Category Archives: LDT Seminar Winter

LDT Seminar – Week 5 – Milestones Assignemnt

Here’s what I have so far in the definition of my Master’s Project – work-in-progress.

Learning Experience Designer (LXD)
Lucas Longo
v.0, Jan 14, 2016

ABSTRACT

The trend towards blended learning environments is irreversible and an increasing number of higher educational institutions are going in that direction. It is a labor intensive task for professors who must transition from a traditional classroom or lecture hall model to an online environment. Aside from the learning curve into any LMS, new content must be created and organized: pdfs, images, videos, links, animations to list a few. The challenge is to make it easier for professors who for the most part do not have formal pedagogical training or multimedia content creation skills, to publish their courses adopting the research based best-practices.

Learning Experience Designer (LXD) is a curriculum construction tool that adapts to your teaching context and learner needs. It also provides all the multimedia creation tools you might need to record and edit video, annotate images and pdf, or create animations. It utilizes artificial intelligence to suggest course formats, pedagogical strategies, activities, and challenges providing references to works others have already created and tested. The final result is a published course which can be accessed via your browser or a mobile app where students can engage in forums and peer-to-peer coaching.

As a proof-of-concept, I propose to utilize as a base, an existing LMS (Canvas, Coursera, or Edx) and add onto its interface the proposed functions, content, and interactions. These new features will then be presented and evaluated by teachers who have experience with the LMS. The goals are to judge if such features improve the experience of creating the course and if the resulting course positively affects the learning outcomes. I intend to focus an introductory programming course, a subject matter I am familiar with, where the learning outcomes are more easily assessed, and because of the vast amount of content already available online to support the course.

MASTER’S PROJECT PROPOSAL

CHALLENGE

Needs

How might we scaffold “experts” to create engaging hybrid courses?

In 2009 I started a mobile app development school in Brazil targeting developers and designers who needed to acquire these new hot new skills. For the first year or so I taught the iPhone app development course while looking for more teachers to meet the large demand and to create new courses. Pedagogically, I going on instincts, using a very hands-on approach: explain the concept, model it, and do it yourself. It worked and it was straight forward enough to explain to the new teachers.

The challenge came when I started hiring teachers for new courses. The curriculum had to be constructed and the course content created. This task proved to be daunting for the developers who never taught before. Even with my course material as a reference or model, teachers were slow to produce the material, and it was usually of poor quality: slides with too many details or lacking explanations of key concepts.

Once I decided I wanted to start selling the courses online, the challenge became too big. Where do I start? How much video versus written material should I use? How will students ask questions? How will we manage all these students? What are the best practices? All questions that could be resolved by a well designed software that would scaffold the process of creating the curriculum and course content.

LEARNING

Benefits:

LDX will make the user more proficient in the art of sharing their knowledge, stimulating them to repeat the process and create new and better courses. Users will benefit from theory grounded strategies that promote effective learning in online environments. The Virtual Student will lead the process by posing provocative questions and requesting content, assessment, and reflection activities to be inserted into the course progression. The backwards design methodology will be utilized along with the best practices of teaching online.

The main learning outcome will be that online teaching requires a different set of approaches, content, media, interactive experiences, and assessment methods to be effective. The Virtual Student will serve as an instructor and coach for the user during the process – different than a standalone course on ‘how to teach online’. Teaching and learning will occur during the process of creating a course.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of LDX I propose to survey the users pre- and post-utilization of the tool with questions that will inform me of the following characteristics of the user:

Pre-utilization:

  • Digital literacy level
  • Previous knowledge/experience with pedagogy
  • Previous knowledge/experience with online teaching
  • Perception of online course effectiveness
  • Personal beliefs on the challenges of creating an online course
  • Confidence level for creating an online course

Post-utilization:

  • New pedagogical content acquired
  • New online teaching content acquired
  • Perception of online course effectiveness
  • Personal beliefs on the challenges of creating an online course
  • Confidence level for creating an online course

During the utilization of the tool I intend to collect the following data:

  • Webcam video recording
  • Screen video recording w/ mouse tracks and clicks
  • User will be asked to think-aloud throughout the process

I also intend to test LDX with users who have already created online courses and interview them to get the following:

  • Perception of how much LDX actually helped them in the process
  • What would they do different now if they were to redo their existing courses
  • Input and feedback on what worked, what didn’t work, and suggestions

The results will be interpreted using the grounded theory qualitative research method. Theories of how to improve the tool will emerge from the evidence coding and proposition creation. The conclusion will address issues such as the viability of the concept, effectiveness, and suggestions for future improvement.

Approach:

The approach to learning that informs my design is a combination of the Protege Effect, project-based learning, and TPACK. The expert, teacher, or content creator is here called the “user” insofar as it is the person who is interacting with LXD during the course creation process.

The Protege Effect will be elicited through a virtual student who will prompt the user to teach him by asking leading questions, making suggestions, and warning the user about excessive use of one style of teaching as well as the lack of content, reflection opportunities, or detailing of previous knowledge. The virtual-student closes the gap between the content ideation and the actual student’s experience. Through immediate feedback, the virtual student will elicit the user to think deeply about content choices and aid in the process of deciding the learning progression that must be in place.

The project-based learning approach simply entails that the user is engaged in a project while using LXD itself. The project is the course creation process itself, within which scaffolds are presented to the user. In addition, the approach utilizes backwards design principles embedded in the interactions the virtual student has with the user. The idea being that the heuristics and strategies invoked by the virtual student are guided by these approaches without necessarily making them explicit.

Finally, LXD aims at increasing the user’s Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) by offering simple media editing tools, pedagogical scaffolds, as well as content produced by other users that can be incorporated into the course creation process. LXD in itself is a technological tool that will increase the user’s TPACK by presenting the necessary information, background knowledge, and content that supports the user’s ideation and publication strategies.

DESIGN OF THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Existing solutions (“competition”):

LXD is a construct that for the purposes of this project, will build upon an existing LMS or CMS – let’s call it LCMS for simplicity. This LCMS provides a base from which to start off with. Creating an entirely new LCMS from scratch is unfeasible and not necessary in order to test LXD’s effectiveness. I am currently analyzing which platform will be the best suited for this project. Here’s a list of the ones I have shortlisted:

  • Moodle – open-source CMS
    • Positives
      • Total freedom to create
      • Mature platform with thousands of plugins
      • Large community to interact with
    • Negatives
      • Cumbersome to customize
      • Old looking base interface
      • Old HTML base – no use of HTML5 affordances
  • Coursera
    • Positives
      • Could work with existing content publishers on Stanford
    • Negatives
      • The focus is curating online courses done with any online tool (I think)
  • Udemy
    • Positives
      • Content publishing tools is one of the most user friendly I’ve seen
    • Negatives
      • Would have to negotiate with Udemy access to their platform’s source code
  • Udacity
    • Positive
      • Focused on tech courses – familiar to me
    • Negative
      • Have never seen their course publication tool
      • Would have to negotiate with Udacity access to their platform’s source code
  • EdX
    • Positive
      • Candace Thille might have contacts to get access to the company
    • Negative
      • Have never seen their course publication tool
      • Would have to negotiate with EdX access to their platform’s source code

At the moment, Udemy is looking like my favorite candidate.

I also intend to talk to VPTL at Stanford to understand what are the usual difficulties professor have in the process of creating their online tools.

Approach:

LDX will be a web-based tool which will overlay the existing LCMS with text, image, and video triggered by analyzing the steps and content being published in the course. This is where artificial intelligence comes to play. Let’s say that the user has published a 30 minute video – LDX might suggest that the video should be shorter. If the user publishes 50 pages of text with no images, LDX might suggest that images illustrate concepts more powerfully that text alone. LDX might prompt the user to insert a knowledge-check or reflection activity once the user has published 5 pieces of content. The idea is to provoke the user to think about how the learner will be processing the content towards learning.  

The key features of LDX are:

  • Virtual Student
    • 3D character that talks to the user
    • Guides the user through the process of creating the content
    • Asks questions about the content and format of the course as it is created
  • Media Editing Suite
    • Video editor
    • Image editor
    • Text editor
  • Course Publication Tool
    • Create course structure and progression
    • Add media
    • Create assessments (quizzes, multiple choice, reflections, and etc)
  • Curated Content
    • Access to similar courses to get examples
    • Ability to link to external material for student’s reference
  • Coaching
    • Peer-to-peer help to go through courses

This is definitely ambitious for the time and resources I have for this project. The biggest challenge, other than the sheer volume of features, is the Virtual Student. I would have to partner up with someone who has experience and access to such technology in order to create a prototype.

EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS

Benefits: How will you show that what you’re doing is 1) working (usability studies) and 2) helping learners learn (learning assessment)?  What kinds of evidence do you plan to collect (summarize here; put survey items, think-aloud protocol, transfer problems, etc. in an appendix)? Will you use questions/frameworks from published studies, or create your own? What target learners will you interview/observe, where and under what circumstances? How do you expect to analyze and interpret your findings?

SUMMARY AND NEXT STEPS

What were the major ideas  in this project? What are you most looking forward to?

REFERENCES

(length as needed)

This proposal should use exisiting scholarship to justify, explain, and extend what you propose to do.  In addition to being mentioned in the text, this list of sources that are cited in this proposal provides instructions for how to find the original reference, in case the reader wants to know more about what that author said. Please use one standard format, such as for example APA: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/.

 

APPENDIX A: TIME

(1 page max.)

 

Milestones and deliverables

When do you need to do what, in order to finish on time? Example:

Winter quarter Observe target learners

Develop ideas

Write proposal

March 20, 2015 Proposal draft submitted to advisor
Date Participants for user testing and learning assessment arranged
Date Low-res learning assessments complete
Date Low-res prototype studies complete
Date Round 2 learning assessments complete
Date Round 2 prototype design complete
Date Final user testing and learning assessment complete
July 20, 2015 Project logo and video submitted
July 31, 2015 EXPO presentation, demo
August 6, 2015 Draft report submitted
August 13, 2015 Signed Master’s Project Form submitted

Time needed to implement project

Include your time and time of others. Okay to barter and trade skills with each other. You can learn new skills, but include the time it takes.

 

APPENDIX B: MONEY

(1 page max.)

 

Funds needed to implement project

If you had a small budget to spend, what would you want to use it for? Think about thank-you gifts for testers, consultants, software, supplies. Be creative in thinking about how to leverage limited funds.

 

Every project that submits a budget here will be given a stipend of up to $200 per student to cover those needs.  Budgets should be specific enough to show where the funds go, but need not itemize every More funds may be available (apply and wait for approval before spending the funds!).

 

Item Approximate Cost
$
Total:

 

APPENDIX C: PEOPLE

(1 page max.)

 

Collaboration (For Team Projects)

Explanation of how you intend to work with others on the team. How will the work and responsibilities be shared? How will individuals’ contributions be incorporated into the group product?

 

Supporters

List of cooperating contributors to your project. These are people outside the project team whom you expect to consult with or who will provide support for the project. What tasks will you need help with (e.g., coding, graphics, connecting with target learners)?  In a real-world proposal they would write letters of support. Here, just list names & their contributions.

 

For individual projects, how will you set up your environment to give you the feedback and support you need along the way?

 

APPENDIX D: OTHER (Optional)

(length as needed)

 

Anything else you think you need to share with your reader. Do not assume appendices will be read; these are reference materials that provide the opportunity for the reader to go deeper should she or he so desire. Summarize the message or insights gleaned from these materials in the text of your proposal.  Example: annotated list of competing products.

 

LDT Seminar – Master's Project Milestone Assignment

Prompts

Approach: Theories

There are several different “approaches” to address in your proposal.  One is your theoretical perspective on the challenge you address.

What approach to learning informs your design? Explain your theoretical framework – a mile-high view of the big ideas in your proposal about how people learn. The point is not to show that you read everything in 333A or 328, but rather to help your reader understand where you’re coming from. Explain how this approach has potential to help learners reach the learning goals.

It can be challenging to know what to include here. It might help to look at past projects. For instance:

  • Contrasting cases is a core mechanic in Feeling Talk
  • Creative confidence is the key outcome in Kibuni
  • Periscope uses augmented reality to promote theory of mind 
  • TandemArt facilitates conversations between kids and caregivers, because that’s how they learn
  • NatureQuest supports close observations of nature through narrative and family interactions.

For more examples, I strongly recommend reading some past project reports (at sdr.stanford.edu) to get a sense of how this might look for different types of projects. 

Approach: design of the solution

Another way to address “approach” is to think about how you will arrive at your final design. You probably identify more with one or the other of two scenarios:

  1. You know (pretty much) what you will be making. You might find it useful to list the key features of the proposed project, with brief explanation and rationale for each feature. You will want to explain why this is the right technology for this problem.
  2. You need to learn more (or much more!) about the learner before you can say anything about what your solution will look like.You will probably focus more on the design principles that you will use to focus your efforts and inform your design decisions. Somewhere later down the line you will need to decide what technologies to use; what can you say now about which ones will be most likely and/or how you will decide

If you expect any challenges, discuss how you might address them.


Response 

Approach:

The approach to learning that informs my design is a combination of the Protege Effect, project-based learning, and TPACK. The expert, teacher, or content creator is here called the “user” insofar as it is the person who is interacting with LXD during the course creation process.

The Protege Effect will be elicited through a virtual student who will prompt the user to teach him by asking leading questions, making suggestions, and warning the user about excessive use of one style of teaching as well as the lack of content, reflection opportunities, or detailing of previous knowledge. The virtual-student closes the gap between the content ideation and the actual student’s experience. Through immediate feedback, the virtual student will elicit the user to think deeply about content choices and aid in the process of deciding the learning progression that must be in place.

The project-based learning approach simply entails that the user is engaged in a project while using LXD itself. The project is the course creation process itself, within which scaffolds are presented to the user. In addition, the approach utilizes backwards design principles embedded in the interactions the virtual student has with the user. The idea being that the heuristics and strategies invoked by the virtual student are guided by these approaches without necessarily making them explicit.

Finally, LXD aims at increasing the user’s Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) by offering simple media editing tools, pedagogical scaffolds, as well as content produced by other users that can be incorporated into the course creation process. LXD in itself is a technological tool that will increase the user’s TPACK by presenting the necessary information, background knowledge, and content that supports the user’s ideation and publication strategies.

DESIGN OF THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Existing solutions (“competition”):

LXD is a construct that for the purposes of this project, will build upon an existing LMS or CMS – let’s call it LCMS for simplicity. This LCMS provides a base from which to start off with. Creating an entirely new LCMS from scratch is unfeasible and not necessary in order to test LXD’s effectiveness. I am currently analyzing which platform will be the best suited for this project. Here’s a list of the ones I have shortlisted:

  • Moodle – open-source CMS
    • Positives
      • Total freedom to create
      • Mature platform with thousands of plugins
      • Large community to interact with
    • Negatives
      • Cumbersome to customize
      • Old looking base interface
      • Old HTML base – no use of HTML5 affordances
  • Coursera
    • Positives
      • Could work with existing content publishers on Stanford
    • Negatives
      • The focus is curating online courses done with any online tool (I think)
  • Udemy
    • Positives
      • Content publishing tools is one of the most user friendly I’ve seen
    • Negatives
      • Would have to negotiate with Udemy access to their platform’s source code
  • Udacity
    • Positive
      • Focused on tech courses – familiar to me
    • Negative
      • Have never seen their course publication tool
      • Would have to negotiate with Udacity access to their platform’s source code
  • EdX
    • Positive
      • Candace Thille might have contacts to get access to the company
    • Negative
      • Have never seen their course publication tool
      • Would have to negotiate with EdX access to their platform’s source code

At the moment, Udemy is looking like my favorite candidate.

I also intend to talk to VPTL at Stanford to understand what are the usual difficulties professor have in the process of creating their online tools.

Approach:

LDX will be a web-based tool which will overlay the existing LCMS with text, image, and video triggered by analyzing the steps and content being published in the course. This is where artificial intelligence comes to play. Let’s say that the user has published a 30 minute video – LDX might suggest that the video should be shorter. If the user publishes 50 pages of text with no images, LDX might suggest that images illustrate concepts more powerfully that text alone. LDX might prompt the user to insert a knowledge-check or reflection activity once the user has published 5 pieces of content. The idea is to provoke the user to think about how the learner will be processing the content towards learning.  

The key features of LDX are:

  • Virtual Student
    • 3D character that talks to the user
    • Guides the user through the process of creating the content
    • Asks questions about the content and format of the course as it is created
  • Media Editing Suite
    • Video editor
    • Image editor
    • Text editor
  • Course Publication Tool
    • Create course structure and progression
    • Add media
    • Create assessments (quizzes, multiple choice, reflections, and etc)
  • Curated Content
    • Access to similar courses to get examples
    • Ability to link to external material for student’s reference
  • Coaching
    • Peer-to-peer help to go through courses

This is definitely ambitious for the time and resources I have for this project. The biggest challenge, other than the sheer volume of features, is the Virtual Student. I would have to partner up with someone who has experience and access to such technology in order to create a prototype.

LDT Seminar – Week 3 – Abstrat & Needs Assignment

Prompt – Abstract

The project proposal serves several goals:

  1. to externalize the current state of your ideas about your project for discussion;
  2. to push yourself to refine your ideas to make them actionable; and 
  3. to help you think through your plans, to avoid unpleasant surprises down the road.

The abstract is a mile-high overview of the proposal.  You may feel at this point that it’s a bit of a mystery how all this will play out over the next few months, but even so you’re going to write this as though you knew the ending.  In 250 words or less, you’re going to give it away here, in the abstract.  

Even though it’s a summary of the proposal, writing the abstract first is a strategic move.  By stating what it is you intend to accomplish in the proposal, you are setting out a roadmap for yourself. If you find that your journey leads you elsewhere, you can easily come back to edit the abstract to reflect your new direction.

For your reader, the abstract is a teaser that gives the outline of what’s to come.  The proposal itself will fill in the details. Thus you should briefly mention the learning challenge (who needs to learn what? why?); the form you expect your solution to take; a description of setting or background environment in which the resulting learning experience will take place; the benefits you expect this design will provide for your users; design studies you plan to do during development; and how you propose to assess what users learn from using your design.

Because the details come later, most abstracts will have no more than a couple citations, if any. Feel free to make rather grand claims here, and be ready to back them up in other parts of the proposal.

See examples here.  Questions? Ask them!

RESPONSE:

ABSTRACT

The trend towards blended learning environments is irreversible and an increasing number of higher educational institutions are going in that direction. It is a labor intensive task for professors who must transition from a traditional classroom or lecture hall model to an online environment. Aside from the learning curve into any LMS, new content must be created and organized: pdfs, images, videos, links, animations to list a few. The challenge is to make it easier for professors who for the most part do not have formal pedagogical training or multimedia content creation skills, to publish their courses adopting the research based best-practices.

Learning Experience Designer (LXD) is a curriculum construction tool that adapts to your teaching context and learner needs. It also provides all the multimedia creation tools you might need to record and edit video, annotate images and pdf, or create animations. It utilizes artificial intelligence to suggest course formats, pedagogical strategies, activities, and challenges providing references to works others have already created and tested. The final result is a published course which can be accessed via your browser or a mobile app where students can engage in forums and peer-to-peer coaching.

As a proof-of-concept, I propose to utilize as a base, an existing LMS (Canvas, Coursera, or Edx) and add onto its interface the proposed functions, content, and interactions. These new features will then be presented and evaluated by teachers who have experience with the LMS. The goals are to judge if such features improve the experience of creating the course and if the resulting course positively affects the learning outcomes. I intend to focus an introductory programming course, a subject matter I am familiar with, where the learning outcomes are more easily assessed, and because of the vast amount of content already available online to support the course.


PROMPT

The first section of the proposal deals with the needs you are addressing. By “needs” we mean the learning challenge your project will address. Who will learn what in the experience you intend to create?

Even if your approach (an app! an online course! augmented reality!) is more important to you than the subject learned, the learning you decide to address must be front and center in this proposal.

Convince the reader that this is an important problem. Document the existence and seriousness of the learning problem by referencing studies. At least one first-hand experience anecdote (drawn from a learner “chat”) will paint a picture for your reader of the learner’s interest in learning this concept or topic.

It’s also important to give the background of the learning problem. Your description of the societal or institutional landscape in your specific learning challenge exists will position your project in a larger context.

See examples here.  Questions?  Ask them!

RESPONSE

Needs

How might we scaffold “experts” to create engaging hybrid courses?

In 2009 I started a mobile app development school in Brazil targeting developers and designers who needed to acquire these new hot new skills. For the first year or so I taught the iPhone app development course while looking for more teachers to meet the large demand and to create new courses. Pedagogically, I going on instincts, using a very hands-on approach: explain the concept, model it, and do it yourself. It worked and it was straight forward enough to explain to the new teachers.

The challenge came when I started hiring teachers for new courses. The curriculum had to be constructed and the course content created. This task proved to be daunting for the developers who never taught before. Even with my course material as a reference or model, teachers were slow to produce the material, and it was usually of poor quality: slides with too many details or lacking explanations of key concepts.

Once I decided I wanted to start selling the courses online, the challenge became too big. Where do I start? How much video versus written material should I use? How will students ask questions? How will we manage all these students? What are the best practices? All questions that could be resolved by a well designed software that would scaffold the process of creating the curriculum and course content.

Comments

– Still needs a lot of focusing in terms of the problem, the who, and what is there to be learned.

– Also feels too ambitious in terms of what could be built in time and measurable outcomes.

– In conversations with Mingming to partner up in the quest of helping experts share their knowledge – we think there is a time/difficulty/complexity barrier for most experts to sit down, learn a tool, create content, and then manage a learner’s population in the process.

LDT Seminar – Week 3 – Class Notes & Pitch Assignment

Did a great “pitch” exercice in class to present ourselves and our Master’s project ideas in 60 seconds + one sentence you want to be remembered by. 2 rounds. Dramatic improvement from after first round of practice and feedback.

In preparation for the class we did the following:

  • Interests (learning problems are drawn to)
    • Online-blended learning environments
    • Best practices in teaching
    • Pedagogical strategies
    • Curriculum construction
  • What you bring to the table that you really want to continue using (skills, content knowledge, strengths, networks, etc.)
    • Passion for explaining how things work to others
    • Finding new ways of explaining the same concept (Cognitive Pluralism)
    • Teaching programing
    • Mobile and web development
  • Where you want to leverage these talents (learners, contexts, content)
    • Higher education setting
    • Highly motivated professors
    • Computer Science
  • One phrase to be remembered by:
    • “How to embed pedagogical and curriculum construction strategies into a blended online course publication software.”

Pitch bullet points after feedback from peers:

  • I started a mobile app development school and the biggest challenge was to create
  • Want to scaffold subject matter experts in their desire to teach others
  • Need a PARTNER with experience in teaching online

LDT Seminar – Week 2 – Class Notes

For next week: practice your 60 second pitch selling yourself and your project idea.

Karin – Foothill College center for innovation

Idea – assess what teachers already know before presenting tool – evaluate their PK

Talk to Lisa K. about what are the problems K-12 teachers have and what kind of a lesson planning tool, instructional design, curriculum construction, or PD they might need.