George Veletsianos, PhD

Author: George Veletsianos Page 27 of 82

A list of Z-degrees and Zed Creds

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On February 5, 2019

In oer, open, z-degree, zed cred

On Twitter last week I asked whether anyone had created a list of available a Zed Creds and Z-Degrees. As a way of definition BCcampus writes: “a Zed Cred/Z-Degree is a set of courses in a specific program area that allows a student to earn a credential, such as an associate degree or certificate program, with zero textbook costs by way of using open educational resources and/or free library materials.”

It’s easy to find lists of colleges and universities working on these, but much harder to find specifics (e.g., what are the main credentials? what are the main disciplines? and so on). Through Rajiv Jhangiani, I learned that Richard Sebastian had created one such list of Z-degree, Zed Cred, and OER Degree programs. If you cite this list, please use the following attribution: Created by Richard Sebastian, Achieving the Dream.

So, there’s a list and we can all help improve it.

But, we had an interesting conversation on Twitter that I am going to rehash here, partly because it relates to the list, partly because my Twitter posts are automatically deleted and that conversation will eventually consist of fragments. David Wiley asked: “Are you looking for programs that use OER (even if there is some cost to students) or programs that are completely free to students (even if there is some All Rights Reserved content used)?”

This question relates to ongoing effort in the field to disambiguate terms and intentions. Both Z -degrees and OER degrees may be one and the same and may cost zero to students. But, they may also cost zero to students and consist of entirely different (non-OER) materials. A Z-degree for instance may consist of copyrighted library resources that require no additional costs to students to access (e.g., a seminal piece of work that faculty deem necessary to include). Library resources aren’t “free,” of course as students pay for them through tuition and fees. But beyond cost, the core argument here is that the permissions that OER enable are expected to lead to more effective and worthwhile teaching and learning experiences.

And here’s the final caveat: Imagine a typical course that uses a commercial textbook. Now consider that course being redesigned such that it exclusively uses library resources. Imagine an instructional designer and a librarian working with a faculty member (or two) to identify resources, define learning objectives, create activities, and align assessments. The permissions that the library materials allow won’t match the ones that OER allow, but the benefits of OER use reported in the literature don’t always just come from OER – they also come through the redesign process. This is not a dispute with OER. Rather, it’s an argument for instructional design. Or, learning design, or learning engineering. Alas, disambiguating these terms is probably best left for a different post altogether.


Women scholars’ experiences with online harassment and abuse

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On January 30, 2019

In harassment, my research, scholarship

For the last year or so, my colleagues and I have been working on a SSHRC-funded project examining the experiences of harassment that women academics face online. “We” refers to my colleagues Jaigris Hodson, and our two amazing research assistants Chandell Gosse and Shandell Houlden. We’re now at a point where we will start sharing artifacts from this work more and more broadly, including a wesbsite, scenario-based simulations, webinars, and, in due course, cc-licensed pedagogical materials to lead workshops on understanding and responding to online harassment.

Our first two papers sought to understand the experience of online harassment: what does it do? how do women cope with it? what supports do they use to respond to it?

These two papers are available below.

Veletsianos, G., Houlden, S., Hodson, J., Gosse, C. (2018). Women Scholars’ Experiences with Online Harassment and Abuse: Self-protection, Resistance, Acceptance, and Self-Blame. New Media & Society, 20(12), 4689-4708. [PDF Preprint]

Abstract: Although scholars increasingly use online platforms for public, digital, and networked scholarship, the research examining their experiences of harassment and abuse online is scant. In this study, we interviewed 14 women scholars who experienced online harassment in order to understand how they coped with this phenomenon. We found that scholars engaged in reactive, anticipatory, preventive, and proactive coping strategies. In particular, scholars engaged in strategies aimed at self-protection and resistance, while often responding to harassment by acceptance and self-blame. These findings have important implications for practice and research, including practical recommendations for personal, institutional, and platform responses to harassment, as well as scholarly recommendations for future research into scholars’ experiences of harassment.

Hodson, J., Gosse, C., Veletsianos, G., Houlden, S. (2018). I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends: The Ecological Model and Support for Women Scholars Experiencing Online Harassment. First Monday, 23(8). doi: https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v23i8.9136

Abstract: This article contributes to understanding the phenomenon of online abuse and harassment toward women scholars. We draw on data collected from 14 interviews with women scholars from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and report on the types of supports they sought during and after their experience with online abuse and harassment. We found that women scholars rely on three levels of support: the first level includes personal and social support (such as encouragement from friends and family and outsourcing comment reading to others); the second includes organizational (such as university or institutional policy), technological (such as reporting tools on Twitter or Facebook), and sectoral (such as law enforcement) support; and, the third includes larger cultural and social attitudes and discourses (such as attitudes around gendered harassment and perceptions of the online/offline divide). While participants relied on social and personal support most frequently, they commonly reported relying on multiple supports across all three levels. We use an ecological model as our framework to demonstrate how different types of support are interconnected, and recommend that support for targets of online abuse must integrate aspects of all three levels.

Three new Tier 2 Canada Research Chair postings

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On January 15, 2019

In scholarship

Won’t you be my colleague? Royal Roads University has posted three new Tier 2 Canada Research Chairs. Please consider applying or sharing them with interested colleagues:

Indigenous Justice
Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation and the Future of Business
Digital Communication in the Public Interest

 

Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences Dec 2018 – June 2019

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On January 4, 2019

In sharing

Clayton Wright has once again provided the educational technology community with an updated (extensive) list of educational technology conferences for the upcoming 6 months. Download a pdf of the list below.

[pdf-embedder url=”https://www.veletsianos.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/EducationalTechnologyEduConferences-40.pdf”]

Searchable directories relevant to educational technology

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On December 12, 2018

In online learning, open, sharing

Contact North | Contact Nord keeps a number of non-exhaustive searchable directories relevant to educational technology leaders, practitioners, and researchers that are really useful, especially because they can be downloaded in csv format. Below are links to the ones I could find on their website:

Searchable Directories of...

115+ Canadian Researchers in Online, Blended and Distance Education

Teaching and Learning Centres across Canada

65+ Open Universities Worldwide

Online, Open & Distance Learning Associations and Consortia Worldwide

110+ EdTech Start-Ups

3,200+ Vendors of Online Learning Products and Services Worldwide

Selected Journals in Online and Distance Learning

ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2018

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On November 1, 2018

In scholarship, sharing

Last week, EDUCAUSE released its 2018 study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. I served as a subject-matter expert on this project and I’m excited to see the report appear in public. The EDUCAUSE team did a fantastic job on this. The sections entitled Experiences with Instructors and Technology and A Day in the Online Life of a Student are really interesting, the former for its highlighting that banning technology in the classroom is an equity issue and the latter for providing a glimpse into students’ self-reported online activities.

The key findings are provided below, drawn directly from the report:

  • Practically all college and university students have access to the most important technologies for their academic success. US students reported near-universal access to a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, with no systematic differences in access based on ethnicity, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. However, students reported low levels of access to newer, more expensive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets and 3D printers.
  • While laptops, hybrids, desktops, and smartphones continue to be rated as very to extremely important to student success, the importance of these devices differs considerably by student demographics. Generally, women, students of color, students with disabilities, first-generation students, students who are independent (with or without dependents of their own), and students who come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds see their devices as significantly more important to their success than do their counterparts. White students are significantly less likely than non-white students to think desktops, tablets, and smartphones are important to their success.
  • Students’ overall technology experiences continue to be correlated with their evaluation of campus Wi-Fi reliability and ease of login.Students’ evaluation of campus Wi-Fi in various locations has remained largely flat in recent years, but significant gaps remain in terms of the quality of connectivity in dormitories/student housing and outdoor spaces, as well as ease of network login.
  • LMS use remains prevalent across higher education institutions, with continued high rates of use and student satisfaction. Three-quarters of all students reported being either satisfied or very satisfied with their institution’s LMS, and more than three-quarters of students reported their LMS was used for most or all of their courses. This likely reflects satisfaction primarily with the functional aspects of their institution’s LMS.
  • A majority of students continue to express preferences for learning environments that fall somewhere on the “blended” continuum (from mostly face-to-face to mostly online). While a plurality (38%) of students prefer fully face-to-face classroom environments, students who have taken some fully online courses are significantly more likely to prefer blended environments and less likely to prefer purely face-to-face courses.
  • Although a majority of students said their instructors use technology to enhance their pedagogy, improve communication, and carry out course tasks, there are limitations when it comes to personal device use. Instructors encourage students to use their laptops more than smartphones, but nearly a third of students are not encouraged to use their own devices as learning tools in class, suggesting that many students take courses in which faculty discourage or ban the in-class use of students’ technology.
  • Nearly three-quarters of students (72%) who live off campus reported their internet connections at their home/off-campus residence are either good or excellent, and only 2% reported having no internet access at home. Students who live off campus have a stronger preference for online and blended courses than do their on-campus counterparts. This preference may reflect how online learning can benefit those who need to juggle work schedules and family responsibilities.
  • The typical student is fairly serious about doing the work of being a student, spending 1 to 4 hours per day online doing homework and conducting research. Contrary to popular belief, students do not appear to spend most of their time using social media, watching TV, or playing video games. Indeed, the typical student spends 1 to 2 hours on social media and another 1 to 2 hours streaming video; more than half of students reported that they do not play video games.
  • A plurality of students who self-identify as having a physical and/or learning disability requiring accessible or adaptive technologies for their coursework rated their institution’s awareness of their needs as poor. According to students, larger and DR public institutions tend to have poorer awareness of disabled students’ needs than do smaller and AA institutions. In addition to institutional limitations, students’ fears of being stigmatized or penalized for disclosing their disabilities and engaging disability services to receive the aid they need may be contributing to low rates of awareness.
  • Students continue to view student success tools as at least moderately useful. Students view success tools that help with transactional tasks related to the work of being students (e.g., conducting business, tracking credits, planning degrees, conducting degree audits) as slightly more useful than those that help them academically (e.g., early-alert systems, academic resources, course recommendations, improvement of academic performance).
Joseph D. Galanek, Dana C. Gierdowski, and D. Christopher Brooks. ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2018. Research report. Louisville, CO: ECAR, October 2018.

CFP: Lifelong learning ecologies

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On October 13, 2018

In cfp

Call for Papers: Lifelong Learning Ecologies

Call for papers for a Special Section of The British Journal of Educational Technology
“Lifelong learning Ecologies: linking formal and informal contexts of learning in the digital era”.

Guest Editors

  • Dr Albert Sangrá*Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
  • Dr Juliana E. Raffaghelli, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
  • Dr. George Veletsianos, School of Education and Technology, Royal Roads University, Canada
  • Dr. Mercedes González-Sanmamed, Department of Pedagogy & Didactics, Universidade da Coruña, Spain

*Corresponding Guest Editor: asangra@uoc.edu

Overview

The last two decades encompassed the outgrowth of several concepts that attempted to underpin the phenomena of learning in and with the digital. The case of ubiquitous learning (Virtanen, Haavisto, Liikanen, & Kääriäinen, 2018) seamless learning (Wong & Looi, 2011), expanded contexts of learning and personal learning environments (Attwell, 2007; Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012) all dealt with forms of learning that a) use the affordances of technology b) go beyond a single context, and c) are personalized and self-directed. Moreover, when social networks entered into the scene, the idea of a personal learning network that is managed by the learner across formal and informal spaces was exacerbated (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012; Manca & Ranieri, 2013). The more recent technological advances, like augmented reality, intelligent tutoring systems, data-driven education based in facial recognition and interactions with the students’ mobile devices in classrooms, to mention but a few, have expanded the digital from the realm of the screen to the physical world, generating new forms of continuity (Adams Becker, Cummins, Davis, Freeman, & Hall Giesinger, C. Ananthanarayanan, 2017). However, the conceptualization of these phenomena seems to be fragmented.

This proposal explores the concept of “Lifelong Learning Ecologies” as a potential construct to address educational interventions and applications supporting new hybrid forms of learning. The central assumption behind the concept relates the connections that the learner can discover between contexts, resources, activities and relationships in a continuum from formal to informal learning, from on site to online experiences. The concept is not new in the field of educational psychology (see for example Bronfenbrenner’s work, 1979) but it has been adopted in highly diversified ways since the middle 2000’s. New empirical and theoretical research addressing this construct could provide an upgraded framework of analysis to understand how the single individual selects, experiences, and proactively promotes activities and relationships into and beyond the digital context, in order to generate opportunities to learn.

This special issue aims at introducing empirical research studies contributing to a) consolidating a definition of “learning ecologies for lifelong learning” as a conceptual framework to observe and analyse the continuum from formal to informal learning experiences across hybrid contexts of learning and along personal timelines; b) introducing new methodological approaches that include new learning phenomena in and with the digital, as well as connected research methods such as public internet data mining methods, quantitative ethnographies and data-driven approaches; c) exploring the applicative potential along innovations based on the concept, like learning recognition tools and methods based on acknowledging learners’ achievement based on ecological arrangements.

Research methodologies should be clearly, but concisely presented and show rigour. All papers should clearly describe the underlying theoretical and conceptual framework that is connected with the concept of learning ecologies. Moreover, we invite the authors to cover issues relevant to an international audience.

Submission and Inquiries
We therefore invite submissions concerning the application of the construct of lifelong learning ecologies to support innovative forms of learning, with learning understood very broadly. The authors must submit a full paper. Therefore, the manuscripts need to demonstrate that the paperfits the special section remit, has a rigorous methodology, is innovative, makes a significant contribution to the field and is relevant to an international audience. Full papers will undergo the standard reviewing process. Therefore, invitation to submit a full paper is just that and should not be taken as indication that the final paper will be accepted.

Authors who are unsure whether their work is suitable for the special issue should submit an abstract with a query to the guest editors well in advance of the deadline.

Abstracts should be clearly and concisely written and generally include the following:
• An introduction of one or two sentences stating the research aims and educational context; e.g. undergraduate; high school; pre-school, all levels etc.
• For empirical reports, a brief summary of the data collection methodology.
• A summary of the outcomes and an indication of their strength and significance
• Concise conclusions and implications in two or three sentences. What new insights does this research provide? What is its unique and significant contribution to the field? How is it relevant for a diverse international audience?

Important Dates

Abstract submission for queries to the guest editors: 20th October 2018
Full paper submission: 10th December 2018
Last Article Acceptances: 30th April 2019
Articles published online as soon as copyediting is completed.
Issue Publication July 2019.

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