Canvas: Evidence of an Evolving Technology

College students who took online courses during the advent of online learning expressed a great deal of discontent with learning management systems (LMS). Several postsecondary students felt that LMS provided a learning environment that was highly impersonal. This environment left students feeling disconnected, and even isolated, from their peers and the course instructor. Such isolation and the lack of virtual presence among online students contributed to a high rate of student attrition in early online courses.

Student disorientation represented a second problem emanating from early LMS. The poor navigational design of many of these learning environments caused students to feel disoriented, as a significant number of students had great difficulty navigating online courses. The difficulties that students experienced during attempts to navigate online courses led to an increase in cognitive load among students, limiting the suitability of online environments for learning.

A third limitation of early LMS was the unimodal design of course content. Most of the course content that students encountered in online courses included text-based content, which burdened learners’ working memory with extraneous cognitive load. Limited video and audio resources were incorporated into these courses despite the fact that research has shown that learning is optimized when instructional content is presented in multiple modalities.

The Canvas LMS solves a number of the problems inherent in early learning management systems. This system allows students to communicate with video and audio messages and maintain a virtual presence with personal images. Communicating in such modalities makes the online learning environment more personable than the earliest online learning environments. Video, audio, and images can also be used in Canvas to enhance the delivery of instructional content, as learners are no longer forced to learn in an environment that features unimodal instruction. A reduced burden is placed on learners’ working memory. One significant contrast in the Canvas LMS and early LMS is the fact that limited navigation is required by students. Most course content can be accessed by students with limited clicking, which minimizes the potential for students to become disoriented with the course environment. Thus, the Canvas LMS provides clear evidence that LMS technology is evolving.

Using video clips contextually

The question of how much of a video clip to use is one that I address with some frequency with instructors. If the copyright owner of the video clip is a publisher, there are restrictions on its use that should be consulted. A review of the TEACH Act, passed by congress in 2002, is worth your time and effort. One of the best sites that covers the opportunities this law creates for presenting video to online students is at Ball State University.

While I can only give a personal opinion, not a legal one, I believe the TEACH act offers marvelous opportunities for showing a portion of a video to students enrolled in a curricular course at a non-profit institution. Moreover, those opportunities are enhanced, markedly, with the introduction of the learning management system, Canvas, very soon here at USF.

But notice I said "portion". Some instructors feel they should be able to show an entire movie to an online class just as they can before students in a face-to-face classroom. The TEACH act says you must use only a "reasonable" portion, but I understand the guidelines leaves those "reasonable" limits up to you, the faculty member. Still, it's pretty obvious to me that the law does not want you to show the entire work online.

So, my recommendation is, give the movie clip you want to show online a "contextual wrapper". Lead-into the clip with some commentary (in the form of a narrative paragraph or a recorded comment by you). Then show the clip, next in sequence. Then follow that up with an activity or assessment. Here is an example:

In the movie, "To Kill a Mockingbird," the lead character, lawyer Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck, is defending an African American, Tom Robinson, who is on trial for the rape of a white woman. This is the old south, 1930's, and Jim Crow laws are in full bloom; it is a very bad time for African Americans. While Robinson is accused of raping the white woman, in actuality, it was the white woman, Mayella, who seduced Robinson. That's the evidence that has been explicitly drawn out by Finch during the trial. In the closing arguments you are about to see, Finch is calling on the all-white jury to consider these facts. Now let's watch the clip.

To Kill a Mockingbird clip

What does this video clip say to you about racial injustice? Does it apply today?

Like I said, it's only an example. But the effect is that the student does not have to see the entire movie to get the meaning of the video clip, if all goes well with the conceptual framework that you provide in the narrative. In Canvas, the link to the clip appears as its own video clip window, which makes for a seamless viewing and reading experience for the student.

The clip is taken from http://www.youtube.com/movieclipsFILM, which is a marvelous resource for adding clips from major movies for an instructional purpose!

Glen Gummess

Note-Taking Apps for the iPhone

Jotting down ideas and information to refer to later should be easy, and these five apps help different people do it in different ways, from the visually-oriented to Microsoft devotees. As any efficient, organized, and focused person knows, finding the right note-taking app is crucial to getting the most out of your iPhone. But the very best note-taking apps are designed help disorganized people keep their thoughts and memos in tip-top order, too. More->>

Electronic Performance Support in Learning Management Systems

It has taken nearly 20 years, but electronic performance support systems (EPSS) are finally appearing in learning management systems. EPSS are integrated, computer-based support systems (LMS) designed to provide an individual just-in-time support while the individual is performing a particular task. Help is provided to individuals in the form of expert systems, multi-modal data, software, and instructional tutorials. Electronic performance support provides a sheer contrast to training, as training focuses on preparing individuals to perform. Such preparatory approaches are not used in EPSS; these systems support individual performance.

The learning management system Canvas provides one example of electronic performance support. This LMS uses just-in-time tutorials in its Sidebar feature to support students and faculty with critical tasks at the moment of need. While the Sidebar in Canvas represents a major milestone in LMS development, innovation in LMS design is just beginning.

Paradoxes of Open Source Knowledge

These days it's just about uncommon to find something that isn't available on the World Wide Web. Paradox? You bet. Just the other day I used Google to search for video or images of a frozen turkey being dipped in cooking oil.
Boy, did I ever find it.

However, as the old adage goes, "things are not always as they seem," and the same is true for Google searches. You get what you ask for.

The search I used in Google was "frozen turkey dipped in cooking oil" and lo and behold, that's what I got. But if you look carefully, one of the sites cautions "slowly and carefully lower the turkey."

There are consequences if you don't. Take a look at this video; the first 19 seconds will be quite enough, thank you:

And how did I land this video in my Google search? By changing the search string to "frozen turkey deep frier". Once again, what you ask for is what you get. The tag line for this video was the "do not try this at home" type: It will burn your house down. No kidding. There was even a message from Captain Kirk, William Shatner, about the dangers of deep frying frozen turkey.

Perhaps this commentary would have been more appropriate around Thanksgiving, but we're heading toward Easter, so, forewarned is ... you know the rest...

But, for instructional purposes, the upshot of this commentary may very well be that Google, Bing, Ask, Yahoo and other search engines are marvelous tools for sifting for knowledge, but only if you're smart in the phraseology of what you are searching for. Composing your search string could make a huge difference in the information you harvest from the web. That is the flaw of search engines. You not only have to be careful what you ask for, you have to know, in advance, what you're asking for.

And that's why search engines will never substitute... never substitute... for the best search engine there is: your reference librarian, who can help you refine what you're asking for. And who resides in the best reputable storehouse of knowledge around: your local library; better yet your USF academic library.