the u is flat: cross-disciplinary support for critical evaluation and effective use of web-based...

The U is Flat: Cross-Disciplinary Support for

Critical Evaluation and Effective Use of Web-Based Learning Resources

Victor WongNancy Kerner

Ted HanssBrenda Gunderson

The University of Michigan

MIC 2007 The University of Michigan 2

Key Questions

• How do we overcome barriers between the various disciplines?

• What synergy do we gain in collaborating cross-disciplinarily?


Outline

UM-MERLOT Community of Practice

• History

• MIC 2006

• AY 2006-2007

• Future

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE


Key Players

• Carl Berger, Provost Office & School of Education: – founding MERLOT Project Director, – recruited Nancy Kerner, then Kim Bayer

• Nancy Kerner, Chemistry Department: – MERLOT editor, Chemistry editorial board

• Kim Bayer, College of Lit, Sciences, and Arts: – second MERLOT Project Director

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE


Common Problems

• Often one or two "lone rangers" involved in MERLOT

– Little or no institutional impact

– Little awareness of MERLOT within our large decentralized campus

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

Let’s see a visual aid to show this problem …


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

MERLOT

Hi! I’m Nancy. Where is

everybody?


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

Hi Victor. Where is everybody?

Are there others?

VKW NK


Common Problems

• Support for MERLOT was not institutionalized

– Did not know if MIC attendance would be supported from year to year

– Did not know if support for MERLOT would last past current year

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

And now back to the fishes…


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

KB

VKW

NK

We have to search and invest in catching some!


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

UM-MERLOT Community of Practice• Don’t invest in a solo fish!

• Rule of thumb: minimally put a pair of fish in your aquarium.

• Invest in a community and happiness will result!


Addressing the Problems

• MERLOT@UM Cross-disciplinary Community of Practice– Put local branding to MERLOT to make it more relevant on

campus

– Select interested persons from diverse disciplines to join MERLOT@UM

– Solicit support/approval from selected persons' chair/supervisor for their involvement in MERLOT@UM

– Kick off Community of Practice by sending to MIC 2006 with commitment to participating in MERLOT@UM throughout next year

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE



• Explicit Recognition of MERLOT's Value: Intramural and Extramural– Explicit support from Office of the Provost (in

addition to support from MERLOT@UM members' chair or supervisor)

– Why MERLOT? piece written by Nancy Kerner– Letter of support from Vice-Provost for Academic

Information

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE



• Continue to push for Sponsorship from the Professional Societies– Journal of Chemical Education, work of Nancy

Kerner– Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate

Statistics Education (CAUSE)

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE


Alignment of Support for Cross-disciplinary Community of Practice

• decentralized support from the various MERLOT@UM members' chairs and supervisors

• centralized support from the Office of the Provost

• funding support from College of Literature, Arts, and the Sciences as well as the Office of the Provost for the MERLOT International Conference (MIC)

We were ready for the …

HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

at the


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

MIC 2006 Invitations

• Victor issued invitations to join Michigan’s new MERLOT Community of Practice

• Invitation included travel funding from the Provost’s Office to attend MIC 2006 in Ottawa– Participant had to commit to participate for one year

with community of practice– Victor recommended that people attend peer

reviewer training at MIC 2006– 10 people accepted the invitation to attend MIC 2006


UM-MERLOT Community of Practice

Brenda Gunderson

Statistics

Robert Bain

Education

Laurie Sutch Faculty

Exploratory

Kim Bayer Literature Sci & Arts

Instr Support Services

Helene Neu Romance

Languages

Raj Mangrulkar Internal

Medicine

Crisca Bierwert Center for Research on Learning and Teaching

Ted Hanss Medical School

Lynne Crandall Language

Resource Center

University of Michigan MERLOT

Community of Practice Board

2006 – 2007 Nancy Kerner

Chemistry

Victor Wong Provost Office


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

At MIC 2006

• Met at lunch on Tuesday to coordinate efforts– Group informally shared plans for particular

sessions so we didn’t all attend the same breakouts

• Held a group dinner Wednesday evening

• Two questions posed at dinner:– What did you find interesting or surprising?– What will you do with the information when you

get back to Ann Arbor?


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

At MIC 2006• Some responses to the questions posed at dinner:

– What did you find interesting or surprising?• … to see the wide variety of types of learning objects available

– What will you do with the information when you get back to Ann Arbor?• “There is a tremendous wealth of material being developed and

MERLOT offers an easy way to get an overview of the LO, look at the content and consider its appropriateness for a class.”

• “I plan to introduce MERLOT to the graduate student instructors I train – they may be excited and open to this resource.”

Turn to that first year … the


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

UM-MERLOT Community of Practice 2006 - 2007

• A diverse group of faculty and staff– to focus on commonalities and cross-institutional

communications– to enable cross-disciplinary conversation– to build a cross-disciplinary community of practice

Education, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching,Statistics, Chemistry, Medical School, Internal Medicine,

Romance Languages and Literatures, Language Resource Center,Instructional Support Services, Faculty Exploratory, Office of the Provost.


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

UM-MERLOT Community of Practice 2006 - 2007

• Group includes a MERLOT Project Director and Editor– Serve as a valuable information resource about MERLOT

• Provostial Recognition of value of UM-MERLOT– Vice provost provides letters to participants and their

department heads to raise the visibility of participation

• Monthly meetings– Participants commit to participation in the coming year


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

1st UM-MERLOT post-MIC Meeting October 2006

Key Discussion Items

1. UM Teaching and Technology Collaborative (TTC): goals and possible relationship to MERLOT

2. What should the UM-MERLOT Community Do?


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

1. UM Teaching & Technology Collaborative (TTC)

• Discussion starts with false assumption about TTC and MERLOT– MERLOT might serve as a resource for UM faculty

developing Learning Objects (LOs)– Faculty need easy-to-adapt templates and tools to design

LOs– Turned to looking more closely at what TTC provides

versus what MERLOT providesImportant to recognize that there will be

a learning curve for faculty and staff


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

1. UM Teaching & Technology Collaborative (TTC)

• TTC versus MERLOT

Consensus: TTC provides technology tools and ‘raw’ objects, MERLOT provides ‘finished’ learning objects

RawLearning

Object

MERLOT

TTCTech Tools

Finished

High

Low


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE


• MERLOT is a resource for FINISHED LOs but there are excellent UM LOs not on MERLOT– Encourage submissions of LOs to MERLOT to support the

scholarship of teaching and learning?– Create a template for UM faculty for MERLOT

contributions?– Create a repository for contributed UM LOs?


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE


• Promote more awareness of MERLOT as useful tool for the scholarship of teaching and learning– How do we create conversation on campus

regarding this issue of MERLOT?

Consensus: need to find many waysto connect MERLOT to the UM campus


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

Key Outcomes of 1st UM-MERLOT MeetingGroup acknowledges need to learn about and discuss:

• Learning Objects

• MERLOT as useful tool for scholarship and teaching

• Discipline specific needs regarding LOs

• How to overcome discipline barriers

• Commonalities across disciplines

• Ways to connect MERLOT to UM campus


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

Homework from 1st UM-MERLOT MeetingEach member to select from following for next meeting:

• Bring and share an item (LO) that could be submitted to MERLOT

• Invite a colleague to submit a LO to MERLOT

• Recommend a MERLOT LO to a colleague

What happened after that first meeting?


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

Summary of UM-MERLOT Meetings 2006 – 2007

UM TTC,

MERLOT

and LOs

Nov Dec Feb Apr

Let’s look at these more closely


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

TTC, MERLOT, and LEARNING OBJECTSOctober - November - December

What are our goals?

TTC vs MERLOT?What exactly is a LO?


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

PROMOTE CAMPUS AWARENESS/USAGE

Promotional flyer(1st draft Dec 06)

Flyer (Jan07)

UM Repository(Discussions

Jan 06 and April 07)

DeepBlue and MERLOT

Grants(First discussion Dec 06)

Whittaker Grants (Feb 07)

NSF Grant 08?


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

CROSS-DISCIPLINARY USAGE AND PEDAGOGY

LO Examples(Nov 06 to Jan 07)

UM & MERLOT

E Portfolio(March 07)

DeepBlue

(April 07)

MERLOT Projects

Elixir, CASTLE(March and April 07)

We turn to looking at the future…


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE

Continue focus on awareness, usage, and development

• Create a UM-MERLOT web presence

• Share and showcase UM-MERLOT at internal academic technology venues that focus on Learning and Teaching (CRLT, TTC/Enriching Scholarship)

• Develop local collection of LOs for UM viewing


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE


• Gain information from and join efforts of ELIXR, Carnegie Academy, NSF and others that focus on appropriate use of learning objects

• Apply for appropriate grant-based support

• Expand membership and continue to grow– Currently science heavy, look for humanities– Send additional people to the MIC


HISTORY

MIC 2006 AY 2006 - 2007 FUTURE


• More proactive in encouragement of UM-MERLOT members to:– propose LOs– review LOs (create good demo of review process to

share)– use LOs– develop LOs


Questions?

the u is flat: cross-disciplinary support for critical evaluation and effective use of web-based...

Documents

merlot little

various merlot

merlot editor

supervisorwhy merlot

university of michiganum

university of michiganmerlothi

crossdisciplinary support

extramuralexplicit support