Nifty and Free Tools for Improving Student Collaboration and learning

1. Nifty and Free Tools for Improving Student Collaboration and learning S. Jane Fritz Faculty Technology Conference May 14, 2012

2. Motivation Move from SAGE ON THE STAGE to GUIDE ON THE SIDE ( Ben Schneiderman- U. Maryland)

3. Challenge • Technology can be isolating- how can we utilize it more effectively to engage students and encourage interactive learning? • How can we design Learning Environments in which students are challenged to question, discuss, collaborate and share their insights with one another? • Many attempts: • Clickers • Blackboard threads and discussions • “Flipped classroom” • Etc…

4. Overview of New and Nifty Tools • Piazza – Stanford University • Graduate Engineering Student – PoojaNathSankar • Gathering place for students to ask, answer, and explore 24/7, under the guidance of their instructors • Classroom Salon - Carnegie Mellon University • Collaboration between English and Computer Science Departments. ( David Kaufer and AnandaGunawardena ) • Tool that is useful for discussing e-documents • Combines documents, collaboration, annotation, people, and analytics, all on one place • Encourages “digital commenting” and highlighting • Dropbox- single location to store and retrieve documents, photos, etc.

5. Introduction to Piazza • Piazza– public square for “meeting and discussion”; a place where people come together to share ideas and knowledge • Started as a homework help and discussion group, which encourages students to collaborate and answer one another’s questions • Instructors can be active participants, or passive observers, offering support, confirmation (“good answer”) and direction as needed. • One of it’s objectives is to provide quick responses to student questions, concerns or inquiries.

6. Beginning Piazza - Demo • https://piazza.com/uci (Student quad) • www.piazza.com • http://piazza.com/profs • Posts: • Notes – announcements • Questions – expect response • Poll • “Sandbox” Demo: http://piazza.com/sandbox/warm#spring2011/piazzatutorial • Sample interactive “class”: http://piazza.com/class#spring2012/tech12/0

7. Piazza – Additional Information • http://piazza.com/help.html • http://piazza.com/features • http://piazza.com/story.html • http://blog.piazza.com/ • http://piazza.com/news.html • Questions or feedback Contactteam@piazza.com or call or 1-800-818-4124.

8. Overview of Classroom Salon • A salon is a meeting place; in this case it is an interactive forum around a common interest • Classroom Salon – called “Facebook for Learning” • Classroom salon makes assignments more “social” • Classroom Salon integrates documents and discussion (unlike some course management systems where documents are in one folder and discussions are in another location. • Can be used to collectively edit documents • Can be used in conjunction with Blackboard

9. How to Use Classroom Salon • Create a salon and invite the students to join • Create or upload a document and add it to your repository (My Documents) • Add questions or tags to the document and share • Invite students to join the discussion, add comments, etc… • Encourage students to “highlight” – major themes, areas that are not clear, etc… • “Dashboard” facilitates managing users and documents

10. Classroom Salon Analytics • Understanding what a student or group is doing within a document: • Isolate the response of a single student- focus on one at a time • Compare a student’s comments to your annotations • Measure student participation • Show where there is an overlap among a group of students • Follow “breadcrumbs” – highlighted areas either in response to a question or as something not well understood. (Darker highlighting indicates greater number of responses ) • Use “most helpful” to see influence of one student on another • Measure distribution of comments, most interesting paragraph, most puzzling, etc..

11. Beginning Classroom Salon • http://www.classroomsalon.org • Videos: • Salon in Social Media –transforming the classroom • Writing, commenting, and web 2.0 • Step 1:Login, go to Quick Start ==> My profile and upload picture       Change/update profile information anytime. • Step 2: Create a Sample Salon       Quick Start ==> Start a Salon       Enter name, make it public, private (and change or repurpose this salon anytime) • Step 3: Salon combines (context + interpretation) of an activity to make it more efficient for management and analytics. Then as students interact with the document, it produces activity analytics.

12. Beginning Classroom Salon- continued •  Here is an example:(a) Unlike courses/activities you develop in a CMS, Salon activities are easily shareable. •   Join this salon:http://classroomsalon.org/redirect/redirect.aspx?action=viewSalon&id=1098 •  (b) Click on this activity link and perform some tasks.http://www.classroomsalon.org/redirect/redirect.aspx?action=annotateDocument&id=13395           (i) when you see something interesting, highlight, make a comment, choose a tag           (ii) In the crowd sourcing exercise, choose 2-3 problems, highlight and provide your answer •  (iii) Do whatever other activities you'd like to perform.

13. Beginning Classroom Salon- continued •  (c) Now here is where we benefit from "collective intelligence"Click on this link to see everyone else in the world who didthe same activity.http://www.classroomsalon.org/redirect/redirect.aspx?action=viewDocument&id=13395     (i) You can click on any highlighted section and see all thepeople who contributed     (ii) Click on "My Hotspots" to see who else overlaps with your work. Do they agree with you? or disagree? What can you learn from them?(iii) go to "Tags" and filter annotations by tags. Forexample, if the instructor used "confusing" as a tag, you will know immediately which part of the assignment is confusing or difficult.

14. Sharing Files and Documents • Step 4: [Sharing with others] So just as I shared the link to My Salon and activity, you can invite others to join your salon and complete youractivity. • Using document manager, you can add tags and questions, set access times for activities (must complete by this date, can view everyone's work after this date etc..)

15. Classroom Salon Modes • Step 5: [Modes of Operations] Salon has 3 modes of operations for each activity/document1.  Annotation/participation ---> in this mode users are only able to participate in the activity by selecting, commenting, choosing tags andresponding to questions2.  View mode ---> this mode is social. It shows collective work of everyone. Using various filters, you can discover many things3. Dashboard  ---> This mode shows interesting analytics of everyone's work. This mode can be locked from the view of students

16. Demo •  You can access all 3 modes for this activityhttp://www.classroomsalon.org/redirect/redirect.aspx?action=viewDocument&id=13395 •  Click Menu and then switch from one mode to another

17. Export Data • Step 6: (Export Data) The most interesting part of Salon is the ability to export Data for you to analyze. • For example, you can export an excel file of student work using       Menu --> Site Menu --> Export Comments • This file can be parsed in multiple ways to produce grades for students or to find course analytics.You can create afile called questions.txt that was generated from a comment file.       [This would be an example of how many questions were generated by students as a result of salon]

18. Customization • Step 7: (Customization) For many user and institutions, it is important to customize the UI (User Interface) to match the tasks. Here is an example of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee building a custom UI to make it easier for students to access their activities.http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab/UWM/       You may want to join the salon:http://classroomsalon.org/redirect/redirect.aspx?action=viewSalon&id=876       if you want to see the activities.

19. Suggested Use •    Suppose you have an e-textbook that students are reading, but in the process they are using tags to tell the instructor where they are having trouble. Instructor can use this information to tailor his/her lectures. Much better way to deliver instructions. •   Since each salon, activity/document is a link, we encourage each individual/organization to build their own custom UI's (or use existing CMS) using embedded salon links (or use salon as is).

20. Classroom Salon Summary • Salon is simple, provides opportunities for innovative instructional design (using annotations, comments, tags and questions), customized UI's, provides many levels of social features (reply to comments, join discussions, follow experts....) all without losing context ofconversation or activity.  • Salon's export data facility provides innovativeorganizations to build their own analytics engines. We encourage you to build web based analytics modules and share with other salon users. • Enjoy Salon. Send us feedback. We will build the core. You build the content, instructional design.

21. Classroom Salon Resources • www.classroomsalon.org • http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab/Salon/ClassroomSalonGettingStarted.pdf ( Getting Started Manual) • Email to guna+salon@andrew.cmu.edu • Related Articles: • http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/05/16/carnegie-mellons-classroom-salon-encourages-collaborative-critique.aspx