Published: Designing a Mobile and Socially Networked Learning Assistant for a University-level Keyword Advertising Course

Another published outcome to a TLT Faculty Fellowship! I love that nearly all of the Fellowships I was involved with at PSU has yielded scholarship.

Abstract

An Internet-based learning assistant leveraging the social attribute features of mobile technology is designed and implemented to incorporate updating course content of an upper-level college technology advertising course in real-time. The mobile application offers an online collaborative environment utilizing the inherent social and location-independent features of mobile technology to improve the teaching and learning environment. The application was implemented in a university-level keyword advertising course and integrated with several course-related web tools, including an enterprise-level social network. Aspects of the effectiveness of the application were evaluated using a series of five hypotheses. The results supported three hypotheses testing the relationship between gender and application use, the variations among tool choices, and the identification of frequently used tools. The two hypotheses not supported were the preference of the mobile application and the use of the social network software as standalone services, as most students desired that the social network service be integrated with an existing, university-level, content management system. Research results indicate that the integration of a mobile application with an existing content management system would be beneficial for increased student engagement with course content, which the university has since implemented.

Murkherjee, P., Kozlek, B., Jansen, B., Gyorke, A., & Camplese, C. (2014). Designing a Mobile and Socially Networked Learning Assistant for a University-level Keyword Advertising Course. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(3), 351-373. Retrieved December 22, 2014, from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no3/Mukherjee_0914.pdf

More on Horizontal Contributions as Conversations

I should know better than to post more about this concept given the lack of interest (perhaps my lack of clarity) in my previous piece on it, but I am really interested in generating conversations about it. My friend and colleague, Brad Kozlek, has been working with Intense Debate on his blog showing what it looks like from an end user perspective … Brad does an excellent job of discussing the affordances of this specific tool offers. I think the idea that it is a service unto itself allows it to do so much more than simply handle standard text comments … to me that is exciting in light of at least two of our faculty fellows this summer. If you are interested in what a third party commenting engine can provide jump over and take a look at it in action at my PSU blog.

One of our Fellows, Chris Long, is exploring the notion of “digital dialogues” to start to understand if the platforms of the web 2.0 world can support ongoing dialogue with deeper meaning. From Chris’ post at the TLT Faculty Fellow site describing his investigations …

In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates claims to be one of the only Athenians to practice the true art of politics. As is well known, Socrates haunted the public places in Athens looking for young people with whom he could converse. During these discussions, Socrates was intent on turning the attention of those he encountered toward the question of the good and the just. It is difficult to understate the lasting political power these dialogues have had over the course of time. Yet the emergence of social Web 2.0 technologies opens new possibilities for this ancient practice of politics, which Socrates fittingly called in the Gorgias, a “techne,” or art.

When we started exploring the notion of using an external commenting engine to support some of the work Carla Zembaul-Saul wanted to think about this summer, we instantly saw these new affordances giving Chris new ways to explore his thinking — commenting inline via video is a huge step forward in our minds to relate to his work.

While this interesting itself, the thing I was really interested in was not what you saw when you arrived at a given blog, it was what it looked like from a personal administrative side … I was interested in being able to think about how what my (or students’) contributions look like across the social web. We post and comment traditionally in a vertical fashion, while what we need is an easy way to track those contributions once we leave the vertical. So if lots of people, perhaps across the PSU blog service, could use a a service that keeps track of our horizontal conversations something really exciting could emerge. Something that would let us look at all of these horizontal contributions with ties to the original context. Since it is a service on its own, it has a set of dashboard tools that pulls it all together — people you are following, certain keywords emerge, your own comments, links to the original posts, and more. This is the side of it that makes me really hopeful.

Horizontal Memory

Horizontal Memory

If we can make this happen the way we are thinking about it we can empower some new uses for our platform. Chris gets his ability to engage people where they are in multiple mediums and Carla gets a way to use comments as measurable artifacts. I gain the ability to introduce this to my friend, Keith Bailey, in the College of Arts and Architecture as a viable platform to teach art appreciation — in that world, the idea of the critique is as important as the original contribution. So having an easy way for a faculty member to track contributions across many posts as a way to review and reflect on a given student’s growth in the critique space is now very easy. If we can work to understand how to capture and pack up a single person’s comments across lots of posts I think we are moving towards giving them more to reflect on and faculty a better set of evidence to base assessment on. At least I think so … any thoughts?

Summer Thinking

Starting this week, three of our four TLT Faculty Fellows will be in residence! I am hopeful that this summer will prove as amazing as last year’s experiences when we hosted Carla Zembal-Saul. Given the people we have coming to hang out with us in ETS this summer, I am guessing it will probably live up to the recent past. Late last week we got the TLT Fellows site up and running and I am hoping to see lots of contributions from the teams we’ve placed around Chris, Ellysa, Carla, and Stuart. Everyone seems psyched as we get ready to spend a few months pushing our ideas in new directions. Summer rocks for so many reasons, but the addition of the TLT Fellows is one thing that I can point to at work as a prime summertime example! So stop by the site, take a look, and let me know what you think … the projects all look killer as well.