Information Technology Assistance Center Faculty Research and Publications
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Item Open Access Action potentials: extrapolating an ideology from the Anonymous hacker socio-political movement (a qualitative meta-analysis)(Information Science Reference, 2013-03-15) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalin; Akrivopoulou, Christina; Garipidis, NicolaosAn ideology is defined as a set of ideas that “explains and evaluates social conditions, helps people understand their place in society, and provides a program for social and political action” (Ball & Dagger, 2011, p. 4). As such, these concepts underpin the actions of various groups and organizations, including that of the Anonymous hacker group, which professes no ideology or creed. Rather, the group has styled itself as a kind of anarchic global brain connected by various spaces on the Internet. This work explores four main data streams to extrapolate the group’s ideology: the current socio-political context of hacking and hacktivism; the group’s self-definition (through its professed values); the group’s actions (through the “propaganda of the deed”); and the insights of others about the group This chapter defines the socio-technical context of this Anonymous hacker socio-political movement, which draws ideas from the Hacker Manifesto 2.0, which suggests the advent of a new economic system with the new technological vectors (mediums of communication). This movement is apparently pushing forth the advent of a new information regime in which the abstraction of ideas adds a “surplus” economic value that may be tapped. Styled as fighters against government tyranny, they are pushing hard against an international regime of intellectual property and information control by governments and corporations. This is being published in the spirit that (some) information wants to be free and that there is a value in direct discourse.Item Open Access An Instructional Design Approach to Updating an Online Course Curriculum(2011-02-24) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinA well-designed curriculum for online learning nurtures both student learning and student retention. While ideally value will be designed into an online curriculum from the start, the reality is that, across the spectrum of e-learning, there is a wide range of quality. Consequently, virtually every online course can benefit from periodic curricular updates. Once online courses are developed and implemented, however, their curriculum might not be changed or updated for some time, if ever. When it does take place, curricular redesign tends to focus on particulars rather than the big picture. Rarely do we step back to fundamentally assess the raison d'etre for a given curriculum — to examine the essential cultural factors that undergird that curriculum and the purposes for which it was created.1 Analyses at that level have great potential to enrich a curriculum. In addition, curricular updates can introduce important new content, and may also introduce pedagogical enhancements that can improve the quality of e-learning. In this context, this article presents ideas for an approach based in the principles of instructional design to updating the curriculum for online courses. Tools from that realm — including establishing processes for effective online learning, templating digital learning objects and modules for quality, defining clear work flows and decision junctures, adhering to standards of legality and ethics, and applying wise leadership and project management—offer a powerful approach to the development and refinement of quality curricula.Item Open Access Washington Online Virtual Campus: Infusing culture in dispersed Web-based higher education(2010-06-09T16:03:16Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinStarted in 1997, WashingtonOnline Virtual Campus (WAOL) consists of a consortium of 34 community colleges around Washington State to provide asynchronous online learning. WAOL bears many of the features of a loosely coupled organization with its geographically dispersed frontline instructors, fragmented external environment, modularity of courses and supervision, and its use of enhanced leadership and technology to communicate a culture. Recent surveys of its administration, instructors, and staff found disparities in various constituencies’ perspectives on the organization’s culture, decision-making, values, brand or reputation, communications, and WAOL’s authorizing environment. Research suggests that WAOL benefits from some aspects of loose coupling: greater adaptive abilities and responsiveness to the State’s college system; “fast” course development and launching; and isolated breakdowns. There is, however, a persistent difficulty in conveying a cohesive culture. There is a perception of WAOL’s invisibility among its varied constituencies. This organization is at a crossroads, with the threat of colleges disconnecting from this consortium. WAOL should redefine its direction and purpose, such as coupling with local universities to provide not only associates degrees but full Baccalaureate and/ or Masters degrees. It may strengthen its position by improving learner supports, publicizing its decisions, creating a stronger sense of virtual community among the instructors (as in its recent creation of an online community for instructors), increased participative decision-making and use of line faculty and staff insights, and greater course varieties.Item Open Access Applying the Cisco Systems™ RLO Model to a Live Automated Training Build for Nationally Dispersed Learners: Takeaways and Lessons Learned(2010-06-09T16:02:33Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinInstructional design theory and practice interact powerfully in live projects. This article describes one use of the Cisco Systems, Inc.’s Reusable Learning Object (RLO) approach (with their legal permission) to the building of automated RLOs for a national project. Through the definition of information as concept, fact, procedure, process, and principle to a live curricular build, a six-module automated training was created in 2006 for deployment beginning in 2007. This project involves 12,000 geographically dispersed learners (of varying educational and cultural backgrounds) with a complex and regionally sensitive curriculum, with contents collected from national SMEs and deployed over an ontologybased database. The training involves evolving biological science materials and requires complex, real-time decisionmaking. This article examines the applied principles of instructional design (cognition, learner profiling, Clark and Mayer’s multimedia development and cognition findings, learner developmental phasing, and other theories) in a live project. It explores how the six modules were planned, created, alpha- and beta-tested and deployed. Vocabulary flashcards, multiple-choice pre- and post-test assessments (for certification), and the beginnings of a decision-making simulation were created. Decision trees were used for the simulation and the planning for a full experience “wrap” for the decision-makers in the simulation. This paper addresses the use of metadata and “invisible” metadata for inhouse password-protected use. Instructor notes added value for the occasions when instructors might choose to deploy the learning live F2F(face-to-face) or via online eLearning using these same digital materials, or when trainers might wish to use online spaces to bring geographically dispersed communities together. Challenges. Real-world strategies for collecting, gaining copyright release, and labeling digital artifacts affected the instructional design. The push for the lowest common denominator among users restricted some curriculum design options. The “affordances” of a database and the collaborative teamwork of dispersed grant principal investigators (PIs) led to yet further limitations. Important multimedia, pedagogical agent strategies, and other elements were harder to create in a cautious environment. This will explore how difficult it may be to create regionalization and customization builds. This will advocate the importance of the malleability and pliability of RLOs for more effective eLearning and reusability.Item Open Access The University Life Café: Promoting Students’ Emotional Health(2010-04-06T16:17:28Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; Anders, Brent A.; shalin; supermanWith the popularization of socio-technical online spaces (high-tech spaces through which people interact, collaborate, and co-create), Web 2.0 ("Social Web") information technologies offer a new tool for the creation of protective factors against suicide, including a virtual student community. Raising awareness of suicide and de-stigmatizing that awareness are critical elements in building protective factors around students. It was in this spirit that Kansas State University began work on a website that would eventually become the University Life Café under the auspices of a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The University Life Café aligns with university endeavors supporting student development of coping skills.Item Open Access Scaffolding Discovery Learning Spaces(2010-04-06T15:53:37Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinDiscovery learning spaces may be created in online learning environments to encourage learner-directed training and learning. Such “autodidaxy” learning tends to be autonomous and learner-directed. This chapter addresses the importance of learner empowerment through the building of learner orientation, decision supports, community supports, and new learning archival. This also advocates promotion of learner selfefficacy and decision-making. The Web-based design of online discovery spaces needs to be aligned in pro-learning ways based on relevant theory, research and in-field applied practices.Item Open Access Exploring the Immersive Parasocial: Is it You or the Thought of You?(2010-04-06T15:53:09Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinImmersive and persistent 3D virtual spaces have been adopted for e-learning in higher education. These spaces involve multi-sensory, real-time interactivity with other learners through high-fidelity, human-embodied avatars as well as automated ‘bots; these involve virtual contexts that situate various types of learning. Practitioners have discussed promoting immersive addictions to support long-term, deep-transfer, and complex systems-based learning. The social presences of human-embodied avatars, in individuals and groups, and their communications-heavy interactivity, have encouraged the development of parasocial relationships in several forms: self-love of people for their own avatars (which they may build up with a range of attractive features and digital powers), and other-love for others’ online personas. Understanding the parasocial spectrum will be important for those heading into immersive multiverses, especially with campuses starting to offer full-service virtual and distance support systems that encourage distance learning without the hybrid / blended or any aspect of face-to-face (F2F). This position paper explores ways to build immersive learning and to communicate to elicit the salutary parasocial effects while avoiding possible negative ones.Item Open Access Culturally Targeted Online Course Redesigns for English Composition and Research Writing: A Case Study(2010-04-06T15:52:36Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinThe Enduring Legacies ReservationBased Project, now in its third year, supports Native American college students of a number of Pacific Northwest tribes. This paper addresses the pedagogical and elearning strategies applied to the culturally sensitive curricular redesigns for English Composition 1 and 2 (which involve essay writing and research writing respectively). These are foundational and required courses for a number of degree programs and certificates. The curricular redesigns for both courses address issues of cultural sensitivity, learner focus, and strategy, and apply concepts of universal design for more effective learning for a wide range of learners. With the redesigns now in place for a year for the EC1 course and one quarter for EC2, some early findings have emerged as well.Item Open Access Breaking into the Fulcrum Arena: A Concept Paper Looking Beyond Next Generation LMS(2010-04-06T15:51:47Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinIn the spirit of futurist probes into what a nextgen learning management system (LMS) may look like, the author uses a scifi scenario to touch on some distant possibilities. This fictional work follows J4 in his quest to break into the Fulcrum Arena and emerge with the information and strategic relationships he needs to achieve mysterious aims. This story envisions a learning space that integrates various databases, global positioning systems (GPS), and other technologies into an integrated digital enclosure. It focuses on informational elites, those who have the rawest and freshest information, vs. those who get processed versions through public channels. Here, identities are persistent and coalesced through information collected by ‘bots. The learning is all strategic, it’s immersive, and it directly applies to the lived world.Item Open Access Issues of Academic Integrity: An Online Course for Students Addressing Academic Dishonesty(2010-04-06T15:49:55Z) Roberts, Camilla Jones; Hai-Jew, Shalin; chjones; shalinAt Kansas State University, an institutional strategy to promote academic integrity involves an honor code that is backed up by the K-State Honor and Integrity System, a student judiciary system, and the “Development and Integrity” course for students who have been found in contravention of the code. This article addresses the honor system, related university policies, and the recent development of the online version of the Development and Integrity course. This article includes an introduction, a survey of the literature, relevant pedagogical theories, a brief background, an overview of the course design and development, and lessons learned.Item Open Access Zuo Lian: Making the Right Kind of “Face” in Online Interactive Classrooms(2010-03-24T19:37:00Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinA research study of 630 Washington Online Virtual Campus learners and the role of trust in high-interactive instructor-led college courses surfaced the importance of instructor and learner telepresence. Particular ways of portraying the self in online space enhanced learning. This paper addresses the research findings on how to make the right kind of face (zuo lian, a colloquial Chinese term on making a social “face” for others) to build more robust trust in interactive online learning.Item Open Access Using Archives to Analyze Online Curricular Structures at a Community College(2010-03-24T19:36:39Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinUsing qualitative inductive analytical approaches, this paper examined the curricular structures of twenty-two (22) online courses (both fully online and hybrid) randomly chosen from Shoreline Community College’s (SCC) course archives to explore how structural elements enhance online learner interactivity and experiences.Item Open Access The Trust Factor in Online Instructor-Led College Courses(2010-03-24T18:50:34Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinItem Open Access Operationalizing Trust: Building the Online Trust Student Survey (OTSS)(2010-03-24T18:50:20Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinThis research study explores the creation of a survey instrument to explore the role “trust” plays in highly interactive, instructor-led online college courses offered by WashingtonOnline Virtual Campus (WAOL-VC). After an extensive review of the literature, a 47-item Online Trust Student Survey (OTSS) was created to operationalize the construct of “trust” based on online learner perception. This instrument explored “trust” relationships between learner and instructor; learner and fellow learners; learners and curriculum; learners and oversight organization; and learners and courseware technology. From this instrument, principal component variables were extracted for analysis. With a .922 score of the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy, the OTSS instrument offered strong ground for confidence coupled and with absence of multi-collinearity. In the first run, 630 current freshmen and sophomore students were surveyed. Post-survey online interviews were subsequently administered to investigate perceptions of learners in “low-trust” and “high-trust” categories. Additional interviews were conducted with distance learning (DL) or e-Learning instructors and administrators. The rigorous use of this instrument served as a test for its wide-ranging respondent accessibility and efficacy. The paper overviews the development of these instruments and offers insight into potential areas of further research.Item Open Access F2F and Online “Live Personalization” of Learning and Implications for Learning Object Repositories and Automated eLearning (A Survey and Analysis)(2010-03-24T18:18:22Z) Hai-Jew, Shalin; shalinLearning object repositories, eLearning systems, and other data management systems have built personalization for their learners through intelligent agents, user profiling (personality, role, needs, histories, “interest” measures, live online behaviors, and learning styles metrics), user-directed learning, social networking, and other strategies. “Online ‘Live Personalization’ of Learning and Implications for Learning Object Repositories and Automated eLearning” will explore what F2F (face-to-face) and online instructors bring to their teaching that personalizes the learning for unique individual learners. Finally, some ideas for personalizing learning object (and data) repositories and automated eLearning systems will be explored in the light of human-mediated F2F and online instructor customization strategies.
