What is Spirit?

In the MTSO Statement of Purpose it is written, "we attend to the theological, spiritual, and vocational formation of a diverse group of students involved in a wide range of pursuits."

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An assertion that often arises within the conversations regarding tech is that we, as a school, do not intend to foster a fully-online course program, and part of the reason for this is that our faculty resonates with a resistance to commodifying the education of our students into easily consumable packages. Instead, we are, as it says above, concerned with the formation of individuals, and our pursuit of the hybridized classroom, as opposed to fully online education, is conditioned by the presumption that interrelation within communities requires face time. "Face time," I would argue is another way of indicating an intermingling of spirit.

The constant task before us appears to be a holding in tension both the assertion that we must remain skeptics of the presumed efficacy of online education - or even more generally, technologically augmented education of any kind - while also actively pursuing augmenting education with technology as a "vehicle toward broader interconnectedness and relevance," as an MTSO colleague put it.

So it is, to some extent, insurmountable (to the point of hysterics) to translate interpersonal in-class time and time spent doing online work on the grounds of how to measure the difference between the physical intermingling of humans and online intermingling. Sure, there are studies that show that students often learn, and learn well, through online courses (however verifiable) but is learning material equivalent to attending to the spiritual formation of our students - our stated goal?

The title of this entry is "what is spirit?" and less an answer to this question what is offered here, to far better scholars of such questions, is a challenge. As we continually assess our identity in an ever-changing world-context, I offer this opportunity, a pause, to motivate our thinking about thinking- about-technology away from the assumption that we are working to keep up, attempting to stay current in the trends of education. Instead, you, our faculty, are the most valuable resource to think us beyond trends in favor of thinking about the foundations of what we are, as spiritual beings, and how the privilege of being religious scholars can inform the world how to approach the human relation to technology.

What is Hybrid?

http://www.ast.obs-mip.fr/users/donati/spirou/protodisc_small.jpg

When the heavenly bodies are born, this happens out of a chaos of dust and gas and gravity. As microscopic bits of dust combine into bigger pieces, eventually a unified whole coalesces into a tangible object - a galaxy, a star, a planet, etc. And although the combining of these proto materials into bodies appear contained in an observable sphere, closer inspection reveals an increasingly complex subject the closer one looks. The universe is a collection of galaxies that are the coalescence of solar systems under a black hole's gravitational pull, and every solar system is a collection of stellar objects borne out of collections of vanishingly smaller materials - no less distinct on their own. Such, I contend, is also the nature of words (and most everything else). My undergrad philosophy professor always said, "if you want to know the definition of something, don't reach for a dictionary." He meant that the definitions in dictionaries are mere approximations, and that words are actually defined in social usage and best represented by a range of meanings. What a word "means" is really a touching of a seemingly endless number of other words.

The reason for this philosophical foray grows out of my recent experience speaking with MTSO's faculty in our one-on-one discussions. The Ed Tech taskforce was originally concerned with addressing ATS requirements for online classes, and so we set about establishing to what degree our courses are "online" and whether we needed to petition ATS for a review of our online program. The result was that ATS does not consider a class to be online unless 50% or more class time occurred online. Institutionally, therefore, we have designated a technologically augmented course as hybrid so long as it meets this very simple criterion: courses with online work that does not account for more than 49% of the total class time are hybrid.

So there is the answer to the big question, "What is a hybrid course?" It is very simple and provides lots of room for interpretation as the nature of our online course offerings continue to coalesce. It also extend into the variety of ways that faculty choose to adopt technology for coursework. Some of the current strategies include:

• building module-based class resources which include lecture information and multimedia products (asynchronous)
• holding online class meetings using Adobe Connect or some other form of online meeting system (synchronous)
• using cloud-based service such as blogs, wiki's, discussion groups, or online media management solutions (this would include Sakai's online resources as well.

Of course, this list is always growing, and we are currently researching the ratio of translating residential seat-time to online time, but this will likely depend on the specific use of technology in each case. For example, spending one hour in an online class meeting will provide a more direct correlation to in-class seat time than time spent reading discussion group postings, and this still needs to be worked out. Ultimately, however, the important thing to note is that to some degree, most, if not all, of our courses are to some degree hybrid, and we continue to consider the ways in which this can be expanded to facilitate the education of more commuting students, alleviate the pressures of condensed-time intensives, or allow for flexibility in scheduling to accommodate current and future student bodies.

Present Technology

One of the most common challenges to assessing the usefulness of educational technology is coming to terms with how different forms of social interaction affect learning. In a recent survey of brain development in babies of bilingual households, University of Washington researchers discovered that not only did early exposure to multiple languages stimulate brain development in the frontal and prefrontal areas of infant brains, but acquisition of languages also inherently depended on the the language being spoken between members of the household. The result of this stimulation was a mapping of brain connectivity that improved problem-solving skills. According to a recent New York Times article "This special mapping that babies seem to do with language happens in a social setting,” . . . “they need to be face to face, interacting with other people. The brain is turned on in a unique way.”

The University of Washington had already issued an earlier report that infant-directed television programing claiming to be "educational" was misleading, and the researchers and impacted companies have remained entangled in legal disputes since. Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics has followed up by definitively reporting that setting infants in front of "educational" programing or any other screen-based educational environment will not yield any learning until the infant is at least two years old. Also clear is that exposure to technologies such as television will “have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years”according to the AAP study. It is believed that this is partially due to television disrupting a child's play, affecting crucial problem-solving and critical thinking development because it most likely acts from a distraction.

Comparing infant brains to graduate-level adult brains may be inappropriate (or perhaps not) but the results of this study do prove that human brains learn differently according to the method of content distribution - as the meta-engine of thought and education, the brain is making distinctions as to what is doing the teaching. Therefore, we know that how (or from what source) one attempts to learn can be as important as what one is attempting to learn. However, without further study on adult brains, we are left with little more to conclude, yet, than that there is a necessity to consider the different types of teaching (e.g. spatially oriented vs. online) are of as equal importance to learning as anything else, and therefore, different methods cannot be presumed to be equally effective.

Managing Assignments in Sakai

One of the more frequently asked questions related to Sakai use is how to distribute assignments. This is a somewhat difficult question to answer, particularly because how one wishes to execute assignments depends upon teaching style. But after several conversations with faculty, I have discerned a pattern emerging that may help many organize the way they collect grades. There are three major forms through the left-column tools. There are others, but these three represent the fundamental principles of grading within Sakai. These tools are Drop Box, Assignments, and Forums. Additionally, to use the full functionality of these assignment options, it is best to employ the Gradebook tool as well.[1]

**Notice the star highlighting recent changes.

Drop Box represents a location for larger-scale projects and files in which students have access to their own private folder wherein they can drop files up to 10MB in size. Obviously, this is still a limited file size and will likely discourage most PowerPoint or video files.[2] However, for large paper projects, the drop box is a relatively basic but solid option requiring little prep time. Items such as word docs that the student uploads to the folder can be downloaded by the instructor, graded, and then re-uploaded to the student's drop box after graded. Additionally, a gradebook item can be created where the grade for the assignment is recorded.

An alternative to this process, and the most versatile of the assignment options, is the Assignments tool. On the assignments tool page, click the “Add” link at the top of the page to add a new assignment, and instructions can be typed into the provided text box or by attaching a document. By checking that the assignment is to be graded, a new item will be automatically added to the gradebook. You may also choose for student submissions to be returned as attachments or written into the provided text box, or both. Clicking on the “grade” link under each student submission will direct you to a page where you can review either the student’s submitted text, or download the student's attached document. Upon grading, you have the option to either make general comments on the submission in the provided text box (excellent for shorter reflection assignments), or make changes to the document with comments to reattach and return. Grades that are entered upon review of this student work are automatically updated in the gradebook. Additionally, assignments created through this tool allow for the automatic generation of an announcement (if so chosen) and/or email notification and the due date will be added to calendar of all participants in the class.

For even less complex responses, such as participation related to class discussion or brief reading reflections, Discussion items can also be attached to gradebook items. To make a forum topic graded, either click on the “edit” link of the “general discussion” topic (or create a new topic) and select the respective gradebook item from the list at the bottom of the page with which to associate student posts. Once you have created this topic, you must then create a thread to which students will reply. Unless you create the discussion thread, students will be creating their own discussion thread – under which others can only post new items, and not directly reply.

Things to remember: For items to be associated with the gradebook, they must be given a point-based grade (i.e. letter grades cannot be associated with items outside of the gradebook feature). If you intend to create assignments for the gradebook outside of the “assignments” tool, it is important to create these items in the gradebook well in advance. It often takes a while for these items to update, and therefore be included in the drop-down list which selecting gradebook associations for discussion posts or other references.

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[1] To add any of these tools to your class site click Site Info -> Edit Tools ->select the check box for the tools you wish to add, and then confirm thisaddition at the bottom of the page. You will then need to finalize yourselection, and done.

[2] An alternative is to print powerpoints as pdfs and upload the file in a pdf version.

Navigating Our Cloud(y) Future

by Justin Lipscomb

            As MTSO realizes its technological blueprints, the school has a fundamental need to keep abreast of trends in educational technology as they develop. Many of you have been involved in technological discussions in which the comment is made “the findings are unclear” as concerns a wide range of crucial information about student response, educational benefit, and potentially detrimental effects of tech trends. To find our way through this labyrinthine condition and set down some basic guidelines in our own assessment of technology’s role for this school, I have been researching what materials I can find to synthesize at least a basic set of principles by which we may judge future advances.

But before we trek our way through the information, I want to offer explicit guidelines as we begin our approach. Resources for this research must meet two, very basic criteria before consideration:

1) Relevant releases concerning technology cannot be sponsored by tech-related donors. I am reminded of a recent white paper I read about the difficulties of finding adequate storage solutions for classroom projects. Findings showed that cloud-based file sharing was increasingly safe, popular, and convenient in that they offset the needs of IT departments to pay for more storage and security. The study was, of course, sponsored by YouSendIt, an online file sharing company that offered “freemium” services (basic services are free, advanced services come at a cost). There was an obvious vested interest in the results of the study, rendering their determinations suspect beyond the services offered.

2) Sources must be vetted for gadget-crazed enthusiasm. Because a product fulfills a need in certain sectors, it does not prove that product’s ability to foster transformational learning in this setting, and according to our statement of vision and purpose. We have demonstrated an institutional commitment to the use of technology that closes gaps in distance, as opposed to creating or expanding them, and this, I believe, is partially due to our awareness in the ways in which the space where learning occurs has a powerful effect. Therefore, we hold in tension the benefits of technology with the potential harm in disregarding the power of meeting in the flesh. And this warrants considerable prudence in not becoming overexcited with new products without attention to our educational philosophy.