Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend a Growing a Greener Campus mini-conference sponsored by IP Logic. Essentially, this was a few presentations about the IT aspects of sustainability from a higher education perspective. For all that it was small, it was a good and useful event.

The first speaker was Debra Rowe and she gave a nice presentation that covered a lot of basics and background about sustainability. One of the very good things she did was to establish some common vocabulary and general context for later discussion. She also tried to do some myth debunking, but ever since reading an interesting article about the persistence of myths I’ve become a bit dubious about the effectiveness of that particular approach.

She talked a bit about the idea of the triple bottom line, an accounting system that takes into consideration social and environmental impacts as well as economic ones. She generalizes it from a business concept to a societal one - that is, a sustainable society is one with a “flourishing environment”, “social well-being”, and “strong economy”. While that sounds good and precise, on further reflection I find that the fuzziness of the terms involved actually makes it less useful than the general definition of sustainability: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs“. The latter actually suggests ways one might go about creating some metrics (looking at stability / longevity, and at create and consume rates of resources), while the former leads to debates on semantics. On the other hand, TBL invokes some positive goals rather than being just avoidance based. On the gripping hand, it doesn’t really matter how it’s sliced as long as we get done what needs to be done.

She then went on to discuss the role of education in this context. There are two main ways educational institutions are tied to sustainability. First, they educate. That is, the provide knowledge, skills, and, unavoidably, values. She proposes (or perhaps propagates from the US Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development?) that “Education for a sustainable society: ‘enables people to develop the knowledge, values and skills to participate in decisions, that will improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for the future.’”. Second, education is a significant economic sector in its own right and the choices it makes on operational and investment fronts can have a huge impact.

One scary and depressing tidbit - she did a quick show-of-hands poll at one point and only about 25% of the people attending believed we were experiencing human-impacted climate change. This in a group of (in theory) smart, well educated professionals. In the scientific community it’s about as well accepted as evolution - that is, barring extremely unlikely coincidence and the beliefs of some fringe individuals, it’s true.

She covered a whole bunch of organizations and groups that were involved in sustainability efforts, either directly as a primary mission or by participation in some other group. I won’t list them all here, but if you want a jumping off point try the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium. Another good one is the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. (Williams has not signed the latter, as far as I know because it feels that the goals are unachievable in the given timeline by anything other than massive purchase of carbon offsets, and that the offset market as it stands in the US is… suspect at best. On the other hand, I’m not convinced it would have been signed even without the climate neutrality clauses.) Another is the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability. A final one is Play A Greater Part, which is focused on particular projects.

She closed with a series of suggestions for things institutions and individuals could do. They’re pretty much the same thing I hear everywhere, but they bear repeating (taken mostly directly from her powerpoint slides, my few edits added context words (e.g. “hot water” in front of “tank”):

Reduce energy, and thereby reduce tons of pollution and save money in the millions.

Buy and invest in renewable energies systems (e.g. Carleton)

Impact the manufacturing sector

Take it to your local and national politicians - this is CRUCIAL

Take it to your local schools, business community, government, non-profits and other higher education institutions

Environmentally and socially responsible purchasing - www.coopamerica.org, www.newdream.org, www.heasc.net - resources page

Environmentally and socially responsible investments - www.socialinvest.org

Caulk and weatherstrip

Get rid of parasitic power consumption - unplug the TV, computer, etc. when not in use!

Fill the freezer and clean the coils

Carpool or use bikes and buses

Turn down the hot water tank to 120 and use water conserving showerheads.

Permaculture instead of grass

Eat lower and local on the food chain

Buy renewable energy locally and offsets (www.nativeenergy.org is a good one)

Be an “energy waste detective”

Reduce, reuse and recyce

Prefer products made out of sustainably harvested materials and sustainable processes

Utilize the media to publicize the positive steps all can take to both teach and model sustainable development.

All of us engaged as effective change agents in our sustainability challenges

Caring involvement instead of despairing apathy

Know that our daily decisions affect the quality of life of people around the globe.

Help create policies that support stronger economies via the building of healthier ecosystems and social systems

She also makes a very good point that the community / government has to be involved at local and national levels. Try to get your community to do an energy audit and sustainability plan. If you’re looking for a starting (and possibly final) framework, the Climate Protection Agreement (signed by over 600 mayors) may be a good place to start. At the federal level, take it (ideally in person or by hand written letter) to your Senators and Representatives. Two good starting actions to request of them are 1. Undo the uneven subsidies, and 2. Pass a carbon tax (Tax pollution instead of income.) or a Cap and Trade system with AUCTIONED CREDITS.

She closed with a really long list of resources. most of which I won’t bother repeating (the mess of links above is already more than anyone will get to). However, There were a few specific to IT which bear repeating:

Green Computing Guide from Michigan State (c. 2004 but still has a lot of juicy stats and ideas) http://www.ecofoot.msu.edu/documents/green.computing.guide.pdf

Computers and lighting in a library analysis at Auburn http://www.auburn.edu/projects/sustainability/storage_public/AU%20Library%20Lighting%20and%20Computer%20Energy%20Report.pdf

EPEAT is a system to help purchasers in the public and private sectors evaluate, compare and select desktop computers, notebooks and monitors based on their environmental attributes. http://www.epeat.net/

Electronics Reuse Initiative started by a university in collaboration with others http://www.wincycle.org/

Greener Computing site http://www.greenercomputing.com/

Cornell University’s Facilities Services Computer & Network Support office guide and accompanying website to promote sustainable computing http://computing.fs.cornell.edu/fsit/Sustainable/FSSustainableComputingGuide.pdf http://computing.fs.cornell.edu/fsit/sustainable/fsit_sustainability.cfm

All in all, a long and interesting presentation. She covered a lot of things I’ve heard before, buit I almost always find it useful to hear other’s perspectives on ideas. She also did a really good job of presenting pro-active steps that one could take in this area - I came away feeling a little less overwhelmed than I usually do when it comes to sustainability issues.

This next presentation was by Daniel Carchidi and Lindsaey Weeramuni, both at MIT, talking about copyright and how the Open Course Ware system deals with it. There were two parts to this. First was an overview of copyright in general, and the second focused on OCW specifically. My impression listen to this, and which was confirmed later during the QA period, was that OCW takes a very conservative approach to copyright. This is quite intentional on their part. It reflects the priorities of MIT for that particular project, and not any position on copyright in general. [My thoughts and comments are enclosed in square brackets.]

Most of the about 30 people in the room had heard of or visited the MIT Open Courseware site. [an interesting example of the marketing value of sharing content - in theory the contributors have given for free some content on which  in theory they could maybe have made some money, but in practice both the individual providers and the institution have gotten a great deal of good publicity out of it. I don't know the finances well enough to know if the value are on par with each other, but my off-hand guess is that the publicity is worth as much or more than the content itself.]

Dan leads off the presentation with an overview of Open Courseware. In 1999 there was wide-spread discussion [references would be nice here - sounds familiar, but actual links would be even better] that distance learning would make traditional, classroom education obsolete. In response to that, the MIT college president formed a committee to examine the situation. The committee produced two main results. First, they felt that MIT had missed the wave in terms of commercial exploitation of distance learning. Second, and perhaps more importantly, they concluded that the MIT experience didn’t transfer to distance learning. That is, there was value to the experience of being at MIT that could not be provided via an on-line experience. The president then asked, essentially, “what now?”, and the committee went back to work. After further consideration, they decided that the MIT course materials should be provided for free on the internet [I would love more details about this process - What objections were raised and how were they countered? What were the perceived costs and benefits, and how has reality matched? What lead them in that direction to begin with? etc.] With that, MIT started the Open Courseware project, with a goal of publishing material for all their core courses.

Some useful clarifications / re-iterations:
- OCW is NOT an MIT education. It’s missing the experience in the classroom and lab, and the presence of teachers and fellow students
- OCW is NOT a certificate or degree program
- OCW is permanent [at least, as much as any info is]
- OCW is open to the world
- OCW contains all course material (lecture notes, lab descriptions, problem sets, tests, etc.)

There is a LOT of material in OCW now. [I'd last looked through it several years ago and found it a little sparse, though impressive even so. Now it is truly amazing.] Just last fall they hit their publication goal/milestone of having every core course in OCW.

At this point Lindsey stepped in for Dan and talked about the intellectual property issues of OCW. Prior to her current position at MIT, she worked in the publishing industry, so she has a good perspective from both sides (the side asking to use material, and the side that controls the material).

OCW uses one of the Creative Commons licenses for all their material. She didn’t spend too much time on Creative Commons itself - that topic is easily an entire presentation in itself [It's definitely worth spending some time reading the Creative Commons site. It's an increasingly widely used system for licensing works, and it's useful to understand the various options and what it can and can't do for you.]. MIT uses the non-commercial, attribution, share-alike (by-nc-sa) options for their license. In brief, people are ENCOURAGED to use, modify, re-mix, etc. the content, as long as they’re not selling the results, as long as they refer to MIT as the originator, and as long as they like-wise share their modifications if they publish them. [That's my pithy paraphrase of her high-level summary - if you actually want to use Creative Commons you must read the actual license. There are some complexities and specific, legal wordings that are completely glossed over here. It's also worth noting that Creative Commons is not something that circumvents copyright or replaces copyright. Instead it relies existing copyright law to create licenses that let people use material is specific ways, just like any other license. It just happens that the specific ways are very unrestrictive compared to most other licenses traditionally used in the publishing world.]

MIT has had a lot of success moving protected material [highly restricted] into the Create Commons environment. After they hit their initial publication goal they did a comprehensive review of their material. They found that about 1/3 of their courses still had some copyright issues (by the restrictive standards MIT is using for OCW - more on that later). Most of those problems were in the lecture notes for a course - that it, the material that the instructor would use when teaching (a more detailed breakdown is available in their slides). Conversely, 2/3 of their courses were completely OK. An important conclusion of that review is that it’s possible to have a very rich repository of publicly available material that respects copyright.

Then Dan gave a bit of Copyright 101. [for full details on the law, check out the law itself] Copyright protects works of authorship (see the slideshow), i.e. ‘the creative product’. In their work with faculty, these are the lecture notes, problem sets, tests, etc. Things that are NOT covered include ideas, concepts [patents cover those two], facts, raw data [including research data, I guess; explains why researchers are often a bit paranoid about sharing / publishing their source data in addition to their results / conclusions], names, and titles. [To protect the latter sorts of things, look into trademarking - it may or may not apply, but copyright certainly won't.]

The people who get the protection [copyright is, at least originally, about protecting a publisher from economic losses, though these days it's cast as more about controlling how content is used - the two subjects are related, but they are by no means the same] are the author, or the employer in a work-for-hire situation (where the contract assigns the rights to the employer), or anyone to whom either of the first two have assigned rights. A copyright holder has exclusive rights to reproduce, to distribute, to display, to create derivative works, AND to grant licenses to others. In OCW the creators still hold copyright to their work, but grant license to MIT and the OCW system (via the Creative Commons  licensing tool set). Among other things, the law means that works are NOT freely available UNLESS it is EXPLICITLY in allowed - that is  failure to claim copyright explicitly does not give up rights, and simply citing the creator is NOT enough without the copyright holders permission.

Copyright is an evolving set of laws. Since 1976, any tangible publication [how does electronic publication fit into that? I assume it's covered in some particular clause of the law, but I'm not willing to dig through and find it just at the moment] automatically has copyright protection. Prior to that the work had to be registered with the Library of Congress. Copyright has an expiration [at least in theory - in 1998 it was extended for 20 years] and works published before 1923 are in the public domain. This set of older publish material is drawn upon heavily by history courses, and to a lesser extent in goverment courses.

The was definitely some early resistance by faculty to contributing material to OCW, but over time people have become enthusiastic about it. About 90% of MIT faculty participate by contributing material to the project. Students also contribute. There was a nice quote of a student about how pleased she was to have her work published in the OCW system. [How does OCW publish count, professionally speaking? presumably it's less valuable than a journal publication, but at the very least it's publicity. I imagine hiring and tenure committees will have to tackle this question and make some kind of policy at some point. Some discussion in the NERCOMP 2008 blog also touches on this idea]

MIT threw a lot of resources at the OCW project. It’s very team oriented. There are OCW team (6 people) who deal with manging the program, the publication managers and the dept liaisons (11 people) who work with faculty, a production team (4 people), and an intellectual property team (2 people) that makes sure the published material adheres to OCW’s policy. [numbers cone from the OCW team web site] Plus they consult a fair amount with the general counsel, and have two sizable advisory boards. In addition to the human resources, it’s clear that the institution embraces this project at the highest level, which makes it possible on a cultural as well as a technical level.

There was a nice few slides covering where and what kind of IP issues they encountered in their review of the repository. The most common areas of infringement are in the lecture notes, and the most commons types of infringement are images, text excerpts, and multi-media (clips, simulations). There are potentially very difficult issues in resolving those infringements. For example, much open source software is licensed using the GNU General Public License (GPL), which is incompatible with the by-nc-sa Creative Commons license that OCW uses [this is a fairly widely discussed issue - in brief, the GPL allows commercial uses, while the CC non-commercial, well, does not]. There are three main approaches they use to resolve IP issues (in no particualr order):
- remove the offending material and replace it with a specially commissioned replacement (MIT has graphic artists on hire for this kind of work)
- negotiate for usage rights with the copyright holder
- ??? [see the slideshow (coming soon...) - the talk was very fast at this point and I didn't catch the last method]
One general rule is that if material can’t be sourced, it can’t be used.

There were quite a few questions from the audience:
Q - You deployed students to take notes in the courses. Is this typical?
A - It depends on what already exists. If there are no lecture notes then the students’ notes form the core.

Q - How do you handle publishing links?
A - Published links are only to publicly available systems. We can put plain text addresses [URLs] which users can go to and/or research on their own, but we don’t do direct links to non-public systems.

Q - How do you deal with custom programmed materials (which don’t work too well with CC)?
A - If it can’t be released using a CC license, it’s not released.

Q - What the background of the Intellectual Property managers who are making the decisions?
A - Lindsey has extensive experience in the commercial publishing world. Her assistance has an art background, but has received IP tutoring.

Q - How much of the repository is actually captured lectures?
A - It depends on the courses. There are about 1K hours of video, ~30 full courses. The focus has been on curriculum, not actual presentation.

Q - How do you deal with text books being posted?
A - Most of the time, you can’t. At best, you can put a link on the reading list section, with links to amazon or the publisher so users can buy it themselves.

Q - Any thoughts on leveraging social systems to adapt and modify the OCW system?
A - There’s now a Open Courseware consortium that contains a lot of institutions world wide. Now that MIT has met their base goal, it’s thinking more about what to do next. E.g. making high school focused adaptations, with feedback from HS teachers.

Q - Has the OCW movement changed the way copyright holders view their IP at all?
A - I’m glad you asked. We just a few days ago made a partnership with Elsevier, one of the big names in journal publication. We got permission to use data from any of their journal articles, with particular limits.

Q - What about fair use, especially with respect to Elsevier material (the negotiated deal sounded like it was all pretty much covered by fair use)? Do you never invoke fair use?
A - It’s a hot topic among consortium members. From the beginning we made a decision NOT to rely on fair use. We decided to be especially conservative because of the high profile - we didn’t want to expose MIT to any negative repercussions. We think fair use is important and valid, but not quite appropriate for OCW. In OCW we’re not just using the material ourselves, we’re publishing it for others to use. [This is a really rich and interesting topic. It would have been great for MIT to push this a bit, but I can totally understand why they didn't. I hope that now the MIT has paved the way with OCW in general that some other group tries to do more with fair use, because if we don't exercise it, we could lose it]

Q - What does ‘maintain’ a course mean?
A - Because of the structure of the publication process, we have a relationship with the professors: we know if their teaching a new course, what changes have been made, etc. Very relationship based.
Q - A follow up, if a course is no longer active, is it removed?
A - They’re kept in the archive.

Q - What about ITunes?
A - it’s another distribution channel. A big part of our audience (of a certain age) is introduced to professors via a lecture on iTunes.

Q - What are you mechanisms for dealing with infringement at MIT (outside of OCW)?
A - OCW is not involved. The general counsel handles it. Hopefully the OCW experience provides cultural knowledge/precedent.

Q - This presentation has been pretty black and white. What/where is the ambiguity?
A - A lot is actually case dependent, but we couldn’t get into the details in time we had

Q - How did you convince faculty to participate?
A - Shame :) Some departments resisted in entirety, at least at the beginning. Over time as they’ve seen success and faculty benefit they’ve come round. There were lots of objections (e.g. no one will come to class), but we’ve generally found the experience did not bear out. There have been some tricky cases involving publishing (e.g. textbook) vs open release (would one be in competition from other). [this has interesting parallels to objections to lecture capture at Williams - hopefully we'll eventually see success too]

Q - What are some benefits to the faculty?
A Lots of feedback from the users. Lots of citations in other publications for things published in OCW. Lots of visibility and publicity. Great organized and recorded courses. It counts as dissemination for NSF grants. Students use it to shop for courses. Students use it for review notes. They can see what their peers are doing. It improves teaching.

And then time was up. I think this discussion could have gone on a while, and I’d love to hear more about / from the OCW Consortium at some point.

This was a panel presentation, moderated by Joanne Kossuth (CIO of Franklin W Olin College of Engineering). The presidents of three colleges (Cheryl Norton, from Southern Connecticut State University Georgia Nugent from Kenyon College, and Susan Scrimshaw from Simmons College) talked about their perspectives on their jobs and on IT, then took questions from the audience. It’s not often the college presidents have the time to sit down and do such a thing, so this was a great event. Most of the sessions / workshops at this conference are in one of 6 tracks, but this session was a general one - nothing else was running concurrently. That was good, because it meant I didn’t have to forego anything else to attend it. An important note before I get any further- I’ve tried to capture everything they said, but there was a lot going on so I missed some things and have paraphrased elsewhere. Unless explicitly denoted (”"), what is written here should NOT be taken as exact quotes of these people. [My thoughts and comments are enclosed in square brackets.]

The panelists started by recounting a bit about their history and their present positions - how did they get into higher ed administration to begin with, and how did they get from there to president. Two went from VP of something-or-other to Provost to President [switching colleges at the last step - hmmm, I like our current Provost, hope this means he's not headed elsewhere]. I don’t remember and didn’t note the other one. Two good quotes/ideas worth sharing here:
Teaching faculty is one of the biggest challenges. Keeping them abreast of the latest things is difficult, but professors CAN do it
“Facebook is one of the best ways to learn what our students are thinking”

Then, some questions from the moderator [not sure how they decided on the questions, but they were decent ones]:

How do you see the expectations of incoming students changing?
Cheryl - students stay connected with each other, and expect to remain connected to professors, administrators, etc 24/7. There are lots of issues with policies and procedures (cell phones in the class room, etc.). They want, and use, instant access to all resources all the time, from library information to people. The real problem is with the faculty catching up to the students and trying to teach the students a little patience (e.g. that people might not always reply to students right away at all hours).
Georgia - cell phone use has increased dramatically. A few years ago there were areas of the campus that were cell-phone free by common consent and seniors enforcement [??? sounds a bit extreme typed out like that, but I suspect it was something along the lines of simply asking another student not to use a cell if they were doing so in a cell-free area], but now they’re everywhere. Faculty are lamenting that students go to Google first, but need to get over it. FACULTY go to Google first, so why should students do differently?
Susan - students are multi-tasking all the time (emailing in class, etc.). Students know a lot, but don’t know everything they need to know. Simmons has an ongoing technology training program from the moment the students arrive. Also, Simmons is working on blended learning, which small colleges [and specifically, professors at small colleges] tend to resist because in their view it undermines the classroom experience. Simmons is working on making blended learning a positive education force - the key is figuring out what can you do with technology that you CAN’T do in the classroom. C
Cheryl - access to info can be good, but it’s a problem when the students can’t distinguish valid sources from invalid ones. Also, there are issues with plagiarism and other such things.
Georgia - there are many ways in which technology is changing our cultural milieu. One of the ways as a presidents that our students have changed our expectations is in regards to privacy. For example, they aren’t forward looking; they can over-share on facebook and have it come back to haunt them when they’re looking for work a few years later. [erm, those last couple of sentences don't really hang together because I missed recording a sentence or two. Still, valid and interesting points, so I kept them in despite the awkward wording - blame me, not Georgia]

What is the most challenging thing you have to deal with, with respect to technology?
Cheryl - cost. There needs to be a strategic plan that includes technology. Need to know when to say no; not everything that can be done should be done.
Georgia - get a really good CIO, and keep them as a part of the senior staff. She likes the 24/7 connectivity/availability thing, but needs to make it clear to her staff that such access is not expected of them.
Susan - distinction between technology support and academic needs. They’re integrated, but have slightly different needs. There is a tension/balance there that needs to be managed.
Georgia - anecdotal survey (during her visits to many other places) merged [IT and library] groups [colleges? administrations? actual departments? Don't think it's the latter - people in departments generally don't like change in their department] thought it better to be separate, separate groups preferred merged. At each college, the particular set up that college had depended on histories of individuals involved more than anything else.

What do you want your CIO to do for you?
Cheryl - listen to the users! If the user doesn’t have a vision for how it can have a positive impact on their education experience, then the technology to support it isn’t worth the cost in time and money (paraphrasing). Also, avoid tech speak! Communicate well (talk and listen).
Susan - The CIO also has a role to educate the rest of the campus.
Georgia - servant leadership. Embrace the concept of servant leadership.

What was your biggest surprise (technology related or otherwise) on stepping into the role of presidency?
Susan - surprised most by the depth and complexity of the small campus of Simmons. It is different from big universities because there’s more cross-group work. On the technology side, surprised by how well developed everything was - possibly this is mostly related to a public institution vs private institution difference (in public ones, you are always struggling for money just to get the basics).
Georgia - the biggest surprise is the meaning that everyone attaches to what you do or not do, say or not say.
Cheryl - “This is a pretty color” means that suddenly the color appears everywhere! I was impacted negatively by how little the college had embraced technology in the decision making process. There was no historical data, no tracking, etc. We could not compare how we did this year to how we did the previous year.
Georgia - a comment in the grocery store carries the same weight as a speech prepared for weeks. Changing topics slightly, resistance to blended learning is a problem endemic to small, high touch campuses; it doesn’t suit the campus well because the students expect something different. (Students expect more/different for 40K/year). [What more? Does blended learning require too much work from students? Many students want simply to know things after attending college, skipping the whole idea that learning is/requires work]
Cheryl - you need to find creative ways to do the right thing. It’s often the faculty that resist changes most. E.g. if you want to get paid during a flu pandemic when you can’t come to campus, then you NEED electronic deposit, which finally overcame faculty resistance. Lots of resistance to blended learning.
Susan - the trick to blended learning is use it where it’s content appropriate; use it where it offers benefits, but don’t do it just to say you do it. BL offers a lot, but it’s not appropriate for every situation.

How do you balance your work and your life, and what is the balance?
Susan - what balance? It’s all work. Joking aside, she really is working and connected all the time.
Georgia - don’t believe in balance. Gave up the notion long ago. She blends work and play and family and it’s all together.
Cheryl - it is key is to slot in some specific activities and limits. E.g. she does NOT show up in the office at 7:00. She’s likely working at that time, but will be at home, on the blackberry, etc. Getting evening time is the real problem; lots of dinner events.
Susan - finding exercise time and time to make music is tricky, but you NEED to make time to some personal things to keep sane. There has to be SOMETHING that you do that replenishes you physically and emotionally.

Any advice for the CIOs out there?
Cheryl - always lead with the soles of your feet. Make sure with your decisions that you take the highest road possible, so people don’t question your personal agenda.
Susan - never stop learning, ESPECIALLY if you’re a leader.

[A commonly repeated aside is that the presidents believe/say they don't actually have power, but their anecdotes belie that. I think what they mean is more that they don't have and can't exercise any kind of dictatorial control, but it's a bit ridiculous to say they don't have power. Generally, when the president wants something to happen, it happens.]

Then there were some questions from the audience:

What kind of strategies do you have in place to make sure incoming students have a certain level of digital literacy?
Georgia - none
Susan - we have some programs in place for incoming students, and then ongoing technology education on a voluntary basis. There are more details on our website.
Cheryl - we talked about testing for technology, but the students [rightfully, IMHO] ask “have you tested the faculty? So, we decide instead to provide opportunities for learning and to have some core courses that require technology skills.

In dealing with faculty and trying to bring them along, have you had success, and how?
Susan - the most important / effective method was to work with small groups of faculty, which are now faculty affinity groups. Take a cohort and work with them to develop their tech skills, then they form the core of a user / peer community. [reminds me of community building work in the early Tripod days]
Georgia - my experience is the opposite of that. Technology did NOT transfer from one dept to another, there are too many dept boundaries; e.g. a religion professor will ONLY learn from another religion professor. So, go to the end of the tunnel yourself first, then bring the faculty along. Figure out what they want to do, then figure what technology will help them.
Cheryl - ignore the hardcore resistors, the early adopters will do tech regardless, and the middle group needs incentives. She found that money was the best (most effective) incentive. There was some peer-to-peer transfer, but incentive is required.
Susan - larger groups had more resistance, and pay was critical. There are different challenges on different campuses. Fewer silos [this is a buzzword from somewhere, clearly. It was used repeatedly by all of them] on a small campus.

To Cheryl, why the problems, and what did you do about it?
Cheryl - as the president, she is the top user. She needed to convince the management of the importance. We know there’s been progress, because now when the system goes down there’s an outcry. Before she arrived the technology people could do the work, but there was no demand.
Georgia - ownership of technology use does in the end reside with the president. The president has no power, but they do set a tone.

When reviewing proposals for new technology, what are you looking for?
Cheryl - Focus on functional results. Not, what can I do in technology, but what can I do elsewhere? Make the cost-benefit case for how it serves the whole enterprise and/or how it fits in with the academic goals.
Georgia - take off your IT cap a bit. Will it be used (outside of IT having fun with cool new technologies)? Is it user friendly? What are the unintended consequences?

Have you sought out your employees advice or help?
Cheryl - yes [with an implied "of course! What kind of question is that?"], it’s critical to success. Among other things, you always have to ask ‘how does this affect our students?’
Georgia- I have a regular open forum
Susan - monthly open forum for students, responds to student email.
[ASIDE - Georgia and Susan focused their response on the fact that they are open to STUDENTS, and largely avoided the question with respect staff and faculty. Probably not ignored, but the appearance is not good. Note to self for public forums - always answer the original question, even if there's more interesting stuff to talk about later in your response.]

There were more questioners waiting, but we ran out of time. All in all, a great session.

I’m attending the 2008 NERCOMP conference in Providence, RI. This annual get-together provides networking with peers at other institutions, professional development in various presentations, and a sizable vendor fair. [My thoughts and comments are enclosed in square brackets.]

The first session I attended was about using WordPress to support learning initiatives. The presenters were Ken Panko (Sr Instructional Technologist), and Randy Rode (School of Drama IT Director) - both from Yale.

WordPress is well known as a blogging tool, but also works well as a light-weight content management tool. The big advantages of WordPress are that it’s fast (you can literally get a new install up and running in 5 to 10 minutes), it’s flexible (with themes to change the look and feel, plugins to extend functionality, and general page authoring as well as specific blog authoring), it’s cheap (the $$ cost is free, since the software is open source, and the actual support needed is minimal - the software tends to work well out of the box), and there are lots of options for running it (windows server, unix/linux/mac server, remotely hosted).

There are some pitfalls to WordPress as well. Probably the largest is straightforward security concerns (see http://secunia.com/search/?search=wordpress). Security holes get patched fairly quickly, but then someone needs to make sure all the installs are actually up to date (though there’s now an Automatic Update plugin that helps with that, or even manages it entirely). The other issue that comes up a lot is spam. There are two good tools to deal with that. The first is the Akismet plugin, which does content based filtering. The second is a configuration option that allows user filtering - WordPress can be set to make the first comment from any particular person require vetting by an administrator, after which that user is OK-ed to post future comments with out oversight.

[It's worth noting that this entire talk focused on multiple instances of installing the word press system. Another option is WordPressMU, which is a single install that supports many blogs. WPMU is what Williams uses to run http://blogs.williams.edu, largely because of the central management features and the single-point-of-maintenance. However, if we were to use WordPress as a CMS we'd probably go with a separate instance. The latter would allow more customization for the particular application, and would have a more logical address.]

They note that it is possible use htaccess files or some other authentication system to limit access to a WordPress blog, but generally they leave them accessible to the general public. There is an intellectual property issue associated with using blogs in a class. Students sign some sort of IP release thing indicating they know that posts will be public. [Details on that were not available, but would be interesting. Perhaps someone who has a copy of the agreement could post it?]

They’ve found WordPress very appropriate and useful for rapid, light weight, perpetual-beta projects. For example a 6-12 month project probably would use some other system (they use joomla as their general CMS), while a project with 1-2 weeks lead time would probably be done using WordPress. The WordPress UI is pretty good, requiring little to no user training. It’s easy to make changes, allowing feedback to be incorporated quickly and easily as the system is used. After that particular project or class is over, it becomes something of an archive (which has its own plusses and minuses, but the talk didn’t really get into that.

To finish they ran through four examples that demonstrated different approaches / uses. The first two were covered by Ken:

Online Text Analysis - Shakespeare Analysis Course
- arose through talking to a faculty member whose office was next door [This is a great example of serendipitous project creation. While there are certainly some advantages to a central IT building, I think we miss a lot of opportunities by not being more fully integrated with the rest of the campus]
- uses the CommentPress theme, which allows line-by-line commenting
- For this class the blog is hidden behind a central authentication system, which deals with most (all?) of the general spam problems.
- MIT has a full shakespeare text archive available, which this course uses (though it looks like MIT may just link to another source, at least in that course)
- There’s a plugin called Ajax Edit Comments that lets users edit their own comments. It has a time window option (so e.g. comments can be made and edited an hour or two after a class discussion, but are fixed thereafter).
- Total time to from project idea to implementation: 11/1 - 1/23, with a big break between. Really, mainly about 4 hours of actual work during Jan 2 to Jan 23. One very nice thing, the sponsor was able to check it out from Holland since it’s on-line.

Yale summer caberet
- student run project set up as a content management system.
- NOTE: site is no longer live since the summer is over.
- Ken set it up and then let the students do whatever they want. Essentially, he volunteered his time, so didn’t want much int he way of support issues/ time.
- Interesting note: plugins are used on pages as well as blog posts, which allows one to use a pretty interactive system.
- Created a custom theme - 6-12 hours of work (usual web site development stuff - messing with CSS, image creation, etc.)

Then Randy took the stage. He talks very quickly and ran very quickly through his slides. Partly just his nature, I think, but he was also pressed for time and was trying to fit in everything. He did a good job, but my notes on his stuff are a little sparse.

One example is a site set up for an architecture course. Students made posts instead of writing papers, which means the posts are LONG. He used the evermore plugin to make the blog more readable. There was a question later about metrics of student evaluation, and turns out that before the course started Randy and the professor got together to develop a rubric for good blog posts, which was then given to the students at the start of the course. Evaluating the posts in this case wasn’t much different from evaluating any other student papers [it'd be nice to get a copy of that rubric....]. This site was (is?) open to the public, and some of the student work ended up being linked to from the architects’ sites.

Randy runs through a quick demo of the WP back end. He also shows us a nice plugin, the anarchy media player, which plays many, many different kinds of media. In general, WP plays very well with multi-media (much better than Sakai and other LMS and CMS). Since posts can be tagged, and since WP can generate RSS feeds automatically based on tags, this makes it a great way to very easily produce a podcast (which can then be subscribed to as normal in iTunes or any other podcatcher). Also, the audio can be played directly from the web page (via anarchy) and and intermixed with non-audio posts (using tags to separate out the audio ones).

Randy has a few pages of How to Use WordPress that he includes in every install he does, but he finds that students pick it up very quickly regardless. A number of students respond (paraphrasing) “it’s just like setting up my facebook page”. [to my mind the good UI is the single strongest selling point of WP]

There wasn’t really much time for questions at the end, so that was pretty much it.

There’s a bit more info on the Educause NERCOMP 2008 blog, and there’s a PDF of the slide show on Randy’s blog.

Conference Report: Nercomp - Panel Discussion - third session

In this session various instructional designers will presented their analysis of some popular video games and in the process identified features and structural elements that could be adopted in higher ed curriculum.

Eileen McMahon (the event organizer) and Scot Osterweil chose two games each for the three panelists and the panelists researched and played the games and then made a short presentation on them. For each game the panelists had to pick three aspects of the game that would translate well into an education setting (either directly as the game, or as concepts that could be extracted and applied elsewhere). [I think this was a very successful format. It covered a lot of ground quickly and was working from real-world data.]

The panelists were:

Jason Gorman, Instructional Designer, Simmons College

Heather McMorrow Gretzinger, Instructional Designer, Lesley University

Michael Palumbo, Instructional Designer, Eastern Conn State University

Scot was the moderator.

Jason Gorman was the first to speak. His games were Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. A copy of his presentation is available at http://www.nercomp.org/data/media/games_092607.ppt

Super Mario - this game is a BIG DEAL. One of the best selling games of all time, likely the best franchise of all time. There’s a lot of culture around the game

3 things about Mario that could be translated into an educational setting:

• multiplayer sequential competition. Competing together creates opportunities for collaborative problem solving and informal learning. Even though there was competition between the players, there was also helping each other against the game - the game is the common enemy. Great informal learning
• scaffolding goals and skill progression
  • well paced progression of difficulty
  • time pressure
  • short and long term goals with multiple rewards
  • true mastery is clearly possible - particularly useful for rote learning (it’s exactly the same each time)
  • [NOTE: The main character keeps dying! This could really put off some players.]
• the music is immersive and catchy… and INFLUENTIAL
  • lo-fi beat compliments graphics and game play
  • memorable tune loops in your head
  • self-promotes synthesis in a musical theme
    • lots of examples of popular music created based on video game music (SM music in particular)

Jason spent a lot of time talking about Super Mario, so his review of Sonic was quick and high level.

Sonic the hedgehog: largely similar play

• faster, better, stronger
  • stimulating, have to take risks and make leaps to survive
  • forced into uncomfortable situations
• multiple paths to success
  • lots of free play
  • multiple difficulty setting
• VERY easy to learn

Heather McMorrow Gretzinger then talked about Boxing (on the Wii) and Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time. A copy of her presentation can be found at http://www.nercomp.org/data/media/video%20game%20presentation.ppt

Boxing on the Wii

She describe the graphics as “incredibly rudimentary” [I would have said 'iconic'], but didn’t find they detracted from the play. This game is engaging - it draws the audience into participating. She talks a lot about the feedback loop, from human action to avatar action.

• visual progression of game provided
• highly kinesthetic
• sound effects motivate and support game play (makes it very energizing for players and audience)

The feedback is a very useful concept to bring into the classroom [but not specifically game related, I think]. Very visual feed back is also good. [This is more game specific - entertaining idea / mental image of grade as health meter... :) ] The social-ness is also good. Interesting observations on varying peer explanations based on gender. People new to the Wii still treated it like a regular old controller until they got a chance to play with it. [Learning through play/experience]

Her second game was Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (one of the highest selling games of all time) [also, among my friends who play such games this is generally considered the best of the Zelda franchise, and one of the best period in the whole CRPG genre]

This was a shift from 2D scroller of earlier Zeldas to free 3D

• lots of surprises along the way
  • knew what the goals were, but there were little incentives along the way (from side quests to coin collecting)
    • player set sub goal - e.g. get enough money to get item X
  • plenty of practice opportunity, lots of opportunity to save and learn from your mistakes)
• music motivates and supports the game
  • follows the oral tradition of story telling ; learn from those around you and repeat back

She found that being able to play video games socially was important.

Mike Palumbo “I learned to do my job by doing it”, a sentiment / experience that is very relevant to games. His two games were Luxor and Tycoon: NYC. A copy of his presentation can be found at http://www.nercomp.org/data/media/gamesPalumbo.ppt

Luxor - 2004 (by Mumbo Jumbo)

Luxor is a casual game, with a style based on the early 80s arcade games. It’s mechanic is similar to Columns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columns_(video_game)), but slightly spiced up and wrapped with a tiny bit of frame tale. Play is based on matching, spatial relations, timing, pattern recognition

• clear rules and scoring
• engages logical, spatial and kinesthetic intelligences
• success depends on skill mastery

Tycoon: New York City

This is a simulation (takes a situation and make it as realistic as possible). The player is given the task of starting businesses in Greenwich village. They’re is given seed money and they’re off - they have to figure out all the principles of business themselves.

• incremental increase of info and expectations
  • as skill increases so do objectives
  • after basic skills are set then competition is introduced
• safe to fail at new skills with little penalty
  • chance to rectify (freedom to fail, plus the freedom to fix things)
• opportunities to excel

Questions and Discussion

Question: any thought about using a game to teach teachers about gaming?

Jason - let them dissect the black box

Heather - ‘it was a big leap for the student teachers to accept games as a useful teaching tool. Maybe tried to introduce them too early in the course. It was a real challenge for them’. Some people totally disengaged - freedom to fail != freedom to participate? Can education support the freedom to participate?

Mike - using games is a really hurdle

[Games have a really, really bad rap. Sad.]

Question: how do you apply the qualities of these game (or create a game?) actually to develop a game that teaches?

Heather - ability to redo a test, to learn from failure, etc. Is it about the grade or the learning. ‘cheat codes’ for school?

Question: How/why does one become a gamer and who plays games?

Heather - you become a gamer through peer pressure and association

Scot - “the major player of casual games are middle aged women”

Question: Do people spend too much time playing games, are they worth while?

Heather - definitely feels that her husband wastes a lot of time gaming

Mike - games are a leisure activity, and people play a lot of games on the computer

Discussion:

[I didn't catch it all, but I managed to get down a few highlights.]

Scot: We shouldn’t try to make games work. Instead we should try to make work fun.

Interesting example of time when parents worried that their kids read too much. Then TV. Now it’s switched to games.

[ASIDE: interesting topic for discussion would be mitigating the negative aspects of games]

Talk about Webkins. An interesting space with an economic gateway. However, collecting things has always been a thing kids do that costs money.

Scot: marketers have gotten more sophisticated about connecting to younger and younger kids.