Last week Jeho Park and I both attended the ELI 2012 Conference in Austin, TX. ELI stands for the Educase Learning Initiative and is the educational technology arm of Educause. Their annual conference is an opportunity for educational technologists, librarians, CIOs, faculty, and students to get together and talk about new and emerging technologies, new initiatives on supporting teaching and learning, and other topics. This year ELI sponsored a special Roundtable on Learning Analytics which I attended. The Roundtable consisted of 20 participants who got together for a special session on each of the three days of the conference. In addition to several introductory presentations on leadership and leading change and on the field of learning analytics, there were also presentations by ELI members who have implemented learning analytics on their campuses. One of the presenters was Dr. John Fritz from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He presented on a tool called “Check My Activity” that they developed for their instance of Blackboard. Dr. Fritz will be presenting via videoconference at A Bite of Learning on March 19th so be sure to attend if you’d like to learn more. Most of the learning analytics tools focus on identifying students who are struggling in order to provide appropriate interventions.

Jeho and I also presented at an Innovation Showcase Session on our “A Bite of Learning” lunchtime speaker series. The Innovation Showcase Session consists of three 15-minute presentations followed by breakout discussion groups.  Our presentation focused on the lessons we’ve learned over the past two years in organizing and managing a successful speaker series. Our session was well received and the attendees seemed to appreciate the practical suggestions and advice that we offered. I also facilitated a “Learning Circle” on accessibility. This is not a topic I know a lot about, but fortunately there were some experts in the group who knew quite a lot so we had a lively and informative discussion. A trademark of the annual ELI conference is their emphasis on trying out new formats for presentations. In addition to regular sessions and the Innovation Showcase Sessions and Learning Circles, there were also several debate/discussion panels, an ELI game, and “Experience IT Sessions” where participants could try out different technologies.

One of the highlights of the ELI conference is the annual presentation of the Horizon Report. The Horizon Report describes emerging technologies that are expected to have an impact on education over the next five years. This year the report focused on mobile apps, tablet computing, game-based learning, learning analytics, gesture-based computing, and the “Internet of Things.” The Horizon Report is published by the New Media Consortium and ELI. You can read the full report by downloading the PDF at http://www.educause.edu/Resources/2012HorizonReport/246056.

Jeho and I had a very rewarding conference experience, as well as some truly excellent Texas BBQ, so feel free to ask us about some of the other sessions we attended.

As you may know, the Educational Technology and Media Services group has been conducting a pilot of a lecture capture system in the Learning Studio Classroom. (You can read the details here.) The piece that’s been missing, however, is an easy and convenient way to upload and distribute the lecture capture videos to the faculty and students. We’ve also been looking for a video streaming solution that allows faculty, staff and students to upload videos by themselves. Our current video streaming server does not allow self-service uploading and distribution.

One of the solutions that we’ve been interested in is Kaltura, a video hosting service that we’ve seen demonstrated at several conferences. It’s been of particular interest because it has a tool that integrates with Sakai, our course management system. During the Fall 2011 semester we tested a free demo account and decided to go ahead with a limited pilot in the Spring 2012 semester.

We have several faculty who have agreed to help us test Kaltura this semester. In addition to faculty who will be using it as a test of the distribution part of our lecture capture system, we also have several faculty who will be testing it for uploading their own videos and distributing them to their students via Sakai.

We’re looking forward to hearing the facultys’ feedback on how well Kaltura meets their needs. Stay tuned for more news on both the lecture capture system and the Kaltura pilot.

The Spring 2012 A Bite of Learning series has started off with a bang with two very well-attended presentations. The first was by Prof. David Vosburg from the HMC Chemistry department. Prof. Vosburg spoke about his experiments using an app called AirSketch on his iPad. AirSketch allows an instructor to bring PDF or JPEG files up on the iPad screen and annotate them. The iPad connects wirelessly to a laptop that then projects the annotated images in real time to a video projector. Over twenty faculty, students and staff attended and there was a lively discussion on how this technology could be used to enhance teaching and learning during class time.

The second presentation was by Prof. Char Miller, Director of the Environmental Analysis Program at Pomona College. Prof. Miller spoke on his use of Pomona’s Video47 service for streaming movies to his classes through Sakai. Personally, my favorite part of his presentation were his comments on why it’s important to use video in teaching. The attendees were very curious about the Video47 service and Prof. Miller demonstrated his use of the video streaming technology in one of his Sakai courses.

You can find the complete schedule of the Spring 2012 A Bite of Learning series on our web site at: http://www.hmc.edu/about1/administrativeoffices/cis1/edtech/a_bite_of_learning.html.

In April 2011 Prof. Mike Erlinger approached the ETMS group with a proposal to build a lecture capture system in the Learning Studio Classroom. Prof. Erlinger was interested in an automated lecture capture system that would make it easier to videotape student presentations for students to review. Our audiovisual staff had manually videotaped classes for Prof. Erlinger in Spring 2011, but this required a great deal of staff time to accomplish. Prof. Erlinger worked with Michael Meyka and James Sadler to write a proposal that used off-the-shelf components to create a more automated system. Since this project fit very well within the scope of our Teaching with Technology Innovation Grant program, ETMS decided to fund the project and create a pilot automated lecture capture system during Summer 2011.

The system that was installed for the Fall 2011 semester consisted of a web cam installed in the ceiling of the classroom, a PC desktop with Wirecast software, a VGA converter box and a large hard drive. Total cost of the system was approximately $1500.

Prof. Erlinger began using the lecture capture system to videotape student presentations in CSCI 121-Software Engineering during the Fall 2011 semester. Michael and James did a presentation at A Bite of Learning on September 19th to describe the pilot program and our very preliminary results. Soon after that Prof. Michael Orrison asked to participate in the pilot program as well. He has also been using it to record student presentations in Math Forum.

While we’ve gathered a lot of good feedback with the pilot program, we’re not ready to go production with the lecture capture system yet. We’ll be continuing with the pilot program in Spring 2012 with the same two courses. We’re limited in the number of courses we can support because we don’t yet have a solution for storing and distributing the videos. However, in Spring 2012 we’ll be running another pilot with Kaltura, a hosted video service that integrates with Sakai, our course management system. So stay tuned for more information on that pilot!

As you are probably aware one of the Audiovisual Office’s summer projects was to prepare eight temporary classrooms to replace the classrooms in Thomas-Garrett. Since the classrooms opened in August, the Dean of Faculty’s Office has made it possible for us to make a number of additional improvements to the temporary classrooms.

Furniture in the Learning Studio Classroom

The video projector in Beckman B115 was one that we had moved from Thomas-Garrett and was not bright enough. It has been replaced with a new Epson video projector. We’re also working with the Dean of Faculty’s Office and Facilities and Maintenance to upgrade the audiovisual equipment in Parsons B146 to include audio, a new video projector, and an SP control system with a VHS/DVD player. We’re also hoping to replace the furniture with tables and chairs similar to, or the same as, the furniture in the Learning Studio.

We’ve also made a few repairs since the semester started. The video projector VGA cable in Parsons B144 was replaced. The motorized screen in Platt A/B has been repaired several times. We’re still having problems with it, however, in that it does not automatically stop at the correct height as it should. We are looking into replacing it.

With Thomas-Garrett scheduled to be torn down later this month, the Educational Technology and Media Services group and Facilities and Maintenance have been busy getting temporary classrooms ready for the Fall semester. There were eight classrooms in Thomas-Garrett. Those eight classrooms will be replaced by classrooms in the following spaces:

• Parsons B144 (formerly the CIS Mac lab)
• Parsons B146 (formerly the CIS PC lab)
• Riggs Room in the Linde Activities Center
• Baker Room in the Linde Activities Center
• Beckman B115
• Olin B143
• 2 modular classrooms

All of the temporary classrooms will be outfitted with whiteboards and/or blackboards, screens, and video projectors. Since these classrooms are intended to be temporary we will not be outfitting them with all of the features of our standard classroom audiovisual setup. We will not be installing a control system, audio speakers, or DVD/VHS players. We have a 55″ LED LCD video screen with a DVD/VHS player that can be rolled into one of these classrooms if faculty would like to show a movie to the class. We are also considering placing computer speakers in each classroom so that faculty can play sound from their laptops.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Greetings from the Westin Bonaventure hotel where I am attending the annual Sakai conference. There are about 500 people here from all over the US and from abroad. The conference kicked off this morning with a general session with presentations from Ian Dolphin, Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation; Jens Haeusser, University of British Columbia, Chair of the Board of Directors of Jasig; and Josh Baron from Marist College and Chair of the Sakai Foundation Board. The most interesting news from the keynote presentation was that the Sakai Foundation and Jasig are in active discussions for merging the two foundations. If all goes as planned the merged organization would be in place by January 2012.

The first presentation I attended this morning was by my colleagues at Pomona College and Claremont McKenna College. Jason Smith and Ben Royas shared our somewhat painful experience with our upgrade to Sakai 2.7 last fall. We ran into some fairly significant bugs at the beginning of the Fall semester that did not show up during our summer testing. The experience led to a great deal of discussion at the Sakai Administration Team on our upgrade process. It’s a lot more fun sharing your success stories, but the community is always appreciative when presenters share their missteps as well.

Jason and Ben’s presentation was one of two presentations from The Claremont Colleges. In the afternoon Mary McMahon (Pomona), Teresa Shaw (Pomona), Ben Royas (CMC) and I presented on the use of project sites. Our presentation was well attended and we had some great questions from the audience.

The most exciting session today was the general session after lunch where we saw live demos of Sakai OAE (previously known as Sakai 3). Sakai OAE is a total redesign of Sakai and the developers have made a lot of progress since the demos I saw last year. The demos focused on three of the design themes: openness, content creation and re-use, and collaboration. I was most impressed by the ways in which the developers have redesigned Sakai to make content more “discoverable” even by people who are not registered Sakai users. Another feature that I’m sure will make many users happy is the new ability to view documents from within Sakai without downloading them. This includes PDF files, images, and all Office files. It was pretty cool!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Today’s sessions were not quite as exciting as yesterday’s, but I had several interesting conversations which I hope have given me a clearer picture of the future of the Sakai CLE and OAE. At last year’s Sakai conference Sakai 3 was discussed as the brand new redesign of Sakai and the replacement for Sakai 2. In the course of the past year the Sakai Foundation began referring to Sakai 2 as the Sakai CLE  and Sakai 3 as Sakai OAE. The rationale behind that decision became a lot clearer to me after today’s sessions and a conversation with Chuck Severance, or Dr. Chuck as he’s known in the Sakai community. Sakai CLE and OAE are now being seen as separate but complimentary products. Sakai OAE development will focus on design themes such as social interaction, content creation and re-use, openness, and user autonomy. Sakai CLE development will focus on teaching and learning management, learning activities, and evaluation and assessment. Sakai 2.8 was released just a few months ago, a Sakai 2.9 release is planned for late this year, and there was even talk of Sakai 2.10. So development on Sakai 2 will be continuing for quite some time. The most common scenario is for institutions who are interested in taking advantage of the new features of Sakai OAE is to run both Sakai CLE and OAE in what is being referred to as hybrid mode where users can access CLE tools from within OAE.

Dr. Chuck did a session this afternoon on the work being done on Sakai 2.9. It’s been over 4 years since any real changes have been made to the user interface of Sakai CLE. Sakai 2.9 plans to address some of the user navigation and usability  issues that customers have complained about for years. The demo was quite impressive. The new design will also bring Sakai CLE more in line with the look and feel of Sakai OAE. So lots to look forward to in the Sakai world!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Thursday was the last day of the conference and was not a full day of sessions. But I attended two sessions that were quite interesting. The first was by Duffy Gillman from rSmart on his efforts to integrate Google Docs into the Sakai CLE. There are lots of issues and complications with making that happen in a truly useful way. The most difficult issue is that Google and Sakai have very different concepts of permissions. Google has a pretty simple set of permission settings, while Sakai has a much more fine-grained concept. In any event the first pass at a solution from rSmart allows users to add a link to their Resources tool that basically creates a copy of the current state of the Google doc when a user clicks on it. Users can’t edit or create a Google doc from within Sakai. So it’s a start but far from a complete solution.

The second session that I found interesting was from HEC Montreal, a business school in Canada. The session’s focus was on how they manage the lifecycle of their course sites using PeopleSoft and Sakai. They have built a tool that is basically an extension of the Worksite Setup tool that allows power users to manage multiple sites, copy the contents of one site to another, and archive sites. The part that I found fascinating is that when they archive a course site at the end of the semester, instead of un-publishing the site as we do at The Claremont Colleges, they have a script that sets the course site to be “read only.” Basically the script resets the role permissions on the site so that faculty and students can no longer make any changes to the site. Faculty and students still have access to the site, but can’t modify it. It’s an interesting idea since it allows student to continue to access the course content as long as they are students at the institution.

I hope you enjoyed reading about the Sakai conference. If you’re interested in looking at any of the session slides from the conference you can find them at: https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CONF2011/Session+Wiki+Pages. Thanks for reading!

## Short version:
CIS in conjunction with the Dean of Faculty’s Office will be running the second term of a pilot program, Teaching with Technology Innovation Grants, this summer. The grant program’s goal is to support faculty in the incorporation of technology in their teaching. Faculty whose projects are selected for a grant will receive support from CIS in the form of staff time and/or a stipend depending on the needs of the project. Reply to Elizabeth Hodas for more info or read through the following call for proposals.

## Formal and long version:
Summer 2011 Teaching with Technology Innovation Grant Call for Proposals

0. Important Dates

* April 29, 2011 — Proposal Submission Deadline
* May 13, 2011  – Awardees Announcement
* May 20, 2011 — Begin meeting with CIS staff
* August 15, 2011 — Final meeting with CIS

1. Overview
During Summer 2011, CIS will be conducting a faculty technology grant pilot, the “Teaching with Technology Innovation Grant.” We invite proposals from faculty for projects that aim to improve student learning outcomes by exploiting new and innovative technology in education.  The grant program provides support for utilizing emerging technology as well as access to CIS staff time and training.
During the 2011 pilot period, two to three projects will be supported.  Priority consideration will be given to applications that:

* have high impact on student learning;
* engage in innovation of teaching and research through the use of technology;
* have applicability of its use by other faculty members;
* are feasible to be completed and implemented during the proposed time line;
* are not already available elsewhere on campus;
* could not be purchased with other funds such as grant money or departmental funds.

The pilot program is being run in conjunction with the Dean of Faculty’s Office.

2. Eligibility
All faculty at Harvey Mudd College are eligible to apply.

3. Awards
Each selected project will be awarded a stipend and/or software and hardware as needed; the amount of the stipend will be determined by the requirements of the proposal. Faculty will work closely with CIS staff to complete the project.

4. Expectations
Upon completion of the projects or at the end of the project term, faculty may be asked to do a presentation about their project at A Bite of Learning or other venue, or write a brief report on the project goals, achievements and their experiences to be shared with HMC faculty, students and staff. CIS may also ask faculty to survey the students in their courses about how the project affected their learning experience.

5. Application Procedure

All proposals must be submitted to CIS by April 29, 2011. Submitted proposals will be reviewed by the selection committee in early May.  Grant awardees will be announced by email and on the CIS website by May 13, 2011. The selection committee includes members from CIS and the Dean of Faculty’s Office.

Faculty should submit a brief description of their project including as much of the following information as possible: project’s goal and significance; required staff resources, equipment and material; timeline for project completion; your availability during the summer for work with CIS staff on the project; estimated budget (estimate costs of hardware, software and person-hours). Faculty should feel free to consult with CIS if they have any questions.

Proposals should be emailed to Elizabeth_Hodas@hmc.edu.

6. Selected Projects for 2010 Summer Grant

* ODE Architect Software Package Incompatibility Solutions by Prof. Bob Borrelli (Math): In his proposal, Prof. Borrelli addressed compatibility issues with ODE Architect (ODEA) package and Windows 7 operating systems. The ODEA is a 12-year old legacy software package still being used by some Differential Equations courses at the Claremont Colleges. Through this project, CIS reviewed the issue thoroughly and proposed a viable alternative, virtualization with cloud computing, using a free cloud computing service called CloudShare.com. The solution is being used by math faculty and students in Math 45 this semester. For more info, visit http://www5.hmc.edu/ITNews/?p=609.
* Web-based Multimedia Quiz Tools by Prof. Bill Alves (HSA): Prof. Bill Alves was looking for a robust web-based quiz tool for his music courses. The requirements for the quiz tool were that it should 1) provide feedback for every answer chosen, 2) allow multiple attempts, 3) allow embedding mp3 files, video clips, and YouTube clips, and 4) be platform independent. CIS searched for available quiz tools out on the Internet, and made suggestions. Through testing and discussions, Hotpotatoes.net service was chosen. It is being used by two Music courses, Film Music (MUS179) and Music of the Peoples of the World (Mus063), this semester.
* Hand-Press Printing How-to Video Making by Prof. Jeff Groves (HSA): Prof. Jeff Groves wanted to create a series of hand-press printing videos to help his students understand complex procedures of creating hand-press printing and (more importantly) cleaning the press after use. During 2010 summer, CIS A/V team supported his creating storyboard, filming footages, and editing/encoding/compressing the clips. The video clips are currently being used for his course, Workshop in Hand Press Printing (ART 060), this semester.

7. Contact Info
Joseph Vaughan: Joseph_Vaughan@hmc.edu
Elizabeth Hodas: Elizabeth_Hodas@hmc.edu
Jeho Park: Jeho_Park@hmc.edu

On January 14,  2011 CIS sponsored a workshop by Apple for faculty and staff on creating student-generated video content. Our two Apple representatives, Tony Graham and Jeff Monday, both presented. Five HMC faculty and 10 HMC staff members attended the workshop. Jeff began the workshop with a presentation on Apple’s efforts to support the creation of short video by students as part of the course syllabus with distribution through iTunes U. Jeff and Tony have been working with several colleges in southern California and showed examples of student work and interviews with faculty who have incorporated these types of projects into their syllabus.

Tony then reviewed some of the basic do’s and don’t's when creating short videos. He divided the attendees into four groups and handed out Flip-style video cameras. The assignment was to come up with an idea for a 2-minute video and shoot the video on campus in about an hour and a half. The groups then came back and used iMovie to edit their videos with transitions, titles and music. At the end of the workshop each group presented their video to the rest of the class. One group created a promotional video for Homework Hotline. Another group made a very amusing video about getting lost in the maze of the Libra Complex basement.