Educational Technologies Research at MET Emerging Technologies and Pilot Programs

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Educational Technologies Research at
METEmerging Technologies and Pilot Programs
MET Faculty Colloquium

• Leo Burstein and Tanya Zlateva

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Agenda

• MET Mission
• Educational Research Technology _at_ MET
• Educational Response to the Changing Working
  Place
• Our Pilots
• Virtualization
• Video collaboration
• Open Discussion

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Acknowledgements

• College of Engineering
• Professor Merrill Ebner for championing distance
  education at BU and for introducing us to the
  marvels of teaching on the web
• Andy Abrahamson for generously sharing his
  experience with video conferencing
• Networked Services, Office of Information
  Technology
• Richard Mendez, Roland Jaeckel, Michael Sullivan,
  George Gaudette and the entire IT team for their
  professionalism and collaboration every step of
  the way
• MET ITJulia, Tong, Vincent, Jay

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MET Educational Mission

• Academic
• Rigor

Latest Industry Technologies Best Practices
Flexible Delivery Formats


InnovationMETs Distinctive Strength Capture
Teach trends in enduring intellectual context

• BU Brand

Responsiveness to Student and Industry Needs

• Ensure students long-term success by linking
  academic knowledge with practical skills and
  competencies critical in the modern workplace.

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Mission of the Office of Educational Research and
Technology _at_MET

• Research, evaluate, test emerging educational
  technologies
• Recommend technologies for pilot courses
• Work with faculty for developing appropriate
  delivery formats and educational scenarios
• Support and manage the introduction of emerging
  technologies

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The Changing Workplace

• Knowledge based economy
• Emerging Technologies the more the merrier?
• Relentless Innovation
• Globally Distributed Work Patterns out of site
  ? out of mind (telecommuting, outsourceing,
  offshoring and putting it back together)
• Teamwork in a culturally diverse and
  geographically distributed environment
• Flat Organizational Structures more
  flexibility, more responsibility
• Time Fragmentation
• Coopetition Competition Cooperation

Business
Education
Technology
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The TheorySkills Chasm
Educational Philosophies ClassicalGreek, Latin, Hebrew, Liberal Arts Modern Languages Professional
Technology Cryptography Security Models Network Protocols Setting Up a Secure Web Server and Browser
Management Contingency theories System theory Organizational Behavior Communication Skills Getting the project done on time
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Business Reality and Education

• There is a real gap between higher education and
  todays business realities

Harvard Business Review "Business schools are on
the wrong track. Some of the research produced is
excellent, but because so little of it is
grounded in actual business practice, the focus
of graduate business education has become
increasingly circumscribed -- and less and less
relevant to practitioners".2
We BU should aim to be the premier
University in the United States where
specialization is not an end in itself, but
always part of a program that aims explicitly at
higher goals and broader horizons. Report of
the Task Force on Changing Landscape
http//www.bu.edu/accreditation/
And Boston University is accepting the challenge
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Blended Deliverye-Live

• Asynchronous delivery blended with face-to face
  sessions over traditional 14-week semester
• Synchronous Communication two-way audio video
  (desktop videoconferencing), one-way video
  two-way audio both with application sharing in
  off-campus week
• Online course content with virtual lectures,
  correspondence, projects, assignments, etc.
• Programs and Formats
• Graduate Certificate in Digital
  Forensicslaunched Fall 2007 Saturday meetings
  every fourth week
• MS in Innovation Managementlaunched Spring 2008
  face to face meetings every other week

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Blended Courses
Fall 2007 --2 courses Fall 2007 --2 courses 28
Business Data Communication (TC 625 HB ) Lou Chitkushev
Digital Forensics (CS 693 HB) Vijay Kanabar
Spring 2008 -- 10 courses Spring 2008 -- 10 courses 214
Accounting (AC630 HB ) Ed Simches
Business Continuity (AD 610 HB ) Mark Carroll
Program and Project Management (AD742 HB) Roger Warburton
Financial Analysis (FI 631 HB ) Bill Chambers
Introduction to ecommerce (TM 648 HB ) Kip Becker
Biometrics (CS599 HB ) Min Chen
IT Project Management (CS632 HB ) Vijay Kanabar
Business Data Communications (TC625 HB ) Lou Chitkushev
Data Mining (CS699 HB ) Suresh Kalathur
Network Forensics (CS703 HB ) Jim Burrell/Vijay Kanabar
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The formulas for success
x
Student Success
Academic Knowledge
Practical Competencies

Fish
Teach how to Fish
Teach how to learn to Fish
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Educational Technologies Landscape
Technology landscape is crowded, how to find the
perfect technology (and do they exist?)
Learning Management Systems
Multimedia

• Discussions
• Blogs, Wikis
• SharePoint, Groove
• Webinars
• Video conferences
• Citrix/app sharing
• Social Networking

Collaboration
Authoring

• Blackboard
• Vista
• Course Info
• Angel
• Moodle
• Sakai
• Mobile Academy
• Learning Gateway

• Video
• Flash
• Silverlight
• Animations
• Voiceovers
• Podcasting
• iTunesU
• iPOD, Zune,

How do we know when students should construct a
wiki entry rather than to have a virtual
discussion or a face-to-face
dialog? 1

• MS Office
• Dreamweaver
• Expression Studio
• Google Tools
• Respondus
• Camtasia
• DRM
• PHP, Ajax

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Virtualization

• One of the disruptive technologies. One of the
  most successful IPOs in 2007.
• Virtualization is an abstraction layer that
  allows multiple virtual machines, with
  heterogeneous operating systems to run in
  isolation, side-by-side on the same physical
  machine.
• We are using three variations at MET
• client-side virtualization (a) pre-configured
  installations (e.g. Oracle), (b) lab support
• server-side virtualization group projects, ease
  of provisioning, simulating distributed
  environments

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Virtualization Scenarios _at_MET
CS579 CS601 CS693
Oracle
Complete pre-configured instal-lations provided
to MET students on a DVD, savings setup and
troubleshooting efforts not related to course
objectives
Multiple images on MET Lab computers for
different courses can be quickly rolled out and
switched between classes with no extra effort
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Virtualization Scenarios _at_MET (cont.)
Easily replicated separate server-based
environments for small student groups, and/or
multi-server environments to emulate distributed
systems
Example online banking scenario (simulation of
a distributed computing environment in a
Cryptography/PKI Lab, linking to crypto
algorithms, network protocols and security models)
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MET Virtual Data Center
Photo courtesy of MET IT
MET-VH1
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Virtual project colla-boration environment might
help to stream-line assignments handling,
eliminate potential discrepancies in between
students and instructors setups, and creates
opportu-nities for group activities (e.g. Project
Server in AD742HB) all this without incurring
additional hardware and installation costs.
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Structure and Dialog Maximizing Impact
Structure Course materials, well defined
activities, schedules, etc.
Impact
Dialog f2f sessions, online discussions, video
collaboration
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Video Collaboration Demo
Video collabo-ration is a term we use to describe
a combination of videoconferen-cing and online
meetings tools (e.g. screen application
sharing).
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IOCOM Demo Scenario

• Start with Vista, meet with Dao in MET Test
  Room Dao introduces herself.
• Dao showing a few slides (positive psychology).
• Bring in recorded interview with David W.
• why and when video collaboration is important
• what learning activities are most suited for
  video collaboration
• Harvard interview
• Music recording
• Show Suresh,
• Show example with multiple participants
• Desktop sharing

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Students survey based on Fall 2007 experience
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Students survey based on Fall 2007 experience
(Cont.)
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Comparative analysis of video collaboration
technologies
Leo
Video Collaboration Video Conferencing Online
Meeting
Technology Evolution Vendors Meeting Type
1. Videoconferencing Online Meeting IOCOM, Radvision, Primary meeting objective is to exchange opinions, develop positions, plan actions, etc., in relationship to certain information that is mostly known by meeting participants.
2. Online Meeting Videoconferencing Webex, GoToMeeting, Wimba, Primary meeting objective is to exchange information and develop common knowledge domains between meeting participants.
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Market Sample
Based on limited testing
Product/Technology Provider V/Conf. Features O/Meet . Features Reliability Support Quality and Availability
1 IG Meeting/IOCOM 4 2 3 5
2 vRoom/Elluminate 2 4 4 2
3 Scopia/Radvision 4 4 3 2
4 Live Classroom/Wimba 2 3 3
5 GoToMeeting/Citrix 1 4 4
6 WebEX/Cisco 2 5 5
7 Live Meeting/Microsoft 3 4 limited to Windows clients
8 DimDim (Open Source) 2 3 2 1
9 Acrobat Connect/Adobe 1
10 Session/Wave3 4 1 3 3
Using IG Meeting for MET video collaboration
pilot (low entry cost, support incl. weekends,
technology similar to Internet2 Access Grid (BU
is one of the 80 Access Grid nodes).
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MET Strategy Implications
Technology providers are making attempts to
bridge these differences and come up with a one
fits all technology, but (as of early 2008) with
limited success. Desktop video technologies can
still be characterized as emerging, and, with
major vendors like Cisco and Microsoft now
demonstrating more interest, the market will
undergo a certain level of consolidation in the
next few years. Until this happens, we should
minimize our risks and costs and continue to
build our video collaboration strategy around
limited pilots, focusing on understanding how to
link video technologies to pedagogical
objectives. We might need to continue using a
combination of video/audio technologies that best
fit our pilot objectives. A very important
consideration in planning emerging technology
pilots is availability and quality of support.
Close collaboration with technology providers and
technology support teams, as well as a high level
of commitment from pilot participants, are
critical to overcome the infant mortality
failures and ensure a meaningful learning
experience.
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More Student Feedback
How to make new technology introductions easy for
students and faculty?
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Math Demo
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Echo360

• Easy to use appliance records your lectures and
  provides automated end-to-end processing of
  audio/video content, including posting to a
  streaming server and sending you an email with a
  link to the recorded lecture.
• System operationally supported by MET IT, with
  NIS available for second level support.
• Demo
• To schedule a recording, just email itmet_at_bu.edu
  .

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Technology Excitement
Mobility
Social Networking
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Use, Amuse, or Abuse?How to Introduce New
Technologies
Open Discussion

• Second Life Video? Zune?
• - Importance of support services (If something
  can go wrong it will, be prepared this is
  another reason why blended programs with more
  forgiving environment are great for new
  technology pilots).
• - Manage costs through iterative piloting no
  waterfalls, proper timing is key, using the
  razor blade terminology, we want cutting edge
  without cuts.
• - Drive adoption through learning objectives,
  fascination with technology is worthless without
  a commitment to perform often less appreciated
  but necessary ground work.
• - Standardize through abstraction .
• - Maintain strong relationships with technology
  providers.
• - Ensure processes are defined end-to-end (e.g no
  video recordings that never make it to students).
  
• - Flexibility, e.g. distributing learning content
  through a variety of delivery channels to
  accommodate different students preferences
  without introducing extra work for faculty. (e.g
  PowerPoint presentation to iPOD podcasting).
• Define measurements cannot manage what you
  cannot measure.
• AND WHAT DO YOU
  THINK?

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Use, Amuse, or Abuse?How to Introduce New
Technologies
Open Discussion

• What works best for you?
• What does not work?
• What would you like to see?
• What does it take?

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References

• Chris Dale, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• Warren G. Bennis and James OToole, How Business
  Schools Lost Their Way
• Moore, M. Theory of Transactional Distance.
• Blanchard, K. Enterprise Management and
  Situational Leadership.
• Moore, M. Investigation of the Interaction
  Between the Cognitive Style of Field Independence
  and.
• Force, D. Relationships among transactional
  distance variables in asynchronous computer
  conferences.
• Keller, J.M. 1983. Use of ARCS model of
  motivation in teacher training.