I am teaching a new online course tonight: Project Management for Training X75.9952, at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. I have taught this course several times before, though this is the first time it is running online.

I decided to make the syllabus publicly available on the course website, in case anybody is interested in seeing it.

This is one of the 3 courses I am teaching this summer, and is thus one of the reasons I have posted so little to my blog on the past week.

Tags: epsilen, nyu, project management, scps

I am teaching a graduate research class at New York University that begins tonight–Research Process and Methodology (Y51.1900.002.FA08). The course is an introduction to research, and is a required class in the Human Resource Management and Development MS degree program.

I am using 3 texts for this class:

1. Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2. Locke, L. F., Silverman, S. J., & Spirduso, W. W. (2004). Reading and understanding research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
3. Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (2001).  (5th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

While I have more formal learning objectives than I can count, there are really only 3 things I am hoping to achieve in this class. I really want my students to:

• understand that research can help inform and explain practice
• know that there is not a single “right” way to engage in research
• realize that research does not have to be scary

I suppose the main reason I am so excited to teach this class is because of my own three personal objectives for this class that I am finally articulating above. I suffered through numerous research courses, and when I finally learned those three points, research was suddenly very accessible and valuable to me. I only wish somebody would have told me and helped me understand those points earlier in my academic work. They would have saved me from much pain and suffering all on my own.

Tags: nyu, qualitative research, reflective practice, Research, scps

My Online Course Design class met for the first time last night, and I think it went somewhat well (though it would probably be best to ask my students their thoughts about this!). I used (and am continuing to experiement with) an online adapted version of Stephen Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire, so will code the results for next week and try to understand more about their perceptions. More about this additional project later.

Overall, I was happy with how the technology (and my teaching, of course!) worked. While the NYU online course system is brand new (the Epsilen Environment), there are a few items that arose that I need to address to try to understand them a little better. I already emailed our technical people about them, and hopefully they will be able to help me determine how to use them better or otherwise open them as help desk tickets or enhancement requests:

1. Attendance. I took attendance on paper and could not figure out how to enter this into the system afterward. I wonder if this had to be done in real time?
2. File / Application Sharing. I was able to upload my PowerPoint slides, though when I shared a Word file (and in fact the entire Word application, I believe) I could not tell I was being shared nor could I determine if my students were still able to hear me. I am not sure if I missed the indicators that these were still happening, but I had to go back to the online course screen several times (3, to be precise) to ask my students if they could still see and hear. On top of all this, it seems this did not get recorded in the course archive, so I do not have any direct way of knowing what the experience was like.
3. Webcam. I tried to use my webcam, though it cast a greenish / yellowing / ghoulish complexion. True, I do try to stay out of the sun, but I do not look like that! Disatisfied with how my laptop’s webcam looks and how crisp and clear everybody else was, I just ordered a new one (Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF) this morning and will receive it on Friday. As one of my students commented about how a webcam helps to maintain attention during a class, I think I need to pay more attention to having a good one that works well.
4. Share a Web Link. I had trouble sharing a web link. I believe it opened in another window, though as it did not pop-up and come to the front (such as happens with WebEx), I could not be certain that it happened.
5. Student Names. Probably one of the strangest open issues (that has already been reported to the vendor) involves seeing the student names in the class. They are not visible as names–only as usernames! Correct–I cannot determine who is present by seeing their names, so have to see the usernames and then look at my printed paper to link them up with their real names. I see this as being a strangely anachronistic issue, one that is problematic for me as class facilitator and problematic for the students as we are now part of a class learning community.

As blogging (either private or public) is a course requirement, I am trying to model something about what I am hoping for my students to do. We will eventually have a discussion about ethics, privacy, public persona, Googleability, etc., though I generally do my best to share my thoughts and experiences via my blog without being overly critical or personally confrontational. Hopefully this will maintain (or even increase!) my credibility as a teaching and learning professional.

Tags: nyu, online course, online teaching

My online course, Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design, begins on Tuesday, and while I have blogged about the course several times in the past few weeks, I am now in the final stretch of preparing to teach it.

I created a simple checklist I have been using to track items that need to get done in the next few days before the course begins, and thought that perhaps it may help others preparing to teach online (or others who read this may have some suggestions I missed!).

• Revise the course website (in the Epsilen platform) to make sure all items are filled out.
• Take the syllabus which is in Word format and put it in the online course format. This is not necessary, but may help us navigate through it more speedily.
• Update my bio on the website. I know this was there . . . where did it go?!?!
• Try to figure out why I can only see from the student’s view, and not the instructor’s view.
• Email the students again to welcome them. I welcomed them already, as well as sent them some Announcements. No response from them and no log ons to the new system. Will have to email our tech support again to try to learn more about what sorts of log on and navigation instructions they should get before class begins.
• Finish my PowerPoint lesson slides and discussion questions.
• Tweak the online communication / platform slide to help navigate students in the first class who get lost with the new technology. Include the help desk contact information here as well!
• Set up the online grade book.
• Review the readings for the first and second class.
• Prepare some specific slides to explain the final project.
• Post a response to the class forum “Tell us about yourself” question to model it for the students.
• Prepare to have my computer on and all materials out and accessible prior to the class on Tuesday at 6:30.
• Get additional treats for my dogs so I have something to give them if they start barking (in the background) while I am teaching.
• Practice using the online synchronous system a little more (how to share slides, use the white board, etc.). I already did this, but one last practice may help. Anybody out there in the blogosphere want to try this with me on Sunday night EST?
• Review online class recording features.
• Review setting student rights for the online classroom space for discussions, cameras, etc.

This is my list thus far. What am I missing?

Tags: Instructional Design, nyu, online course, online teaching

Anybody see the interesting PBS article about this student vs. faculty issue at NYU (where I teach as an adjunct)? From the PBS website, the lengthy and detailed MediaShift piece is NYU Professor Stifles Blogging, Twittering by Journalism Student.

Interesting.

My experience is I try to do anything at all possible to get my students to use and integrate technology into everything they do, often to great resistence from students. I wonder if my students are just older or in fields where technology use is less integral (or am I grasping for straws here?). Nevertheless, while there is certainly a lot of processing and learning here to go around, this does not seem like the most pleasent situation.

How technology in education can go both ways, I suppose.

Tags: nyu

I have been saying for some time now that Twitter is one of those phenomena that come along from time to time that changes the very way we communicate. It does not allow us simply one more way of doing what we have been doing. Instead, it alters communication itself.

Those of us who Tweet often think and share and communicate and interact differently from before we started with the application.

I used the example in my graduate Leadership class on Tuesday night, “How many of you have cell phones?” Yes, all their hands raised. What surprised me was my follow-up, “How many of you do not have land-lines at home?” Half raised their hands. HALF! In only a few short years the importance and modality and paradigm of using a phone has changed, and in the process our connectivity and expectations and ways of communicating have changed as well.

Business Week seems to be leaning in this direction as well with their article in this week’s issue. Those of us who have been using Twitter find our ways of interacting different as well.

Case in point. I Tweeted on Tuesday night, in my graduate Leadership class, while I was demonstrating Twitter. I sent a Tweet and asked anybody out there to say hello to my class. I received 5 replies from friends and colleagues around the world who were reading Twitter and sent their greetings and encouragement in return. FIVE people. Unscheduled. Unplanned. Real-time. Try communicating to a group in any other medium and getting a response back so quickly. The speed of information exchange, idea development, collaboration, and our very approach to communication itself is now put on its head.

Where is leadership in all this? I think the question is more along the lines of new possibilities for leadership in ways we never considered. With communication increasingly flat, the sky is the limit.

Do you agree with my assessment?

Tags: nyu, Twitter

I am teaching a Leadership class at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies that begins tomorrow. The course is an elective course in the Strategy and Leadership Concentration toward an M.S. in Management and Systems through the Management and Information Technology Program within the Division of Programs in Business.

While the course description is already online for anybody to see here, I thought instead I will lead by setting an example of sharing text references. Academics (and even scholar-practitioners, which is a title I use for my own work) do not easily and publicly share what materials they are using for a certain course, so I thought I will share my required and recommended texts, specifically to assist others who may be building such a leadership course for the first time and are looking for appropriate texts.

Required:

• Bass, B. M. & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational Leadership (2^nd ed.). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. ISBN 0805847626
• Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. New York: Collins. ISBN 0066620996
• Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership: Theory and Practice (4^th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. ISBN 141294161X

Recommended:

• Kouzes, J. M. & Posner, B. Z. (2007). The Leadership Challenge (4^th ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 0787984914
• Marquardt, M. J. (2005). Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions By Knowing What To Ask. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0787977462

I am expecting great things from my students in this course, and expect to share a bit about the experience between here and Twitter.

Tags: leadership, nyu, scps, Twitter