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What is the shape of things to come? Delivering a 21st Century Learning Experience

Hello. I’m glad we’re here.

A recent report by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future noted that within the next decade, more than half of the nation’s teachers—currently of the Baby Boomer generation—will be eligible for retirement.

Consider that there are more than 1,000 educational podcasts, nearly 200 U.S. universities providing recorded lectures on iTunes U (and several more K – 12 and international institutions), 1,800 courses available on MIT OpenCourseWare, and over 10,000 learning resources on wikiversity.com. All freely available and growing.

Conversely, tuition and fees to attend an in-state or private university continue to outpace the (CPI) rate of inflation.

To summarize: the amount of freely available educational materials is considerable; cost of traditional education is increasing beyond what is controlled for by inflation; and the next ten years offer an incredible leadership opportunity as a majority of current faculty members are succeeded by those inherently comfortable with teaching in the information age.

The traditional pedagogical model remains strongly rooted in activities and structures that add value when information is scarce and disseminating knowledge is inefficient.

My question is: Is there a better time for leadership than now? To provide that leadership, a model as compelling and easy-to-follow as the existing one is essential. This proposal focuses on three areas in need of innovation necessary to developing one.

Design and delivery of instructional materials: covered in the objective, Optimize instructional delivery for students’ visual literacy.

Course Structure and delivery: covered in the objective, Identify methods for customizing the learning experience.

Role and responsibility of course instructor: covered in the objective, Increase student-teacher and student-student collaboration.

With this proposal, I hope to outline a clear plan for an important first step, filled with experiments guided by the need to assess what is the shape of things to come.

Project Outline

What will happen?

During the Spring 2009 semester I designed and delivered a course about new media and social technologies (ADV 400-Q) to a live group of 17 undergraduate advertising majors at UIUC and also as an online class through Syracuse University to 28 information technology undergraduates. I was inspired to advance the way learning is facilitated after the priceless experience of simultaneously delivering an identical curriculum in such different environments. In preparing this proposal, I consulted with students and two professors: Michael Wesch, the Carnegie Foundation’s 2008 Professor of the Year; and, William (Bill) Hammack, noted UIUC Engineering professor who has written frequently about the imperatives cited in this proposal.

This proposal looks beyond technology for its own sake; instead, it focuses on contemporary teaching practices and modern communication techniques. The resulting innovation is a simple model that can be adapted in whole, or in part, by educators of today and tomorrow. Proposal objectives will be pursued while delivering the same course (ADV 400-Q) under this model to enhance the learning experience for students.

Objective 1: Optimize instructional delivery for students’ visual literacy

Enhancing existing course documentation and instructional material with professional quality video will more efficiently relate concepts and communicate expectations to students. The goal is not to replace all written documentation and live lectures with videos, but to exploit the respective strengths of written and visual media. A template for enhanced syllabi, assignments, and micro-lectures will illustrate how to incorporate short YouTube-like clips into common materials.

Rationale and Strategic Alignment

Increasingly, teachers are incorporating online video into presentations and instructional materials. While the use of YouTube videos brings compelling content into the classroom, there are unrealized opportunities to enhance the course with short video clips. Students’ heightened visual literacy is a critical, yet un-emphasized factor in instructional design.

This objective serves the academic excellence strategic goal, specifically the initiative to position the academy to meet 21st century opportunities. Two of the three YouTube founders being UIUC alumni, it is fitting that we develop a new model to exploit the power of online video.

Objective 2: Identify methods for customizing the learning experience

By using “mass customization” to extend the traditional model of course delivery, the academic excellence strategic goal from Objective 1 is reinforced. To encourage educators to incorporate customization, a set of examples and guides for implementation will be necessary. The goal: to make facilitating a course that allows students to adjust various factors—such as the technical difficulty level of assignments and grading weight—as simple as the one-size-fits-all approach.

Rationale and Example

Incredible economic activity is taking place in the area of mass customization. Using a personal example, I once signed up for a credit card simply because I could upload one of my own photos for the front. Similar to that kind of customization is the personalization offered by powerful “recommendation engines” like Amazon.com and Netflix, which are thriving by meeting individual tastes. Customization in the classroom is nothing new, but a successful model has not been developed in a way where widespread adoption took place, likely because of stringent academic standards to maintain. However, the information age is a time to test an instructional model offering some customization. I believe it will lead to higher performance to standards such as grades, instructional reviews, and external recognition of student work.

For example, this model could include basic and advanced assignment levels with different incentive structures assigned to each, or a system allowing students to adjust the grading weight of certain assignments and assessments. There are many practices in place today by innovative teachers, so the objective of this proposal is to integrate them into a contemporary model with guidelines for implementation.

Objective 3: Increase student-teacher and student-student collaboration

This objective responds to one student’s frustration: “I collaborated with my teachers and classmates more when I was in high school.” Formally increasing the instance of student-teacher and student-student collaboration will require emphasis of the teacher’s role as “project manager,” along with a clear model for leading a class as such. Similar to the other objectives, this would take place by integrating existing and new practices—popular with engineering educators—into a cohesive model with guidelines and clear instruction on effective practices for collaboration.

Rationale and Strategic Alignment

As higher education adjusts to the age of information abundance and fluid knowledge creation, the added value with respect to the classroom experience is through collaboration and counsel over one of information transfer. Controlling for various teaching styles and class formats, the results of this objective can be followed in small or large class settings because all students are organized into teams. To complement this class structure, grading will be redistributed more equally among the work effort/process and the resulting product. As this objective equally applies to online education, it meets the strategic goal of increasing access to the Illinois experience, by increasing and excelling in distance learning.

Then what?

The guiding vision of this proposal is to provide a model that is so compelling and practical, it will fuel a grass roots movement among faculty to recast their courses in a similar fashion. They will look for the indivisible units of their instructional materials and develop their own library of micro-lectures; they will improve communication of expectations through embedded video; they will look for ways to collaborate more closely with students by emphasizing their role as manager and architect of the learning experience, rather than “reader of slides.”

For this project, specific platforms are being used to facilitate timely technical execution; however, the fundamentals of the model will be technology agnostic and can grow as the enterprise advances.

Should the results of this proposal prove successful, there are opportunities with the Department of Education to apply for general education research grants. Seeking a new educational model to provide post-secondary (and possibly secondary education) leadership would adhere to the following excerpt from the grant’s online description:

The central purpose of the Institute’s research grant programs is to provide parents, educators, students, researchers, policymakers, and the general public with reliable and valid information about education practices that support learning and improve academic achievement and access to education opportunities for all students.

Additional opportunities with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching are also a viable path given the aim of this proposal. From their Undergraduate Education webpage:

Through the Foundation’s work in undergraduate education, we investigate the conditions under which teaching occurs, what it looks like and how to expand upon it in order to improve and advance classroom teaching and student learning at colleges and universities.

This proposal’s focus on innovating the core classroom learning experience is a perfect fit to offer award committees a solution to the larger problems they are tackling.

I believe that with successful execution of this project, we can provide both leadership and fresh ideas that extramural funding agencies find to be compelling, and the shape of things to come.

[Budget and Schedule sections omitted, but can be found in the full PDF]

The case study covers the development and first year of the StationM social network that McDonald’s launched for North American crew members.

Due to an NDA, the case study is only available to my students. But I am happy to request an exemption if you are interested. Just contact me.

Visit shiftlearning.com

A podcast where Alana and I explore what it means to be a millennial, with the help of other millennials. Check out http://millennio.us for the homepage and complete archives.

Click to listen to millennious! in your iTunes

Recent episodes:

Ethan

Eun Joo

Jon

What does it all mean? I have a passion for helping launch, improve or educate in the field of online communications, for internal or external environments, from undergraduates to executives.

Work Experience

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Media | 2009 – present: Adjunct Professor of Advertising

I teach a course and workshops of my own design focusing on theory, practice and application of new media and social technologies. My course website can be found at shift.syr.edu and eventually at shiftlearning.com (under development).

Syracuse University, School of Information Studies | 2008 – present: Adjunct Professor of Information Management & Technology

I teach an online course and workshops of my own design focusing on theory, practice and application of new media and social technologies. My course website can be found at shift.syr.edu and eventually at shiftlearning.com (under development).

Dulye & Co. | 2007 – present: Chief Information Officer and Social Media Specialist

• Manage all hosted IT systems and web applications that facilitate virtual collaboration of geographically distributed consultant network
• Redesigned and maintained firm website Dulye.com, including coordinating firm renaming/re-branding effort
• Coordinated ongoing employee engagement effort for clients covering 18 employee teams at various locations
• Developed strategy and coordinated production of executive communication programs for Fortune 500 companies, including blogging, podcasting, and online video tactics
• Designed, administered, analyzed and reported on annual employee survey responses covering thousands of employee responses with more than 10,000 qualitative data points

Edelman Public Relations, Sacramento | 2006 – 2007: Public Relations Intern

• Developed and refined outreach databases for client programs
• Successfully pitched stories for clients to target media
• Analyzed value of “reach” for earned media coverage
• Consulted on online/new media components of client projects and new business proposals
• Was the “go to” person for technical advice, AP Style, and grammar questions

Proficiencies & Skills

A list is an imperfect way of communicating what I bring to every one of my working relationships, but here is a list of skills, platforms and applications that I draw from to provide solutions and assistance.

• Web applications:
  • Google Apps Enterprise Edition,
  • Basecamp
  • Salesforce.com
  • iContact (e-mail marketing)
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint
  • Google Analytics
  • SelectSurvey Pro
• Microsoft Office Suite (including Access)
• Adobe Creative Suite
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Acrobat Pro
  • Dreamweaver
• Content Management Systems:
  • WordPress
  • Drupal
  • SquareSpace
  • SharePoint Server
• New Media Production:
  • Record and edit podcasts using complex recording environments (e.g., studio, call-in, conference, round table, etc.)
  • Record and edit video and distribute via podcast feed, including titles and basic effects
  • Setup, configure, and customize blogs on a variety of platforms
  • Distribution via iTunes, YouTube, blip.tv and other online platforms
• Social Media:
  • Online conversation tracking and monitoring
  • Google Analytics and conversion optimization
  • Google AdWords and AdSense configuration
  • Facebook Ads setup and configuration
  • Twitter customization and integration (e.g., co-tweet and other services)
• Data Analysis:
  • QSR NVivo
  • SPSS
  • SAP Xcelsius
• Working knowledge of HTML, XML, CSS and similar markup languages

Education

2007 Bachelor of Science, Public Relations and Information Management & Technology | Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Public Communications and The School of Information Studies (Jointly Conferred Degree)

Awards & Distinctions: Summa Cum Laude; one of 10 University Scholars; one of 22 Newhouse Scholars; Undergraduate Leadership Award.

2002 Cisco Certified Network Associate Training Program