BbWorld14 Day 2, Part 1

Leaving Las Vegas

I am currently sitting in an aeroplane, high above Arizona (I suspect) looking back over day 2 at BbWorld14. I had to miss the third day, which is unfortunate, but unavoidable.

Yesterday started with our own session, and I was joined by Darren and Fionn in Murano 3205, where we gave our presentation to a fairly full room. It was a very different audience to Dublin, but a good one all the same. Thanks to everyone who came along. We know you could have picked up a free webcam at the Respondus session, but we had no freebies to give, so we particularly appreciate your support. 

The big keynote of the day was from Jay Bhatt, CEO of Blackboard, in the Venetian Ballroom again. As we entered the room, music pounding, there was an air of expectation and excitement. The theme of the keynote was Reimagine. Redesign. Redefine. which was expanded to: Reimagine the education experience; Redesign our approach; Redefine the teaching and learning environment. 

We heard about how Blackboard has restructured in the last 12 months, all of which sounds very positive. We heard about the new vision and mission, which is focused on the learner, and how this is driving development, particularly in the areas of the new user interface and mobile developments. We heard about how Blackboard wants to be our partner, with a global network of support centres and a series of services solutions. I had heard much of this at BbTLC earlier this year, so it wasn't particularly new. 

We were given a look at the new user interface, using responsive design, and a radiant  Stephanie Weeks talked us through some of what we can expect. Again, it's something I have heard before, but I am looking forward to the release of this new user experience. Although it means we'll have to completely redevelop all our local user documentation, I do think that the majority of our users will be happy with it. 

What did come as a surprise to me (shock?) was the news that Blackboard is changing how it packages solutions. In future, the basic product will be called Learning Core, including the capabilities of Learn, Content, Community, Mobile and XPLOR. The next step up is Learning Essentials, which includes Collaborate. Learning Insight will extend this to Analytics. 

What exactly does this mean for an institution, and when it will happen? I don't know the answer to that. For NUI Galway, where we just have Learn, Mobile and Collaborate, does this mean that our Blackboard capabilities will be extended? Will we finally be able to use Portfolios, which belong in the Content system? Can we create communities beyond the formal module codes? And what effect will it have on our licence fee? If the answers to the first few questions are "yes", and the answer to the last one is "none", then this is good news indeed!

Another piece of the keynote that made an impact on me was the piece about Big Data. I had assumed this related to the provision of information back to admins, but in fact Blackboard want to use it to provide students and instructors with better information about their progress in a course. Assuming that the information to be made available to students is customisable (it may not always be helpful to compare themselves to fellow students) this does look like something that could help the learning experience. 

After BbTLC in Dublin, I noted a new customer focus for Blackboard as a company, and that certainly seems to be true. Jay also talked about wanting to celebrate and promote our success stories. In a section on Industry Citizenship, he indicated that Blackboard will support research and studies to inform (education) industry dialogue. This seems to be more than just wanting to sell a product, and a very welcome new direction. 

I think there are interesting times ahead with Blackboard. A lot has been done in the last 12 months, but there's plenty more to do. 

I will recap the parallel sessions in a separate post.

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BbWorld14 Day 1

The first day of BbWorld is over, and I am turning to my responsibilities as an official conference blogger. These notes will be very much from my own experience and my own point of view.

From registration it was clear that BbWorld is unlike any conference I have been to before - it is massive! There are 2500 delegates, with lots of different backgrounds. There may be 14 sessions happening in parallel at any time. The logistics involved in moving people between rooms, up and down escalators, and organising them in the large auditorium for keynotes, is an exercise in complexity. 

With all this happening, trying to find people is impossible without using electronic communication of some kind. Luckily, the conference wifi has been fairly reliable during the day. 

The twitter stream (#BbWorld14) has been constant - with some contributions from myself - and during the keynote was more like a firehose. I found it difficult to keep up - though that might have also have something to do with my jet lag.

With such a full programme, it's inevitable that you sometimes feel you should have gone to a different session, especially if the tweets from another room appear much more interesting. In almost all time slots, I can identify at least two presentations I would like to be at. But I haven't mastered bilocation yet. 

I was at 3 quite different parallel sessions this afternoon. The first, Social Media: It's not just what you had for breakfast was given by Steven Anderson, @web20classroom. Aimed at schools, Steven gave some good reasons for using social media and some great advice about how to establish a social media presence. His main message is that it's all about storytelling, and social media gives schools the opportunity to be in control of their message, to tell their own story. I have followed @web20classroom on twitter for a number of years, so it was great for me to finally hear him present. 

My second session today was the Overview of Product Innovations for International Clients, a Blackboard led session, involving Matthew Small and Jim Hermans. In this, we were told how International clients have helped shape product development, and also how Blackboard wants to work with us as a local partner in the future. Most of the innovations I already knew about, from the Blackboard TLC in Dublin earlier this year. But I was interested to hear about the development of an app for instructors, which will include grading - I imagine a little bit like the GradeMark app. Also of interest is that Blackboard is looking at offline capabilities for mobile. Initially this will allow learners to "consume static eLearning content", but will be extended to other types of content. 

My third session was a panel session on Rethinking Student Services to meet the changing learner. This involved a distinguished panel of leaders in higher education: Scott Jaschik, founder and editor of Inside Higher Education; Joan Zanders from Northern Virginia Community College; Gloria McCall from Kentucky Community and Technical College System; and Kent Hopkins from Arizona State University. This was a tough one for me to understand without knowing the context of the US higher education system.  What is clear is that we have in common: increasing student numbers; a more diverse student population; and limited resources. 

Finally it was time for the big keynote of the conference, Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab. We were ushered into the Venetian Ballroom with loud throbbing music. I took my place at the bloggers area, next to @skyvking, where we have our own power sockets! After a short intro from Jay Bhatt, who will speak tomorrow, we were treated to a very nicely crafted, very visual, presentation from Joi. His message wasn't particularly unique: we need to change education. But he delivered it in such an interesting way, really drawing us in. I particularly enjoyed the section on synthetic biology, which illustrated nicely his point about the need for Anti Disciplinary spaces. (Although, now it has been named, is synthetic biology a new discipline?) He finished with a point about the role of serendipity, or just good luck, in innovation. If you keep meeting the same people all the time, with the same agenda, how can you hope to be creative?

With that in mind, I will conclude day 1 with the observation that my own attendance at BbWorld is serendipitous, and I am certainly not with the same group of people. In particular I had a lovely lunch with a completely new person, who was put in touch with me via a twitter connection. 

If you are in the area tomorrow morning, do join me and my student co-presenters at 8:15 in Murano 3205 to hear about student involvement in developing a campus app. I know there are 13 other sessions you could attend - but you won't regret it!

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Documenting BbWorld14

I am sitting in the airport at Philadelphia, waiting for the next stage of my journey to BbWorld14 in Las Vegas. It seems a very long time since I set off, early this morning, from Galway. I got the 5:15 CityLink bus from Galway to Dublin airport, accompanied by my 12 year old daughter, who is spending a few days with family in Dublin. 

As we sat into our seats, my daughter took out her mobile phone, connected to wifi, attached her ear buds and proceeded to ignore me for the whole 3 hour journey. As we left Galway, I was surprised that she started taking photographs out the window - it was dark - and posting them on snapchat and Instagram. Then I realised that she was starting to document her visit to Dublin, which is probably almost as exciting for her as my trip to Las Vegas. Maybe she's a future blogger?

In contrast to her single device, I am travelling with at least four (five if you count my watch - which I still use to tell the time). I have my phone and my iPad, to keep me connected. But I also have my 8 year old iPod, which I use for my music, and my kindle, for proper reading. I don't like extended reading on the iPad, although the kindle app does come in handy. And I have my whole music collection on the iPod, so why would I take up extra space on my phone? Evidently it's a generational thing - or is it?

Of these, my phone and iPad will both be used to document BbWorld14, in a variety of ways. 

During the conference, I will be tweeting my most immediate thoughts and reactions, using the conference hashtag. I will also be taking photographs, with my phone, and tweeting some of these. I haven't got comfortable using the iPad for taking photographs - it just seems too big and awkward. 

While tweeting is immediate, and can be conversational, it can also provide a useful archive after the event - the nearly now. A tool like storify can be used to collect together a more permanent record of an event. For example, I created a recent archive of the twitter feed at 6IIPC. 

But of most value, to me, and hopefully also to you, dear reader, is when I manage to reflect a little bit, and put something more connected and considered into a blog post. Sometimes this can happen quite quickly, and sometimes it takes a little longer to let the ideas take shape. But I've already had 3 hours on a bus, 7 hours on a plane, and quite a bit of time hanging round airport lounges today, so hopefully this one makes a little sense. 

In the last little while I have noticed David Hopkins, in particular, making use of sketchnotes. This is something I would love to try, and I am told you don't require artistic talents. I have gone so far as to download Mike Rohde's book The Sketchnote Handbook to my kindle, but haven't tried the techniques yet. Maybe this is the event to start. 

So, I will be interested to see the other BbWorld 14 bloggers, and what devices and techniques they use. What is your approach to documenting events?

Preparing for BbWorld14

Earlier this year I presented, with two student co-presenters, a session at the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference (BBTLC), which took place in UCD in Dublin. The presentation was based on a project that I've been involved in, along with the students, to develop a campus mobile app for students, based on the Blackboard Mosaic platform. The interesting thing about the project was that the project was entirely initiated, driven and implemented by the students.

My co-presenters, Fionn Delahunty and Darren Kelly, are both first year undergraduate students at NUI Galway. Fionn intends to major in Psychology, while Darren is a student of Biomedical Science. Neither would describe themselves as particularly technical. But they are now at the point of launching the first official mobile app for NUI Galway students.

The film crew at BBTLC

The students were excited to be going to BBTLC, which fell at an awkward time during their first year exams. Blackboard, the company, had shown some interest in the presentation, and we were able to spend some time with chatting with Alex Ackerman-Greenberg, the product manager for Mosaic. For the presentation we had a packed room, and a full film crew at the back. For two first year undergraduate students, they did amazingly well and delivered a very engaging and natural presentation. I collated the tweets from the session using storify, which give some sense of how it was received. You can find the presentation on prezi.

After the event, we got a lot of positive and useful feedback. We were very excited when we featured in a short video, embedded below, including an interview with us. From about 54 seconds in, you can see Alex Ackerman-Greenberg talking about the project.

A recording of the whole presentation then appeared on YouTube, which I still haven't managed to watch through (I hate watching myself). I am also aware that a Blackboard Whitepaper is in preparation.

But, our excitement escalated to a whole new level when we found out that our presentation received the popular vote for best session at the conference, and we were invited to take up a presentation slot at Blackboard World, to take place in Las Vegas next week. We spent some time trying to figure out if it was possible, financially, for the three of us to go. We even featured on the NUI Galway news page! But I'm really delighted to let you know that Fionn and Darren will be presenting with me next Wednesday morning at the very early hour of 8:15am in Murano 3205. If any of this blog's readers happen to be in Las Vegas, we'd love to see you there.

So, what do I hope to get out of BbWorld14? I'll only be there for a short time, and will probably be jetlagged and disorientated. From my limited knowledge, Las Vegas is a million miles from Galway (I don't mean distance, though there is a lot of travelling involved). This will be the biggest event that I have ever attended. But I do intend to make the most of every waking moment. I'm building my schedule, using the BbWorld14 app. I'm very interested to try out the new User Interface. But mostly I am looking forward to meeting a whole new set of people, including some that may already be twitter buddies.

I will certainly be tweeting lots, and also blogging about the experience - using proper English spelling, of course. Las Vegas, here we come!

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A Fragile Trust

At the 6th International Integrity and Plagiarism conference last month there was an interesting juxtaposition of talks, some technology-related, but most not. In particular, the keynote sessions provided an array of ideas that I intend to follow up on.

Teddi Fishman (left) in conversation with Samatha Grant

On the last day of the conference, the programme opened with a keynote from Samantha Grant, a filmmaker based in San Francisco, who has made the feature length documentary A Fragile Trust, based on the serial plagiarist Jayson Blair, a journalist at the New York Times. The case, when it was discovered in 2003, was such a scandal that it brought down 2 NYT editors. The documentary features interviews with Blair, as well as with other journalists and editors who were caught up in the story.

During her keynote, Samantha played a number of clips from the film, which gave a great insight into the approach she has taken, and raises plenty of questions about ethics in journalism. I now am very keen to watch the full-length version, which may be coming to Netflix in the future.

At the very least, this documentary should be required viewing for all students of journalism. As part of the overall project, the company has also developed an online game Decisions on Deadline for journalism students, to teach ethical decision making. Lesson plans to accompany the game are coming soon.

But I think there are lessons to be learned for all of us involved in academic integrity when watching this film. The short clip below describes a scenario we are all familiar with.

I'm making a transition from the world of journalism to the world of academic, where some students use exactly the same approach as Blair. This points to a culture where we permit (perhaps even encourage) academic dishonesty. If the system does not have integrity, how can we expect it of our students?

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