Academic Technology Podcast - Episode 19

Kimberly: Hello and welcome to the nineteenth episode of the Academic Technology Podcast. I'm Kimberly Hayworth, the manager of Academic Computing's Consulting and Multimedia Services group.Today's episode includes an interview with Eric Grant, the Executive Director of the Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall. Thanks for being here today, Eric.

Eric: Oh thanks for having me.

Kimberly: So what is the Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall?

Eric: Well, the Summer Institute is our ongoing forum for academics and members of industry to come to Stanford and participate in workshops that do skill development in areas that concern learning and technology. Traditional courses at Stanford will focus more on the theory, we focus more on actual practical skills development. The instructors that lead these sessions are well versed in the theory but they prefer to do more interactive group work staying away from outright lecture instead focusing on getting everyone to work together and learn from each other.

Kimberly: Oh that's great. And how long has the Summer Institute been offered at Wallenberg Hall?

Eric: We started the Summer Institute three years ago. We had three sessions at that time: one on learning and gaming, one on multimedia and the third was on learning spaces. And we had an excellent turnout and we had good reviews of it. Last year we just had the learning spaces sessions and this year we've upped it to five different sessions with plans for seven next year. Our goal is to become a well-known source of practical skill knowledge and a gathering place for academics and industry folks from all over the world. (We usually get a pretty good turnout of both domestic and international attendees.

Kimberly: And when does the Summer Institute start?

Eric: The Summer Institute begins on August 1st with our first session and ends on August 17th with our last. So far we have registration for every course and we're ready to close out a few of them.

Kimberly: Oh, so sign up fast.

Eric: Sign up fast if you can. Things are closing out and we will have to turn away folks that really want to get in.

Kimberly: And, who is your main audience?

Eric: The target audience varies by each session but for the most part it's folks who work in academia either researchers, graduate students or faculty as well as members of industry who have some tie to academia such as folks involved in user research, folks involved in other forms of qualitative research and folks in the gaming industry.

Kimberly: Hmmm...that's very interesting. So what types of sessions in particular? You mentioned you have five.

Eric: The first session is being taught by Chuck House who is our Director of the MediaX program at Stanford and Chuck is teaching a session on building effective virtual teams. That session will be held from August 1st through the 3rd. The second session is being taught by Keith Devlin. Keith is a professor here at Stanford. Keith is going to teach a class entitled Using Video Games in Education. Keith will be bringing together folks from the gaming industry as well as from Academia to discuss the intersection of video games and learning. And he'll be bringing in a number of experts and expects it to be a very interactive session. Keith's session will be the longest one. It's being held from August 6th-10th and it's also going to be one of our most popular.

We have people signed up for every session so far. The last two are the fullest with the others coming along very rapidly. We expect a full turnout for all five sessions.

Kimberly: And what is that max?

Eric: Depends on the session. Chuck's session is going to be a maximum of 40 people. Keith's will probably be about the same. The other three sessions we expect to max out at 30 people.

Kimberly: So that'll be a great mix of folks.

Eric: It should be. The third session will be two days long. It's from August 9th through 10th and it's being taught by myself. It will be a course on new tools for qualitative research and that'll mostly be folks from Academia and perhaps a few from industry discussing the various new tools, technologies, methodologies for ethnographic and qualitative research and user research.

Kimberly: Can you talk a little bit about your background...what types of tools?

Eric: My background is mostly in technology and learning. I have a degree from Stanford in Learning Design and Technology from the School of Education. My particular interest is in the intersection of physical and virtual tools and spaces. And to that end, I've been very interested in how people do their research in a new and emerging, global, collaborative research environment. My interest in this course has stemmed from the realization that many folks engaged in qualitative research are stuck with the pen and paper notebook model. Whereas the world is increasingly digital and increasingly collaborative so those models don't necessarily work anymore. The technologies and tools that I've been investigating are mostly ways of just digitally capturing data as well as the software tools out there that are use for coding and analysis and new ways to visualize data. So anything from a digital USB voice recorder, to the DIVER video system that does multiview capture, to video editing tools to things like wikis and blogs and other forms of online collaboration tools as well as new ways to visualize data. So I've been looking at the use of tag clouds to illustrate the codes found in data. And all those things are present out there but haven't really been looked at in the context of qualitative research. So I'm attempting to get a nice group of people together to investigate those.

Another aspect of new tools and methodologies for qualitative research is the privacy issue. When you start putting all your data in digital form and sharing it with others you run into issues of privacy when it comes to human subjects. So I'll also be inviting members of Stanford's Institutional Review Board which approves research protocols to come to the session for a round table to discuss various issues.

Kimberly: That's really exciting. That's a very innovative approach to using those tools.

Eric: Thank you. I thought so. I hope that folks will come away with a new personalized process for themselves that will integrate well with their existing means of conducting research.

The fourth session will be taught by Dan Gilbert. Dan is an Academic Technology Specialist at the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning and Dan's specialty is in learning spaces. He's been teaching this course for three years. Both as part of the Summer Institute as well as as a Stanford course. It will be August 12th and 13th. Dan will be expecting about 20 or 30 people in each session. His course concentrates on the design and execution of spaces for learning...both formal and informal. As well as it has some application to workspaces and he usually gets a mix of folks from both academia and industry who are interested in building innovative spaces.

The last session will be taught by Dr. Helen Chen who is a research scientist at the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning. Helen's class is called using ePortfolios for Teaching, Learning and Assessment and it takes place on August 16th and 17th. Helen's class basically focuses on the idea that there's a large amount of material generated by each individual and that material should be archived and reused and displayed in ways that make it easy to share it with other people. She's also interested in the idea that one's body of work is generated throughout their lifetime and can be used to assess their progress as a learner and as a member of a learning community. Helen is bringing in a number of experts from academia including Toru Iiyoshi from Knowledge Media Laboratory at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She is bringing in Tracy Penny-Light who is at the Centre of Teaching and Learning through Technology at the University of Waterloo. She's also bringing in John Ittelson who is a Professor of Information Technology and Communications Design at Cal State University Monterey Bay. John Ittelson is also the Director of a research lab there that focuses entirely on distance and online learning and multimedia development heavily uses folio thinking.

Kimberly: Great. So these sessions actually are full day sessions?

Eric: Yes, the sessions typically run from about 8 AM to 5 PM. For some days we supply lunch or breakfast and typically each session involves a dinner with some prominent speaker in the field.

Kimberly: Well, in addition to all the great information, that's an amazing networking opportunity.

Eric: Yes. Dr. Devlin is also having a nice array of speakers come for evening lectures. On Monday, he'll be having Byron Reeves who's a professor at Stanford, and on Tuesday, he's having Henry Lowood, also a professor at Stanford. And these are all folks heavily involved in the gaming industry and pretty well published.

Kimberly: After the Institute, do you have some type of forum or list where people can stay in touch...wikis...blogs...

Eric: Several of the sessions are going to develop communities that should exist beyond the Institute. In particular, Chuck House's Building Effective Virtual Teams session will be using a wiki and will be using the Qwac forum to maintain a virtual environment for people to collaborate, meet, produce artifacts together and generally experience online collaborative work. Qwac was built on the OpenCroquet platform. Open Croquet is designed as a free virtual worlds tool. It's a bit like Second Life only it's a private, closed system with more security. Helen and Dan's sessions will both be using wikis so the Learning Spaces and ePortfolios sessions will have a community that has a place to go to look at the artifacts created during that session and engage in a conversation after the close of the session at Stanford. And in the past, Dan's session has used a wiki and has had a discussion all year long. Some of the material from that session will be used in this year's session. Helen's class is all about creating online archives of work so I suspect that that one will have a nice, ongoing conversation beyond the scope of the initial session here at Stanford.

Kimberly: So, Eric what's the best place to go for more information about the Summer Institute and to sign up?

Eric: I invite anyone interested in the Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall to come to our website, find out more information and sign up. It's wallenberg.stanford.edu/institute and it has all the information you need including pricing, discounts and a schedule.

Kimberly: Is this actually eligible for STAP funds if you're a Stanford employee?

Eric: Yes, it is. We accept STAP funds. We have a number of discounts based on group rates, graduate students and MediaX affiliates get a discount on Chuck House's session.

Kimberly: Well, that's a great opportunity. Thanks so much for coming in today, Eric.

Eric: Oh, thank you for having me.

Kimberly: Well, that's it for Academic Technology Podcast episode 19. Thanks for listening. Episode 20 will include an interview ith Dan Gilbert, Eric Grant and Bob Smith of the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning about Wallenberg Hall's resources for teaching and learning with technology.

Links to information discussed in this podcast and other show notes are available online at http://acomp.stanford.edu/cams Just click the Academic Technology Podcast link. You'll also find a link to our blog if you'd like to provide feedback or suggest topics for future podcasts.