It occurred to me after I published yesterday’s post that I should probably talk about why I think it’s important to do all the things I was trying to do with the Faculty Academy Web site. I’ve already touched on a few or those reasons — mainly the selfish desire to learn more about how WP/WPMU works and to, hopefully, discover some techniques/ideas that I could put to use on other projects. But I don’t want to suggest that putting together this site was purely an exercise; I’d like to believe that there was actually some meaningful purpose behind the experience.
In a former job, I spent a lot of time planing Web sites, thinking about their communicative goals, talking to focus groups and committees about their purpose and how we would measure their success. While I learned a lot from that experience, and I think I was able to put what I learned to good use, truthfully, a lot of it felt like wheel spinning. Talking about what we were trying to do so as to convince ourselves we understood what we were trying to do. Making a science (or a study) out of something that still, for me, often feels very nebulous and difficult to define.
So one of the reasons I love, love, love working on the site for Faculty Academy is that it has a somewhat short life-time (I know that it serves a purpose as an ongoing, permanent archive of the event, but it’s core user functionality is really critical for only about 6-8 weeks prior to the conference). It’s also a small enough conference, with enough returning attendees (most from within my own University), that I have some freedom to try new things and not worry too much if they backfire. Sure, the cfp and registration system needs to work. The program needs to be clear and easy-to-find. Logistical information needs to be accurate and consistent, but, beyond that, there’s a lot of opportunity to play.
This idea of “playing” as a way of building a Web site is, more and more, a much more rewarding way for me to work on sites. I feel pretty lucky that most of what I build online these days has a somewhat short life-span (a semester, perhaps), is done in collaboration with other playful individuals (my colleagues in DTLT and the amazing faculty and students at UMW), and doesn’t contain a lot of “serious,” institutional data that I need to worry about vetting with a huge committee or administration.
That said, I don’t want to downplay the importance of these projects. I just think course management systems, with all of their institutional-looking interfaces and static feature sets have lulled a lot of us (instructional technologists, faculty, students), into thinking that building online experiences within the Academy needs to be a locked-down, top-down, “standardized” experience. I think that’s just antithetical to how we ultimately teach and learn.
So as I embarked on this year’s conference site, I was seeking to build a site that could serve the following goals:
* provide clear, accurate information about the event (that’s a no-brainer)
* allow people to easily register or submit proposals (again, duh)
* provide an online venue for pre-conference interaction and investigation
* provide an online venue for live conference activity and monitoring of conference activities happening in other spaces
True:
* Not a lot of people added tags to program items
* I’m not sure how many people cared that there was a “live” feed of current sessions on the home page.
* As far as I can tell from the Google Analytics, no one viewed any of the archived conference video from previous years that I highlighted in the site footer prior to the event.
* Only a handful of people used delicious to add bookmarks that were tagged “umwfa09.”
But, by no means, do I think any of what I tried was a failure. First, as I’ve said before, I learned a ton doing it. I’m never failing when I’m learning. Second, even if a lot of people didn’t participate in some of the opportunities I provided, I believe a few people had seeds planted that we can continue to nurture throughout the year and at next year’s conference. Bit by bit, we make inroads. And we also model for our faculty, our students, and ourselves a way of building and creating that values learning, creativity, experimentation, and even “failure.”
, but it was very cool to be able to simply install a plugin and have an iPhone/iPod touch-ready conference site.
Reflections on Day One of The (Un)Common University
Lots of great take aways from this first day of the conference.
James Boyle’s talk was inspiring, engaging, simply awesome. In Twitter someone said he had the audience in the palm of his hand, and that was certainly evident looking around the room. There was so much to take away from his talk, but I’ll mention two things that jumped out at me.
* It’s really interesting how we avoid thinking about issues of open-ness vs/ closed-ness in self interested terms. The conversation always seems to veer towards discussions of values and philosophies. I think values and philosophies are great — but Boyle reminded us that openness is also a great choice because it can serve our self-interests. We just tend assume it can’t.
This reminds me a lot of the way my dad talks about environmentalism. He’s a biologist with the Office of Endangered Species, and although he certainly believes in the mission of the ESA for philosophical reasons, he’s also great at reminding people that preserving species and the environment is a choice that protects our own self-interests.
It’s OK to be self-interested. It’s even better when our self-interests jive with our philosophies.
* At one point Boyle basically referred to the practice of teaching as the ultimate mashup. Teachers are constantly “stealing” techniques, lesson plans, activities, styles from each other — often without attribution. The next time I’m talking to faculty about mashups, I plan to use this as a means to explain the concept.
During Lunch, Jim Groom and John St. Clair blew us all away with the mock debate, “Is the CMS dead?” Jim, quite predictably and charmingly went the zombie route. John, however, well. . .who knew John had that in him? I can’t describe it. I recommend visiting the faculty academy Web site in a week or so and watching the video.
In the afternoon, Cole Camplese’s plenary captured people’s imaginations about how we can use lightweight emerging technologies to redefine our notion of conversation in the classroom. The number of questions and comments at the end of his presentation spoke to how he clearly engaged the faculty at UMW and our guest visitors. My favorite anecdote from his presentation was about the student who tweeted one evening that he had just realized his thesis was due the following day — a week earlier than he had thought. Out of nowhere, his classmates jumped in to assist — proofreading, helping with endnote formatting, meeting in the Library to discuss a draft. In the course of that evening, the entire class suddenly understood what Twitter could do for them.
And now, I’m sitting in Laura Blankenship’s workshop on personal learning networks where about twelve of us are brainstorming how to use lightweight web-based tools to accomplish all sorts of tasks and connect with the people who can help us to work, learn, and live online. Frabulous!
We’ll close the day with some wine and food and be back in the morning to start it all over again.
I wish everyday could be Faculty Academy.