Month: September 2022

Photo source: engaeli

Let me introduce… Dr Daphne Koller

Dr Daphne Koller is a highly regarded Computer Sciences professor at Stanford University who focuses on biomedicine and machine learning (Daphne Koller, n.d.).  She is the founder of insitro, a company that focuses on machine learning and drug discovery/ development (insitro, n.d.). In our class book club chat on September 16, 2022, a facet of the conversation discussed the gap in ed tech being pedagogically driven and the lack of adoption by educators. This led to a discussion about the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, sharing resources, and educators’ involvement in ed tech development to encourage adoption. I chose Dr Koller because, besides AI and biomedicine, she is an educational forerunner developing quality ed tech that is open, accessible, and engaging.

Her list of achievements and publications is long.  Notably, she was listed in 2013 on Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people because, with her business partner, they founded Coursera, an open learning platform.  According to Koller (TED, 2012), they recognised a gap between degree programs and employability; additionally, various access challenges (monetary and otherwise).  The platform provides high-calibre, interdisciplinary, open courses in collaboration with various educational institutions.

“We wanted to create the best quality education for as many people as possible. So, we formed Coursera, whose goal is to take the best courses from the best instructors at the best universities and provide to everyone around the world for free.” (TED, 2012, minute 3:27)

Within the video (Ted, 2012), she demonstrates how students use the platform that encourages innovation, creativity and problem-solving through active learning.

In 2020, Dr Koller founded engaeli.  This platform is designed for higher education and corporate environments with active learning principles (engageli, n.d.).  The secure platform can integrate with many learning management systems (LMS) and other collaboration tools while offering face-to-face, online and hybrid learning options (engageli, n.d.).  It has recently won awards (pictured above). It appears to be an exciting development in ed tech because it was built from the ground up with engaged, active education and learning theory practices as the foundation of the design.  I would be interested to know more about analytics and data collection; however, what I find essential about Dr Koller’s work is that she is an educator who designs meaningful ed tech for educators that can be quickly and widely adopted across disciplines and formats. The gap we acknowledged in our class session.

References

Daphne Koller. (n.d.). Home [LinkedIn page]. LinkedIn. Retrieved September 16, 2022, from https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphne-koller-4053a820

engageli. (n.d.). Engageli: Where engaged learning happens. Retrieved September 16, 2022, from https://www.engageli.com/

insitro. (n.d.). insitro. Retrieved September 16, 2022, from https://insitro.com/

TED. (2012, August 1). Daphne Koller: What we’re learning from online education [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/U6FvJ6jMGHU

Preface– The pathway to decide

The requirement for this assignment in LRTN 523 was to introduce a significant contributor to ed-tech. Inspired by the readings of Weller (2020) and the accompanying audio file discussions (Between the Chapters: Blogging – 25 Years of Ed Tech: The Serialized Audio Version, n.d.), I sought to read about various contributors to the field but was unsure.  Audrey Watters piqued my interest, but I noted that Michael had covered her already. After some consideration, I settled on Neil Selwyn because I was drawn to his critical views and assessment of ed tech.  It appeals to me that he acknowledges the benefits of ed tech on learning and looks at the broader implications of using it, such as sustainability. Here is a list of articles from his blog that you might find interesting. He is clearly, a significant player in the field; however, when I returned to the assignment outline, I considered the instructions regarding the unheard voices and whom we chose for the task, and I reconsidered my choice.

In this effort, I uncovered this article (Ivus, 2022) about Marissa Hill:

‘Marissa is the Indigenous Innovation Lab Manager at the Indigenous Innovation Initiative, where she is co-creating a first-of-its-kind pre-seed through scale Indigenous innovation lab in partnership with community, partners, and innovators.’ (Grand Challenges Canada, n.d.)

I could not find much information on Marissa, and I realised she is in the tech realm more than ed tech.  Thus, I decided to introduce you to her here and not focus on her for the assignment but encourage you to see what type of projects she participates in.

Now over to my other post for the assignment focus.

References

Between the chapters: Blogging – 25 years of ed tech: The serialized audio version. (n.d.). https://25years.opened.ca/2021/01/14/between-the-chapters-blogging/

Grand Challenges Canada. (n.d.). Marissa hill – Grand challenges Canada. Retrieved September 16, 2022, from https://www.grandchallenges.ca/people/marissa-hill/

Ivus, M. (2022, April 20). Indigenous women in tech: “we belong here.”. ICTC Digital Think Tank. https://www.digitalthinktankictc.com/articles/indigenous-women-in-tech-we-belong-here

Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech (1st ed.). ACP – Athabasca University Press.

Second Life

I had never heard of Second Life (SL) until reading Weller (2020). From reading the chapter (Weller, 2020), the motivation for universities to have virtual islands was unclear.  There was discussion of the great possibility of SL and that it could integrate with learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle, but I did not get a true sense of what it hoped to achieve in education.  SL, as it was being used in education by universities in the mid-2000s phased out; however, SL is still being used.  It is one of the largest spaces for virtual commodity exchanges, such as Bitcoin (Virgilio, 2022).  Thus, while SL was not strongly adopted in the education realm or valuable to what I teach currently, it remains relevant in our lives behind the scenes. 

As discussed in the post-chapter discussions online (Between the Chapters: Blogging – 25 Years of Ed Tech: The Serialized Audio Version, n.d.), SL has also paved the way for virtual reality (VR) to be used in education.  There is space for the virtual world in education; educators were not necessarily creative in how SL developed in education in the mid-2000s. I see this growing in medical education specifically because my cousin works in VR and is currently building VR technology for NHS medical students to train them in surgery. What he is developing allows medical students to perform surgery without performing surgery on cadavers which has numerous limitations, including enormous costs.

E-portfolios

Although not widely adopted, E-portfolios had merit in their intent to showcase student achievement, competencies, and skills in a tangible way to future employers (Weller, 2020). I recently took over a course taught by the same person for 5+ years.  Within the course, one assignment was an e-portfolio which I removed from the course. Namely, I did not see it as the valuable tool for future employers that the previous instructor had hoped it would be.  I also felt that learning the tool the portfolios reside in was less important than the content on the tool, but a considerable amount of time was needed to perfect the tool. Something the students did not have. Both points, I now read months later, are noted by Weller (2020) as some of the issues with adopting the e-portfolio. 

I received pushback for wanting to remove this assignment.  As a compromise, I created an assignment that still had the desired artefacts and showcased their work through LinkedIn. They cultivated their online professional presence in a space where employers already reside. I listened to the online chat regarding their best practices for not being too prescriptive, giving students license over what they publish, and how they publish (Between the Chapters: Blogging – 25 Years of Ed Tech: The Serialized Audio Version, n.d.) and confirm that my choices for this task were on point.  Cultivating the content meant for an e-portfolio has a place in academia, but the format needs to be something that aligns with the professional realm to be useful.

References

Between the chapters: Blogging – 25 years of ed tech: The serialized audio version. (n.d.). https://25years.opened.ca/2021/01/14/between-the-chapters-blogging/

Virgilio, D. (2022, February 9). What comparisons between second life and the metaverse miss. Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/technology/2022/02/second-life-metaverse-facebook-comparisons.html

Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech (1st ed.). ACP – Athabasca University Press.

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My knowledge of the history of education and technology is minimal.  I remember in 1994 being part of the first year of students at UVic to receive a school email account, so the start of the textbook (Weller, 2020) seems apt to me, and my technology experience in education beyond word processing.  I dropped out, and until I had a laptop and a smartphone in the mid-2000s, technology as we use it today was not a fundamental part of my daily life. Thus far, the reading content has been new to me.

The consistent theme or preference for face-to-face and traditional modes of education presented in chapters I have read (Weller, 2020) is not shocking because we are still seeing educational institutions struggling with this shift during and beyond the pandemic twenty-plus years later.  As I read through the early days of ed tech and various chapters (Weller, 2020), I can see how the technology needed to be less cumbersome, accessible and user-friend for people to adopt.  However, I do wonder why resistance to change is prevalent now, when in was demonstrated as early as 1999 that students wanted an opportunity for flexible online learning (Weller, 2020).

Is it because many instructors (even now) are subject matter experts (SMEs) employed as educators but are unfamiliar with educational theory and practices (Weller, 2020) that benefit the learning experience?   Is it the fear of technology and/or lack of ed tech digital literacy? Is it that institutions do not want to invest the funds into developing their offerings? Maybe it is a bit of all of these things.

I adopted numerous best practices and ideas from my online courses and revised them to suit my needs. I wonder if you need to experience a well-designed online class with openness to embrace educational technology and tap into the 4Rs (now 5) (Hilton III et al., 2010).  Is the experience of well-designed online education needed to scaffold the resisters into the ed tech realm?   I’d love to hear your thoughts.

References

Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., Stein, J., & Johnson, A. (2010). The four ‘r’s of openness and alms analysis: Frameworks for open educational resources. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 25(1), 37–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680510903482132

Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech (1st ed.). ACP – Athabasca University Press.