Learning with Technology

Guest Blogger: Uzoma James Chikwem

There is no question that there has been unbelievable technological revolution in recent years that has changed our businesses, governments, travel and pretty much everything but our educational system, which for the most part, is still stuck in the past. There has been a silent but quick mobile apocalypse that have made most smart phone users, especially millennials, become almost like mobile zombies, or social media fiends, that live with an uncontrollable urge to be plugged into their smart phones at all times. In education, we always observe that it gets tougher each year to grab the attention or interest of students due to what’s trending on social media or some new technological announcement like the new iPhone coming out. Even after creating the best PowerPoint presentations or coming up with simple but profound handouts that explains everything about a topic, a majority of students will still be on their phones or passed out during class.  The fact that students have the internet in their palms on a mobile device that has more power and memory than some personal computers, makes them feel like genuine geniuses. Students can find out any answer or solution by asking Siri or Google or get the latest information on certain fields by following pages on social media. I believe this misleading intellectual feeling of being able to know it all by using their second brain, their smart device, is hindering or distracting students from paying attention or wanting to learn anything in the classroom.

With all the technological advances that has happened just in the last year alone, for example the use of Virtual Reality plus Augmented Reality on phones, students often feel like they are in an ancient dungeon when they come to the classroom and all they see are desks, blackboards or whiteboards; even books and smart boards seem old fashioned to them.  When Apple coined the phrase, “There’s an app for that” it literally revolutionized the way everything is done in our day to day lives; instead of reading books we can now just listen to them using audible; if one doesn’t know how to solve a math problem, they can simply take a picture using PhotoMath and it will quickly show the results and steps to solving the problem.  These two simple ideas for apps are making lots of money and made life easier for users but can ruin the fun of learning and the challenge of understanding how to get solutions to a problem. Through critical thinking, analysis, memorization and repeatedly practicing problems anyone can learn any subject or topic by putting time trying to understand it. Even though it seems like a lost cause trying to teach nowadays, I often get praised for how fun my classes are or get to view the excitement of students when they figure out a lab or project. All because I use technology to get students to learn, and if I can do it, we all can.

Since the educational problem we face isn’t just happening at Lincoln University but internationally, computer scientists, web designers and others are teaming up together to try and tackle this huge issue of lost interest in learning and education. There are tons of resources out there to assist in getting the interest of students in different topics. I would like to help by listing some programs and websites I use in my courses but would like to hear from faculty or students if there are other sites, apps or anything else they use to grab students’ interest in participating and enjoying the learning process.  First off, I’d like to mention that I am in Computer Science and my focus is Educational Game Technology so I am already at an advantage because most of my labs, projects and tutorials involve use of fun technologies and hands-on learning. Although, I have had a lot of computer science faculty just lecture the whole class and totally lost me because I wasn’t practicing or being hands on with the topic, I have had some great professors, like Professor Barimani, whose style of teaching I try to utilize every time and add my own flavor to it. He made sure that in every class he left room for students to practice what he just taught, then gave feedback plus projects before ending the class.  When using technology for teaching, just don’t throw it at students and expect them to pick it up easily; one should always give a tutorial or workshop on how it works, what you expect them to accomplish; guide them by giving requirements, labs and more and make sure they know it’ll be part of their final grade to complete plus participate.

Here’s a list of apps and website that can help students to Learn through Technology:

Name	Link 1	Link 2
Moodle rooms	Android Link	Apple Link
Khan Academy	Students	Faculty
Google Classrooms	Android Link	Apple Link
Kahoot	Android Link	Apple Link
Quizlet	Android Link	Apple Link
Prezi	Website	Mobile
Ted-ed	Website	Lessons
Science360	Android Link	Apple Link
Google Hangout	Android Link	Apple Link

Please research the names on the list, click on the links, download the apps and in Part 2, I will describe in more detail how to use them in classes.  Also, please leave a comment on how you utilize technology in your courses and any other tips you might have of grabbing student’s attention.

That 0ngoing Textbook Problem

A common complaint heard pretty much any time two faculty get together is, “My students won’t buy the textbook. What do I do?”

Might one possible solution, Professor Pettaway asked in a recent email, be to have all students purchase iPads with their textbooks already loaded?  “Since most faculty complain about students not purchasing text books,” he wrote, “I have long espoused the ideas of all freshmen being required to purchase I Pads for a fee (included in the tuition bill) that would include the text book materials for all first year courses. After the freshman year, this cohort  would pay a textbook fee only for textbooks.  In four years Lincoln’s entire student body would have all textbooks delivered electronically.”

With his permission, I am posting the issue here, along with a link he provided to an article in Inside Higher Ed  about how some other universities are using iPads.

What do you think?  Could something like this work at Lincoln?  Are there other ways (cheaper, lower tech?) to solve the “they won’t buy their textbooks” dilemma? Have you tried anything that works in your classes?

Faculty Attitudes toward Technology

On Thursday I viewed a webinar discussing the results of a recent Inside Higher Ed survey of faculty attitudes on technology; 2075 faculty and 105 administrators had been surveyed.  (If you would like to view the PowerPoint from the webinar or the webinar itself, you'll find it at https://www.insidehighered.com/audio/2015/11/12/2015-survey-faculty-attitudes-technology )

Four issues stood out for me:

1. When asked “Did use of educational technology lead to improved student outcomes?” only 20% of the faculty and 35% of the administrators said outcomes were improved significantly.  Tenured faculty were somewhat more skeptical than non-tenured but most were in the middle, agreeing that technology somewhat improved student outcomes. The majority of both faculty and administrators felt that the cost was worthwhile.

2. However, when asked “Do for-credit online courses achieve outcomes at least equivalent to in-person courses?” only 17% of the faculty said yes, while 62% administrators said yes.  One of the narrators made the point that it might be that the comparison faculty have in their minds is an idealized picture of a small group of interested, motivated, high-achieving students sitting around a seminar table discussing complex issues rather than, for instance, a big lecture hall in an introductory course.

3. With respect to Plagiarism Detection Software (like Turnitin), most faculty liked it.    The moderator, however, was concerned that students often don’t know what plagiarism is and pointed out that this is something teachers need to address and not just have a false sense of security that if students run their papers through the software they will understand the complicated issue of plagiarism.

4. Finally, there was one issue on which everyone agreed: 93% of faculty said textbooks are priced too high, and 92% thought professors should assign more open educational resources.  Here, the moderator pointed out how much time was needed to find and incorporate open educational resources into a class and, more worrisome, how much time is needed to change those resources as times change, serving as a possible disincentive for course improvement.

What do you think?  Any reaction to any of these points with respect to your own attitudes and your classes here at Lincoln?

Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Social Media

Full disclaimer:   I do have a FaceBook page (that I check a couple times a year…) but beyond that I admit that I pretty much limit my web-based communication to email. I’ve never felt compelled to “tweet” anything (which for all I know is now so yesterday, anyway) or use whatever else may be the flavor of the day in the apps world.

This semester, though, one of my students on the first day of class asked if he could collect everyone’s cell phone number to set up a “Group Me” class chat.  A bit reluctantly, I gave my cell phone number and waited to see what would happen.

Not surprisingly, I got a lot of “how u doin” and “boy Im tired” types of messages, ones that I just glanced at and hit Delete.  But gradually I began to see a real purpose.  One obvious use is as a place where a student can ask a general class-related question and I can answer right away, so that others don’t have to ask the same question.  (While I was typing this, a student texted to ask if Moodle was down and I let her and others know that it was fine at Lincoln’s end, while another student suggested a workaround.)   

Perhaps even more importantly, though, I think it’s a motivational tool.  Early this morning I was getting ready to head to campus when one student texted, “Good morning, wonderful people.”  A few class members chimed in with similar greetings.  While I was too busy getting things together so I could get on the road to write anything, I drove to school musing about how nice it was to have students thinking positively about class and classmates first thing in the morning and thinking that it would be an interesting research project to see if class satisfaction and course completion/persistence correlate at all with that sort of casual media use.

Do any of you have examples of constructive use of social media, whether formally for instruction or informally?   While I may be too old to use them, I’m still young enough to be curious!