RJ Hogue Consulting

This week I'm learning to use Articulate Storyline. It is a fun software package for rapidly creating eLearning. When learning a new software package, I find scanning the documentation to be useful. I also find that video tutorials are particularly helpful. If the company doesn't provide video tutorials, then I can often find a bunch of useful tutorials on YouTube. On a side note, if I were challenged with creating software user document today, I would want to incorporate a lot of show-me type videos in the documention, as they are amazingly more effective than text only documentation and in many cases faster to produce.

One of the challenges with video tutorials is that they take too long to watch. Often they contain too much fluff or segments are too slow. In good tutorials, the speaker talks slowly and clearly. This is useful if you are not proficient at understanding English; however, as an English speaker, I find that the speaker talks too slowly. Also, if I want to  scan a series of videos, then I want to see them quickly.

I have found this great little tool, Enounce MySpeed, which works well with videos played through the Firefox browser (it doesn't work for me in Chrome). With the tool, I can adjust the speed of playback – making it faster to quickly gloss over content that I already know. I can also slow down the speed if I want to follow along with the speaker. On a side note, I've also found the tool useful for slowing down video for transcription.

In summary, to learn a new software package quickly, I seek out videos on how to use the various features, and then watch them on fast speed!

Last week I presented a poster at the Canadian Conference on Medical Education (CCME) about my experiences creating eBook participant guides for faculty development workshops. I talked a little bit about my experiences in the blog post Getting an eBook published in the iBookstore.

Below is a copy of the poster.

Creating eBooks to Support Faculty Development

For the last few days I've been participating in the Canadian Conference on Medical Education (CCME, twitter hashtag #CCME13). The conference involved a lot of hype around the use of social media. I saw many people stretching beyond their comfort zones to explore social media, and specifically, Twitter. People want to know what this twitter things is all about. Personally, I really appreciate that people are willing to try.

Unfortunately, the exploration often goes something like this:
1 – Get a twitter account
2 – Learn how to search the hashtag
3 – Experiment with sending a tweet to a friend
4 – Follow the conference hashtag for a few minute
5 – Decide the information received is of limited use
6 – Conclude that twitter is dumb

As someone who has been active on twitter for some time, I've left feeling like they just didn't get the point. Twitter is not necessarily about individual tweets, it is about a community of people sharing.

When I first created my Twitter account, I didn't get it either. I did not see the value in it. Then someone introduced me to #LRNCHAT (http://lrnchat.wordpress.com/ ). Every Thursday night for 2 hours, learning professionals get together to participated in a facilitated chat. The facilitators post a stream of questions and anyone who wants to can join in the conversation. There are many idea leaders from the workplace learning community on LRNCHAT, so joining in on the conversation is a way to connect yourself to the community. I loved that I could chat with the well known authors and leaders, as well as other instructional designers who share my passions and frustrations with the profession.

I've now found a different type of learning community, #PHDCHAT (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23phdchat). PhDChat is a community of PhD students and early career researchers, who provide support for one another. Although there are regular chat times, it is more of a continuous support community. When I need a break, I check-in to see what is happening on PhDChat, provide congratulations to anyone who has announced an important milestone, and answer any questions if I feel that I can be of help. If I am feeling isolated in my PhD experience, I can reach out to this community and know that I am not alone. If I have a questions about a tool or research method at 2 a.m., I can reach out to this community, and often (not always) get an answer, usually within a few minutes of posting! Again PHDCHAT is about a community.

Conferences that have hashtags provide an opportunity for community to form around the conference. Tweets from the conference allow those who are not there to learn key nuggets of information from those that are there, but in many ways, that is a secondary benefit of tweeting a conference. More importantly, tweeting provides a way for people to connect with one another. At a conference with over 2000 people, it isn't easy to "bump into" that person with a shared interest, but if both of you are tweeting, then you can arrange a time and place to meet. If you are going to a conference and don't know anyone, Twitter can provide a way to connect with people so you aren't eating all your meals alone.

In summary, Twitter isn't just about a one way flow of golden nuggets of information. Twitter is social media – it is about connecting people with a shared interest, in a format that welcomes all. Anyone can join, anyone can lurk, and anyone can participate. That's why I tweet!

In a meeting with my committee to review my research proposal, I was told that I needed to consider how I would maintain a ‘critical distance’ as my research proposal had me performing several roles, but more specifically the roles of designer and evaluator.

Joseph (2004) argues that a researcher who is place in multiple roles can gain deeper insight, providing that he or she is aware of these different roles as they shift. However, some scholars caution that it is not possible for the researcher to be so objective when evaluating their own designs (Collins, 1992; The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). I did not really appreciate the significances of this issue until I connect the idea of ‘critical distance’ with a TED talk that I happened to have watched last week.

In the 2013 TED talk by the behavioural economist Dan Ariely titled “What makes us feel good about our work”, he talks about studies that have shown that when someone is involved in the creation of an artifact, that the person who created the artifact will value it more, and that the creator will also give it more value. That is, the creator believes the artifact is worth more than comparable artifacts created by others. It is not just that the creator gives more value to his or her work, rather that the creator actually has a disproportionate view of the value of the work.

Upon reflection, I now see that I need to do a better job of clarifying and articulating my biases. As part of the research, I will be observing the learning intervention as someone else delivers it. This allows me to evaluate the learning intervention while is it being taught, as I cannot evaluate myself as a teacher and teach at the same time; however, I now realize that my observations will be inherently biased. Being in the room, in the moment of the learning intervention I will not be able to be aware of my shifting roles of designer and evaluator. Fortunately, I will also be video recording the experience for future playback and analysis. The video clips will allow me to take a step back from the learning intervention and view it as a more distant observer. I can mentally prepare myself to be in the role of evaluator rather than designer. In addition, I can ask another researcher to view the video analysis to ensure that I am not missing something or over valuing something as a result of my dual role.

The ‘critical distance’ becomes a special problem in design-based research. It is something that I believe needs more consideration, as design-based research methodology evolves.

References

Collins, A. (1992). Towards a design science of education. In E. Scalon & T. O'Shea (Eds.), New directions in educational technology (pp. 15-22). Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.

Collins, A., Joseph, D., & Bielaczyc, K. (2004). Design Research: Theoretical and Methodological Issues. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 15-42. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1301_2

The Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5-8. doi:10.3102/0013189X032001005

In education, technology for technology sake is often thought of a bad thing. You will often hear that technology in education  "needs to start with the problem not the technology" or "needs to start with the pedagogy not the technology". There was a time that I would have agreed with those statements. I have often said that you cannot just introduce a technology to the classroom without a purpose for it, otherwise the introduction of the technology will fail. Poorly introduced technology adds unnecessary complexity to lessons, and reduces the learning (I still feel this way).  As a practitioner, bringing in a technology just  because it is cool is a recipe for an unsuccessful project. The technology needs a foundation to stand on.

However, as a researcher I'm not so sure. I have seen really interesting innovations be dismissed as technology for technology sake – as a technology that isn't solving a problem. What I think is missing in this is the view of the the technology as an opportunity. In marketing, when you create a new technology, you know that the users of the technology will do things with it that you never anticipated. The user of the technology will find problems that you, as the creator of the technology, never concidered. These unintended uses are opportunities.

I recall a time in my early PhD studies, telling a professor that I don't believe in technology for technology sake, and yet I find it highly ironic that I specialize in mobile and tablet learning. The parts of my research that I find most interesting are in the discovery of how we are changing the way we teach because of new technologies. I am interested in the opportunities that these new technologies provide, rather than the problems that they solve or the pedagogy that they support.

So for me, the part that is most interesting is the opportunities, and perhaps the unintended consequences, of technology adoption in teaching, rather than in the problems the technology is trying to solve. In focusing on the opportunties rather than the problems, I am looking at technology for technology's sake.  So, I must confess, I am studying technology for technology's sake, and I think that is is a good thing. 

I am happy to announce that I have successfully published my first eBook in the iBookstore. It isn't really a "book", rather it is a participant guide for a four-hour workshop. The process itself took longer than expected because I was missing some key information about the process, so I thought I would share the process with you here.

1. Sign up for an iTunesconnect account (http://itunesconnect.apple.com). Although this account uses the same credentials as your Apple ID, it is a different account. Also, iTunesconnect seems to only work from SAFARI! When I tried to log in from Chrome, I got errors as if my password is not correct. After many password resets, I realized the problem wasn't my password, it was the wrong browser!
2. Typeset the content in iBooks Author. I use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint to author the content as these are the tools that are common to all members of the design and development team. Once the content has been approved as "final", it is then typeset in iBooks Author. Note that there are several free eBooks in the iBookstore on how to use iBooks Author – but check the publication date, as the new version of iBooks Author has many nice new features that make it easier to use.
3. Export and test the eBook. I uploaded both the eBook and PDF versions to a website and had several people test both to ensure that the content was ready for publication.
4. Publish the eBook using iBooks Author. Apple has done a great job of integrating this workflow into iBooks Author. Once you have finished working through the "publish" function in iBooks author you are redirected to iTunes Procuder.
5. Enter meta data and publish in iTunes Producer. Once you have entered in all the necessary meta data (e.g. authors, description, regions), you can click the submit button in iTunes Producer. I found that the select all regions did not work in iTunes Producer. It was better to just select one region (I used Canada), and then after the eBook was in iTunesconnect, add the remaining regions from there.

Then you wait. The issue that I ran into was that I did not know where to check for updates. I had naively assumed that if there was a problem I would get an email. I was wrong! After waiting too long, I finally discovered that I needed to log into "http://itunesconnect.apple.com" using only the SAFARI browser to see the status of my eBook. Of course, once I did log in, I discovered a ticket had been opened again my eBook. I had broken Apple's branding rules and referred to the eBook as an iBook. I had to make that correction throughout my document in order to submit my book. Note that you use "iBooks Authors" to create an "eBook" that can only be read using the "iBooks" app – iBooks Author is not used to create an "iBook". I suspect that a lot of people fall prey to this problem.

After submitting the update and replying to the ticket, I again had to wait. Fortunately the wait was not nearly as bad as I had feared. In each case, the Apple review process was only 2-3 days, not the weeks that I had feared. I can now proudly announce that the eBook is published in the iBookstore, and I am hopeful that this will make it easier for the workshop participants to access the eBook. It is a free eBook, and you can download it from: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/essential-teaching-skills/id608625196?ls=1

In summary, my lessoned learned are:

1. Only use Safari browser to access http://itunesconnect.apple.com
2. Log into the http://itunesconnect.apple.com website frequently to check the status of the publication process
3. Add distribution regions from the iTunes Connect website rather than the iTunes Producer application
4. Do not call the thing you are writing an "iBook", it is an "eBook" or "eBook for iPad"

Last week at IADIS mLearn in Portugal, I gave the above presentation (click image to see the presentation), based upon my short paper "Tablet use in Medicine" published in the conference proceedings.

This entry is a cross post from http://goingeast.ca/blog

On days like this …

I find myself California Dreamin'…

Back in early February (Feb 6-11), we spent a few days in Mountain View California and spent a day in San Francisco, exploring a little bit of what the city has to offer. We drove up into the Mountains and along the very scenic highway 1, and of course we had to rent bikes for a few hours. We did the tourist bike trek – a ride over the Golden Gate Bridge. The whole area is beautiful. Here are a few picture highlights.

View of Silicon Valley from the mountains to the west.

Sea gulls flying over the waterfront in Santa Cruz.

This guy parked a little too close the ocean!

We stopped for a walk at a secluded beach. It turned out to be a "hidden gem", Gray Whale Cove State beach.

Scott playin' the piano at Half Moon Bay State Park. (It's a temporary art installation, but the piano works, it's just getting more and more out of tune)

The Golden Gate Bridge, with a rower working hard against the tide.

The view from the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Taking the trolley across the city at the end of the day.

After our short adventure in Mountain View and San Francisco, Scott was offered a new job (a transfer) in Mountain View, California. And with that, our new adventure begins. We will be selling our house here in Ottawa, packing up and moving to California. Scott will move sometime in early May. Becky is about to start a critical phase in her PhD, so she will remain in Ottawa for about a year, visiting Scott whenever she can, and making her big move once she has finished collecting her data for her PhD research.  

Yesterday, I presented in a panel discussion about ethics, equity, and plagiarism. I was encourage to talk about technology and how that related to the topic. In reflecting on the topic, the two areas where I felt I could contribute the most were that of self-publishing, self-plagiarism, and the relationship between the two. Here is the script of my talk.

Hello, My name is Rebecca Hogue and I'm both a PhD Candidate and a blogger. I write for two blogs, a blog that describes my husbands' and my travel journeys (http://goingeast.ca), and a more professional or academic blog, where I share my explorations as a PhD student, such as my journey through epistemologies, as well as technical tips and tricks, which sometimes relate to my teaching or research experiences (http://rjh.goingeast.ca). I use my academic blog as a practice area for writing – where I explore how best to write about different ideas, and how to disseminate the knowledge that I gain.

When I began my journey to become an academic, in January 2011, I quickly became aware of areas where there was a distinct lack of clarity in the guidance that is provided to a new academic, or any academic for that matter – that is, the areas of self-publishing and self-plagiarism. So, in the next 5 minutes or so, I'm going to share with you a little of my journey in this area, and where it has brought me.

Let’s first talk about self-publishing.  Although self-publishing is not a new idea, it has become so much easier, which is causing the practice to become more common. The biggest advantage to self-publishing is the speed in which the material gets into the hands of the readers. For example, in December, I helped Professor MacDonald self-publish a textbook on research methods. I was able to take the completed manuscripts and make it available to students in the span of about six weeks. Note that the manuscript had been written and was planned for publication with a transitional publisher, but after two years of issues with the traditional publisher, the contract was cancelled. The ability to make manuscripts available quickly is appealing, especially when that work is time sensitive.

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A couple weeks ago, I finished teaching a short course at Simon Fraser University in their Technical Communications program. The course is 100% online. As someone who has taught online but also someone who has been an online student, I can attest to the importance of the facilitators "presence" in the online classroom.

I was delighted when one of my students, in an anonymous feedback survey, reported that: "Having Rebecca's answers coming in at the speed of light on the questions posted on the discussion forum almost made working online 'better' than an actual classroom, where we typically wait an entire week to address issues."

The key to my success in this area is not spending a excessive amount of time logged in. During the week, I try to log into the course twice a day – at about lunch time and just before I turn off my computer for the evening. If I am busy, I skip the lunch time login. It is important to note that I'm in a time zone that is three hours later than my students, so my students are often up working later than I am. Each time I log in, I scan the discussion boards and post when necessary. Most of the time, there is no need for me to do anything, so I'm only logged in for 5 minutes. However, if a student is struggling I might need to spend 15-20 minutes answering their question.

Where my 'presence' is really felt is on the weekends. As most of my online students work full time, I appreciate that they spend most of their time working in the evenings and on the weekends. So, I make it a point to check into the course multiple times during the weekend, especially in the evening and on Sunday afternoon. These are the times that most of my students are working, so it is the time where I check in a little more frequently. Again, most of the time checking in involves a 5-minute check to ensure there is nothing new that I need to address. If I see something and I cannot address it right away, I acknowledge that I've seen it, and let them know when I plan to answer it.

My point is, that you do not need to be always there or spend an excessive amount of time facilitating to provide a sense of "speed of light" presence for your learners. You just need to acknowledge that you have seen their questions, and be there when they are!