Tag Archives: user experience

Teaching, Learning, Technology & You

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This week we read a range of texts focusing on the issues facing education within a digital context. From the qualitative multi-year study conducted by our very own Prof. Smale, we read about the circumstances that many CUNY students face when confronted with coursework. While indeed many students these days are extremely tech-savvy, in some situations, the availability of technology may not meet the growing need. Further, many students are capable of navigating online resources and doing research using mobile devices such as smartphones, e-readers, or tablets. Instructors can learn to maximize the utility and availability of these resources by guiding students through searches to find valid resources to contribute to their research and classroom-based activities and discussions. One such initiative to improve the accessibility of resources is the OpenLab at City Tech as described by Rosen and Smale.

 

In terms of online pedagogy, the presentation of instructional materials is an important consideration because it creates a platform for learning. Based on his own experience, Pelz describes three principles based on experience with online learning. The first principle states that “students should do (most of) the work.” Describing different types of online tasks, such as virtual ice-breakers and discussions of online resources, Pelz convincingly shows how online forums can be used to continue a conversation between students about course material and learning outside the confines of the classroom. Principle 2 emphasizes the importance of interactivity in learning and provides examples for creating collaborative writing activities online. Much like GoogleDocs or Social Paper, the advantages of both writing within a quiet space that free of distractions as much as possible combined with the benefits of receiving feedback from peers and instructors can be set-up online. The third and final principle stress the need for presence in online education. Presence, according to Pelz, in an online environment comes in three distinct forms: affective, interactive, and cohesive. Just as disappointing as it is finding a blog that hasn’t been updated in years, seeing that a course site is out of date is probably similarly upsetting to a student who attempts to use it as a means to access resources and communicate with others in the course.

 

While not evident in Pelz’s piece, Ugoretz brings light to a different aspect of online discussion forums in particular, highlighting the creative potential that forums have for generating digressions. Whereas in a classroom setting, the digressions can consume a large amount of class time and may not always be to the benefit of each student, digressions in an online forum can invite all students to participate in the conversation allowing it to err in any direction that the participants see fit. For those who are not interested in the digression, they may contribute to another conversation or create their own. Ugoretz provides some recommendations for setting up productive digressions – for one, by establishing very clear goals for the discussion forum.

 

If anything, access to technology and information has created a meta-space for learning that extends beyond the classroom and as educators and students, we should try to maximize this potential.

 

Motivation: React to one or more of the following

 

In line with the empirical tradition, no significant statistical difference merely indicates that you have failed to demonstrate of an effect of one variable in relation to another. That is to say, that you have not proven a relationship does or does not exist. One can neither really prove nor disprove anything. Occasionally, errors can occur where an effect is not detected and this outcome, known as a Type II error can stem from multiple issues, including faulty experimental design or simply not having sufficient power as a result of a small sample size. With that said, do you believe that there is sufficient reason to call into the question the studies in No Significant Difference?

 

How is the need for the Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age (BRPLDR) self-evident? Who is primarily responsible for ensuring that they are adhered to?

 

What were your reactions to the BRPLDR? If you were to amend the bill, what principle would you include or change?

 

The article by Pelz attempts to establish very concise principles of online learning. Do you think that they are comprehensive enough to lay the foundation for a good online discussion?

 

Digressions in an online setting can beneficial for students, according to Ugoretz, but need to be set-up by the instructor in such a way the objectives of the discussion are clear. In what other ways can an instructor enhance the productivity of a digression by setting it up?

 

React to your own experience in online education.

Week 3/Feb 22: Let’s all get it done together

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What does what OR How to get things done OR Let’s all get it done together

As Sara notes, 37 Signals, Getting Real (2009) definitely operates in the discourse of start-up. The text is snappy and feels like a pitch. It certainly presents an image and tone for agile development. While I appreciate many of the strategic impulses (not tying yourself down to padded check ins, establishing a minimum version for the sake of getting things done and testing them, finding a common “enemy”, and making things in a spirit of passion not tedium), I find the flashy presentation a bit off-putting. The fact that they preemptively address this potential resistance in the caveats does not, in my mind, let them off the hook.  I think Sara is onto something when she raises the concern about what people this approach may or may not encourage. The in-and-out quick model is easier to support if you are more accustomed to fallback securities — it’s easier to fail from a place of privilege. I would also argue that letting the users have a say is a way of outsourcing focus-groups. The way statistics and feedback are built into tools is a personal pet peeve. I once received a promotional email that claimed “people need to hear what YOU think”…on clothes?  The way the burden of feedback is put on the user strikes me as a devious redistribution of labor. I am now responsible for improving the tools I use? I can’t just pick out my tool at the store and consider the transaction finished? The app after app after app culture with constantly evolving features promotes this “user-oriented” development that seems to displace a lot of assessment, much the way we are the product in the free tools we use, we are the developers in the tools we comment on.

In academic development, I feel less cynical about the shared responsibility of use and revision. Without the paranoia about who is profiting from my feedback (because education as profit seems to me universally worthwhile), I am more forgiving in academic loops. Miriam Posner’s digest of digital tools, How did they make that?, is an amazing resource. The question of what to learn to make the things you want is persistent in Digital Humanities. When I revisited Bamboo DiRT, I revisited my sense of possibility and subsequent panic. I have poked around DiRT many times and I am continually overwhelmed by the breadth of tools and the degrees of use and disrepair of certain projects. DiRT is looking much better than when I first went on a year and a half ago, and the Assignment-in-a-box demonstrates a reciprocal action of use and evaluation that might be dubbed agile development in 37Signals. Are these built-in measures which invest students in the outcomes of their tools part of what we were talking about in terms of dynamic teaching last semester? Or is just a productive way to get conscientious feedback?

I find that these catalogs can be less terrifying when you start to meet people at events like Media Res (1&2), last week’s NYCDH events, and the GC Digital Research Bootcamp (everyone should apply for June). The community in NYC is remarkably open and encouraging, and the GC is such a vibrant part of that. I’m really looking forward to hearing former ITP students  Sarah Litvin, Christina Shane-Simpson, and Pamela Thielman talk about their Independent study projects!

Response and motivating thought:

I would like to sound a rallying call for us to work together!

I think the working group evenings (Mondays (2/29) and (3/21) 6:30-8:30, (4/18, 2-4pm NOTE TIME CHANGE)) are going to be a really excellent way for us to share our learning and build our projects. I also figured I would bookmark the remaining Digital Fellows Office Hours:

Mondays in the Digital Scholarship Lab, Room 7414

  • February 22 (2:00): Michelle & Patrick Sweeney
  • February 29 (5:30): Mary Catherine & Ian
  • March 7 (2:00): Michelle & Jen
  • March 14 (5:30): Ian & Jeremy
  • March 21 (2:00): Patrick Sweeney & Keith
  • March 28 (5:30): Mary Catherine & Jeremy
  • April 4 (2:00): Jen & Keith
  • April 11 (5:30): Hannah & Jeremy
  • April 18 (2:00): Patrick Sweeney & Ian
  • April 25: Spring Break – No office hours
  • May 2 (5:30): Hannah & Jeff
  • May 9 (2:00): Michelle & Keith
  • May 16 (5:30): Hannah & Jeff

 

 

 

Week 1: Chris Stein’s Contexts and Practicalities

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A General Overview

I am most interested in the ways expediency might affect your goals in digital contexts when you pare your ideas down to fundamental components — do the conveniences of ready-made tools/code and the paralysis in the face of overwhelming quantities of learnable skills corrupt the integrity of the core ideas?

…but I will get back to these concerns in my provocation. First I’ll digest Chris Stein’s blog post a bit and attempt to point out some changes since its publication in 2011.

Chris Stein’s blog post offers a straightforward framework for building a digital project from inception to implementation. Addressing the best ways to simplify questions of use and users, Stein outlines guiding questions for prototyping:

  • why or what need
  • what you should build
  • who is going to use it
  • where you want to put it, and
  • when it will be ready.

Extracting a why (a clear question of what must be solved) from what should be built is a critical point.

In the who category, Stein draws our attention to distinguishing actors (roles of potential users) from personae (archetypical instances of actors). Defining concrete use cases is invaluable. Stein also talks about scale of usage: how many people one might reasonably accommodate with a project varies (Simple Web Site: 1,000’s, Dynamic Web Site: 100’s, Voice, Video Chat, Virtual Classroom, 10’s). There are so many resources available that clarifying these categories of who as early as possible helps narrow your searches.

In the where category, Stein considers where we deploy the tool (online, desktop, mobile, kiosk) and where our audience uses the tool.

When largely addresses practical projections of project completion. The adage “underpromise, overdeliver” will surely come up as we all begin to plan our projects.

Links

I often find links in context too difficult to track. So I pulled Stein’s list into this ref-list and found pdfs of the broken links and seminal articles.

Blog posts about designing your personal development plan:

Jason Santa Maria’s post about fitting design into workflow (July 26, 2010)

‘s Responsive web design (May 25, 2010) (he coined the term. RWD has changed dramatically since this article came out in 2010. Mashable called 2013 The Year of Responsive Web Design)

Alex Williams’s Risks/concessions of free software

Tom Kuhlmann approach to developing ELearning course

Older arguments about software development:

2005 post and comments about this instigating Nicholas Carr article

Fred Brooks’s 1986 article  “No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accidents of  Software Engineering” (FULL PDF) — Brooks talks about accidental and essential complexity (limit the first and acknowledge the second in developing software).

Jack Gordon and Ron Zemke trash the Waterfall Method, ADDIE or ISD Attack on ISD (Instructional Systems Design) (Training April 2000) (BROKEN LINK in Stein) — worthwhile read about how knowing the templated version of instructional systems design is not the most effective — a call for adaptability.

Klein’s Wikipedia glossary:

History Software Engineering 

Waterfall model

Scope Creep

Agile Software Development

User-centered Design — his example Nielsen Norman Group

Useful Image:

Caption from JSM’s post: “The x-axis shows how true-to-browser rendering ranges from approximate to actual, while the y-axis depicts the scope of centralized control over layout and type from local to global. The sweet spot lies somewhere at the intersection of browser-like behavior for—and widespread control over—type and layout elements, while providing a fertile environment for creative thinking.”

Jason Santa Maria discusses how designing for mobile devices presents a remarkable degree of complexity when it comes to aligning software and hardware for the widest range of users. The toolkit he describes has certainly evolved, but the chart helps describe what you should consider when picking your tools.

 

 

Provocation and Motivation

Ok ITP Core 2. I’m ready to discuss. I was sitting with a DH friend who does history of science and had this week’s reading open on my computer. He was distressed to see the apocryphal NASA pen story as a point of entry into the questions of project development. The fact that this example so bothered him struck me as a problem central to what we are doing. Is it okay to use a tool that exists (in this case a popular and memorable example) simply because it is convenient and seems to work? Do we have a responsibility to find better solutions? We are going to have to make many concessions in the interest of time, but does this sort of shorthand of example teach us to be hasty or is it okay because its application and qualifications point to our understanding that the situation is deeper than we have time to address? As students of the humanities and social sciences coming to software development, we cannot expect to teach ourselves the components learned by people who focus solely on software development. As we all conceptualize our work in terms of basic components and get down to our nuts and bolts, I hope we can be conscientious as well as efficient. Perhaps I am over-optimistic, but I look forward to our collective attempts.