George Veletsianos, PhD

Last month we invited applications from and provided funding to advanced doctoral students and early-career researchers to conduct research with our research group. Michael Paskevicius received one of these awards and we are supporting him in his endeavour to make sense of the discourse around openness and open education. You can read more about this project on his website. One of the steps involved in this process is identifying Twitter hashtags that are related to openness and open education. Below are the hashtags that we have so far. We would love your help. Do you know of any other hashtags used in the context of openness or open education? If so, could you please add them to this shared spreadsheet?

Once we have a list to start with, we’ll search tweets tagged with those hashtags for co-occcurring hashtags, and we’ll add those below as well.

Complexity, Mess, and Not-yetness: Teaching Online with Emerging Technologies

By George Veletsianos

On June 14, 2016

In sharing

What follows is a summary of one of the chapters included in Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications.

Digital learning is messy and complex. Yet, it’s often portrayed as a solution to the perils facing educational systems or as a cause of those problems. Ross and Collier call for a recognition of the messiness of digital learning. As emerging technologies and practices practices are not yet fully understood or researched, these authors provide a compass to help readers make sense of digital learning environments and their design. They argue that in designing digital learning we

should avoid emulating established practices,
could gain fruitful knowledge about the instructor’s role if consider the online instructors’ body, and
should consider how calls for accountability and data science are unsatisfactory for modern educational systems

Ross, J., & Collier, A. (2016). Complexity, Mess, and Not-yetness: Teaching Online with Emerging Technologies. In G. Veletsianos (Ed.), Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications (pp. 17-33). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

The Defining Characteristics of Emerging Technologies and Emerging Practices

By George Veletsianos

On June 13, 2016

In sharing

What follows is a summary of one of the chapters included in Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications.

The terms “emerging technologies” and “emerging practices ”are catch-all phrases that are often misused and haphazardly defined. This chapter defines those two terms. It argues that what makes technologies and practices emerging are not specific technologies (e.g., virtual reality) or practices (e.g., openness), but the environments in which particular technologies or practices operate. It is argued that emerging technologies and emerging practices share four characteristics:

not defined by newness;
coming into being;
not-yet fully understood or researched (i.e. not-yetness); and
unfulfilled but promising potential.

Veletsianos, G. (2016). Defining Characteristics of Emerging Technologies and Emerging Practices. In G. Veletsianos (Ed.), Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications (pp. 3-16). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

New Open Access Book! Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning

By George Veletsianos

On June 6, 2016

In emerging technologies, my research, online learning, open, sharing

emergencecover Athabasca University Press has just published Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning, a book I edited that owes its existence to the insightful authors who contributed their chapters on the topic. Like other titles published by AU Press, the book is open access.

Emerging technologies (e.g., social media, serious games, adaptive software) and emerging practices (e.g., openness, user modeling) in particular, have been heralded as providing opportunities to transform education, learning, and teaching. In such conversations it is often suggested that new ideas – whether technologies or practices – will address educational problems (e.g., open textbooks may make college more affordable) or provide opportunities to rethink the ways that education is organized and enacted (e.g., the collection and analysis of big data may enable designers to develop algorithms that provide early and critical feedback to at-risk students). Yet, our understanding of emerging technologies and emerging practices is elusive. In this book, we amalgamate work associated with emergence in digital education to conceptualize, design, critique, enhance, and better understand education.

If you’ve ben following the conversations in the last two years, there will be some themes that you’ll recognize here. To mention a few: defining emerging technologies; not-yetness; data mining; technology integration models; open and social learning; and sociocultural aspects of MOOCs.

In the days that follow, I will summarize each chapter here.

How long does it take from journal article submission to publication?

By George Veletsianos

On June 1, 2016

In scholarship, sharing

One of our research papers was published in its final form this morning. Since I had yet another conversation about the publishing industry at Congress yesterday and I keep track of dates, below are the behind-the-scenes details for this particular paper.

Submission: Aug 1, 2015

Minor revisions requested: Nov 6, 2015

Revision submitted: Nov 13, 2015

Minor revisions requested: Feb 10, 2016

Revision submitted: Feb 10, 2016

Accepted: Feb 13, 2016

Unedited article (uncorrected proofs) appears online: Feb 15, 2016

In Press version of the article appears online: Feb 23, 2016

Final version of the article – assigned to a journal issue/volume: June 1, 2016

I know (and have experienced) papers taking much longer (and much shorter) to publish. So, four words of caution are probably needed here:

This n of 1 may or may not to be representative of this journal. I had other papers in this journal published under different time horizons.
This paper is in a non Open Access (NOA) journal.Do no take this n of 1 to mean that Open Access (OA) publishers will necessarily publish a paper faster. I’ve had a paper accepted as is with a reputable OA publisher and the whole process took 2 months. I also have a paper with an OA publisher under review that is taking forever.
It might be worthwhile to explore what the differences are beyond OA vs NOA. Reviewer turn-around time is a significant variable in this process.
The paper was published in a journal concerned with education and specifically educational/learning technologies.

Digital Learning and Social Media Research Funding for PhD students and very early career researchers

By George Veletsianos

On May 2, 2016

In my research, Royal Roads University, scholarship

Digital Learning and Social Media Research Funding

May 3 Update: A note on eligibility

If you don’t fulfil the requirements for this call (e.g., you don’t hold a valid emlpoyment visa for Canada or are a later-career scholar), but are still interested in collaborating with us, we would still love to hear from you. Please head over to the form available on the opportunities & collaboration page of our website.

Description of Opportunity

The Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University invites applications from advanced doctoral students (i.e. those who completed their graduate coursework) and post-doctoral associates to conduct research with the D igital Learning and Social Media Research Group.

Funding for five (5) research opportunities are available.

The D igital Learning and Social Media Research Group is an international and interdiciplinary team of researchers investigating the ways that social media and other emerging technologies are used in learning, teaching, scholarship, and institutional settings. The group is led by Dr. George Veletsianos (Canada Research Chair & Associate Professor, Royal Roads University) and Dr. Royce Kimmons (Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University). The Digital Learning and Social Media Research Group executes the CRC’s program of research.

Aims

The research funding opportunities aim to involve applicants in the scholarly endeavors of the research group and thus provide experiential mentoring focused on supporting the students’ or post docs’ scholarly and professional development. With a mentor, each student or post doc will co-plan, execute, and submit for publication a research study. The outcome of each research opportunity will be the publication of one (1) peer-reviewed paper.

Funding is available for research that focuses on one or more of the following areas: networked scholarship, social media use in education, digital/online learning, open learning, emerging technologies, learning analytics, social network analysis, or educational data mining.

Deadlines

Potential researchers should submit their application materials by May 16, 2016.

Start date is around June 6^th

Deliverables

Submission of a co-authored research study to a peer-reviewed journal.

Duration

Research opportunities are expected to last anywhere from 3 to 5 months

Requirements

Advanced doctoral student status (usually in the 3^rd or 4^th year of their studies) OR post doctoral status having completed a graduate degree (PhD/EdD) within the last 3 years.
Enrolment in or having attained a graduate degree (PhD/EdD) in education, educational technology, learning technologies, learning sciences, curriculum and instruction, cognitive science, or other related field.
Individuals must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada, or must hold a valid employment visa or work permit issued by the Government of Canada.

To be well-suited for this opportunity, individuals must have excellent organizational abilities, analytic skills, and be familiar with methodologies involving the analysis of quantitative or qualitative data.

Application Process

Interested applicants are invited to submit the following materials to Dr. George Veletsianos (george.veletsianos *at* royalroads.ca) by May 16, 2016:

Curriculum Vitae (CV)
A single-authored paper (class papers are acceptable)
An expression of interest or research proposal (not to exceed 2 single-spaced pages) that includes the following:
- Description of a research project that the applicant wishes to complete under the auspices of the research group (This description should include at least 2-3 research questions of interest and a proposed methodology)
- Description of experiences analyzing quantitative or qualitative data

Applications will be evaluated by an academic panel.

Though the research group is interested in any proposal examining digital learning and social media use in higher education, we are especially interested in proposals focusing on analyzing large-scale datasets such as those gathered from public sources (e.g., Twitter, university websites, and others). The research group has expertise in this area and can collect, structure, and organize data necessary for such endeavors. Thus, we welcome applications from those with and without technical expertise. Past studies conducted in this context include the following:

Research question	Data sources
How do students and professors use Twitter?	~600K tweets from ~400 Twitter profiles
What narratives do institutional Twitter acccounts construct for students and faculty?	Images posted by public Canadian Universities on Twitter
How well do institutional websites meet mandated accessibility requirements?	~3,000 U.S. university homepages

For examples of research studies in this area conducted by the research group, please refer to:

Compensation

$2,000 CAD upon submission of the study to a journal to reimburse the student or post doc for their time working on

Listening to learners to improve access, equity, their experiences, and education overall

By George Veletsianos

On April 29, 2016

In emerging technologies, learner experience, moocs, my research, online learning, open

Over the last year or so, we’ve interviewed more than 200 individuals who have participated in a number of open courses. We are working on a project in which we are using learner narratives and vignettes from these interviews to help administrators, faculty, researchers, and learning designers understand learners and improve their learning experience. Though there are many ways that are used to understand learners (e.g., dashboards) we believe that in-depth vignettes of typical experiences may allow for greater sensitivity of the learners’ lifeworld and realities. We will be using these stories to problematize various aspects of digital learning. Each story will be followed by a longer analysis of the issues raised in the story. For now, below is one such (DRAFT!) story. What do you think? Is there anything else that you’d like to see in this narrative? Is it interesting? If you are an administrator, faculty, researcher, or learning designer, does this story add anything valuable?

Title: Why not?

Theme: Open learning opportunities are oftentimes costless and relatively risk-free.

Mary and her demanding Pomeranian, Kylie, live deep in the heart of Texas. “I have a passion for the law!” the thirty-year-old exclaimed when we called her on her landline. She had seriously considered going to law school and had even passed her LSATS, the law school entrance exams used for US Universities. But having just finished four intense years of a bachelor’s degree, she decided to wait a bit. “Law school just didn’t seem like a good choice at the time,” she reflected. Five years later, Mary has settled into her work as a business consultant. Her interest in the law is still keen, and she’s never completely given up the dream of law school, but it’s been tempered with a bit of realism. “I don’t know if I can afford to spend another three years in the classroom,” she confided to us, “I don’t know if I still have the same passion for the legal industry as I did five years ago.”

During an afternoon enjoying frozen mango margaritas with a friend, trying to cope with the scorching sun, Mary learned about MOOCs. Shortly thereafter, she signed up for a number of courses, dabbling in some and promptly forgetting about others. One day, ContractsX, a course on contract law taught by a Harvard professor, popped up on her screen and she decided to “give it a shot”. What had she got to lose? “It’s a free class, taught at one of the more well-respected institutions. Why not?!” she laughed.

The course was flexible and fit into her busy life. On Saturday mornings she would sit in her office, with Kylie by her side and a warm cup of dark roast coffee in her hand, and use her trusted iPad to watch Harvard Law lectures. These weren’t just any lectures. Professor Fried was a masterful storyteller, a king of his trade. It was through these short, interesting, and memorable stories that Professor Fried taught concepts relating to contract law. “I can’t believe that I’m sitting here, I’m learning this material from Harvard law!” The fast pace and cramped content made the course challenging, Mary acknowledged, and she didn’t always do as well as she would have liked on the course tests. But, as she was able to go back to review the answers and re-watch the videos, this didn’t stress her too much, and she ended up passing the course with flying colours. Proud of her certificate of accomplishment, Mary enthused, “It makes me want to keep coming back for more!”

Even though it was a personal interest in the law that led her to sign up for this course, Mary has found what she learned in ContractsX helpful when she has to deal with contracts in her own job. She has enthusiastically recommended the course to co-workers and friends. She’s currently taking a number of other open courses and is anxiously awaiting the second version of the Contracts course. While Mary’s dream of attending law school, may not have changed, her confidence in herself has: “I never thought of applying to Harvard. There was no way I would be getting in. But then, five years later, I’m taking a course from Harvard. I wouldn’t say that I’m a Harvard law student, but at least now I could sit across from a Harvard law student and have a clear conversation with them. It’s very rewarding to know that.”