Data-Driven

By John Grossman on May 21, 2012 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
We've been looking at new ways to gather data from our business processes and apply them to process improvement. Nancy Hill, project director for our department recently analyzed data gathered from several years of processing streaming videos. She identified a number of patterns that will be helpful in reducing the manual video processing workload for Jon Metty, our intrepid web developer and streaming video expert. One direction for improvement is to identify departments and people who generate the most video content and then develop workflows that simplify processing their content.

For example, a number of faculty members in the School of Health Professions record their classroom lectures for use by the students. We have been piloting use of a workflow that includes Camtasia Relay for capture and encoding followed by automated posting to iTunes U. This gets our team almost completely out of the processing loop, saving time for more creative tasks. Analysis of the video processing data allowed us to identify several faculty who produce a lot of content but who haven't yet implemented the automated process. Focusing on those high-volume producers should yield the greatest payback in reduced effort.

It's one thing to apply analytics to business processes. Stephen Wolfram takes it to the next level in this blog post.

'Free-Range Learners' and Data Mining in Education

By John Grossman on April 27, 2012 8:32 AM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Here are a couple of research-based items of interest:

How Students Use Digital Resources in Their Learning - Educause presentation. Glenda Morgan of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleagues also presented at a Sloan Consortium event recently and there have been several interesting blog posts about it.

Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics from the Office of Educational Technology of the U.S. Department of Education.


New Apple education tools - first impressions

By John Grossman on January 24, 2012 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Apple announced new tools for education recently, including enhancements to iTunes U and textbooks for iPad. If you have an iPad the free Life on Earth textbook available in the Books section of the iTunes store is a good example of what's possible with the new textbook tools.

Here are some first impressions:

  • The new tools are Mac/iOS-centric. The complete set of course enhancements to iTunes U is only available on iOS. The new, free textbook authoring tool, IBooks Author, is a Mac-only app and the iBooks textbook capability is iPad-only.
  • Get ready to upgrade your software: It's a bit complicated to locate all the required tools. You have to download the latest version of iTunes (software update), the new iTunes U iPad app (iTunes store), the new iBooks 2 iPad app (iTunes store) and the iBooks Author app (Mac App Store). If you want to use the course features of iTune U you also need to get your iTunes U administrator to grant you access to the Course Manager tool, a web-based app that works only with Safari.
  • IBooks Author for editing textbooks is very nice with excellent templates. Previewing a book you are authoring requires that an iPad be tethered to your Mac via the USB cord. This generally works well, but I experienced some hangs on the iPad during and after previewing a book and had to reboot the iPad. Editing a book is really easy if you have all the content ready. Embedded video works great, although you have to encode it to a specified format using iTunes.
  • This may seem obvious, but as with most authoring environments, interactivity doesn't come for free. You'll need someone who can create animations or other media to give your content pizzazz. For example, the Life on Earth textbook contains wonderful 3-D animations created by MacArthur "Genius Grant" winner Drew Berry. That kind of talent isn't readily available on a lot of campuses. There has already been some kvetching about the lack of interactivity in the first batch of textbooks available in iBooks.
  • The new iTunes U course tools may have the most immediate impact. They add the course content creation and distribution capabilities of traditional course management systems to iTunes U. You start with a course outline and add related content, assignments, etc. The courses are public, though, so instructors who are concerned about keeping their course content within their institution will not want to use these tools.
Overall, this looks like a great start toward a promising toolkit for educators. I'm looking forward to migrating some MD Anderson public course content to the iTunes U course format. 

Too good to miss

By Nancy Hill on December 5, 2011 9:04 AM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
ATS has just begun an exciting project with MD Anderson's Hematology Oncology Fellowship Program. When we met with Dr. Robert Wolff, Dr. Ahmed Eid and other program leaders a few weeks ago, their initial questions centered around Sakai as a repository for educational resources. But this group has a passion for education and the discussion quickly became a lively exchange of ideas for ways that the Program could put educational technology to work for them, including instructional design consultation, the Camtasia Relay lecture capture tool and Sakai.  

Fellows participate in a structured program of face-to-face experiences including clinical work, case presentations and didactic learning. Another key emphasis is board review. ATS is working with the program leaders to identify how technology can support their goals and also capture elements of the program that are literally too good to miss. 

I witnessed one example of this during a recent visit to the LBJ site. Dr. Martin Raber and Dr. Eid engaged the fellows in a discussion of everything from treatment strategies to professional ethics to burnout among oncologists. Dr. Eid and his team know there's no substitute for being there, but they hope to make those experiences less ephemeral and share the learning with those that can't be there in person. Their approach is scientific, with a strong interest in also using the technology tools to measure effectiveness and learning outcomes.  

We are just getting started - but it's already too much fun to call it work.

Stay tuned.

What I missed at Educause

By John Grossman on October 24, 2011 2:13 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
I wasn't able to attend the national Educause conference in Philadelphia but there was a lot of interest in an announcement from Pearson about a new "free" LMS called OpenClass. Michael Feldstein has a thoughtful post about it in his e-Literate blog. There's also a follow-up post today. Well worth a read, especially for those interested in open source learning management systems.

Introduction to Clinical Oncology course now available

By John Grossman on October 10, 2011 1:33 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Introduction to Clinical Oncology a new, publicly accessible online course in the Professional Oncology Education series from MD Anderson is now available in Sakai@MD Anderson. The course was developed by Maura Polansky, MS, MHPE, PA-C and Alma Rodriguez, M.D. for use by physicians, physician assistants and others involved in the care of cancer patients.


The technical implementation of the project, like all those in the Professional Oncology Education (POE) series, was a team effort, including work by UT Television (video production), Medical Graphics and Photography (presentation design and editing) and Academic Technology Services (media streaming and playback, web page development, course management system).  Kendra Woods, Ph.D. and Steven Rosita of the POE program worked with the authors and subject matter experts to organize and deliver the content in a format that is consistent throughout the series. The course is available in English along with Spanish language transcriptions of the lectures and textual material.

Where libraries and academic technology meet

By John Grossman on October 10, 2011 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
David Weinberger of the Berkman Center posted this video of Harvard library staff and users talking about digital libraries.
 


There are great opportunities for better integration of MD Anderson's instructional technologies with its library technologies and services. We took some small steps earlier this year when Research Medical Library and Academic Technology Services staff worked together to synchronize library and technology orientation for new students in the School of Health Professions (SHP). Clara Fowler, Library Manager, is using Sakai to teach a course at SHP and a Sakai project site is being used as a library resource container for SHP students. Another project in the planning phase involves use of Sakai and Adobe Connect for an online course with both synchronous and asynchronous components, including library information. More on that project in a future post.

New tools for a new educational module: How to Win at the Application Process

By John Grossman on October 7, 2011 2:11 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Shaun Caldwell, Program Director for Radiation Therapy at the MD Anderson School of Health Professions had a problem: students applying for the RT program were having difficulty understanding all the prerequisites and steps required for completing their applications. Shaun wanted to make the process smoother for applicants by explaining things clearly in an online module.

Shaun consulted with Nancy Hill of Academic Technology Services on how to deliver the project. Together they came up with a design that centered around short explanatory video clips and  resources like check lists and web links. Shaun didn't have a budget for the project so he and Nancy agreed to use it as an opportunity to test some new low-cost production techniques. Jon Metty built the final web pages.

The result is How to Win at the Application Process. Here's an overview of the tools and techniques used to deliver this module:
  • Video - shot with a Canon T3i DSLR camera.
  • Audio - recorded with a Sony PCMD50 digital recorder. This could also have been done with lower cost recorders like the Zoom H4. Using an external recorder produces much higher quality audio than the camera's built-in recorder.
  • Synchronization of audio and video - done automatically in software using Singular Software's DualEyes.
  • Video clip editing and titles - Apple Final Cut Pro X
  • Web page editing - Adobe DreamWeaver. Some JQuery was used for the video window effects.
  • Video player - The MD Anderson accessible video player developed by Jon Metty and Haili Tu.
  • Module delivery and evaluation: Sakai@MD Anderson course management system.
  • Additional assistance from Mrs. Potato Head in Shaun's office.
Using this relatively lightweight approach to media-enhanced module development was a great learning experience. We plan to apply the experience to delivering future projects faster, cheaper and better.

More Sakai Horsepower!

By John Grossman on October 6, 2011 3:40 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Academic Technology Services recently upgraded the Sakai@MD Anderson server environment by adding a third server to the server cluster. Sakai is our course management system for academic and community learners. Anand Mehta, our Sakai administrator, worked with Data Center Operations and Technical Services to provision an HP server with more than twice the combined capacity of the older servers. Over the next few months we plan to add a fourth high-capacity server. The fourth server will complete our upgrade and will give us the ability to support thousands of simultaneous users with reduced downtime and faster response times.

Digital Filing Basics

By Janice Simon on September 26, 2011 3:18 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

This guest post is from Janice Simon, MA, project director for Faculty Development at MD Anderson. Janice is also a certified professional organizer (CPO). She works with MD Anderson faculty on organizing and time management.

A recent post on Tech.Edu focused on formal organizational schemes or taxonomies for educational content. On a more basic level, one of the questions I frequently receive as an organizer is how to create a personal filing system for digital files. If you have ever searched madly for that final jpg file for a PowerPoint presentation you know the problem.

First, where to store the files? At work I recommend storing your files in the space allocated to you on a file server since it is regularly backed up and safer than keeping files on your hard drive.

If you want to revamp your filing system, you should first sketch out an outline. What are your major categories? What sub-categories fall under them? This outline becomes your map.

Let's use my own server directory as an example. I have a category called "Organizing" - no surprise there. Under Organizing, I have the following sub-categories:

  • Articles
  • My Presentations
  • Technology

I would refrain from having too many levels of your sub-categories. You don't want to have so many sub-folders under a category that you only have one document filed in it. It's the equivalent of having a file folder with one piece of paper.

Create the folders and systematically drop files into the folders. Depending on how many documents you have, this could take some time, but devoting 10 to 15 minutes a day can help you make progress.

Change the names of the documents so you can identify them and search for them easier.

Just like with paper files, you should periodically review your documents and delete the ones you no longer need. Files that served you last year may no longer be relevant this year.

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