www.bsu.edu/inqsit/inqsit.cgi/flowers2?510sp2009p1

3. Don't forget about the Individual Project based on the objective you wrote for Assignment 3.1.

3.2. Please submit the appropriate materials to the instructor via Email by:

11 pm on Friday, April 10^th.

You know, I'll spend a lot of time and effort when it comes to evaluating your discussions and your report. Oddly, there would have probably been an easier way to do this evaluation: I've found that the performance measures I use correlate fairly well with the frequency of cognitive comments posted to team forums. That is, those who post more (meaningful) comments about the subject (the links between technology and sedentary lifestyles, legislation, etc.) or the process of performing this technology assessment, and post more frequently, seem to be the ones who get the highest grades, and the ones who are the most satisfied with the value of this activity.

By this week, in general, a team that is on-track will likely have:

• Established a group timeline, with milestones, resulting in a final report that will be ready a few days prior to the due date.
• Posted many (50?) informational items linked to sources.
• Discussed what goes into the co-authored introductory chapter, and started finding specialized information for it that has not yet been found.
• Decided who writes which section of the introductory chapter, and how it is assembled and jointly reviewed.
• Determined which team member is the one to post the report to their iweb account, and uploaded a single HTML page that contains the outline of the report (without pasting any text from MS Word.)
• Thought hard about what policy options the team should forward, considering several different approaches to policy options, though the actual decisions of which options to include and who authors which option might be made this coming week.

Tips

Your team forum is, frankly, more important than the cognitive jobs forum. That is where the bulk of your discussion takes place. And there are plenty of instances where you will be making wonderful contributions to your team that don't happen to fit your assigned job. However, I'd like to again mention those jobs forums, since at this stage in the assignment, it is easy to avoid them. But be sure to visit your team forum often, and try to post often. You see, for this online collaboration to work, there has to be a lot of give-and-take dialog, and this means that the delays between the time you post and the time someone replies should be rather short.

Be sure you visit the Cognitive Jobs forum. Feel free to post comments and questions there. Share with others who have the same job. Did you "play your role?" Did you make it easy for me to find when you deliberately played that role, for example, by writing, "As the _____ (Summarizer, Possibility Generator, etc), I'd like to suggest..."?

• If you are the Summarizer, did you make sure to post clear summaries of your team's progress, noting what has been agreed upon and what remains on the table? Did you post a summary of any synchronous meetings your team might have had?
• If you are the Possibility Generator, are there multiple posts where you made a point to list a large number of possibilities (possible technologies to consider, possible legislation, possible alternatives to problematic technologies, etc.)?
• If you are the Idea Connector, are there multiple posts where mentioned connections between ideas? Did you make connections between ideas from different teammates, between ideas from the literature and from your work, between ideas in the award letter and your discussion, and between parallel areas of investigation and your team's area?
• If you are the Strategist did you help your team work out a plan for researching, for sharing ideas, and for reaching consensus? Does everyone have a good understanding of what the goal is, and of the different jobs of each teammate, including who is to look for certain types of information?
• If you are the Inferencer, did you help your team uncover the assumptions in the award letter, or suggest who might be impacted by your report?

Are You On-Track?

Last week, all team members should have visited their team (and job) discussion board forum. But just visiting is not enough, you are a "lurker" unless you actually post comments.

Here are some tips for getting started:

• Compare your plans to the statement of the assignment in Lesson 9.3 and the contract award letter it contains.
• Provide information from cited sources to shed light on the problem; critique that information; suggest how the information might be used by the group.
• Determine a plan of action that identifies specific tasks, individuals responsible for those tasks, and target due dates or milestones.
• Think. This is the most important task, and it takes time. Please use the team forum as a tool to help you and your teammates develop well-reasoned plans and rationales. It is alright to disagree at times - in fact, it is necessary.
• Bound the problem. (Check out Porter, et al., linked to Lesson 9B for more info.)
• Identify the target audience. Options will be developed, but "options for whom?" Who will take the actions listed in your TA report? Look back at the award letter for the answer. And who is your client's target audience?
• Gather much information. Organize it. Critique it. Summarize it. Piece it together. Look for implications, inconsistencies, opportunities.
• After you look at the background information, determine writing jobs for the section on background information.
• Identify a list of many possible options to consider for inclusion in the report. Only four are required in a four-person team, three in a three-person team, in addition to the do-nothing option. But before deciding which options to include, make sure you've entertained a list with sufficient variety.

You should have visited the forum associated with cognitive jobs. Posting there can be a neat way to turn this rather competitive activity into more of a cooperative learning experience.

Are you on track? Here's a way to see. Go back through the first week's discussion in your team forum and collect all of your own posts. Now count the number of times you've done each of the following, quoted from the "guidelines for working together" I posted in your team forum:

That is exactly what I will do when I attempt to assign individual grades. This is a discussion-based activity, so please, help yourself out here by logging in often and engaging in a meaningful dialog. Online graduate classes are expected to take about 9 to 12 hours of work per week, so please give me the evidence I need to give you the grade you want - show me that you're putting some deep thought into this project. Everyone in our class should post more frequently, discussing the issues raised.

Please also remember to provide evidence that you are playing your assigned cognitive role. I suggest you even use phrases like, "As the strategist, I'd like to...." I will collect all of your messages and try to find that evidence myself. I'll look for how many times you provided meaningful input both in keeping with your job, and in other areas, during our first week, during our second week, etc.

Note: I will be attending the International Technology Education Association Conference in Louisville on March 25th through March 28th, so I won't have office hours during that time. I do expect to have Internet connectivity when I return to my hotel, however, so feel free to contact me through the forums or by Email. Jim

9.3. Please begin initial work on the Technology Assessment Activity, as instructed. You have been assigned to a team, and you have been given a special "cognitive job" concentration in that team, although you should negotiate group tasks with your team members. Please begin the conversation on this activity now by posting early and often to your team's discussion board forum. The final report is due 11 pm Eastern Daylight Time, Friday, April 24^th, 2009.  (150 points)

The goal here is to learn by participating in an online collaborative technology assessment, and this is more important than the writing of a report. Please log on to your team's forum early and often - there is a lot to discuss. Use that discussion board forum as the main area for your work, rather than working independently and posting individual results. This is a team project, so try to think with each other online.

[I decreased the font size this week in an effort to make this not "seem" like so much. ;-)    ]

Talk through the assignment on your team's discussion board forum.

I've decided to hold some "online office hours" next Monday night to answer questions you might have about the technology assessment activity, your assigned groups, your individual project, that usability research, or just to chat about our class. These are strictly "optional," so you need not attend, though I hope you do. It will give us an opportunity to use live video communications. However, please do not wait for that meeting before getting started in your group forums. Go to those forums now and get the conversation going.

• 7 pm, EDT, Monday, March 23, 2009

I will enter the "room" 10 minutes before the start time. That is a good time for us to work out technical difficulties. Before logging in, please review Lesson 1E at http://jcflowers1.iweb.bsu.edu/rlo/breeze.htm. Then, just before the meeting starts, browse to the room at:

http://interactive.ihets.org/r91508743/

and click the button to enter as a guest

A broadband connection is required for this to work. You can participate by listening and typing in comments if you have a computer with a broadband connection and either a speaker or headphones. If you have either a mic or a video camera on your computer, you can participate by sharing your voice and your image, as well. We can also use a whiteboard, share applications, and "push links" to each other.

I will be in my office for these sessions, where the phone number is 765-285-2879.

Are You On-Track?

By now, everyone should have taken the Mod 9 quiz and posted their two formal messages for Assignment 9.2. Within the next two days, you should also have posted to the team discussion board forum. Typical postings may include introductions (backgrounds, strengths, interests related to the report), initial informational needs, coming to an agreement over the problem, discussion of the assignment, comments on others' postings, and initial task assignment of team members.

Don't forget about your Individual Project

Although the emphasis is now on the Technology Assessment activity, please do not procrastinate on your individual project, the one that aligns with the objective you wrote for Assignment 3.1. Please send me Email if you'd like to discuss it.

(Please note that we'll use this "Weekly Assignments" page as a way to let you know if you're progressing on schedule. There will also be future notifications here about taking two very brief but required surveys worth an additional 10 points, and reminders of due dates.)

9.2. As noted, please post messages to the appropriate threads in the Mod 9 Forums by March 16^th to:

• Discuss each of your assigned techniques;
• Post examples and explanations of each of your assigned techniques.

(25 points)

It really is important to take a vacation every now and then. For some in our class, your work vacation does not match your BSU vacation. ITEDU 510 is on break from Sunday, March 8^th, 2009, through Sunday, March 15^th, 2009. You are welcome to engage in the course materials, communicate on Blackboard, and work on your reports during that time, but it is not expected. I, for one, will be in Florida, trying to stay as far away from a computer as possible. That means that if you have questions on Assignment 9.2, try to ask them prior to Spring Break. Thanks.

There is only one deliverable, a discussion board forum posting.

By the way, there are some who will submit their work after the deadline, and you might need to go to their message in the Mod 5 forum to see the URL to their work. I'll update that list before long.

ITEDU 510 follows Ball State University's schedule for Spring Break, not one of the many public school schedules of those in the class who may be teachers. Our spring break is from Sunday, March 8^th, 2009, through Sunday, March 15^th, 2009.

(This is not a very big module. Students have two weeks here because of the Usability Research Report that is also due on February 22^nd. Earlier submissions are encouraged. Those doing user surveys for their usability research should dwell on Module 7; however, students who are performing usability tests are advised to read through the module rather briefly and to concentrate on their usability test - just make sure you get a 100% on the Mod 7 quiz.)

6.1. Create an original Web page, publish it to the Internet, and post a message to the Module 6 Discussion Board Forum that lists the URL (i.e. Internet address). (10 points)

For minimal requirements of the page and message, see Lesson 6.1.

1. Complete Module 5, which is an introduction to usability research.

(In Week 4, Module 6 will cover Webpage creation and publishing.)

5.1. This class has three major projects, and the usability research project is one of them. It is due, as a published Webpage, by 11pm on February 22^nd. (100 points)

You are encouraged to share your research idea with the instructor (via Email) as soon as possible.

1. Complete Module 3, which explains how to develop your own course objective, and propose it to the instructor using Blackboard's digital drop box.

Please do not work on Assignment 3.2 until your proposed course objective has been approved.

3.2. Please submit the appropriate materials to the instructor via Email by:

11 pm on Friday, April 10^th.

Some students submit brief reports of their achievement of their objective by attaching a Word document, others submit a URL to a Web document they've created. If you have any questions about your activity, contact the instructor now. Please make sure that your submission contains your name and states the learning objective. (50 points)

Ball State University, and this class, are not in session on Monday, January 19^th in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, his work, and his dream. Participants may still access web pages and Blackboard on this day if they like, but class is not in session. I am therefore posting this week's lessons the day prior to Martin Luther King Day.

1. Complete Module 1, which covers some Internet basics. You can access it through the button at the top of this page. Follow the directions in Module 1 to do each of the three required tasks at the right.

(Click here to open the modules page for the first two modules only in a new window.)

(Note, it can take a day or two after an enrolled student gains access to the Blackboard Website, so just be patient if you've enrolled in the last two days.)