Our first meeting to discuss the project

I need to spend time fleshing out this idea of a problem that I need to propose for my Ed Tech Grad project.  The basic idea, as I understand it is:

1. identify an problem within my realm of influence
2. the problem must somehow coincide with or deal with technology
3. a solution must eventually be proposed and executed within 12 weeks

Along the way I'll need to go work on taking some pictures and video footage of the whole process to use as the presentation piece of the project.  This needs to include several different artifacts and several different means of presentation - but somehow I should be able to encapsulate it all onto a DATA DVD or CD, which should be browse-able.  Ideally it'd be nice if it was completely self contained and replicated out on the Internet somewhere - but that's just my wishful thinking.

So what are some ideas that I have in mind?  I have to be clear in thinking about what types of problems there are that are within my direct line of influence to change or improve. I know that from my experience there are two specific things that stick out and they're both around the same premise:

That a specific provided technology is not used effectively.  The two technologies are:

• the promethean board located in Richardson Hall 127
• Sakai - the LMS recently adopted for the school to use instead of Blackboard

Now there are some very legitimate - perhaps understandable reasons why these technologies are not used effectively. 

Promethean:

1. few faculty have had formalized training in use it
2. few faculty see the relevance to using it within a collegiate setting
3. material for the content faculty teach has to be customized
4. accessiblilty is an issue - only so many courses can take place in that class at a time

Sakai:

1. lack of motivation to use it
2. lack of understanding behind the usefulness behind the toolset that Sakai provides
3. a desire on the part of most faculty to give up on an LMS when switching from another one
4. not enough in-depth training on how to use it in their course
5. incongruent beliefs about the relevance of the LMS to student success

With these ideas in mind, I'm trying to think along the lines of other issues that exist.  Both of the ones above are faculty-centric - that is that there is a piece of technology that exists that is well-provided for (that is it's installed, it works, it's standardized, and for both sets of technology there is wide-spread adoption, use and tutorials and passive types of helps (helpfiles, videos, and how-to guides). But I'd like to press my brain into thinking of some more.

I could also look at problem that I see in my own class (CPED2023) that I teach, analyze it, and come up with some way of providing a solution.  The biggest problem with addressing or identifying a problem in my own course is that I have such a limited amount of time to address the issue in the first place. For example: my class meets once a week during a 2.5 hour session in the evenings, 12 weeks is essentially 75% of my semester.  And from what I understand about the scheduling - it must happen (that is the implementation and execution of the solution) during the spring semester of 2011.  That's fine - and it gives me a lot of time to plan for executing the solution.  I think identifying the solution is going to be the most difficult thing though.  I'd almost have to go back and pole my former students - or look into information from previous surveys over the past several years to identify an issue.  I know I could contact the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and ask them to report back each of the course survey's they've done in the past and from that I could come up with a problem, or at least identify a problem.

Now that I say that I do recall several students mentioning that they hated doing the puzzlers in my course. These puzzlers are basically crossword puzzles that use vocabulary each chapter in their content.  My general purpose behind using them is to insure that students do in fact cover the material prior to us discussing it in class.  This is based on the idea behind Blooms Taxonomy - learning must begin with basic knowledge set, and this even works well into the reorganized Blooms levels.

Having said that I could look at the effectiveness of the puzzlers.  On the other hand, I've just switched texts this semester, and the new text does not include some type of 'remembering' tool for students to do.  I'll have to come up with something else.  Consequently I could examine the possibility of creating some type of alternative 'puzzler' - since the new text doesn't provide one and do it differently.  This would provide a different means of reviewing the material - and hopefully accomplish the same thing - in a different, but much more relevant way to students.  The initial thought here is to transpose the puzzlers into an e-form.  This would have the added benefits of being computer-based, automatically gradeable, along with putting gradebook entries into an electronic gradebook.  This could also have the added benefit of insuring that students get immediate feedback on how well the know the text's information - so that we can move onto Understanding, Applying and Analysing during the time the class meets.

I'm easily seeing how I'm getting ahead of myself though.  I need to step back here.  Dr. Templar said - 'do not think about the solution - don't even mention it - think about the problem, identify a problem.'

Even in thinking of a problem I think I have to think about the possibility that there may not be enough resources and literature out there to support me implementing a solution - which then becomes a problem in and of itself.