The Power of Tweaks and Nudges

Some recent articles talk about small tweaks or nudges that can motivate people to engage in activities. As we enter the second half of the semester, some students are falling behind or forgetting to do assignments. It may be time to increase the tweaks and nudges.

My own experience with hybrid classes reminded me that students lead very busy lives and don't always read the syllabus, course calendar or moodle shell. I found that even though I had given all the dates for the  assignments and I wanted them to be independent learners, that they did not always do assignments on time. I then started to send short reminder emails (using the moodle news forum), trying to be positive and motivational and discovered that the submission of assignments in a timely manner seemed to increase.

When discussing this with students they felt that the reminders were helpful in keeping them on track and made them feel that I really cared about them and their success. This was especially true when the tweaks or nudges had some positive content (ie. After our discussion in class, I look forward to reading your papers) rather than simply a reminder message.

This strategy also worked in classes that meet on a weekly basis. Why not give it a try?

Here are two recent New York Times articles that talk about the the good, the bad and the ugly of tweaks and nudges.

A Better Government, One Tweak at a Time

The Power of Nudges, for Good and Bad

Free Online Texts with Boundless

For the Spring semester, I worked with Boundless (http://boundless.com) to create a FREE, online text for the HS6 Systems "Social, Political & Economic Dimensions of Community" course. This course currently uses three text books, two online and one paperbound. One of the online texts had been a free open source text from Flatworld Knowledge, for which they are now charging $19.99 or $34.99, depending on the package of tools the student purchases. I am not sure how students who receive book vouchers can purchase these resources.

Boundless uses open source material (including wikipedia) which it curates using experts (many of whom are graduate and doctoral students) to ensure the accuracy of the content. Usually a student goes to them, tells them the text assigned by the faculty and receives a customized boundless book that covers the same content. Many standardized texts are in their system. In this case, I went to boundless with the three texts for this course and the course outline. With a staff person from boundless, I looked through their content in political science, sociology and economics and indicated the text that I needed and they placed it in a easily accessible online packet, that matches the course outline, for the students. If you want to look at it go to: https://www.boundless.com/schools/metropolitan-college-of-new-york/courses/social-political-and-economic-dynamics-of-communities/. You will have to set up a free account. Students will also be able to highlight, take notes, create study guides.

While it currently is designed to work only online, I have discovered that on a mac I can print to pdf to get pages in printed form. I have also recommended to boundless staff that they develop a means of downloading so that students can read when offline. Some of the student tools can be mailed to them as pdf files.

Some more traditional courses may be able to use Boundless content out of the box. You can check out the subjects and content available on the educators page: https://www.boundless.com/educators/.

Now I have to go and update the syllabus and the moodle shell for Monday's class.

I will be soliciting feedback from students throughout the semester about their use of this tool and would like to hear from others about their experience with this tool.

(Please note, this content was previously sent as an email to faculty and administrators on 1/5/13)

Finding Online Videos

I  have been collecting a list of resources for locating on-line videos that can be used in class or viewed by students outside of class.  On-line films/videos can also serve as the basis of an on-line class when in-person classes have been canceled because of weather, rescheduled around holidays, or the professor is unavailable in-person. Links to the video can be placed in the learning management system (moodle) or embedded in the discussion forum, with discussion topics or questions. I always have one or two video assignments available on moodle just in case I need them. 

Educational Video and Documentaries

• MCNY Films on Demand Database 
• A.Weiner - Documentary Films - Society and Human Services
• TED Talks  (and TED ED lets you turn videos in lessons)
• Khan Academy
• TopDocumentaryFilms.com
• Hulu.com (also general release TV and film)
• FORA.tv (conference and event video from around the world)
• MediaStorm 
• Green Card Stories - Filmography -Documentaries and Dramas 
• SNAG Learning Films 
• The Society Pages - TSP Teaching - Video Archive 
• FreeDocumentaries.org 

News (All the major TV and cable news networks have on-line video resources)

• NY Times Video
• Washington Post Video
• Wall Street Journal Live
  
• CNN Video
• TIME Featured Videos
• Newsweek/Daily Beast Videos

Broadcast Television

• PBS Video 
• Discovery Channel Video
• National Geographic Video 
• History Channel Video
• Smithsonian Channel

Internet Videos  

• YouTube 
• Google Videos (Video Search Engine)

Miro is a free open-source video and music player. There is also a Miro Video Converter, a simple way to convert almost any video to MP4, WebM (vp8), Ogg Theora, or for Android, iPhone, and more.

This is not an exhaustive list of all the resources available. Please feel free to share your video resources.

Resources for Teaching with Technology

Reposted from an email sent to all MCNY faculty on 5/8/12.

A couple of summers ago I developed a Faculty Development Workshop on creativity to help faculty incorporate online resources into their classes and Moodle shells. As we move forward with our Strategic Plan and our efforts to provide significant course content online, this becomes more important.

At that time I collected a list of web resources that could be used across the MCNY curriculum and placed them in a Moodle shell that was available to all the workshop participants. I still use many of these resources and have added others over the years. Of course some of them have morphed into something different than they were, totally disappeared, or been replaced. New ones have been developed. But I keep finding myself going back to that old Moodle shell to find something.

So I thought about updating this resource list to make it more accessible and since I wanted to try out my new Pinterest account (the fastest growing new social media network), I set up a Pinterest board on "Resources for Teaching with Technology". Piniterest boards are like bulletin boards where you can "pin" pictures from all over the web and add some descriptive text. When a visitor clicks on the picture, they are taken to the original source of the picture. I have also set up some other boards that can be used in my teaching ("Human Services Interest Board", "Documentary Films - Society and Human Services" and "Books Worth Reading"). The film and book boards are in response to questions that students often ask about seeing additional films or recommendations for books.

Please feel free to check out the Resources for Teaching with Technology board at: http://pinterest.com/draweiner/resources-for-teaching-with-technology/.

You can like items, "repin" them to your own boards, follow a board, or write comments. I would be interested in hearing about the creative ways you are using some of these resources. Please let me know about other resources you find useful. Unfortunately not every resource can be pined since some of the web sites do no have usable photographs, which is the main element of a pin. Groups can develop boards since the owner of a board can add others who also have the ability to pin to that board.

We can also talk about how to use Pinterest itself as a teaching tool. Happy pinning.

Are You Tired of Powerpoint?

PowerPoint is a necessary evil for teaching in a technology enabled classroom. And if you don't believe me, read Tufte. E. (2009). PowerPoint Is Evil. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html) Ever since Adobe Persuasion was discontinued I have been forced to use Powerpoint. I have even tried using Pages on my Macintosh and iPad. 

For the last couple of years, I have been making Quicktime videos of my lecture slides and placing them in the Blackboard or Moodle shell so that students can review them. I am often asked why don't I just create handouts. I don't for several reasons. I believe that....

• students are responsible for their own learning.
• the ability to identify and conceptualize is important for students to develop and a tool for doing this is note taking
• active learning involves "activity" such as writing notes, hi-lighting, typing, etc.

Students are able to stop and review slides as many times as they want. And in fact this makes for more interesting interaction in the classroom, since students are not trying to be human xerox machines, copying every word on every slide. Many no longer take notes in class and are fully engaged in listening and discussing.

But it is a long process to make the original PowerPoint slides, turn them into Quicktime videos and upload them to Moodle. Every time I make a change in a slide set used in class, I have to make a new movie, remove the old file from Moodle, and upload the new file, and then make sure that it works.

So what if some presentation software came along that was could be edited online so that you only need to place a link or embed it in a Moodle shell. Well it does exist, meet Prezi (http://prezi.com/).  If I make a change in my Prezi slides, all I have to do is save it in my Prezi account. (Which it does automatically while I am editing.) When the student clicks on the link or the embeded Prezi, they see the most recent version. No need to upload, download or redo movies. Not only that I can import my large collection of PowerPoint slides into Prezi, which also easily imports resources such as images and videos from the web. Prezi also allows collaboration through shared editing so that students could work on a presentation together. Purpose Faculty might jointly create a Prezi that could be used by all.

And best of all, it is free to students and faculty with .edu email accounts. Prezi also has an iPad app. It is easy to learn and comes with some very suitable templates. A full series of tutorials and cheat sheets can be found at http://prezi.com/learn/.

I gave my Purpose 8  Constructive Action students the opportunity to use Prezi instead of PowerPoint for their final in-class presentations and the Prezi presentations did seem more interesting and dynamic. Prezi also has the potential of allowing students to make online presentations without the difficultly of creating, uploading and downloading slide shows. All they have to do is post their link or embed their Prezi into a Moodle forum and the other members of the class can review the presentation and comment.

To learn more about Prezi...

Prezi Zooms to 10 Million on Prezi

Now my old PowerPoint remote does not work with Prezi so I have to go out and get a new remote mouse if I want to use Prezi in my class and not be tethered to the mouse on the computer. But is seems a small price to pay.

Have You Discovered TED?

I have been using TED Talks Videos in many of my classes (http://www.ted.com/talks). Many are short and can easily be used as discussion starters and to encourage reflective thinking. The tagline for TED is "Ideas Worth Spreading".

Now they have a new resource for teachers, TED ED (http://ed.ted.com/), Lessons Worth Sharing.  They developed some pre-made lessons, using animators and the TED Talks Videos that can easily be linked or embedded into Moodle. Lessons come with a video, quick quiz, thinking questions and additional resources.

But it gets better, faculty can "flip" the lessons to individualize them for their classes. To Learn more about flipping a video got to http://ed.ted.com/about#/flipthisvideo.

This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED's, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student.

Try it out. I think we might be able to create some interesting transdisciplinary lessons that we can share and used in support of our unique PCE curriculum.