[DG: Teaching & Learning] Thoughts on a New Focus for the Sakai Teaching and Learning Group
Josh Baron
Josh.Baron at marist.edu
Wed Aug 19 10:33:47 PDT 2009
Mark,
Thanks for your quick reply and for your earlier leadership in this area.
The project you've listed sound interesting but I think the issue that I'm
hoping to see folks discussing and addressing is more about "process" at
this point. There seems to be a lot of interest in having a new process
for creating these "instructional visions" for what Sakai should be
facilitating from a teaching and learning perspective but we don't have a
clear idea of how we actual should engage in this work. Thus the need to
discuss process at this point.
Josh
-----------------------------
Joshua Baron
Director, Academic Technology and eLearning
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, New York 12601
(845) 575-3623 (work)
Twitter: JoshBaron
From:
Mark Norton <markjnorton at earthlink.net>
To:
Josh Baron <Josh.Baron at marist.edu>, "pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org"
<pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org>
Date:
08/19/2009 11:39 AM
Subject:
Re: [DG: Teaching & Learning] Thoughts on a New Focus for the Sakai
Teaching and Learning Group
Rather than responding all of the lists, I'm just responding to the
Pedagogy list. Cross post if you feel it's appropriate, Josh.
You may recall that I participated in the very early pedagogy group
calls and dropped out after the work of the group became focused on
promoting good pedagogy in Sakai (via TWSIA and other methods). I remain
very interested in exploring the use of technology for teaching and
learning.
Since that time, I have become involved with three projects that may be
of interest to this group:
1. SoftChalk LessonBuilder
Some of you may have seen a demonstration of the SoftChalk LessonBuilder
application at the Sakai Conference this summer. LessonBuilder is a
content authoring application that provides very simple and easy to use
tools to create content that can be delivered as either linked web pages
or as a SCORM package. I have been working on integrating this into
Sakai and will be conducting a beta test program in the next month or
so. I believe that a powerful content authoring tool like LessonBuilder
could open up new support for pedagogy in Sakai.
2. Digital Marketplace
The California State University system has been working to create a set
of specifications and tools that would allow an instructor to select and
recommend the education resources need for a course facilitated by an
online support environment like Sakai. The system allows free,
licensed, and fee-based materials to be recommended and provides support
to students for purchasing and fulfillment via the web, delivery
services, or campus bookstores. In particular, the system has the
ability to reduce the cost of educational materials by recommending
digital versions of textbooks (etc) if available. I have been engaged
as the Production Architect and I am working with a team towards a
limited pilot/rollout early next year.
3. OER Development
As a result of engagement in the Digital Marketplace effort, I have
become interested in the development of Open Education Resources (OER).
These include Open Courseware material, free text books (such Flex-books
from CK12.com and wikibooks), free courses (wikiversity.org), and
peer-reviewed online learning modules such as those offered by Merlot.
I am in the process of developing a course at wikiversity and I'm
interested in talking with other people who have experience in such
efforts.
Are these the sorts of things you are talking about, Josh?
- Mark Norton
Josh Baron wrote:
>
> Sakai Colleagues,
>
> In lieu of our usual weekly "teaching and learning" conference call, I
> would like to share some thoughts the future of these calls and some
> new ideas that have surface following the 10th International Sakai
> Conference in Boston this past July. I recognize that this e-mail is
> very long and detailed but I felt that in order to engage a larger and
> broad audience that a posting to multiple lists, rather than phone
> calls, was best.
>
> I know that this is a busy time of the year for many of us but if you
> can dedicate a few minutes to reviewing this and posting comments that
> would be great. To assist in freeing up some of your time, I'm
> suggesting below that we not have our regular call for the next
> several weeks and then reschedule it for a new day/time.
>
> As many of you are aware, there were several sessions at the Boston
> conference focused on the need to find new ways for our community to
> discuss, identify and document the types of instructional practices
> that Sakai needs to support now and into the near as well as distant
> future. Some of this "need" centers around finding new models for the
> type of "requirements gathering" that has been attempted in the past.
> Beyond this, there also seems to be a strong desire to implement new
> processes that would produce "tool/technology agnostic" visions of the
> types of instructional practices (ranging from traditional to
> innovative) that future versions of Sakai should facilitate and support.
>
> Following the conference there have been a number of discussions
> taking place in various groups and settings, including several members
> of the newly formed Product Council, as to how we might engage in this
> new work. Some of the ideas (but not all) and commentary on this can
> be found in Confluence at http://tinyurl.com/nuzsu2. In addition, the
> folks within the Portfolio group have shared some of the "visioning"
> work that they have been engaged in for some time that many feel could
> represent a good model for the larger community (likely requiring some
> small modification). Examples of their work can be found at
> http://tinyurl.com/mx5uvb. I have participated in some of the weekly
> Portfolio/OSP calls recently and believe that they are interested in
> engaging in some broader work in this area.
>
> WHERE IS THIS ALL GOING?
> I, and I believe others, feel that in order to move forward with some
> practical work in this area that we need to establish a regular (I
> think weekly but that is open to debate) conference call that is
> dedicated to such an effort. At the same time, we need to broaden the
> participation beyond the folks who have been regularly participating
> in the Teaching and Learning calls as means to increase the resources
> (i.e. people time) going into this work and to have a more diverse set
> of institutions represented (particularly more international schools).
>
> Because of these issues, I would like to make two proposals:
>
> (1) Re-purpose the Sakai T&L call to focus on "instructional
> visioning" activities. This would mean shifting our calls away from
> the Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award program and other
> conference-related discussions. I am currently talking with Michael
> Korcuska about how the Foundation could assist with the TWSIA work
> (with continued involved of folks from this group) and also believe
> that we could move the other conference-related discussions to the
> Conference Planning Committee calls.
>
> (2) Reschedule the call during a time that will allow a more diverse
> and larger group to participate. This may end up requiring some
> creative approaches in order to include various time zones.
>
> NEXT STEPS
> I would like to hear from folks "on list" as to any concerns,
> thoughts, suggestions, etc. related to these issues and proposed
> changes. I would like to particularly encourage folks who are new to
> either the community or these calls to share their thoughts. Having
> this discussion on list rather than on our calls will allow for
> greater participation (I hope).
>
> I would also like to suggest that we temporarily postpone the regular
> Wednesday at 11:30 AM EDT "Teaching and Learning" call with the plan
> of re-starting these calls in mid- to late-September. This will allow
> us to some time to find a new day/time as well as free of some time
> for all of us to think about and start to discuss (on list) the
> details of how we might proceed with practical work. Unless there is
> objection to this, I will put out some e-mails over the next couple of
> weeks in an effort to find a good time(s) for out future calls.
>
> Finally, I am going to put some time and effort into updating the
> Teaching and Learning Confluence page to clean up the older content (I
> won't remove it obviously, just re-organize it) and try and set up
> some pages that will hopefully facilitate some of our initial work in
> this area.
>
> I'm looking forward to engaging more on these issues on list with
> everyone.
>
> Thanks, Josh
>
> -----------------------------
> Joshua Baron
> Director, Academic Technology and eLearning
> Marist College
> Poughkeepsie, New York 12601
> (845) 575-3623 (work)
> Twitter: JoshBaron
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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