Thursday, April 21, 2011

Augmented Reality Assignments

Last week I attended the ELCC Conference and presented with Mary Cash, Save the Trees!, on open content courses including my use of NROC content in CCCOnline history courses. One of my favorite presentations at the conference was by Chris Luchs and Kae Novak on Augmented Reality Assignments.

Scenario based learning, Authentic Assessments, and Augmented Reality Assignments in many ways are the same concept with different names. As seen in the previous link, Augmented Reality Assignments can be an assignment conducted in a virtual space including Second Life, but I want to imagine this concept more like a Murder Mystery Dinner party in your online or face to face classroom.

Our students and instructors become players in a carefully constructed game created by Instructional Designers, Teachers, and Librarians. Students become the content experts and may be assigned various job titles like Curator, Archives Specialist, National Historian for a Federal Agency, Research Librarian, History Journalist, and Professor. A “client” contracts the historians for a project that involves research, writing, presenting, communicating, and meeting deadlines with their “client.” The instructor, librarian, and designer engage the students as professionals, but have some pre-made clues and guidance tools in place to provide at opportune moments to help students be most successful. Like a Murder Mystery party, the hosts (teacher, designer, and librarian) will release information as the party progresses to guide the guests to the clues and the solution. Instructors have a variety of tools to provide obvious and subtle hints to their students such as twitter, websites, discussion, and resources at the library.

I admit, this sounds like a daunting task for an instructor to create and conduct by themselves. My suggestion is experiment with an augmented reality assignment on a small scale first. For example, in collaboration with an English Instructor, your students become writers for a historical journal like the Journal of American History. The English class becomes the editors of the Journal and using the articles written by the historians selects the best for publication or provides editing comments for consideration and future approval on the rejected articles. What an opportunity for cross-curriculum collaboration and providing a simple real world scenario!

To make the scenario most believable, students in the history class should believe they have submitted their writing to a real historical journal (in fact, they could submit directly to a journal of their choice) and the English students should believe they are truly evaluating professionally written articles for publication. You may even want to have a “visitor” to the class from the Historical Journal that explains why they are excited about the opportunity to work with the class. If not a real visitor, maybe a "letter" to the class from the Journal describing the scope of what they are trying to do by working with them.

Truthfully, I would only be successful with this kind of assignment in an online environment because my facial expressions would give me away. However, with a real-life purpose, I do suspect that many students would feel more engaged and motivated to produce some of their best work.

If you are ready to create a more complicated augmented reality for your students, the summer is a great time to plan and I look forward to your examples!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Production Groups: History Teamwork

Teamwork often involves a daunting assignment that is difficult for both the instructor and the students to get excited about. I suggest building a culture in your classroom of collaboration that is not usually tied to a grade so that when a group project is assigned the team experience is not foreign to anyone. For history classrooms, get students thinking about what historians do which is often researching a topic and producing something that communicates that to an audience whether that might be a website, museum display, journal article, or a TV show. Most of the time, historians do not do all the work alone and therefore work with a production group or team. A team is often more effective if each member has a defined role. The roles assigned might depend a bit on the type of project and depending on the size of a group some students might perform more than one role, but here are some of the roles you might consider.

1. Researcher-Not only locates reliable primary and secondary sources, but provides documentation of those sources for the final product.
2. Writer-Composes the text for the final product.
3. Graphics Organizer/Designer-Depending on the project and the level of your students, this person will collect images, maps, and other illustrations of the content or develop their own.
4. Director-Organizes all the text, documentation, and visual aides and develops a story board to be approved and completed by the team.
5. Editor-Edits grammar mistakes in the final product and checks for plagiarism issues.
6. Content Editor-Critically examines reliability of information in product and ensures all the key details are provided accurately.
7. Technician-Depending on the scale and complexity of the technology used in the project, one student may need to be the technical expert who brings a background in computers, AVI equipment, etc. and is responsible for any school equipment utilized and oversees use of technology in the project.
8. Producer-This is the instructor who may remain fairly hands off but should have checkpoints along the way--for instance seeing the story board and approving the production of the team. The instructor might also reject a production group's proposal outlining the specific areas that need improvement to be reconsidered.

Ideally, your students have had a chance in small ways to be these various roles on an ungraded or low stakes assignment. As a class, define the responsibilities of each role, like a job description, and the consequences for not doing the job. Be ready to answer these questions:
-Can the group fire members, and what happens then?
-How will the product be evaluated or is it their performance in their group that is evaluated?
-Do students get to form their own groups or will the instructor assign the groups?
-Will the instructor assign jobs to the students or does the group determine that?

Running production groups in your classroom takes a great deal of planning to truly be effective. However, students, particularly those who are not interested in history, will find the experience rewarding and engaging.