Image: Learning Content Management Tool by Sandra Schön CC-BY

In the course of the edtech work I do in the provincial post-secondary system, I often get asked by someone developing a new learning technology to take a look at the technology and provide some feedback. Often these technologies are developed by an educator, sometimes in collaboration with a (usually co-op computing science student) developer/programmer.

These are often small, niche projects; labours of love built on the side of someones desk to scratch a pedagogical itch the educator has. I love seeing these projects, mostly because the educators pitching them are passionate about their tool, and that passion is infectious.

As someone who has sat in on my fair share of edtech elevator pitches from educators, I’ve come up with some standard talking points that I often bring up at some point in the conversation. If you are an educator who has spent some time working off the side of your desk on an edtech project and are looking to take it wider, here are some points you should consider as you begin your journey from educator to learning technology provider.

1. Do your research on where your product fits in to the edtech landscape. There is a very good chance that your idea is not unique and someone is already doing it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but it does mean that you have to be able to differentiate your technology from theirs, and be able to explain that difference to those who product is different than theirs. And, sorry to be the one who disappoints, but chances are very good that someone is doing something similar to what you are already doing.*
2. Narrow your target audience. What education level is your product aimed at? Broadly speaking, you should decide on whether your system is better suited for k-12 or higher education. And, once you have made that broad distinction, narrow in even further. Educators are no longer looking for one size fits all systems. Focus on who your audience is and develop for them.
3. Pay attention to integration. Your technology will have to fit into the existing edtech eco-system of an institution, so be sure to answer questions like, “how does this integrate with a student record system?” and “how will you handle authentication?”
4. Have a pedagogical model. This should be obvious, make sure you can clearly articulate the learning model that underpins your technology.
5. Explain how your technology uses and stores data, and how you ensure that your application is (BC context here) FIPPA. complaint.
6. Have other educators use your technology, ideally in a class with students. I often see a lot of work that has gone into a technology that is only used by the person developing it. You’ll learn much from having others use your tool.
7. You need to pay attention to three aspects of your project; Pedagogy, Technology, and Business Development. The pedagogy piece is usually taken care of by the person driving the project, whom is often an educator of some kind. Second, have an actual developer working on the project, ideally someone with a firm grasp of current development methodologies and architectures. Third, have someone who understand business models and can see how to sustain the technology. I often see projects with the first, sometimes the second, but rarely the third. Speaking of business models….
8. If you are going open source (and I really hope you do), know what are successful business models for open source software. There are many to choose from. Pick a model you like and go from there.
9. If you go open source (and I really hope you do), have a plan for how you will develop your community. Open source depends on community, some of whom may be commercial partners and vendors, so don’t exclude them as they can have a valuable role in helping to sustain your product.
10. If you say you support Open Education or Open Educational Resources, you need to explain exactly how you do that, and be prepared for hard questions. I see A LOT of tech products that say they support Open Education, but don’t. If by support you mean “we can take OER’s and import them into our platform”, then unless you can explain to me how you add value to those OER for the wider Open Education community in a way that is free and unencumbered, then you are a freerider and the meeting will end quickly. If you want to work in the Open Education space, and say you work in the Open Education space, then learn how to work in the Open Education space in ways that are meaningful to the goals and aims of the open education community. Here’s a very good guide started by Paul Stacey of the Open Education Consortium where you can start to learn about how to be a valuable partner in the Open Education community.

Now, following these guidelines doesn’t necessarily mean you will be successful in launching your new learning technology to the world. But putting some thought into these areas while you are in the bookstrapping phase of your project will go a long way in helping you take your idea to a larger community.

* If you do find someone doing something similar to you, and they are an open source project, consider joining forces with them.

Shortly after the contentious Bill 22 passed final reading, hundreds of public sector workers gathered at the University of Calgary to protest job cuts, pension changes and what supporters called "vicious cuts" to post-secondary education.

With written communication becoming increasingly multimodal—from newspaper websites to your social media feed to your learning management system’s announcements page—researchers and practitioners alike have made the case for the value of multimodal assignments. While much of this work focuses on the theoretical changes, this article offers practical suggestions for faculty members with limited experience designing multimodal assignments who’d like to convert some of their traditional assignments to multimodal ones.

An assignment is multimodal if it invites students to engage in more than one medium of communication, or if it gives students the opportunity to select from several potential media. For example, a video podcast would be multimodal because it uses both oral and visual communication. An assignment as a whole could be multimodal if it offers students several strategies for completion and/or assessment of the work.

Instructors can benefit from altering some assignments by making them multimodal in two ways:

First, the move to multimodal can help prepare students for a world of communication that is increasingly multimodal and help them develop valuable insights on how to write effectively in that world.

Second, the move to multimodal assignments can help students produce better work. As Christine Joy Edwards-Groves has argued, students who have grown up in a multimodal world “thrive on the utility of technology, creativity, social interaction and communication” (2011, 52). By offering them such assignments, we give them the opportunity to thrive.

Tip #1: Start Small

Rather than revamping your favorite end-of-the-semester research paper, consider tweaking some of the smaller assignments. This works particularly well for assignments that are platforms for assessing content knowledge. For example, you might transform a traditional weekly reading quiz or an in-class writing response into a multimodal video response where students provide spoken and visual analysis.

Tip #2: Think a la Mode

Huang and Archer offer a helpful way of thinking about multimodal assignments: break them down in terms of mode (i.e., medium or platform), genre (“social textual” form), and discourse (how they approach the topic) (2017, 65). In terms of assignment design, think about how you might retain the same options for genre and discourse as your existing assignments while shifting the mode. For example, you might transform a short, written first-person narrative into a short, visual first-person narrative, shifting the mode significantly while retaining the genre and discourse. This may also ensure that your new assignment meets the existing student learning outcomes or objectives for your content.

Tip #3: Don’t Sweat the Tech

Faculty are often intimidated by emerging—or even long-standing—technology. You do not need to be a master of iMovie to offer your students the opportunity to create a video response, or even a short film. Chances are your campus has resources students can use; you need only to direct students to those resources, such as a tech-savvy librarian or web-based tutorials on YouTube. In some sense, it’s probably better if you’re not an expert on the technology, as this will make it clear to students that you’re primarily assessing their content and not their ability to execute a panorama shot.

Tip #4: Adjust Your Criteria

One of the (perhaps) unexpected challenges of the multimodal shift is the need to adjust grading criteria. A traditional essay rubric, for example, will refer to paragraphs. There are no paragraphs in a podcast. Waltheitner has suggested the possibility that rubrics for multimodal assignments focus not on the product but on the process (2014, 81). Another option is to emphasize common structural elements rather than mode-specific ones, such as argument rather than thesis and supporting claims rather than paragraphs.

Tip #5: Consider Rigor

Multimodal assignments tend to be as rigorous, if not more so, than their unimodal peers, but students unfamiliar with new modes may see them as “easy.” This is particularly the case if multimodal assignments are used in a token way. This can be avoided by carefully considering how the content of one mode might match another. One option here is to think quantitatively: given a slow, standard speaking voice, a 250-word script becomes an approximately 2-minute video, so a 1,000-word paper might be equivalent to an 8-minute video. Another option is to offer specific criteria that hold across any type of assignment: an introduction with a clear argument, 6-8 pieces of scholarly evidence, analysis of at least 2 data points, etc. Finally, it’s important to make multimodal assignments a significant portion of the overall assessment scheme, not just a small extra credit add-on. (Though, if it’s your first time assigning a multimodal assignment, making it low stakes can reduce stress for you and the students.)

Multimodal assignments and assessments offer faculty and students the opportunity to flex their creative muscles, engage with emerging forms of media, and complete work in areas where they feel confident. While the initial move from unimodal to multimodal can be daunting, these simple strategies can make the transition more manageable.

Bio: Christian Aguiar is Assistant Professor of English at the University of the District of Columbia Community College. His research interests include approaches to supporting first-generation college students, multimodal writing, and Lusophone literature.

References

Edwards-Groves, Christine Joy. 2011. “The multimodal writing process: changing practices in contemporary classrooms.” Language and Education 25, no. 1: 49-64. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ910840

Huang, Cheng-Wen and Arlene Archer. 2017. “’Academic literacies’ as moving beyond writing: Investigating multimodal approaches to academic argument.” London Review of Education, 15, no. 1: 63-72. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1160035

Wahleithner, Juliet Michelsen. 2014. “The National Writing Project’s Multimodal Assessment Project: Development of a framework for thinking about multimodal composition.” Computers and Composition 31, no. 1: 79-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2013.12.004

The post Going Multimodal: 5 Tips for Making the Switch to Multimodal Assignments appeared first on Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

Premier Jason Kenney is defending his idea that Alberta could pull out of the federal pension plan by saying times have changed.

After years of poorly-received MacBook Pro models, Apple's new sixteen-inch model has a lot riding on it. The 2019 MacBook Pro (available today at Apple.com) will have a larger screen, latest-generation innards and, yes, an entirely new keyboard design. Prices start at $2399.

Early reviews are appearing.

The 16” MacBook Pro comes configured with either a 2.6GHz 6-core i7 or a 2.3GHz 8-core i9 from Intel. These are the same processors as the 15” MacBook Pro came with. No advancements here is largely a function of Intel’s chip readiness. The i7 model of the 16” MacBook Po will run $2,399 for the base model — the same as the old 15” — and it comes with a 512GB SSD drive and 16GB of RAM.

It's only 2% larger for the extra inch of display. Keyboard's better, but ... maybe wait a few months.

Apple is calling it the Magic Keyboard in homage to the iMac’s Magic Keyboard (but not identically designed). The new keyboard is a scissor mechanism, not butterfly. It has 1mm of key travel (more, a lot more) and an Apple-designed rubber dome under the key that delivers resistance and springback that facilitates a satisfying key action. The new keycaps lock into the keycap at the top of travel to make them more stable when at rest, correcting the MacBook Air-era wobble.

And yes, the keycaps can be removed individually to gain access to the mechanism underneath. And yes, there is an inverted-T arrangement for the arrow keys.