Week 3 (May 29, 2006)

This week I began work on the power point pedagogy modules with Dr. Brock Allen in CTL and on the Fellows grant to support the publication of research conducted by the Fellows.

Power Point Pedagogy Modules – The power point pedagogy modules are lessons of instruction on how to use power point to enhance instruction and student learning. Its focus is not on the bells and whistles, but on the ways in which power point can be used to demonstrate different ideas such as using transparencies or highlights to focus attention on scanned text, etc…

I attended a meeting with Dr. Allen (CTL), Marc Pastore (ITS) and Suzanne (pICT) to discuss the evolution of how the development of these modules will unfold. We identified five things that must happen to get this process started.

• Select five (of 12) modules for development and testing, with testing to be complete by August 14th. The date for this is next Tuesday, June 7th.
• Edit modules and ensure consistency (mostly for formatting)
• Script the narration
• Recruit authors/narrators
• Schedule author production
• Testing

I spent a few days watching the student presentations archived in breeze and also on high level analysis of the hard files. The content is rich and mostly developed, but the overall development, through collaborative efforts will need to be planned and executed.

Some of the developmental tactics discussed in the meeting were to consider using Microsoft’s help system for the script and creating captivate movies for those concepts and actions that might be enhanced through the use of video – but we need to check into potential copyright issues.

Grant Program – The purpose of the grant is to promote SDSU in the Science of Technology and Learning while provided pICT Fellows opportunities to develop their research project and to present it at either a conference or in a published journal. I did some research on grant proposal requests and on grant programs in general and concluded that most grants are unique to the situation in which they were created, therefore there is no right or wrong way to write an announcement on grant availability.

I met with both the Director and assistant Director of the pICT to discuss the grant. My biggest holdup was if the stipend was an award for publishing research or if it was to defray costs associated with research and publication. Due to limited funding, this was necessary to identify, because it would drive the procedures required for applicants as well as the grant awardee selection process.

We decided against journal publication because of the minimal stipends available and the difficulty in a selection process. After publication or before publication? At what point would stipends become available if the budget allows for only $2000.00? Through the meeting with the pICT, we decided to provide stipends in two categories for Fellows who submitted a proposal to present their research at a conference and subsequently received an invitation to present. The two categories are:

1. An individual presentation at a discipline specific or education & training related conference.

2. An individual presentation at the ELI conference in January. This one was originally going to be a panel proposal (1-Fellow, ITS, CTL, pICT), but then was decided it should be an individual presentation so the Fellow recipient would have the entire time frame to present their project, instead of 10 minutes if they were part of a panel.

The goal is to complete the grant announcement by the end of next week and distribute it to the Fellows so they can begin the project proposals, if interested.