TLT Faculty Fellows

Reflections on a Summer of Podcasting

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:44:39 -0500

My summer as a Teaching and Learning with Technology Faculty Fellow began with a general sense of purpose without a clear idea of precisely how the goals I set for myself would be achieved. The purpose was to perform scholarship using digital media. Specifically, I wanted to begin work in earnest on a research project focusing on the nature of Socratic politics as depicted in the Platonic dialogues. The idea was not only to begin reading and thinking about the enigmatic appearance of Socrates as he practices politics in the dialogues, but also to use digital media to expose my thinking to a wider audience early in the research program.

Happily, Cole Camplese, Director of Education Technology Services, surrounded me with a very talented team of educators -- Allan Gyorke, Matt Meyer and Ryan Wetzel. During our first meeting, we talked in some detail about the concerns I had that my nascent work might suffer by being exposed too early to a wider audience. We thought about the different sorts of communities I could reach with different types of media and we devised a flexible strategy to begin work.

The key to the success of the project was the decision to follow a suggestion made by Allan Gyorke that we make podcasting central to the project. My immediate reaction to this was, to be honest, negative. I had already done some podcasting on my own and, well, I just did not like to hear the sound of my recorded voice. However, once my team lent me the courage to speak without thinking about the fact that my voice was being recorded, I began to recognize the power of this medium for my project.

The Power of Podcasting

The reason podcasting turned out to be so important to the project was that it afforded me the opportunity to reach out explicitly to colleagues within Penn State and in the larger academic community and invite them into an safe and comfortable space in which ideas could be risked, challenged, discussed and revised without calcifying into written text. In short, with podcasting, I was able to tap into the dynamic dialogue between living voices that often fails to translate in written form. If writing allows us to reflect and formulate, edit and craft, oral expression allows us to play with ideas, to test and challenge them in dynamic relation to another.

In a way, by choosing podcasting as a medium, I was affirming something Socratic rather than Platonic, for Socrates spoke but did not write, while Plato wrote even if he chose a style (the dialogue form) that sought to articulate something of the play of spoken dialogue.

Once I began to recognize that podcasting offered me a medium through to practice dialogue with others even as I sought to think about the powerful political implications of dialogue itself, I focused my attention on developing the Digital Dialogue, a podcast dedicated to cultivating the excellences of dialogue in a digital age.

The Digital Dialogue

The Digital Dialogue began as an attempt to articulate the excellences or virtues that must be cultivated if dialogue is to have a politically transformative effect. While the podcast is rooted in the Ancient Greek tradition of virtue ethics and dialogue, it has expanded into the area of contemporary political and social theory. As it grows, I expect the Digital Dialogue to engage a diverse set of thinkers concerned with thinking about the political possibilities opened to us by dialogue facilitated by social media technologies.

I imagine there are many ways to measure the success of this podcast. One might look at the number of people who subscribe to it over iTunesU or the number who have visited the Socratic Politics blog looking for the link to a specific episode. Or one might measure the number of links posted back to the blog or the extent to which other universities have highlighted it on their website. Although I have not yet tried to track down the statistics, we have seen the podcast picked up by Boston College, Colby College, Rhodes College, and the Institute for Conflict Resolution and Analysis at George Mason College.

For now, however, the way I choose to measure the success of the podcast is by the degree to which it has pushed my research in directions I had not anticipated. In dialogue with others, my own thinking has developed and changed and I am much further along in my thinking about the nature and practice of Socratic politics than I would have been had I spent the summer reading alone in the library.

For this, I would like to thank everyone in TLT at Penn State and especially Cole Camplese, Allan Gyorke, Matt Meyer, Ryan Wetzel, Brad Kozlek, Pat Besong, George Webster, Chris Stubbs and Zach Zidic.

The Virtues of Podcasting

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:06:50 -0500

When I began my summer faculty fellowship here at ETS, I did not think that podcasting would play a big role in the project as a whole. However, Allan Gyorke convinced me that the podcast would be a great medium to do the sort of things I wanted to do with my scholarship.

Over the course of the last few weeks, my team and I have produced a number of podcasts that center on the excellences associated with digital dialogue. Our work raised my comfort level with the technology of podcasting and with the sound of my own voice digitally recorded and now I have started to move out into a wider academic community to produce podcasts of my own with students and scholars at diverse locations using Skype Recorder.

One of the main goals of my project was to expose my research to others earlier in the creative process to see if new ideas and directions of research emerged from that exposure. Originally I thought I would do this with blog posts, and I have to some degree. However, the dynamic, probing, tentative and, indeed, dialogical nature of the verbal exchanges captured on podcasts actually seems to be the more natural medium for this attempt to cultivate a cross-pollination of ideas.

Check out the Digital Dialogue Podcast on the Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue blog or visit us on iTunesU.

Digital Literacies workshop update

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:05:13 -0500

(this is a follow-up to Ellysa's post about our workshop)

As part of the faculty fellowship with Ellysa Cahoy, we're going to be holding a workshop on digital literacy. As we've been meeting and planning this, we've started to come up with some really great ideas that I think will make for an engaging learning experience for instructors, instructional designers, librarians.. basically anyone involved in developing student instructional activities. It started out as essentially the DC Digital Storytelling workshops rounded out with information about literacy, research, and utilizing library collections. The idea we came up with last week was to wrap the whole workshop in an overarching project to develop a historical narrative. Essentially what we'll be asking participants to do is choose an important moment in history, and use library media collections and media authoring tools (potentially Kaltura) to tell a story from the point of view of someone who was there. Each step of the way participants would develop their digital literacy. For example, effective research skills by searching AP videos of the event, and then identifying appropriate use given licensing restrictions and Fair Use freedoms.

The workshop will help us round out our understanding of digital literacy, especially as it pertains to literacies required by students to successfully complete digital media projects in their classes, which will factor into research studies we'll be running over the next year.

If you're interested, you can sign up for the workshop here: https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=106796

Digital Literacies workshop update

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:05:13 -0500

(this is a follow-up to Ellysa's post about our workshop)

If you're interested, you can sign up for the workshop here: https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=106796

Creating Cross Pollination

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:46:56 -0500

In recent weeks there has been a lot of discussion about how to create cross pollination among the faculty fellows. This week's big accomplishment for our groups has been to arrange a joint summit with Chris Long's group. The Fellows are also scheduled to be on a panel for the Summer Camp, but I hope there are more opportunities.

When we compared notes on projects, it definitely seemed like there was a lot of overlap. Allan asked what we thought the common theme was, and on further reflection, I think it's that we all are working towards a common vision of the Internet being a place where anyone, anywhere can contribute to the knowledge of the community (and I count brisk discussion as an important part of that).

Ellysa Cahoy has been focusing on new information literacy - which not only allow students to filter the enourmous amount of content out there but hopefully will allow them to make intelligent contributions. Carla Zembal-Saul has been focusing on student portfolios, which is an important skill to allow us to organize and share what we are learning with the world. Chris Long has been focusing on how the Internet can enable discussions of the type practiced by Socrates...but with a potentially much larger stage. And Stuart Selber has been focusing on how technical writers need to prepare for a world where users may be providing "official instruction" on a product.

I think there's been lots of interesting discussion going on and it's giving a lot of us a rare opportunity to think about how our jobs really can impact Penn State and the larger world. As I said, I hope there are more opportunities for cross pollination out there for us and the Learning Design community. These instructors have a lot to teach us.

If you want to sample what we are thinking, I would recommend Mary Janzen's last blog entry on technical writing. As always, I find it very interesting reading.

So Where Are We?

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:36:13 -0500

We're only a few weeks into the Stuart Selbur project, but already it seems time to review where we are.

Truthfully, we're still brainstorming, but we've had some fascinating conversations about different aspects of Web 2.0 and higher education. Stuart is formulating his taxonomy of online documentation modes, but this week we began to touch on what the implications would be for future practitioners in technical writing/editing. This will have many practical implications for those of us trying to both provide training and leverage resources/knowledge we know is out there in the community.

Another track we want to explore is how the Fellows can interact with each other. The Faculty Fellow team leaders are seeing lots of overlap in the topics, and Stuart himself said that one of his goals was to meet the other instructors. I'm realizing that a major benefit we can provide for our cutting edge faculty is a place where they can meet others with similar interests.

Penn State has been moving at a stately pace towards innovation, but, for the truly cutting-edge instructor, the experience out front may be a little isolating.

Next steps and new directions

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:46:38 -0500

Returning to ETS as a faculty fellow this summer has been a natural next step for me. Last summer I worked with an amazing group of designers and developers that included Brad Kozlek, Chris Stubbs, and others. We spent time contemplating the potential of blogs as e-portfolio, discussing and developing tools and templates to support the professional growth of learners while allowing for program assessment, and dreaming-up a mechanism to capture a "moment in time" in the e-portfolio space without interfering with users' work flow. There were a number of successes along the way, such as the adoption of the blogging platform as the primary e-portfolio tool at PSU and a pilot project with Schreyer Honors College students and their advisors. I undertook two pilot projects with education majors in 2008-09. My goal now is to synthesize what was learned from these initial efforts and to explore new problems of practice that were revealed along the way.

Hosted Conversations

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:46:34 -0500

In the demonstration of Google Wave, they talk about the metaphor of a "hosted conversation." Whatever the ultimate impact of Wave is for the future, as I begin my TLT faculty fellowship for a project on Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue, I am struck by the recognition that what the Wave speaks to at its very core is something deeply human and ancient: the need to engage in dialogue with one another in ever new ways that open new possibilities for human being together.

Google Wave is potentially revolutionary because it is the latest articulation of the human drive to communicate with one another as we move through and attempt to come to terms with the world in which we live.

I am particularly excited about Google Wave because of the central metaphor in which it is rooted: the dynamics of dialogical conversation.

There is one other point I would want to make as I begin to think about my own project: there is something significant about the way Google is introducing the Wave. They are inviting people to participate in its development, which means they are, at least theoretically, taking seriously the central metaphor in which the phenomenon of the Wave is rooted: the creative possibilities opened by and in dialogue.

If I am going to open my research into the meaning and nature of Socratic Politics at this early and embryonic stage, I will need to trust the possibilities of dialogue and accountability; I will need to perform research in dialogue.

Elizabeth's Selber Weekly Update #1

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:29:56 -0500

We just had our kick-off meeting yesterday, and it was very interesting. Stuart is interested in analyzing how instruction is constructed with new Web 2.0 tools. Stuart's proposal notes that, depending on your tool set, "instruction" can range from static documents to documents with comments or voting or fully participatory wikis.

For me, the interesting question is determining the social factors behind creating joint documentation. Anyone involved with recent efforts at community building know that it's easier to provide the tools than for people to accept them.

I'll be curious to see where this heads, so stay tuned.

Team Introduction: Cole Camplese

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:19:34 -0500

I just wanted to take a quick moment and introduce myself to people visiting our TLT Fellows site. I'm Cole Camplese, director of ETS. It is my responsibility to help keep us moving in a positive direction and to help discover great projects for us to be working on. I'll be working with Carla this thinking about how to extend the work we accomplished last year around the notion of social ePortfolios. I think we'll have some interesting things to share as we go forward. Look for posts from the team as work on new ideas this summer.

ETS Team: Ellysa

Sun, 31 May 2009 09:49:40 -0500

Each Faculty Fellow is assigned a group of interested staff from ETS. The team will meet weekly with the Fellow and work through ideas and activities. The team members assigned to Ellysa are:

Chris Millet
Hannah Inzko
Kim Winck

ETS Team: Stuart

Sun, 31 May 2009 09:46:00 -0500

Each Faculty Fellow is assigned a group of interested staff from ETS. The team will meet weekly with the Fellow and work through ideas and activities. The team members assigned to Stuart are:

Elizabeth Pyatt
Erin Long
Mary Janzen

ETS Team: Chris

Sun, 31 May 2009 09:43:26 -0500

Each Faculty Fellow is assigned a group of interested staff from ETS. The team will meet weekly with the Fellow and work through ideas and activities. The team members assigned to Chris are:

Allan Gyorke
Matt Meyer
Ryan Wetzel

ETS Team: Carla

Sun, 31 May 2009 09:36:54 -0500

Each Faculty Fellow is assigned a group of interested staff from ETS. The team will meet weekly with the Fellow and work through ideas and activities. The team members assigned to Carla are:

Cole Camplese
Brad Kozlek
Jeff Swain

Stuart Selber

Thu, 28 May 2009 13:57:40 -0500

Stuart Selber, Associate Professor of English and Sciences, Technology, and Society

For my faculty fellowship, I propose to investigate the changing nature of instruction sets in online environments, including Web 2.0 environments. My deliverables will include a research-based heuristic that provides a rhetoric for electronic instruction sets, which can be applied by teachers of technical writing and by instructional designers responsible for procedural documentation.

Instruction sets have become a fixture and a focus of online participatory culture, illuminating the significance of technical writing to an ever widening audience of authors and users. By "online participatory culture" I mean the activities and practices in social spaces on the Web that encourage the production and distribution of user-generated content (e.g., uploading videos to YouTube and photos to Flickr; writing and rating product reviews at Amazon; adding and editing encyclopedia entries at Wikipedia; sharing and tagging collections of bookmarks at Delicious; offering advice in user forums at Apple or Microsoft).

At present, it seems that nearly everyone on the Internet is a technical writer--or at least has the potential to be one. The sociotechnical interfaces that organize literate activity today are inclusive and remarkably flexible. They no longer position data and information--or people, for that matter--in one context or another. Nor do they care very much about the boundaries the field has used to define technical writing. Although the range of user-generated content is extensive and includes a wide variety of materials (new media or not), instructional discourse occupies a conspicuous position in the landscape of online participatory culture. At the previously mentioned websites, which incorporate so-called Web 2.0 features, there is no shortage of how-to texts, images, and videos of both an official and vernacular nature; these items have been produced by amateurs and experts who confound distinctions between subject positions (or audience categories) and between elements in a mixture of additional binary oppositions that have come to organize Western culture (e.g., private/public, work/play, literacy/technology).

In addition, Web 2.0 websites such as Expertvillage.com, Instructables.com, and Docstoc.com have been specifically designed to support the activities and practices of participatory culture in the context of instructions. Sites like these--there are many of them--host hundreds of thousands of instruction sets framed with metadata and mechanisms for various forms of feedback.

My argument is that Web 2.0 environments have begun to recast the instruction set in concrete and meaningful ways. The relevance of the instruction set has been amplified and widened by an online participatory culture that encourages involvement, collaboration, and information exchange. More than simply a good example, the instruction set has become something of a metonym for the complex world of Web 2.0. Although such a part-for-whole substitution is certainly reductive, it has heuristic value in that it helps people to understand a role and function for user-generated content--a phrase with no shortage of interpretive flexibility. In other words, the sharing of expertise, which is an easily understood and frequently practiced form of human discourse, has become an archetypal task of online engagement and interaction.

You can learn more about this project by visiting the ETS Wiki.