to post new resources and ideas that are discussed by the participants.

Many in the audience did not have "first hand" experience with these tools - so from my perspective the debrief about the group work was very valuable. Not sure if many of these teachers will actually get to use these tools as there are LOTS of Freedom of Informaiton and Privacy (FOIP) and technical issues associated with teaching in a K to 12 school :)

International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) Conference - Edmonton, Alberta - October 2008

2008-10-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

Finally, a conference located close to Calgary that I could drive, rather than fly, to. The ISSOTL 2008 Conference was co-hosted this year by the University of Alberta (their 100 year birthday) and Grant MacEwan College at the Shaw Centre in Edmonton Alberta from October 16^th to 19^th, 2008. Attending and participating in this year’s conference was definitely a growth experience as I was finally able to look beyond my own personal SoTL interests (redesigning courses to increase student engagement with disciplinary concepts and practices) to understand and appreciate the perspectives of others (e.g. narrative and discourse analysis). I facilitated a session on Designing for Student Success and as usual, I made an extensive list of conference notes that I’ve posted to my personal web site but the following is a list of sessions that had a personal impact on me.

On the Journey to SoTL: Moving from Passive Learning to Scholarly Teaching with Student Groups – Ellen Lynch, University of Cincinnati
I was very impressed with how Ellen conducted her study about the impact of a problem based learning approach in her pre-service teacher education courses. Excellent data collection and analysis techniques through the use of student concept maps (pre and post course), surveys (pre and post), interviews and analysis of student assignments.

Community of Inquiry (CoI) Panel

This panel was hosted by Heather Kanuka from the University of Alberta and consisted of Randy Garrison (University of Calgary), Liam Rourke (University of Calgary) and Walter Archer (University of Alberta). This session reminded me of the importance of emphasizing teaching (shared responsibility) rather than teaching (individual) presence and the need to look beyond online discussion forums for looking for evidence of CoI (i.e. course assignments, CoI survey (deploying student and faculty versions to exam for alignment).

The Struggle for Connections by Sue Clegg from the United Kingdom

The a couple of key messages from Sue’s plenary session for me. One, the need to take a “big tent” approach to SoTL by allowing for multiple entry points for people to enter and participate in this research community (e.g. experimental studies, relationships, discourse analysis, personal reflection). Second, that lectures can be an effective way of engaging large groups of people. For this keynote – Sue read from a prepared a text but surprisingly I was “engaged’ throughout her talk and from my perspective, I took an excellent set of notes for comprehension.

Teaching for Learning Network – Cambridge-MIT Institute by David Good from Cambridge

In this session, David did an excellent job of summarizing the “lessons learned” from the Cambridge-MIT teaching/research partnership. He stressed how each institution is focused on developing four capacities in their students:

deep conceptual understanding
personal & interpersonal skills
self-efficacy (confidence in one’s abilities)
life-long learners

And, that their overall lesson was that course design really does matter. Other “lessons learned” included:

The discovery that thoughtful student feedback serves as an impetus for change.
Faculty are sensitive to what students say about them.
Emphasizing learning objectives and assessment focused faculty on student learning rather than “covering” the content
Faculty are receptive to assessment when it is framed as a mechanism for improvement

Scholarship of Teaching/Learning and Pedagogic Resonance by Keith Trigwell, University of Sydney, Australia

I think this was my favourite session – clear, to the point and in line with my own thinking. Keith suggests that pedagogic resonance is the relationship between teacher knowledge and student learning. The notion of student learning aligning with teacher intentions – being on the same wavelength. What students experience in the act of teaching that contributes to their learning.

Student Engagement Special Interest Group

Kudos to Chris Garrett from Oklahoma City University for being pro-active and starting the very first ISSOTL special interest group. I immediately “hit it off” with Chris and Elizabeth Barkley from Foothill College in California (she is currently writing a handbook on Student Engagement with Patricia Cross for Jossey-Bass). There was a large turn out of people to the inaugural meeting and after introducing ourselves we began a discussion about the variety of definitions for student engagement. I ended up “plucking” mine from Wikipedia:

Students are engaged when they are involved in their academic studies, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing tasks related to their studies.

As “take aways”, I created a Google Group and Elluminate space to continue the dialogue and Elizabeth is going to coordinate collecting faculty and student definitions of student engagement from the group.

Transforming Strategies: The Indigenous Struggle for Higher Education by Professor Graham Smith from New Zealand

Graham is the CEO and Vice Chancellor of a Maori University in New Zealand and I appreciated how he emphasized the Maori Learning Values:

Knowledge belongs to all
All the knowledge goes into the group pool
Focus on collective wisdom
All the children belong to all of the parents
No separation between teaching and learning (ako)

From Collaboratory to Commons: Mobilizing Knowledge for Exemplary Teaching by Tom Carey, Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQC) and the California State University System

The focus of Tom’s session was on State wide course redesign projects. A couple points of interest were the idea that often we need to redesign the way that we admit students to courses – not just courses themselves. And, how he is using MIT’s Collaborative Knowledge Networks model to mobilize the knowledge from this projects. This framework includes innovation, learning and interest (i.e. linux creators, maintainers, users). Interesting how the course redesign teams are using Google Groups to document their redesign processes. Here is an example of the Developmental Math Teams space.

Science Education within the Virtual World of Second Life by Tony Cider & Megan Squire, Elon University

I have to admit that I’m still not a big fan of Virtual Worlds but Tony did emphasize that these environment should be used to focus on the process of student creation and building rather than on playing games or simply using material that has been created by others. I also like the suggestion by someone in the audience that higher education institutions should foster an Emergent Technology Community of Practice to critically examine new and emerging technologies and how they can be used to support student learning.

Phew, I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference at Indiana University in Bloomington. Hopefully, we’ll be able to present our Student Engagement and Interactive Learning Technologies study as well as a panel session for the Student Engagement Special Interest Group.

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2008-10-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

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Lilly North Conference, Travis, Michigan - September 2008

2008-09-22T00:39:00.001-07:00

My journey to the Lilly North Conference began on such a positive note. The weather departing Calgary was wonderful (entire September week of above 20C temperatures) and my arrival in Traverse City , Michigan was spectacular, brilliant blue sky and lakes with a mixture of cool, crisp fall air. Upon my arrival at the airport I took the shuttle to the conference hotel and I checked into the Wellington Bed and Breakfast, a restored Victorian mansion. Wow, finally I got to experience sleeping in a “four poster” bed!! I made sure that I got a picture of this experience.

We then drove out to one of the local vineyards for a wine tasting tour. The area has some resemblances to the Niagara Peninsula Region in Canada as it is surrounded by the Great Lakes , which provide a moderating influence to the climate. The area is also known for its cherry orchards and believe it or not – there is such a thing a cherry wine :)

I must admit the “thrill” for me – was eating fresh grapes from the vine rather than tasting the assortment of wines. As the sun began to set, we headed to a restaurant on the water called the “Boat House” where I dined on White Fish from the Great Lakes . After dinner, all the plenary speakers for the conference (me included) provided a 5 minute “fireside version” of their session. It was a lot of fun but difficult to hear all the speakers over the “din” of the other restaurant conversations.

There was a tremendous sense of community at the Lilly North conference and I was really impressed with the level of inter-institutional collaboration within the State of Michigan but I found many of the sessions to be “hit or miss”. It was obvious that several of the presenters had put a great deal of time and effort into their sessions while others had a “wing it” feel to them.

I did enjoy “touring” the town of Traverse City . It's obvious there is some money in towne by the number of large, well-kept up homes as well as the “high end” stores that lined the main street (lots of art galleries). The first morning I ran along the water front and the second day I ran along a trail that follows an inland lake behind the City ( Boardman Lake ). The final night of the conference I even took in a few laps of a bicycle road race that was taking place on the edge of downtown.

On Sunday, I facilitated the closing session entitled Passion, Curiousity -Driven Learning and Web 2.0: What's the Connection with an accompanying handout and follow-up wiki for resources? A number of people attended the session and the plan was to provide the audience an opportunity to reflect and consolidate their learning from the conference but I think I just “overloaded” about one-third of the group :(

Anyways, the weather was still beautiful and I was relaxed when I arrived at the Traverse City Airport – looking forward to a “stress-free” journey home. Sigh, this picture quickly faded when I learned that our flight was delayed for two hours due to fog in Chicago . This meant that I missed my connection to Calgary and I ended up being re-routed to Houston for the night – before taking a 7am flight to Calgary . Maybe I'll think of twice about traveling through Chicago in the future :(

Otterbein College Visit - September 2008

2008-09-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

This past week I had an opportunity to visit Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio. I had been invited by Leslie Ortquist-Ahrens, the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning to facilitate a workshop on Teaching with Technology and on Collaborative Web-Based Technologies.

To begin, Otterbein College was established in 1847 as a university for the Church of the United Brethern in Christ. Phillip William Otterbein was considered to be the spirtual leader of this Church with later merged with the Methodist Church to become the United Methodist Church. There are currently around 3,100 students attending this private liberal arts College with approximately 150 full time faculty members.

I immediately felt a strong sense of communty upon my arrival on campus. People from different Faculties knew each other and everyone appeared to have a strong teaching focus. The morning session on Teaching with Technology was held in a large meeting room with participants arranged at 8 tables. From my perspective, this session went relatively well as the participants appeared to be engaged in table and large group discussions about how technology could be used to support Chickering and Gamson's (1987) Seven Principles of Good Practice in Education. The afternoon session on Collaborative Learning Technologies was held in a computer lab and potentially was a bit more chaotic. I myself find it difficult to focus on a speaker when I have a computer in front of me. I tried to modify the session by providing an overview to 8 categories of collaborative web-based technologies and then providing the participants with time to experiment with each of them.

I created a wiki to support both sessions and I'll be curious to see if anyone uses this tool to post follow-up resources from the session. And of course, I took a few pictures to record my trip :)

August 2008

2008-08-31T20:21:00.000-07:00

Even though our time at the cottage was finished - summer was definitely not over.

Upon our arrival back in Calgary Alex and I competed in the Lake Chaparral Triathlon. Alex placed 4th in his age division on Saturday and I was 4 minutes slower in the Sprint Triathlon on Sunday - than a year ago :)

For the last couple of weeks of August - Alex attended hockey camps in Calgary and Banff, Eric relaxed at home, Marie worked on an article related to her dissertation, and I prepared for the upcoming academic year at Mount Royal College..

We finished the summer with a camping trip to the Kananaskis Country for the Labour Day weekend with friends. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side and we returned to Calgary early - after awakening to snow on Sunday morning. Some great pictures and memories!!

Cottage Life - August 2008

2008-08-31T20:09:00.001-07:00

We had an amazing holiday in British Columbia and I had the privilege of being a facilitator for Academic Impression's Instructional Strategies for Blended and Online Learning Conference in Park City, Utah but . . . my favorite part of the summer was with my siblings and their families at the cottage on the Lower Rideau Lake in Ontario. The Rideau Canal System celebrated it's 175th anniversary last year by being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The weather this year was definitely mixed (lots of rain with some sunshine) which meant that the vegetation was green and the water level very high. A couple of highlights for me this summer were Benjamin's (my sister Christy's baby boy) first visit to the cottage and Eric & Alex both mastering one ski on the water. These highlights and more are captured in photos of our cottage experience this summer.

Instructional Strategies for Blended and Online Learning Conference - Park City, Utah - July 2008

2008-08-31T19:46:00.001-07:00

I was very fortunate to have been selected by Tunde Brimah of Academic Impressions to help facilitate a conference on Instructional Strategies for Blended and Online Learning. The conference was held at the New Park Resort, just outside of Park City, Utah, at the end of July 2008. The other facilitators were Chuck Dzuiban from the University of Central Florida, Tom Reeves from the University of Georgia and Margaret Riel from Pepperdine University.

Helping to facilitate this conference was a real "stretch" for me as Chuck, Tom and Margaret are VERY experienced researchers and facilitators. Once I got over my nervousness I was able to become part of the group and I must admit that I learned a lot from the experience (despite arriving direct from the summer cottage with a case of poison ivy).

I facilitated the pre-conference session on Designing Learning Courses for the Needs of Diverse Learners and then followed up later in the day with a session on the Role of a Successful Blended/Online Instructor. The second day I facilitated a session entitled Student Engagement and Web 2.0: What's the Connection. From my perspective, this was my best session (highest personal comfort level and positive reception from the audience).

Besides facilitating the sessions, I had an opportunity to have some wonderful dinners with the "gang" as well as a great evening in downtown Park City. Of course, I made sure that I captured the experience with some photos before jetting back to the cottage on the third day of the conference (just in time to join the rest of the family - next blog posting).

British Columbia Family Holiday - July 2008

2008-08-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

It seemed like it was a mad rush to get everything completed before we headed out on our family holiday to British Columbia. I had to finish the marking for the graduate course in blended learning and the University of Calgary and as well as put the final touches on a funding proposal with Griff Richards and Terry Anderson from Athabasca University (sigh, we were not successful).

But, it was worth it. We had an amazing time in British Columbia and as usual we took lots of pictures of our adventures. It all began with the drive north to the Bowron Lakes - with beautiful weather and scenery. The canoe trip was a HUGE success as we completed it in a heat wave - no rain until the final day.

The drive west to the Pacific Coast was interesting for Marie and I as we passed through a number of communities where we had received offers to teach in the mid-90's (no regrets). In Prince Rupert we visited an old cannery and then enjoyed putting our feet up for the ferry ride south to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, via the Inside Passage.

Once on Vancouver Island we marveled at the huge Douglas Fir and Western Cedar. We did a day hike into San Josef Beach in Cape Scott Provincial Park in the north-western corner of the Island. We went whale watching and kayaking out of Telegraph Cove on the north-eastern coast of the Island. And, we headed south to Nanaimo to enjoy a relaxing day on the beach at Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park.

Then it was off to Vancouver on the ferry to visit the Aquarium in Stanley Park, the Capilano Suspension Bridge and a night of "urban" camping. Next we headed to Whistler and Pemberton along the Sea to Sky Highway. Phew, lots of construction and congestion - it took us over 3 hours to reach our campsite. The journey continued on a very rough and windy road towards Lillooet and then onto the Shuswap for a final night of camping and swimming before arriving back in Calgary - rested and relaxed!!

International Conference on Blended Learning - June 2008

2008-08-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

Wow, the 2007 to 2008 academic year has certainly provided me with some tremendous opportunities to travel to a number of interesting conferences.

This year culminated in my trip to England to attend the International Conference on Blended Learning. This is the 3rd year I have been involved with the event. The first year, Randy and I presented a sessions from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference in Toronto and then last year, I attended the actual event. Besides attending the conference the trip to England is a wonderful opportunity to catch up with Rick and Diane Mills. Last year they introduced me to road biking and I purchased my own bike as soon as I returned to Calgary. This year we spent a weekend in Winchester, which is located in the south-eastern part of England. Apparently, King Alfred, the first Anglo-Saxon King of England established his headquarters her in 800AD and a replica of King Arthur's Roundtable hangs in the remnants of Winchester Castle. In 1382 the Bishop of Wykham established Winchester College as a feeder school to New College that he had recently established at the University of Oxford. Both of Rick and Diane's boys attend Winchester College and it was fascinating to visit the College and the Towne.

As usual, I took lots of pictures of the trip and I had a great time cycling in the countryside around Winchester. I always feel like I'm traveling back in time as we pass through villages with thatched roof cottages and country lanes bordered by tall hedges and stone fences. This year Rick and I even did a cycle tour through the City of London.

I then headed north to Hatfield and the University of Hertfordshire. This University is quite similar to Mount Royal College as the institution has a long history but the present campus is located on land that used to be an airfield. In the case of Hatfield, the land was previously occupied by the De Havilland and British Aerospace companies while MRC was built on a former military base and flight training centre. Both campuses have new buildings with lots of windows and natural light, which I really appreciate.

I particularly enjoyed the conference this year as I knew a number of people and there was lots of time allocated for networking. I helped to facilitate 6 sessions from Canada via Elluminate with the conference. There were some audio problems with a couple of sessions but the majority were well received. Mike Powers from Laval University and myself did a session on Blended Online Learning Environments (BOLE).

Two sessions that really stuck out for me were one by David Nicol on Re-Engineering Assessment Practices (REAP) and one by Myles Dyer on Video Blogging. David's premise is that good assessment practices provide students with higher quality learning experiences and he has developed a set of guiding assessment principles to facilitate this process. Myles very eloquently demonstrated how vBlogging can be used as a powerful self-reflection tool in order to document personal learning growth and development. As usual, I posted a set of notes from the conference and Myles included and interview with me in his YouTube Video about the conference.

I must admit that by the end of the conference I was exhausted. Trying to keep up with life back in Canada, teaching the blended learning course, and actively attending the conference have all caught up with me. Time now to go "into the wilds" of British Columbia.

Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE) Conference

2008-06-22T10:45:00.001-07:00

Hmnn . . . it seems that I begin each journal entry with a statement about lack of time for reflection. I really need to get a handle on this issue . . . or life is just going to pass me by :(

The CSSE conference at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was a rewarding experience for a number of reasons.

First, it was a great opportunity to spend some time on the UBC campus, which from my perspective is one of the most beautiful settings in the world. The campus sits right on the end of peninsula and is rimmed by rugged beach scape. Wreck Beach - known for it's nudity - is located right below a residence complex.

Second, this is the first conference I have attended that included a 10km run and it was a wonderful experience running through the University Endowment land - along wooded trails and flower lined pathways.

Third, now that I'm actually an instructor for MRC's pre-service teacher education program - I really enjoyed "connecting" with other Education faculty from across Canada. We had an exciting Technology and Teacher Education (TATE) pre-conference workshop, I presented my study on The Role of Communication and Information Technologies in Canadian Pre-Service Teacher Education programs and I participated in LOTS of related social activities such dinners and receptions.

Fourth, there were some wonderful sessions on the Scholarship of Teaching and as usual I took lots of notes and some of the presentations/papers were posted online. One of my favourites was a session by Gary Poole from UBC, Lynn Taylor from Dalhousie, and John Thompson from U of Saskatchewan. They provided an amazing departmental, institutional and Canadian-wide perspective to SoTL. Carl Weiman, the 1980 Nobel Prize Winner in Physics also facilitated a wonderful session on Discipline Based Educational Research (DBER). Hopefully there will be interest by the Canadian Federal Government to actually fund Educational Research in Canada.

I finished the conference with a meeting with Terry Anderson and Griff Richards from Athabasca University about submitting a proposal to research Alberta Education's Technology and High School Student Success Initiative. I sure hope we are successful this proposal as it would really link with the Student Engagement and Web 2.0 research that I'm doing at MRC and I would love to work with Terry and Griff!!

CNIE Annual Conference in Banff, Alberta - April 2008

2008-05-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

I was very pleased that I had the opportunity to attend the first annual Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) conference in Banff, Alberta at the end of April 2008. Wonderful to be able to spend some time in Banff - as it truly is one of our country's natural gems!!

This was a VERY busy conference for me - as I'm also the Research Director for the CNIE - so I was involved in a series of pre- and post-conference meetings. I also made a couple of presentations. One, with Zehra Akyol and Randy Garrison entitled Community of Inquiry in Online and Blended Learning Environments and one with Mike Power from Laval University entitled Taking Blended Learning a Step Further. There was tremendous amount interest in Randy's Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework and I enjoyed chatting with some of his colleagues about their work (i.e. Peter Shea with teaching presence, Karen Swan with social presence and Phil Ice with synchronous audio).

I'm already looking forward to next year's conference in Ottawa in May 2009!!

UCEA Conference in New Orleans - March 2008

2008-05-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

As usual, I'm way behind in my blog postings. I just can't seem to get the hang of contributing to this personal forum on a regular basis :(

I was very fortunate to be able to travel to New Orleans, Louisiana in late March to attend the United States Continuing Education Association's (UCEA) annual conference to receive the Phillip E. Frandson Award For Literature for our Blended Learning in Higher Education book. The conference was a great reminder to me about how important Continuing Education programs are for increasing opportunities for adults to higher education and for generating much needed income for post-secondary institutions. There was very little evidence of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in the downtown core but it was easy to still see the damage in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Visiting the French Quarter of New Orleans was definitely a highlight for me and I was impressed with the night life on Bourbon Street, which is transformed into a street party, each evening. I ended up creating a photo tour of my visit :)

SITE2008 Annual Conference - Las Vegas, Nevada

2008-03-07T18:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally made it to Las Vegas - and I don't think I'll be coming back soon. This really is the global gambling mecca - the scale and scope of the casino/hotel/resort complexes were much more extensive than I had imagined. I took the obligatory walk and picture tour down the "Strip" (Las Vegas Boulevard) and it was exhausting as this street goes on forever . . . . . .

The SITE2008 conference was also a bit overwhelming - lots and lots of very brief concurrent sessions. The focus was definitely on information dissemination and transmission rather than on dialogue and understanding. I must admit though - I did gain a number of key insights from the conference. In some ways - it was my re-entry to the world of K to 12 education and for about the past 10 years I have been focused on conferences dealing with faculty development and technology issues in higher education. I've put together a set of notes from the conference but here are some of my highlights with key resources.

The opening keynote was by Barbara Means from a non-profit Centre for Teaching and Learning. She began her presentation about the need for schools to prepare children for jobs and to be able to compete in the global workplace - which I'm not too big on but she did introduce me to a couple of resources that I was not familiar with such as Fred Newmann's work on authentic instruction and the Microsoft Innovative Schools Program. I really like how the MS initiative was helping teachers to develop, share and utilized rubric assessment templates - rather than focusing on standard achievement tests to assess children.

After my own presentation on Supporting Deep Approaches to Learning through the use of Wikis and Weblogs I attended an interesting series of brief papers on ePortfolios. These sessions reminded me that student portfolios can be used for a variety of purposes - exit requirement for B.Ed. programs (focused on competencies and product) versus process portfolios - that begin at the beginning of a program. The one resource that I got from these sessions is a listing of Neil Strudler's ePortfolio studies from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The highlight conference session for me was by Helen Barrett about Online Personal Learning Environments – Structuring Electronic Portfolios for Lifelong and Life-Wide Learning. Helen is definitely the "guru" of ePortfolios for teacher education. A couple of key resources that she shared included the Beyond the Electronic Portfolio: A Lifetime Personal Web Space (LPSWS) – Educause Quarterly, 2004 article by Cohn & Hibbitts (2004) and Tolley's (2008) notion that portfolios should be portable, personal, generic, dynamic in nature (Web 2.0 applications), MIS free, light, lifelong, accessible and credible. And, a new term that I had not heard before an ePortfolio Mash-Up – small pieces, loosely joined.

On the second day of the conference I attended Petrea and Jennifer's session about Investigating Deep and Surface Learning in Online Collaboration, which outlined a great learning experience between pre-service education students at the University of Calgary and in Australia. I also attended Nancy Law's (from the University of Hong Kong) session on Teacher learning beyond knowledge: an ecological model for fostering pedagogical innovations with ICT. She reported a number of interesting findings from international K to 12 studies. I thought her learning communities model was very complex and that I really think that Randy, Walter and Terry's community of inquiry framework could be applied to K to 12 contexts. I finished the day by attending Martine Pellerin's session about the eDOL (electronic documentation) process at the U of C. Apparently there have been problems with the stability of the Drupal server and the fragmentation of the student reflections. I really do think that google.docs is the way to go for a reflective practicum/volunteer placement journal. What really impressed me about Martine's session (one of her student teachers was working with my son's grade six class) was how the journaling process impacts the placement/cooperating teacher (gets them thinking about being more reflective with regards to their own practice).

I was only able to stay for 3 days of the conference and I attended a couple of great sessions on my last day before departing for the airport. The first session was on

Pre-service Teacher Perceptions of ICT Learning Outcomes. What liked about this session was the research methodology. Instead of relying on surveys the researcher got students to draw a picture of their ideal classroom and the role of technology in that room. I liked this idea and I think it would be even more powerful if a written component was added to this task or assignment. The next session was on digital storytelling. The presenters use the MS Photostory tool that Rod Corbett had showed me and they shared two amazing resources for digital storytelling. The first one was the Centre for Digital Storytelling and the second one was their Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling with some examples of great assessment rubrics for this activity. Reminder to self to get the Target diagram from Jennifer Locke for digital storytelling.

The final conference session was entitled TPCK and Technology Integration: An Open Forum about the Handbook. This session emphasized to me two things. One, I'm still an outsider when it comes to K to 12 teacher education and I need to learn the language. Apparently TPCK stands for technology, pedagogy, content, knowledge (not sure I like this term - as it appears to focus on content rather than process from my perspective). Two, some of the folks that I read about when I was a K to 12 teacher are still involved in the field. For example, this session was led by Judi Harris who I remember from her work with the telus2learn.ca project on activity structures.

Week Four - Winter 2008 Semester

2008-01-31T15:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I’ve noticed that I’ve already missed week 2 and 3 of the semester – so I’ll try and create a more informative posting for week 4 :(

This was an interesting week as I was in San Antonio, Texas for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Annual Conference (ELI) while I also trying to keep up with my EDUC3325: The Role of Technology in Education and my EDER679.20 Blended Learning courses.

The week began with a long flight from Calgary to Denver and then another onto San Antonio. I must admit that I was a bit nervous that the journey would not even begin as it was -30C with a wind chill of about -44C when we left Calgary. The flight was delayed for almost 30 minutes as they had to de-ice the fuel line and the toilets on the plane.

Wow, what a wonderful treat to arrive in San Antonio to 22C weather. I must admit that I didn’t know much about the city before I arrived and I’m not sure I learned much more during my stay. I do know that San Antonio is the 3^rd largest city in Texas (after Houston and Dallas) and from my perspective it appears that they have invested a lot of money into their downtown core – in the hope of becoming a major conference centre in the United States. A number of hotels, restaurants and a central convention centre have recently been built along the San Antonio River. They call this area the “Riverwalk” and it slightly reminds me of the canal system in Venice.

In terms of historical significance, San Antonio is the site of the “Alamo”. The Alamo was originally named the Mision San Antoio de Valero in 1724 and served as a Spanish mission for about seventy years. In the early 1800’s the Spanish military stationed a cavalry unit at the mission and referred to it as the Alamo (the Spanish word for cottonwood). San Antonio and the Alamo played a crucial role in the Texas Revolution (battle between Mexico and the United States over the land territory that would eventually become known as Texas). In December 1835, Texian and Tejano volunteers forced Mexican troops in San Antonio to surrender. These volunteers then occupied the Alamo – where they held out for 13 days against the larger forces of the Mexican army. Texans remember the Alamo as a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds – a place where men mad the ultimate sacrifice for freedom (to die rather than surrender).

Anyways, onto the highlights of ELI conference. I’ve posted my complete set of notes to my personal web site and EDUCAUSE has set up a site where you can download podcasts, PowerPoint presentations blog postings from many of the sessions.

We arrived late in the afternoon – so I was only able to attend the final session of the day on Monday. This session was facilitated by George Siemens who was a student in several of my graduate courses at Royal Roads University. George is now the Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba and has really evolved his connectivism learning theory. His theory suggests that knowledge is a function of being connected and that we make sense of our world based on our own connections through our own networks. He has even developed his own five stage taxonomy for connectivism

1. awareness and receptivity

2. connection forming (ahah moment)

3. contribution and involvement

4. pattern recognition & meaning making

5. praxis (self reflect on how & why you create your networks – forming a network that will serve you beyond formal education)

Tuesday was a VERY full day for me – as I attended a number of sessions, co-facilitated a session with Randy on blended learning and I connected with two of my education courses via the Elluminate Live! system. The first session was by Tom Reeves of the University of Georgia. Tom has a tremendous amount of experience with instructional technology and program evaluation and I had heard him speak previously at the University of Alberta. His talk was on Technology and the Conative Learning Domain in Undergraduate Education. I must admit that I had never heard of the conative learning domain and he described it as one’s will, desire, level of effort, drive, striving, mental energy, focus, self-determination and intention to succeed. Tom believes that the Millennial generation is self indulgent and narcissistic and that through their sense of entitlement that they have lost the “will to succeed”. He argues that the conative domain can be achieved in undergraduate courses through authentic learning design & assessment – which involved the constructive alignment of higher order objectives, assessment and objectives in a course. Learning tasks shift from academic (textbook) to authentic (ill-structured). He and his Authentic Learning Team have a web site that demonstrates how to put these strategies into practice.

Fortunately, I made a last minute decision to attend Michael Wesch’s session on Human Futures for Technology and Education. This is the guy who, along with his first year cultural anthropology course created the YouTube video, Vision of Students Today. This video illustrates the crisis of significance in higher education – students’ are increasingly finding that their learning in post-secondary classes is not relevant. His believes about learning are very similar to those of George Siemen’s. He suggests that learning is about creating significant connections and there are two types of meaningful connections:

1. Semantic – word, concept, idea – what it is and how it relates to other concepts – semantic web (e.g. love)

2. Personal – find your own identity – how you relate to others

Michael argues that these two types of connections are inseparable and interdependent. In essence, students learn what they care about from people they care about. His recommendation for creating significance in a course is to find a grand narrative that has relevance and context for learning in a particular course. This narrative should be full of ill-defined problems, which created opportunities for student self-directed inquiry, leverages all members of the class (collective intelligence) and appropriate media environments. His suggestion for a grand narrative is the metaphor of Spaceship Earth. What are the serious issues that we face as a “planet” and how do we go about collectively solving these problems?

In his first year cultural anthropology course of 200 he actually gets the students to identify what they believe to be the key problems and then using the jigsaw method (developing distributed expertise) he gets students teams to come up with ideas to solve these problems.

Wow, looking back on my notes – I now realize that I actually did not attend that many conference sessions L On the final morning of the conference I sat in on George Siemens and Cyprian Lomas’ session on data visualization. The key being to make sense of an abundance of data by displaying it visually so one can begin to recognize patterns. George emphasized how information aggregation tools are growing (e.g. Google Custom Search feature) but that information manipulation tools are still in their infancy. They then want onto demonstrate the following tools.

1. Dollar Street by Hans Rosling which contrasts scenarios visually – allowing one to explain complex situations through story telling with the aid of visual patterns for illustrations.

2. Twittervision – to find out where twitter feeds are coming from in the World

3. TouchGraph Facebook Browser – to map your community of friends (which potentially might be a community of practice)

4. Many Eyes – an interesting tool from IBM that can map out themes and relationships within a block of text (e.g. essay, transcript) that is pasted into Many Eyes

5. Xobni – InBox spelled backwards – email organization and search tool, which unfortunately it appears to be just restricted to Microsoft Outlook at the moment

6. Qunitura - related search tool

7. WorldMapper – displays maps of global trends

8. Jing – a screenshot program

Some final comments from the audience about the session included:

An idea has semantic value – based on how it relates to other ideas
Predictive capacity of data-visualization – have students first predict trends and then graph them and see results – using these tools
Data mining – torture the data until it confesses (Chuck Dzuiban from University of Central Florida)

Unfortunately, I had to coordinate one final Elluminate Live! session with my EDUC3325 students so I only got to see the beginning of the LITRE: Investigating the Effectiveness of Technology in Improving Student Learning session. It does appear though that they have developed some interesting sets of questions about student learning with technology.

Sigh, long flight home as we had to go through Denver and as usual there was a 2 hour delay but at least the weather was warmer (-20C) in Calgary than when we left :)

Winter 2008 - Week One

2008-01-13T07:40:00.000-08:00

After a restful and relaxing family Christmas holiday in California it feels great to be starting the winter 2008 semester. I have 2 sections of the EDUC3325: Role of Technology in Education course at Mount Royal College and a campus based section of the EDER679.20 Blended Learning course at the University of Calgary.

The EDUC3325 course sections began this week and I was very impressed with the students' interest and motivation about sharing their previous "teaching with technology" experiences during their volunteer school placements last semester. Sigh, I'm still finding that the online discussion board in the Blackboard learning management system is very difficult to use so I've moved our discussions in Facebook. This allows both sections to participate in the same discussions as well as alumni from this course who are now at other higher education institutions or teaching in the K to 12 system.

November 2007 Conference Travels

2007-11-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

Wow, it sure has been awhile since I last posted to my Blog. Whatever happened to my weekly self-reflections this semester :) Sigh, time just keeps slipping away . . .

Anyway's, I'm just heading back to Calgary after a 10 day conference tour to promote the Blended Learning in Higher Education book that Randy Garrison and I just published with Jossey-Bass. First stop, was the Sloan ALN conference in Orlando, Florida where Randy and I presented a session on Blended Learning & Student Engagement. The weather was wonderful for the entire stay (mid 70sF and blue sky) and I was able to get in a couple of good runs and swims in the hotel pool. Randy and I also had a couple of wonderful dinners, which I was able to capture in pictures. Sloan has traditionally focused on text-based asynchronous learning environments but with the growing use of synchronous communication tools (i.e., Elluminate) a number of sessions were about "blended" online learning - an area that I'm excited to conduct research studies in collaboration with Dr. Mike Power from Laval University. I tried to capture my thoughts from each session I attended in a set of digital notes.

Next, it was off to the 27th Annual International Lilly Teaching Conference at Miami University on Oxford, Ohio. En route, I was able to stop over in Brooklyn, New York to spend a bit of time with my sister Christy, her husband Charles and their new infant son Benjamin. We had a wonderful time together and I had some GREAT runs in Prospect Park - which is located just 2 blocks from their apartment.

This was my 4th Lilly Conference and it always feel like "I'm coming home" when I arrive at the Cincinnati Airport. The drive from the airport to Oxford winds through hills and along river valleys. Fortunately, I was able to stay right at the Marcum Conference Centre once again and enjoy the running trail through the forest along the river below the Centre. I had been invited to facilitate a couple of sessions - one on Podcasting: Aligning the Medium with Learning in Higher Education and another one of Designing for Student Success through the use of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Framework. This conference features a number of teaching scholars and I always take copious quantities of notes :)

A few highlights for me were Dee Fink's session on the Joy and Responsibility of Teaching Well. Dee discussed a lot of important concepts in his presentation and the one that "stuck" with me - was the importance of emphasizing more than "academic" learning outcomes in a course. The following is a list of his recommended learning outcomes for any course:

Foundational knowledge – understanding and remembering information & ideas

Application – skills, thinking, critical, creative, practical, managing projects

Integration – connecting ideas, people, realms of life

Human dimension – learning about oneself, others

Caring (values) - developing new feelings, interests, values

Learning how to learn – becoming a better student, inquiring about a subject, self-directing learners (generate own learning agenda and apply an appropriate learning strategy)

It was neat how the next session I attended by Alan Wright, the Vice Provost of the University of Windsor focused on the last learning outcome. The title of his session was The “ORA” of Engaged Learning: Ownership, Responsibility, and Autonomy. He has developed a very interesting survey that asks students and faculty to rank their top 5 strategies for developing meta-cognition in a course. I'm going to try this as an ice-breaker activity in my winter 2008 courses.

Marcia Baxter-Magolda continued on this theme in an evening session by stressing her student development concept of self-authorship. She and Robert Kegan from Harvard define this concept as "one's capacity to internally define one's beliefs, identities, and social relations (Baxter Magolda, 2001; Kegan, 1994). Based on a 21 year longitudinal study she has been conducting on a group of former Miami University students she suggests that the journey to self-authorship involves three phases:

External formulas – rely on external sources for what to believe, identity, and how to relate to others, learn for tests

Crossroads – experience dissonance with authority-dependence; begin to listen to internal voice

Self-authorship – internal voice moves to the foreground and mediates external influences

She indicates that support and challenge are key to a students' development process:
Support

Situate learning in learner's experience
Define learning as mutually constructing meaning
Share authority & expertise

Challenge

Portray knowledge as complex & socially constructed – internal belief system
Self is central to knowledge construction – internal identity
Validate learner's capacity to know

Finally, I was very impressed with the session by the President of Miami University, Dave Hodge's presentation on his framework "Student as Scholar". He has published a paper on this framework. He suggests that there is an important distinction between scholar and engagement and that we have moved beyond a teaching and learning paradigm to one of discovery - outlined as follows:

Teaching paradigm – telling students what they need to know

Learning paradigm – engaging students in learning how to learn (limited body of knowledge)

Discovery paradigm – encouraging students to seek out new knowledge – break down boundaries – move into new territory

His notion of "Student as Scholar" is based on one developing the following attributes during their university experience:

accepts responsibility for learning

integrates learning

lays out appropriate attributes

students belief in doing original research

importance of looking at the entire curriculum rather than an individual course

Fall 2007 Semester - First Posting

2007-09-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

Hmnn . . .

I only seem to post to this blog when I'm teaching a course. I wonder what that says about my ability to be a reflective practionner?

First up - we had a great summer as finally Marie was able to join us for a family holiday. We drove east to Ontario and New York State. We had a wonderful time exploring upstate New York with sister Christy and her husband and our time at the cottage in Ontario was very special. We actually managed to build a tree house in the olde oak tree down by the dock. We made sure that we took lots of photos to capture our memories.

The fall 2007 semester has begun on a positive note and I'm VERY excited to be back teaching full time. I've got three classes at Mount Royal College - 2 sections of the EDUC3325: The Role of Technology in Education course and 1 section of the EDUC2231: Introduction to Teaching: Theory course. And, I'm "quarterbacking" an online version of the graduate course in blended learning (EDER679.20) for the University of Calgary.

Wonderful to observe the connections and networks that are developing between the 4 courses (one of the alumni graduate students in the blended learning course is also supervising a volunteer school placement for one of the students in my introduction to teaching course :)

Let the blogging begin!!!!!!!!!

Norm

Study Trip to England

2007-06-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

The past ten days in England have been very exciting for me on a personal and a professional note. I thought I would take a moment to share some of my impressions and photos from the trip.

Friday June 8th to Sunday June 10th - Wimbledon
The first part of the trip was spent with Rick & Diane, friends from Queen's University, at their home in Wimbledon. I had a chance to visit the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on Friday June 8th where the first English Tennis Championship was held in 1877. Looking forward to watching this year's Championship on TV (it begins on June 25th to see Roger Federer defend his Men's Championship Title).

On Saturday we headed for the countryside of Southern England where we "sped" through the hedge and tree lined country lanes on road bicycles. This was the first time I had ever been on a road bike and the "speed" sure is addictive. I'll have to look at purchasing such a bike when I return to Calgary (if I can find the $$).

Sunday was spent visiting the "hub" of the former British Empire and currently the "financial capital" of the world - London. The last time I had visited was in 1988 and there has been lots of new construction since then - especially with the Millennium projects (i.e., the giant British Airways Eye - ferris wheel and the Tate Modern Collection - which has been re-located in a renovated power plant along the Thames). Great to see some olde traditions - such as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and that all the National Museums & Galleries still have free admission (i.e., British History Museum, Portrait Gallery) - just like the Smithsonian Institute Museum and Galleries in Washington, D.C. What I was surprised about was the lack of security screening to enter these institutions as in Paris last summer - we had all our bags X-rayed and we had to walk through a metal detector (exactly like airport security) whenever we entered a Museum or Gallery.

Monday June 11th - The University of Oxford
I got down to business on Monday when I took the train/subway from Wimbledon to Oxford. The University of Oxford is considered to be the oldest university in the English-speaking world. There is no exact date of the University's foundation but teaching has existed at Oxford in some form since 1096 and developed rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. I had a chance to view some of the 39 colleges that accommodate, feed and tutor the close to 30,000 students that attend Oxford. I'm sure that Oxford would score VERY high on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) as ALL students live on campus in a college (VERY supportive campus environment). You really do feel that you are "living history" when you walk along the cobblestone streets and view the formally attired students entering and exiting the Examination Halls (final exams were taking place during the second week of June). The purpose of my visit was to chat with Graham Gibbs, the Director of The Oxford Learning Institute. The Institute was located on a side street in a modern, secure office building. I had to "buzz" the receptionist in order to gain access to the building and the Learning Institute (not sure how inviting this would be for your average faculty member). The entrance hallway to the Institute has a glass framed showcase - which displays the current publications that have been produced by the academic staff of the Institute. The physical space consists mainly of work cubicles with really no area for faculty workshops or discussions. The core areas of the Institute consist of Management and Leadership Development (Graham's focus) and Teaching Development Support (Lynn MacAlpine's focus - she is originally from the McGill Centre for Teaching & Learning). Graham believes that transformation can best be achieved at the University of Oxford by working directly with the Department Heads (leadership development) to experientially demonstrate the importance of linking research, teaching and service practice (holistic perspective).

Side Note: A constant theme in each higher education I visited was the emphasis on "learning" . Such as the University of Oxford's Learning Institute (rather than Teaching & Learning Centre).

Tuesday June 12th - Oxford-Brookes University
I woke up on Tuesday feeling pretty groggy. Over the past couple of years I have begun to experience hay fever in the spring (pollen & grass allergies). Give the climate of Calgary (often lots of rain and sometimes snow in the spring) I have been able to manage but WOW -with all the vegetation and flowers in England my hay fever has really been acting up. Any medication I take just makes me feel dizzy and tired. I've just got to "suck it up" - the true British way :) After a wonderful English breakfast at the Galaxie Hotel on Bambury Street (highly recommended but a bit far on foot from the train station) I took a city bus to the Wheatley Campus of Oxford-Brookes University. This is where the story begins to get interesting. In 1992, the Conservative Government, under John Major, automatically converted all the Polytechnical Institutions (i.e., SAIT, Mount Royal College) to universities in order to try and increase the number of students participating in higher education (the goal was 50% and it sounds like currently 43% of the 18 to 24 age population attend a higher education institution). I think with this "shift" came greater pressure for improving the quality of the learning experience for students (i.e., improving the quality of teaching). In order to achieve this goal the Higher Education Academy (HEA) was formed in May 2004 through the merger of the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE), the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN), and the TQEF National Co-ordination Team (NCT). The HEA mission is to help institutions, discipline groups and all staff to provide the best possible learning experience for their students. One of the ways to achieve this objective was to help establish Centre's for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CELTs) and mandatory higher education teaching certificate programs with National Standards and Accreditation (at many of the new universities - not The University of Oxford).

After an AMAZING English breakfast (lots of bacon, sausage, egg and cooked tomatoes) I took a bus back to the City Centre and then another one of the Oxford-Brookes University - Wheatley Campus (about 8 miles from the City Centre). Rhona met me at the front gate and I was VERY impressed with the itinerary that she had set up for me. She works with the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development. This office provides ALL the staff and academic training for the Institution (everything from safety training to teacher & research training). We started the day by chatting about Rhona's programs (a combination of research/evaluation studies, consulting and a designing for learning program). I was particularly interested in the Designing for Learning program which is a course redesign program. There are faculty development champions embedded in each department of the University and they work with the Dean's and Chairs to identify strategic courses and programs for redesign. Faculty at the departmental level are then selected to attend a two day "intensive" workshop to begin the course redesign process. Rhona passed onto me the outline for this workshop - which emphasizes the use of a critical friend and a series of questions to provide a reflective element to the program.

I then spent some time with the eLearning Coordinator for the University. He had been the Head of the Engineering Department and involved in computer managed learning for a number of years. We had a nice discussion about how information and communication technologies had been a "catalyst" in our own teaching practices to focus on creating active & collaborative learning environments for our students. Next up, was a chat with Deanna who is responsible for the mandatory teacher training program. Each new academic staff member must be part of a year long "certificate in teaching in higher education" program. This program is accredited by the Higher Education Academy and can be credited towards a Master's degree in Teaching in Higher Education. The probation (not sure if they have tenure) period at Oxford-Brookes University is one year. Deanna passed on to me a couple of excellent papers (one by Chris Rust at Oxford-Brookes and one by Graham Gibbs at Oxford) that demonstrate the positive impact that teacher training programs have on student learning (everyone ends of up taking a "deeper approach"). I then had lunch with Rhona's "office mates". They have lunch everyday together - a great chance to regularly connect on a personal and a professional level. I got the sense that they are a "real" community of educational development practionners.

After lunch, Rhona drove me down to the city centre campus of Oxford-Brookes. I met with their eLearning development and support group. They are currently very involved in supporting and researching the collaborative students use of wiki-based technologies. I really have got a better job at helping students using wikis to summarize online discussion forums. At the moment I think the key is to get each team to explicitly document the inquiry process that took place during the week (defining the key triggering event, what forms the exploration took, how integration and a sense of resolution/application was achieved).

Too quickly, it was time to head to take another city bus to the train station and through a combination of trains and the underground - I made my way to Hatfield. Peter Bullen, the Director of the Blended Learning Unit (BLU) for the University of Hertfordshire, met me at the station. We went directly to a reception for the Aerospace and Automotive Engineering students who were celebrating the launch of their new Student Formula One car. Peter is also the Ford Automotive Engineering Professor at the U of H (and former head of the department). The Engineering Department emphasizes a project based approach to learning and student teams are involved in a number of projects (i.e., racing cars, rockets and hovercrafts). This approach has also spread to the K to 12 sector with the team based development of "green vehicles". After the launch reception (which included a testing of the vehicles in a nearby parking lot) we had dinner with Peter Chatterton (and eLearning Consultant) and Trish Andrews from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Unfortunately, I became increasingly congested with my hay fever and I didn't have much energy to participate in the discussion.

Wednesday June 13th - University of Hertfordshire
Rats, I woke up this morning even more congested. I was based at the De Haviland campus - former site of British Aerospace buildings and airstrip. Sigh, it must be tough on the UK ego to no longer have their own airplane or automotive industries - as everything is now owned by former companies (Mini-Minor by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Ford). This campus is VERY modern with lots of glass buildings which I love because of all the natural light. I had breakfast in the Sports Centre (complete with a major climbing wall) and then walked over the original Country Lane campus to meet with Mary Reid, former Head of the School of Education and Acting Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT). The Blended Learning Unit was funded from another Higher Education Academy grant and I think there is a bit of tension between CELT and BLU. The plan is to create a new Institute for Learning & Teaching which will integrate both units. Mary has applied for Director of this new Institute and everyone seemed pretty confident that she would get the position. I had a wonderful chat with Mary. I could tell that we were both "kindered spirits": from our K to 12 roots. Two "take aways" from our chat were the importance of integrating student's part-time work into their studies (work for connections rather than separations) and the use of "critical friends" to help in our teaching practice. There is a Learning & Teaching Narrator position (Joy Jarvis) in the School of Education and this person facilitates this process.

Joanne Teague, the eLearning Coordinator for the School of Education arrived at 11am and we had a nice coffee together in the Centre for Creative Arts building. Joanne is off to the EdMedia conference in Vancouver at the end of the month and she was curious to learn more about life in Western Canada. Sounds like she works with BLU and Joy Jarvis to help instructors in the School of Education redesign their courses. She drove me back to the De Haviland campus after our chat. I went for a swim at the Sports Centre (lane swimming from 7:30am to 10:00pm each day during the spring semester). I then spent the afternoon catching up on email and documenting this trip.

The evening was spent at the pre-conference reception for the Blended Learning Conference. Peter Bullen made some opening comments about BLU. He emphasized that the goals of the unit were to:

Minimize barriers to the use faculty and student use of learning technologies
Foster and support innovative practice of using these tools
Evaluate and document the progress of the unit
Dissemniate the results locally, nationally and internationally

Thursday June 14th - University of Hertfordshire
Today was the 2nd International Conference on Blended Learning. Grainne Conole from the Open University was the keynote speaker and she spoke about how we are now focusing on the "C" rather than the "I" in ICTs (Information Communication Technology) because of the increased focus on active & collaborative learning which is being supported by Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs & wikis. I made a series of conference notes throughout the day - a lot of reporting of action research studies (which also included my own presentation). Personally, I found everything a tad bit rushed with the one day format. The sessions were broken into a series of "back to back" 30 minute time slots - 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for Q&A. I was very tired by the last session (an Elluminate connection with the U of C for Irene's presentation on using Blackboard to support student critical thinking) and I'm not sure how much I absorbed.

I had a nice evening in St.Albans with Trish from Australia and Vivian & Amy (my former graduate student) from Simon Fraser. We had a pub dinner at the Waterend Barn - an olde historic building. It was currie night - so we all indulged a spicey currie with a British Ale :)

Friday June 15th - University of Hertfordshire
I spent most of the day with Peter Bullen and members of BLU. BLU is located within the Learning Resources Centre of the Country Lane campus. This is similar to how the Teaching & Learning Centre will be located in the new Library building at the U of C. The BLU teachers spend three days a week in their home departments and 2 days a week with the blended learning unit. Peter, Jon and Mark provided me with a tour of their two teaching spaces - complete with interactive whiteboards and projection screens on all four walls of the classroom. We chatted about collaborative projects regarding the assessment of the redesigned courses, development of case studies and involvment in the annual Blended Learning Conference (two day event at the U of H in the spring of 2008 with the potential of the U of C hosting the event in 2009).

I took the train from St. Albans to Gatwick International Airport late in the afternoon and relaxed at a hotel in Crawley before departing for Calgary on Saturday June 16th (Queen Elizabeth the 2nds birthday as well as my sister Beth's).

Week One - EDER679.20 Blended Learning Course

2007-05-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Randy and I just finished the first full week of the EDER679.20 Blended Learning course and I thought I would take a moment to make a few reflections.

I think the first class went relatively well as from my perspective the students were provided a fairly detailed overview of the course while at the same time having an opportunity to engage in discussion with their peers. Great start to creating a sense of "open communication" within our community of inquiry. One of the central activities for the class was to have the students discuss the course outline & schedule in small groups, identify key questions & issues and then report back to the entire group. I must admit that I was surprised at the nature of the questions such as the defining critical thinking in higher education and the nature of blended learning in various educational environments (i.e., K to 12, higher education and the workplace). While I appreciated these questions, next time we offer this course we'll need to get the students to focus on more "logistical" questions.

I was VERY impressed with the student input for the second class which was focused on the community of inquiry (CoI) framework. We began with an open discussion of the three course assignments - which lasted for almost 75 minutes as everyone had clarifying questions. Originally, we had planned to just lecture on the CoI framework with the aid of PowerPoint slides and some audience Q& A but we modified this format based on a suggestion from one of the students. We provided an overview of the framework and then the students divided up into four groups based on the CoI framework article that they had selected to critique. Randy also had a great jigsaw idea for the next iteration of this course. First, get the students into their article critique groups. Then pull one member from each of theses groups (social, cognitive and teaching presence) into a "master" cohort - which is then responsible for putting together a brief summary of the CoI framework.

The focus of our third session was a "hands on" orientation to the Elluminate Live! synchronous communication system. The majority of the class was new to this system and came to our computer lab for the orientation while several experienced users logged in from their home computers (the importance of choice in education). It took me awhile to get everyone logged onto the system but in the end we had 100% participation!! The first part of the orientation was spent in Q&A mode about the course assignments and then for the second part I put students into breakout rooms based on their interests for the course redesign project (i.e., K to 12, higher education, Math & Science, Language Instruction). I was a bit rusty with the breakout rooms (I forgot how to bring back each group's whiteboard comments - I need to chat with Joanne about this) but I was able to "visit" each of the breakout rooms and conversations sounded very engaging.

We also had Rhona Sharpe as an online guest for our "Introduction to Blended Learning" discussion. I really appreciate the thought and time that Rhona put into her discussion postings and replies. I wish I had been more active in this first discussion but I spent the long weekend in Waterton National Park with the boys.

Tuesday April 3rd Post

2007-04-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

Looks like Blogger is working again and that everyone in EDUC3325 can now make their final blog postings for our course :)

Take care, Norm

EDUC3325 - Winter 2007 Semester - Week One

2007-01-16T19:55:00.000-08:00

The EDUC3325 class began on a VERY positive note. 24 students signed up and I think 22 will remain in the course. The larger number of students creates "more energy" from my perspective. Jack Tarasoff, another Education instructor, wants to sit in on my classes - a nice addition and a great opportunity for me to get some peer feedback on my teaching :)

EDUC3325 - Final Reflections for the Fall 2006 Semester

2007-01-16T19:49:00.000-08:00

Wow,

My blog activity really "fizzled out" towards the end of the semester. Just too many other things going on before the Christmas holiday.

Anyways, all of the students' work from the fall 2006 semester is posted at the following URL:
http://www2.mtroyal.ca/~nvaughan/educ3325fall2006/

Overall, it was a good semester - even though there were only 14 students in the class. I always find it a bit tough - when the class ends so suddenly with the final exam - but hey it's time then for everyone to move on.

EDUC3325 - Week Thirteen Reflections

2006-11-22T16:40:00.000-08:00

Well, we are now definitely on the "home stretch". The students are working on their final assignment - "teaching with technology" group workshop. They are all currently putting their workshop outlines together using the BOPPPS model that we learned at the beginning of the course. Next Monday I will be sitting down with each of the groups to review their outlines - to make sure that they are on "track" for an interactive versus a presentation focused workshop.

We also debriefed about the process of working in groups and low and behold - email is for olde people like me. The current way for members of a group to "stay connected" is through cell phone and text messages :)

Here is a summary of our debrief:
a) Importance of creating a project outline and/or charter
- Defining the goals for your workshop
- Assigning roles, responsibilities and tasks
b) Importance of staying "connected" (clear lines of communication) throughout the process
- Using the group project areas in Blackboard to exchange files
- Using Email, cell phone and text messaging to stay connected (post everyone's cell phone number and text message ID in a word document that gets posted to the group area)
c) Importance of using class time to work on the project and identify individual tasks to be completed outside of class time
d) Importance of group size
-Groups smaller than 5 work best :)

EDUC3325 - Week Eleven Reflections

2006-11-22T16:24:00.000-08:00

The importance of collaboration and group work for learning was emphasized again for me this week as the EDUC3325 students completed their WebQuest projects. This semester I asked the students to complete a "confidential" online reflection about the process involved in completing their group projects. I asked them to respond to four questions - in order to guide their reflection:

How did you contribute to the success of the WebQuest (i.e., roles, responsibilities and tasks)?

How did other members of your group contribute to the success of the WebQuest (i.e., roles, responsibilities and tasks)?

What were the challenges that your group faced when completing the project (i.e., goals, scope, communication, workload)?

How did you overcome these challenges and/or what recommendations would you make for your next group project?

We're going to debrief on these reflections in the coming week and I'll be sure to post a summary of our discussion to this blog next week :)

In other news, my travels took me to Ohio for the Lilly National Teaching Conference at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. This is my "all time" favourite conference and I have attended the past three years in a row. Milt Cox is the "host or inn-keeper" for the event, which he has coordinated for the past 26 years. What originally drew me to the conference was Milt's pioneer work in the area of faculty learning communities. It's just amazing how he has spread this concept around the globe. The conference is definitely an "intense" event!! I facilitated a couple of sessions - one on using wikis and weblogs to support deep approaches to learning and one on our inquiry through blended learning approach at the University of Calgary. I also hosted a couple of lunch time discussion tables on these topics. As usual, the quality of the sessions, company, food & drink, accommodation and organization was outstanding. I'll definitively be back next year. As an aside - I really do think there was an increase in the number of sessions on course redesign this year. A trend similar to last week's ISSOTL conference. Hmnn . . . I wonder if this is true or just my perception - as I seem to be seeing everything in higher education these days - through the "lens" of course redesign. I really, really appreciate the work that Dee Fink (former President of the Professional & Organizational Development network) has on designing for significant learning. I've linked to my conference notes and posted a few pictures from Miami University below - the university was founded in 1809 as a land grant institution to encourage people to move and settle in the western part of Ohio state.

EDUC3325 - Week Ten Reflections

2006-11-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

This past week has been an "experiment" for both myself and my EDUC3325 students. I was away the entire week - visiting my sister in New York and attending the International Society for Teaching & Learning (ISSOTL) conference in Washington, DC. Meanwhile the students were working on their WebQuest group projects. I'll be curious to see how the "group process" evolved while I was away - as the projects are due this coming Wednesday November. On a positive note - I already have the URL for 3 of the projects :)

In terms of my "professional development" week - I had a wonderful time visiting my sister and her husband in New York. All the family came along and we had amazing weather in both New York and Washington. If you are interested you can take a "peak" at our photo gallery from the trip.

The ISSOTL conferenc was a VERY rich experience for me!! You can visit the Virtual ISSOTL conference blog to read the synthesizer reports for each of the sessions. And, I took some pretty detailed notes from the sessions that I attended. I also created a summary of my key "take away" themes and resources from the conference. The themes included:

Course portfolios
Course redesign
SoTL
Decentralized-centralized distributed models of faculty development
Student engagement
Evaluation/research approaches
Learning sciences
Web-based learning tools

EDUC3325 - Week Nine Reflections

2006-11-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, time is definitely "flying by" this semester - and as usual I'm finding it difficult to keep up with my weekly reflections. The focus of our EDUC3325 course this week was on Computer Mediated Communications (CMC) and the WebQuest assignment.

With regards to CMC we had a wonderful Elluminate chat with Dr. Debra Hoven in Australia. The students really enjoyed viewing her pictures of Australia and learning more about the WebQuests that her graduate students had created. Unfortunately, I was the only one who had audio contact with Debra - the students just had text chat access - so after about an hour - the students got pretty restless.

In other news, I "shifted" our EDUC3325 course wiki from Google Docs to seedwiki.org. The reason for the change was that students were forgetting their passwords to access and edit the wiki on Google Docs. Seedwiki is "wide open" access - which I think is probably easier for them. Time will tell?

Next week I'm off to New York to visit my sister Christy and then onto Washington, DC for the International Society for Teaching & Learning (ISSOTL) conference. I'll be away from class but try and use this Blog to "keep connected" and record my notes from the conference.