Notable Presentation from FUSION

At D2L’s recent FUSION conference in Boston, Dr. Cable Green gave a powerful presentation, according to David Chatham, one of our conference attendees. You can see the slides here: “OpenEducation, MOOCs, Student Debt, Textbooks and Other Trends”

Dr. Green is Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons.  

Enjoy and as always, commentary is welcome in the CCCOnline Community!

Post-FUSION Reflections: D2L Conference Inspires

This week, CCCOnline staff share food for thought after having attended FUSION, Desire2Learn’s annual conference (held this July in San Diego). Enjoy their contributions below – and we welcome you to join the conversation in the CCCOnline Community!

“Raif Esquith was a very inspirational speaker. When asked why his students are so successful in his class, one of the things he said was that he wasn't concerned with teaching his students skills that they'll use in class, or skills to pass a test one year from now; he's concerned with teaching his students skills they'll use 10 years from now, or for the rest of their lives. That, to me, was an inspirational point that could have the potential to change a teacher's entire approach to their class.”

-Sean Renner

“I enjoyed hearing Sal Khan speaking about changing teaching by creating tools that motivate students to progress through content at their own pace, and that building the foundation of skills keeps good students strong in a subject area but also helps weaker students rise to a higher level than they may have in a traditional classroom.”

-Karen Kaemmerling

“The future of online education is heating up and there is a land grab for students and institutions worldwide.

The keynote speakers impressed me very much.  Each presented several ideas that could be generally called inflection points of history.

First the creation and then delivery of Online Content is rapidly vibrating between publicly funded institutions and pure commercial interests. Already running ahead and staking out territory are the ‘Oklahoma Sooners’ of the digital education age.  The new products and solutions being introduced are awe inspiring yet at the same time highlight how far behind non commercial interests are in generating and delivering online content.

Secondly, the keynote from Sal Kahn who spoke about how education is not the exclusive territory of ‘old institutions.’ He was harkening back to days where families, communities and students would shop for and procure the services of the best tutors and private instructors. Except that now that private tutor being somehow automated can be played, rewound, or practiced with again and again until the student actually learns that lesson. It’s of no use, nor benefit, to move on if the learner didn't understand the current lesson. Basically the market for education is returning toward the learner as being the one in charge of his/her intellectual formation and its pacing.  A system or school which offers a menu or track that must be done within X amount of time or whatnot is no longer the exclusive place to find an intellectual formation program.

Lastly, in many areas the purpose and intent of online training is going to be highly focused. The Admiral's (ret) presentation spoke about on-the-job training and just-in-time training using online as the media as well as the content was an eye opener. Tactically relevant Virtualization and Simulation embedded into courses is coming. OJT and JIT training in medical or technician type fields are no longer about book based learning looking at static pictures. Students will in the future be presented with a simulation (Graphical, 3d or otherwise immersive) of the equipment or scenario for which they are training. In the future it’s not just about reading, looking at diagrams or videos and taking quizzes. Learners will have to complete a ‘simulation run’ and will then be evaluated post simulation as ‘proof’ for demonstrating they know how things are to be done. This type of education delivery is in the space of hours and days, not weeks and months. He sees a future where learners study, simulate till proficient, then go into the field just after training finishes and do tasks well the first time."

-Joseph Foss

“I was particularly struck by individual conversations with peers at other institutions.  One in particular stuck with me when a representative from The Ohio State University told me that you’d have a hard time finding the text books in the campus bookstore.  This is no longer a significant business for them, and the reasons are that students are finding other ways to buy text books elsewhere or the ebooks and Apple IBooks are changing the model.  So, we are in the midst of a change and this creates opportunities and challenges.  How will CCCS and CCCO deal with this in a beneficial way?”

-David Chatham

What We Learned at FUSION, Part II

This week continues our discussion of lessons learned at FUSION.

Lisa Marie Johnson, Cultural Science Instructor, contributes:

“I attended many useful sessions at Fusion 2011, but the one that gave me the most pause for thought was 'The Future of Mobile: Insight and Vision from Desire2Learn' presented by David Kruis.

David discussed how the first internet experience for most developing nations' citizens is mobile technology. He examined the difficulty for educators in design and delivery of mobile due to the different definitions of ‘smartphone’ in the USA and abroad. Some phones are merely web enabled while others do truly mimic a personal computing experience.

Following that discussion, David explored a framework for understanding what mobile computing and learning means. . .”

Lisa Marie continues a summary of the framework in the CCCOnline Community. As always, please feel free to join in the conversation!

What We Learned at FUSION

We asked CCCOnline staff what they learned from last week’s Desire2Learn FUSION conference. Responses follow, and we’ll continue to showcase them next week!

• David Chatham, Dean of Academic Technology, commented on Jonah Lehrer’s keynote, in which Mr. Lehrer discussed the marshmallow kids experiment* and the possibility of predicting factors for success:
  
  “That is the key to our interest in analytics. If we can determine the key factors for keeping students progressing in their college career, then we’ve accomplished something additionally worthwhile with our D2L installation by mining the data that provides us with the clues.”
  
  *See “Don’t! The Secret of Self-Control,” Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker, 5/18/2009.



• Natalie Jeremijenko, another keynote speaker, discussed the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic at NYU and its use of emerging technologies for social change. Sean Renner, Instructional Designer, found Prof. Jeremijenko’s keynote to be the most inspirational part of the conference:
  
  “I thought it was an amazing way to combine activism with art, and was an incredible example of thinking way outside the box making a difference in an area you care about in some of the most creative ways possible. For me, and I think for all of us working to provide new and creative opportunities for education, there’s a lot there that inspired me.
  
  The most useful thing I learned was the current, and upcoming features in the ‘insert stuff’ tool, allowing users to directly embed videos almost anywhere in D2L, and soon add youtube and flickr videos via a direct connection with D2L.”