Computer Skills Assessment – Post 2

Posted on November 13, 2009 by barrydahl

This is a continuation of the previous post related to the results of the Computer Skills Assessment given to 245 new students at Lake Superior College in September 2009.

Not all of the tasks were as easy as the others. For the following analysis, students were combined into two categories: Confident and Not confident, by combining the top 2 categories into the confident group and the bottom two categories into the not confident group.

The chart below shows how each group performed on each of the individual tasks.

General information about the tasks (survey questions 3-8) are shown below. I’m not going to post the specific tasks since this is an ongoing assessment (don’t post your test online).

Question 3 (task #1) – students must open a web browser to navigate to a website without having a link to click. Students must type the URL into the browser address bar or search for it based on the information given.

Question 4 (task #2) – using a browser, students are instructed to go to the Lake Superior College home page (www.lsc.edu) and then find some specific information about available financial aid.  There are several different ways that students can navigate to the chosen page and find the answer. You can see from the chart that this question does not differentiate abilities very well.

Question 5 (task #3) – students use a search engine to find a web site based on a description provided. Once the students finds the site they are able to easily find the answer for the question. If a student chooses any of the major search engines they should easily find the website based on the search term given in the question.

Question 6 (task #4) – if the assessment is being administered on-campus in a computer lab (as it was for these 245 students), then the students are asked to search for a file on the hard drive. After finding the file, the answer to the question is the size (in KB) of the file. Using the computer search function is the easiest way to do this exercise, but students could try other techniques including browsing through the various file folders on the computer. You can see from the chart that this was the task with the lowest success rate.

Question 7 (task #5) – students are asked to use Microsoft Word or another word processing program to create a new document. They are asked to enter some text (a small amount) and then format the text in a few different ways. NOTE: this is a very basic attempt at assessing word processing knowledge. The exercise could definitely be longer if time is not a concern.

Question 8 (task #6) – students are given a flash (USB) drive to use during this step (which they get to keep as compensation for their time) and are asked to save the document to the external drive named [your name].doc. (e.g. John Doe.doc).

Question 9 – Thank you for participating in this computer skills test. We would especially value your feedback about this exercise. Do you have any suggestions for ways that we can make it better? Are there any parts of the instructions that you found to be confusing? Anything else you’d like to tell us? (a few of the many responses are shown below)

  • It was nice to learn how to use the flash drive. Thank you very much.
  • Nope, you did good and that’s the most I’ve done on a computer in years! Later
  • The only confusing part was the flash drive.  Which removable disk to save it to.
  • very easy
  • All I can say is Thank you! I have not used a flash drive before this but now I know how.
  • I believe a refresher course would have been good for me personally.
  • This exercise has made me feel better about what I know about computers.
  • This was great it showed me my week points and my strong points. it also showed me I need to be more sure of myself when it comes to computers.

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Computer Skills Assessment – Post 1

Posted on November 12, 2009 by barrydahl

245 students completed the computer skills assessment during the Fall 2009 Student Success Day at Lake Superior College. All students enrolled in the FYE 1000 classes (First Year Experience) were invited to complete the assessment. To encourage their participation, each student who completed the survey was given a 2 GB USB drive with the LSC logo attached.

Question 1 – How confident are you in your ability to use a computer?

As you can see from the chart, the vast majority of students indicate that they are very or somewhat confident in their computing abilities.

Question 2 – How confident are you in your ability to use email, including sending documents or photos attached to an email?

Very confident = 124  (50.6%)
Somewhat confident = 83  (33.9%)
Not very confident = 29  (11.8%)
Not at all confident = 9  (3.7%)

After those two self-assessment questions there are six tasks that the students are asked to complete. One factor that was analyzed was how many of those six tasks were completed successfully. Based on the data shown below, the self-assessments of computer skills appears to be a fairly accurate predictor of how many tasks a student could complete. (Full statistical analysis not yet completed, Nov. 2009)

  • 92% of the students who indicated that they were “Very confident” in their computer skills (n = 101) either completed 5 of 6 or all 6 of 6 tasks on the computer skills test.
  • 86.2% of the students who indicated that they were “Somewhat confident” in their computer skills (n = 116) either completed 5 of 6 or all 6 of 6 tasks on the computer skills test.
  • 50% of the students who indicated that they were “Not very confident” in their computer skills (n = 20) either completed 5 of 6 or all 6 of 6 tasks on the computer skills test.
  • 12.5% of the students who indicated that they were “Not at all confident” in their computer skills (n = 8 ) either completed 5 of 6 or all 6 of 6 tasks on the computer skills test.

In the next post we’ll take a look at what those 6 tasks are and how well students performed on each of the tasks.

Filed under: Computing | 1 Comment »

Testing Windows Live Writer

Posted on November 2, 2009 by barrydahl

I have previously used LiveWriter from Microsoft, but I just installed the newest version on my Windows 7 PC. The main purpose of this post is to test out the functionality of the blog writer and to see if the integration with my WordPress blog (the one you’re looking at right now) is working properly.

Photo embeds work properly? Let’s see.

Detroit CIT09 052

That’s a mirror shot from my recent trip to Detroit. Not very exciting, I know.

I also installed the “Live” version of Windows Movie Maker. I’ll check that out later and report back on what I find.

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Catalyst CAMP Recap

Posted on October 27, 2009 by barrydahl

I was a Catalyst CAMP Ranger at the recently concluded WCET09 conference in Denver. Catalyst CAMP is a wrap-around leadership academy that was started by WCET this year. By “wrap-around” I mean that the camp started the day before the annual conference began and concluded with the end of the conference on Saturday.

The CAMP was led by Hae Okimoto of Univ. of Hawaii System and Myk Garn of Southern Regional Education Board. That’s Myk in the Ranger hat when he was welcoming the campers on Day 1. Fellow CAMP Rangers included Maggi Murdock, Muriel Oaks, Mollie McGill, Karen Paulson, Russ Poulin, Philip Cameron, and David Phillips.

I had the pleasure of working directly with three of the fifteen campers; Judith Steed, Reed Scull, and James Russom. Their testimonials are shown below.

“There were three main high points of the camp: 1) meeting others learning their way into the WCET advantage, 2) getting to talk with the keynote speakers in smaller group discussions and 3) connecting with the great rangers who had experience, ideas and encouragement to share so very generously. I especially enjoyed the campers’ willingness to share and explore together with humor and productive intention. I look forward to meeting my camping cohort next time.”

Judith L. Steed, M.S.
Director of Assessment: Promoting Student Learning
University of the Rockies

———–

“There were several very helpful aspects to Catalyst CAMP.  One was the opportunity to discuss issues of common concern with experienced campus distance education leaders.  Secondly, the canoe speech was helpful in seeing how others process and explain challenging distance education topics.  The time constraint of three minutes for this speech was very important in encouraging us to reflect on what elements of our “pitches” were the most salient.  Lastly, the opportunity to interact in small groups with the plenary speakers was very helpful.  Overall, I learned more from the camp than I expected, and I made some nice friendships to boot.”

W. Reed Scull, Ed.D.
Director, Outreach Credit Programs and Associate Dean,
The Outreach School, University of Wyoming

———-

“The Catalyst Camp experience was extremely beneficial.”

“Benefits included:

  • Leadership by the Camp Rangers was personal and relevant – a good learning atmosphere
  • Exposure to folks that are extremely knowledgeable in their field of expertise
  • The fellowship and networking among peers
  • The unique learning experience from being face to face with the keynote speakers
  • The fellowship at meal times”

“The format, food, fellowship with the other campers and the face-to-face with the keynote speakers was invaluable. I cannot imagine not taking part in future camps.”

Dr. James R. Russom
Associate Director of Online Education
Nazarene  Bible College

———-

It was my pleasure to meet these fine leaders and work with them over the four days of CAMP.

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Who the hell is Brian Lamb?

Posted on October 26, 2009 by barrydahl

This video helps answer two buring questions:

  1. Who the hell is Brian Lamb?
  2. Why is he saying all these terrible things about Learning Objects?

Brian is one of my favorite EdTech speakers and thought leaders. He was the closing keynote speaker at the recently concluded WCET conference in Denver. My flight was scheduled to leave at about the same time that Brian’s address was scheduled to begin. I even tried to pay extra to get a seat on a later flight, but alas, none were available so I was destined to miss this event.

As luck (and good planning) would have it, Brian agreed to spend an hour with the Catalyst CAMP attendees on the day prior to his keynote. I was one of the CAMP Rangers (my cabin group was known as the Tweetarondaks) and so was able to be part of the group that spent an hour with Brian in a more informal session. He agreed to let me shoot some video during the chat and this is the first one that I’d like to share.

In this 10 minute video you’ll learn about how Brian got started working in education, and how his first job at UBC was essentially to help them build a closed-system Learning Object Repository with all the SCORM and IMS guidelines and requirements, and all that jazz. Not surprisingly, Brian tells the tale of how open-ness and simple technologies can be used much more effectively for those who truly want to share.

http://www.wcet.info/2.0/

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Catalyst CAMP Begins

Posted on October 20, 2009 by barrydahl

I will be serving as a camp ranger for the WCET higher education leadership academy called CatalystCAMP (Changing Academic Methods & Practices) from Oct. 21-24 in Denver.

The leadership academy is wrapped around the WCET annual conference that starts Oct. 22. Myk Garn of the SREB and I will be leading the group through their paces as we talk about the Articulation step in the process. The five A’s are as follows:

  1. Awareness
  2. Anticipation
  3. Articulation
  4. Action
  5. Assessment

One of the first things we provided to the campers was a suggested reading list. Here are my contributions to the list.

1) The Cluetrain Manifesto by Locke, Searles, Weinberger, Levine

“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”  http://www.cluetrain.com/book.html

Barry says: this book is still as informative and relevant as it was 10 years ago when it was first published. Every leader in higher ed should be familiar with the manifesto and how it represents a fundmental change in how we must communicate with the world by speaking with a human voice. BTW, this book can be read in its entirety for free, online.

2) Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen

“According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn’t always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need ‘disruptive innovation.’”  http://disruptingclass.mhprofessional.com/apps/ab/about-the-book/

Barry says: There’s lots of books out there about how we need to reform education or “fix” schools. This book takes a reasoned approach of how we can use technology effectively to create truly individualized instruction that can help students learn at many different levels – where they are and when they need it. Based on the idea of “disruptive innovation.”

3) The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein

“50 Million Minds Diverted, Distracted, Devoured. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their minds had the opposite effect.”  http://www.dumbestgeneration.com/home.html

Barry says: Don’t believe the hype about the “tech-savvy” (quote marks intentional) Millennial generation and most definitely don’t make big strategic plans to change the way you provide education based upon that same hype and drivel. If anything, this generation (and presumably the next one, etc.) will need more of our help to make sense of and productive uses of technology in their educational pursuits.

4) 33,000,000 people in the room – by Juliette Powell

“33 Million People in the Room offers practical tools and advice for optimizing every stage of your own social networking initiative, from planning through measurement. The techniques can help you build your company, introduce new products and services, and strengthen your brands, whatever they are: business or personal.”  http://www.juliettepowell.com/book.php

Barry says: We’ll talk about this idea during the camp; you probably won’t need to read the book after that discussion. It’s an important idea about creating your own network of connections. This book is not specific to education, but the examples allow you to make your own connections to higher education.

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CIT09 Begins Sunday

Posted on October 9, 2009 by barrydahl

I leave tomorrow for the League for Innovation Conference on Information Technology (CIT) in Detroit City. Here is a Wordle made from all the sessions titles for Track II – Teaching and Learning.

wordle2-CIT09

I will be involved with four different presentations during the conference: (full schedule here)

1/2 Day Learning Center Course:
Ensuring Quality in Online Learning: A Primer for Administrators
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Sunday, October 11, 2009
Barry Dahl & Hanna Erpestad, Lake Superior College

Myths and Realities of Teaching With Technology
8:00 AM to 9:00 AM Tuesday, October 13, 2009

How to Be a Digital Community College Winner
11:00 AM to 12:00 PM Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Lani Cauthen, Vice President Of Sales, Center for Digital Education
(I will talk briefly about how we made it on the list.)

Special Session:
Users and Uses of Web 2.0 in Higher Education
12:30 PM to 1:30 PM Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Twitter tag for the conference is #CIT09.  I have also created a Twub (Twitter Hub) at http://twubs.com/CIT09

Ensuring Quality in Online Learning: A Primer for Administrators1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Sunday, October 11, 2009Barry Dahl, Vice President, Lake Superior College; Hanna Erpestad, Dean, Lake Superior College;

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Action Analytics Symposium – Day 1

Posted on September 23, 2009 by barrydahl

MnSCU-ActionAnalyticsA two-day symposium on Action Analytics was held in St. Paul on September 22-23, 2009. I took lots of notes via Twitter. I’ll copy and paste several of those tweets from day one and call it a blog post. Twitter hashtag #ActionAnalytics

  • Symposium begins in 1 hour. First up: “Why action analytics for higher education?” My answer: to improve student success
  • Symposium getting started. MnSCU Chancellor states that the people are fed up with the completion problems in higher ed.
  • “I don’t think we can assume that our needs will be funded if we can’t demonstrate high levels of achievement.”
  • The key piece of #ActionAnalytics is not the analytics, it is the ACTION. Use the data to lead us to actions to span the achievement gap.
  • Who’s been invited to #ActionAnalytics ? Trustees, presidents, political leaders, policy makers, national associations (& me?)
  • Donald Norris has a blog titled: Linking Analytics to Lifting Out of Recession http://bit.ly/1TI4s
  • Higher ed has never said “Every student needs to succeed.” We accept failure – non-completers are expected & “normal”
  • Health care & education are similar in the “laying on of hands.” Nationwide discussion about reforming health care, will education be next?
  • Had breakfast this morning with Capella’s president. He told me some surprising things about their student demographics. Very impressed. Capella educates huge numbers of first-generation college students. I don’t think that’s widely know. He tells a great story about access.
  • Higher ed measures lagging indicators (persistence, graduation, etc), should focus on leading indicators (Wk1 engagement)
  • More open education environment will take us from education opportunity (now) to education assurance (future). Bill Graves
  • Getting data out of our systems is hard (costly) – we need better standardization of info systems. Michael Feldstein
  • The data is leaving the LMS for Web 2.0 apps – how do we build connections to all these tools (can we)? Michael Feldstein
  • “Smart Change” is the aggressive application of change management principles to develop institutional capacity (Baer/Duin)
  • Routine change happens everyday, transformative change gets you out of your comfortable box. Academics freak out with that.
  • My take on transformative change – largest barrier is TRADITION (think Topol singing in Fiddler on the Roof). For example: 300 bright minds may agree that we should extend the school year – but 300 million people disagree because of tradition of summer vacation.
  • John Campbell of Purdue. Building capacity for analytics is really about building community – getting buy-in
  • Purdue Signals Program – actionable intelligence – real-time predictions of student success in a course. Try to focus your data analysis – one question leads to another – must make choices and keep it simple. Purdue’s Campbell. Purdue’s info system hasn’t reduced course drops, but they drop earlier. More B/C grades, fewer D/F. Purdue students didn’t think it was Big Brother. They appreciated the info avail to them “thanks for kick in the butt.”
  • Alex Ushveridze – Predictive Modeling Expert at Capella. “How” questions depend on the “who”and the “why.” Persistence? Predictive Modeling is a continue cyclic process- a way of acting rationally. Online education is ideal arena for P.M. Capella – Early alert – how early? FIRST WEEK determines everything!! High predictability of grades at end of first week.
  • Jeff Gran- mgr of assessment at Capella will focus on measurement of learning. How can we collaborate to measure outcomes? Capella has 1,100+ faculty. Outcomes are measured with a fully embedded assessment model (FEAM) in each course.
  • Craig Scheonecker of MnSCU showing MnSCU accountability dashboards. Focus on fewer items and make easy to understand. Check out the MnSCU dashboards – available to the public http://bit.ly/Jq0lb You can even “drill down” (somewhat).
  • Conundrum: as we move to individualized learning models – how can we aggregate/analyze data with small N sizes?
  • Issue: there is a need for info literacy about these analytics – who’s doing something about that? Michael Feldstein
  • Will #ActionAnalytics evolve into a set of open tools that can be shared across institutions? It’s not happening yet.
  • ERP vendors, LMS vendors are all looking at (selling) these types of tools – but is that the direction Higher Ed should go.
  • http://twitpic.com/iq2vj – Lunch keynote speaker at #ActionAnalytics – Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter.
  • During lunch: “When Blackboard is presented a business opportunity – their response is ‘What would the 19th century robber-barons do?’”
  • #ActionAnalytics panel discussion – What info, reports, dashboards are needed? 1st up: Dr. George Boggs, American Assoc. Community Colleges. Dr. Boggs: The old saying was “students have a right to fail.” Luckily, that point of view is changing – but not totally. Spellings Commission concerned with consumer info. That’s not the focus for CCs. We need the data to improve our outcomes. Voluntary system of accountability. One concern is improving the effectiveness of our remedial education programs.
  • Foreign dignitaries come to the US. to study our system of higher education. “Sorry, we don’t have one of those.”
  • 25-30% of the developmental ed is done at universities – but they don’t do remedial education. Name Game: Banana Fanna Fo.
  • Revenue per FTE at public institutions: $7,059 appropriations, $4,004 tuition revenues. (64% – 36% nationally)
  • If academe makes accountability studies without outside oversight, will they be viewed as being less than truthful?
  • “As an educator masquerading as a technologist, I now realize how little I know about what will happen next.” Michael F.
  • http://twitpic.com/iqgyd – From #ActionAnalytics – two bright minds: Mark Milliron and John O’Brien.
  • Data Quality Campaign website: http://bit.ly/e2bMb Using Longitudinal Data Systems to Improve Student Success.
  • We have a greater supply of data than demand for it. People don’t ask for it, don’t trust it, can’t use it effectively.
  • Next generation of analytics – interesting conversation since we are still making baby steps on the current generation. Next gen: move from high-cost business intelligence to value analytics for the masses. Next gen: move from users waiting for results to immediate results with dynamic analysis and changing parameters. Next gen: analytics currently driven by power users, move to end users deploying user-friendly tools. Next gen: move from institutional data sets to cross-institutional analytics and P-20 data sets.
  • Discussing some of the user-generated analytics – RateYourProfessors, PickaProf, CollegeResults dot org, etc.
  • Statistics is THE math that we need to be teaching in high school and college. More important to our future than Calculus.
  • One of the secret sauces for analytics is the predictive model – good place for collaboration. Open-source style. Al Essa
  • Our technical capacity is developing faster than our ability to make constructive use of the output. What does this mean?

Overall, it was a very good day, very long day, spent with very intelligent people. My brain is full.

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More Twitter Goodness

Posted on September 3, 2009 by barrydahl

Just passing along a few good links from my Twitter friends. I just add these to my Favorites list as I see them and then post them when the mood strikes.

Filed under: Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Link Love for my Tweople

Posted on August 24, 2009 by barrydahl

twitter-34dSome of my favorite tweets from recent days with links to useful stuff. I learn more things from the people I follow than any other network or learning group or anything else, by far. They’re smart, they’re engaged, they’re connected, and they’re relevant to my day-to-day life. Here’s a baker’s dozen (in no particular order):

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