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Digication Scholars Conversations...
Welcome to Digication
Scholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll.
In this episode, you'll hear part
two of my conversation with Matthew
Street, Senior Lecturer in Spanish
at the University of Virginia.
More links and information about today's
conversation can be found on Digication's
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full episodes of Digication Scholars
Conversations can be found on YouTube.
Or your favorite podcast app.
I wanted to talk a little bit, I know
we mentioned at the beginning of the
conversation that you've been doing more
work around open educational resources as
well, and I would love for you to share.
You know, why that's something that's
important to you, how it, how you may
be developing these things for your own
courses, or maybe even other faculty
members that are within your program.
I would love to learn more about
what you're doing in that area too.
Yeah, so.
Um, the Open Educational Resources
has this been a big emphasis for, for
a while, but at UVA for a couple of
years now, there's been a big emphasis
in some, some support in the term
of stipends and stuff to, to create
you to create your own resources.
And, you know, it makes a lot of sense
because the textbooks and the programs
and curricula has grown gotten so
expensive, you know, when we were using
like a mainstream publisher and they
were coming out with a book every two
or three years and the book in the
online platform is over 300 dollars.
I mean, that's, that's, that's
a hell of an amount of money
to, to pay in addition to
your, Super-high tuition.
So for, from an accessibility standpoint,
it makes sense from the cost aspect and
also from an equity standpoint for, um,
the coverage of different minority groups
and, and, uh, equality aspects all around.
And you're free to, to explain
things that, that, that maybe
may not be presented in.
That more nuanced terms that aren't
necessarily in the, the, the dictionaries,
the Spanish dictionaries yet, but
are definitely in the, definitely in
the, the main, the discourse around.
And so there's some of the incentives
to create open educational resources.
And we've been working to create,
it's, we kind of took a big undertaking
to create open educational resources
for three different courses,
which is a lot of information.
So, you know, we're, I'm slowly working
on the one for accelerated beginning
Spanish and some of my colleagues
like Kate Neff and, um, and, and.
Esperanza Goriz, they're working
on developing one for Spanish 2010.
And so, you know, over time,
we're going to start using these.
I'm actually going to use a couple
of pages from the one that I'm
developing and I'm developing it.
It right into Canvas.
So we're using things like H5P,
which is, do you know what H5P is?
Right?
Like an interactive, it's an interactive
sort of like, like the home, like a
Duolingo sort of thing where you can
drag and drop, fill in the blank.
You can speak in there.
It's these little activities that link
to the grade book in the, in the LMS.
So we're creating activities doing
the H5P activities and then creating
our own content or adapting content
that always are is already out
there from other creators of OER.
And yeah, so, you know, the, the copyright
stuff is something I'm not well versed in.
Um, but you know, we have the
permission to use certain things
if it's a certain different.
A certain copyright.
Yeah, so we're still kind of
learning as we go with this.
Um, yes.
So, but what I'm creating, you know,
the whole focus of, of mine, like a
portfolio is just, it's integrated one
to one with, with what I'm creating.
It's like the students are
going to be, they're going
to be putting this somewhere,
their work somewhere to show it.
Yeah, so I'm definitely thinking
about mine through the lens of
the, the work will be disseminated
or the create the, the open ended
stuff will be done on an ePortfolio.
Oh, I'm so excited to
see where that may go.
And I'm also interested, you
mentioned earlier your use of
some of the instruction areas.
within Digication to kind of scaffold
the creation process for your students.
Do you ever, um, link to or embed or
use that instruction area to provide
resources like this in your teaching?
So kind of using it as a tool to provide
resources or content to the students that
then they could respond to within those?
Kind of corresponding pages.
So like, um, like some of the, like the
H5P activities and things like that.
Mm-Hmm.
Yeah.
So I've tried to embed H5P on Digication
and I don't think it works yet.
Okay.
I don't, I don't think you can yet.
Um, at least the last time I tried, you
could not embed it in, in Digication.
May, maybe, maybe that's something
that, that, that's coming.
Or maybe you can do it now.
But we do provide our own
content for some activities.
Yes, like for our open ended summative
activities, those are things that
don't correspond with the textbook.
We create them 100%.
The concept map activity created 100%.
The monologue prompts, those are created.
You know, the reflection prompts and, and
some, and then with the first iteration of
the Portfolio that we used, uh, We created
all of the open ended projects there too.
They were not, um, because the
book that we were using at the
time was not a project-based book.
We're using a program now
called Contraseña – by Lingro
Learning - and it is project based.
So we adapt some of their projects
and put them on Digication, and they
know that we're doing that, and the
students can respond to those activities.
Multimodal ways on the, on the Portfolio.
Nice.
Nice.
Yeah.
What, what does that look like?
Are they kind of text prompts or their
videos that they watch?
A bit of everything, right?
So there's text, the main, the main
driver is text for instructions
for sure, but there could be,
there could be video examples.
Like I'm thinking of the conversation
prompts for the Spanish, um,
the summer Spanish course.
Yeah.
So it's, you know, me
doing a conversation.
Um, this shows what the
ideal one would look like.
And it also shows, you know, maybe
it's a tutorial linked, you know, I've
made tons of tutorials for Digication.
So it could be, here's a quick
tutorial on how to whatever.
So it could be embedded YouTube videos.
It could be if they need to see
particular guidelines or rubrics,
it could be either in, I love how
Digication has, where you can put like
a little, tiny little window of the.
The file.
Mm-Hmm.
. So it could be something
like that or a hyperlink, you
know, that links out Mm-Hmm.
to another, like a, a
another PDF or Word file.
So we do aloo...
of a variety of those at, at some.
It would be really cool to have an option
to do some H5P stuff within Digication.
Yeah.
I have to look into that.
Yeah.
And it, it may exist now.
I know I tried it, um, uh, maybe,
um, last summer, not this summer.
But the one before that, yeah.
And it wasn't, it wasn't working
then, which is, it's okay.
Yeah.
We are just always really fascinated
and interested in, you know, other
kinds of technologies that, um,
you know, the people are using our
platform are using too, in ways
that they can become integrated.
So I'm glad that that got mentioned.
So I'll have to, um, share
that with my team and, and see
what might be possible there.
Um, So thank you so much also for
just kind of sharing that because I, I
think in many ways, there's, you know,
passionate educators like yourself that
have gotten, you know, really engaged
with the ways that this technology
can be used within their courses.
So not only as.
A place for the students to
be able to kind of make their
learning visible and see their
growth and development over time.
Um, but really, as this kind of teaching
tool that creates a kind of bridge
from what you're offering to them.
in person in the classroom and
something that they can kind of interact
with within their own time as well.
So it's kind of serving as this
place for them to be able to to learn
from you and also respond to that.
Um, And then get feedback from you along
the way in a way that I think is, is,
you know, different than what a lot of
learning management systems are offering,
just because they're organized around
the course specifically, and this is
kind of organized around the individual.
So you can kind of serve out these things.
Are you putting them into a template
that they're using throughout the course?
Or do they just kind of go from scratch?
Yeah.
So I, I provide the students with a
template for their Spanish portfolios as
well as their unprofessional portfolios.
However.
Um, one of the, one of the guys that
was on the team, that's also been
using portfolios for a long time here.
So, um, he's in the French department.
He's also, he's also, um, he's also
a lecturer or, or teaching professor.
His name is Spiros Spiridon.
Have you, have you ever heard of him?
No, I have not spoken
to him.
Yeah.
So,
yeah, so he.
He, he does very creative things
with portfolio and he, he piloted a
professional portfolio sort of thing
where the students could create their own.
Like he just, he just told them you use
whatever source site that you want to do.
And some students used Digication,
some students use Wix, you know,
some students use whatever.
And so that was interesting.
But since Since my class is not, it's
mainly like first year students or second
year students, and then there's also
other sections going at the same time.
It's good for us to have
like a Digication template.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kind of streamline things.
And are there multiple
sections of your course too?
There's multiple sections of my
course, and then there's sections
that other lecturers teach as well.
And, and, you know, in the,
the, the different level of,
Digication buy in from, you know,
varies from lecturer to lecturer.
So you got to kind of give it to
them on a platter in some ways, you
know, cause it's just such a valuable
tool for the students, you know,
it's like, that's one of the things
that I've seen that we're teaching.
We have to remind ourselves that
we're teaching college students,
not high school students.
And the big thing about the Portfolio
is the Ownership and the autonomy that
comes with it, even if it's not explicitly
stated that the students don't explicitly
know that they own this work, you can
tell that they get that by the end.
And that's something that makes them
more, more responsible and active learners
when they're When it's their work that
they're sharing with the professor,
it's not, it's not something that I own.
They're giving me
permission to look at it.
And so that sort of switch is, I think,
a big deciding or differentiating factor
between like teaching high schoolers
versus teaching at the university level.
Yeah.
And you can tell when you look at the
You know, pages and projects that they
put together that they're incredibly
proud of the work that they've done.
And there's a great number of
students that have opted to
share those Portfolios publicly.
Um, where people can go in and, and see
this incredible progress that they've
made and really listen to the student.
View their reflections and, and
get to know them and why this
course was, you know, impactful
and where they hope to take this,
you know, language in the future.
Um, so it's always exciting to see, you
know, when they do understand that kind
of ownership, you know, how openly they
would like to, to be able to, to share it.
And very often I find, you
know, we see many, many examples
of those students that are.
Creating these more kind of crafted,
professional oriented portfolios
that they want to share outside.
But more and more students are wanting to
really share, you know, this was something
that, you know, may not be as polished
as something that I'd be developing for
my career, but it's really providing
evidence of how much I was able to evolve
and how much I was able to learn over
really a relatively short amount of time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and I agree.
Yeah.
And I, um, this was years ago, but when
I did the university of Virginia study
abroad in Costa Rica, I had the students
create Portfolios for that because it's
like, you're documenting this any way
it's going on Instagram and Facebook.
You're going to sit down with your
grandma and show her all these pictures.
Why not have this learning tool at the
same time where you're also is a place
where you can dump your pictures and
stuff, but also you can tell a story
about your evolution of your journey
in this other country for six weeks.
Yeah.
It's yeah.
And I, I agree.
I think the students that have
really seen the, the effects
of the professional portfolio.
Just really take it to the next level.
They really kind of see themselves
branching out as these critical thinkers
and they identify the ways in which their
thinking has evolved and, and how not
just one class, but the totality of their
learning has contributed and engendered
this kind of new curiosity to, to, to want
to, to want to put their best foot forward
and show that they're their own person.
And the
portfolio is a great tool for that.
Yeah.
And I love to see even, you know, in some
of the beginning stages, how they're,
you know, really tying in what they're
learning in your course to other elements
of who they are and, you know, what may
be their core area of study, if it's
not foreign language and how they're
kind of making those connections from
your course to other kinds of learning
experiences that they have had or that
they're planning for at the same time.
Um, so thank you for sharing that.
And, um, I wanted to.
Kind of, um, circle back to some of
the points you made earlier about,
um, for our listeners to hear why you
think some of this active learning and
project based learning is so critical
for students in Higher Ed, um, as they're
preparing for futures beyond college.
Yeah, well that, that,
that is a great question.
So, you know, I shared this with my
students that I heard, um, on a news
show the last semester that several
countries have installed government
positions like for, to deal with
loneliness in their countries.
Like, like there's like the Czar of
Loneliness for, for a couple of countries.
And so, um, So the, the, the active
feature of being able to get out of
your comfort zone and make these, these
personal connections in this space is.
is something that we need to
be actively focusing on, right?
It seems like, oh, that's a no
brainer, but no, you actually do need
to encourage students to talk to the
person next to them, because if not,
they're, most of them are not going to.
So I think, I think that,
I think that's important.
And I also think in kind of
sharing the rationale with students
about how important it is to
be able to talk about concepts.
In an elevated way is part of developing
this critical thinking aspect as well.
When, you know, I remind my students
that your students at the university
of Virginia, you should be able
to stand up and tell me about the
present progressive right now.
And, and, and it doesn't
have to be all right.
You can stumble over your words, but
these are things you should be able to do.
So we're going to work on
practicing those things.
So I think giving them opportunities to.
To kind of express their learning as
they're kind of working toward mastery
helps them to be able to teach each
other in the active learning spaces.
And when they're sitting across from
each other, it's easy to, to, for me
to ask for help, it's easier to ask
for help and offer to help others.
And when the students, the students that
have the most success are the ones that
say, I was really impressed with the fact
that I was able to teach and help others.
And that really helped me.
And I think that makes people.
Really active in their own learning.
And that's what you have to do.
You have to always be doing the
next thing instead of waiting
for the next instruction.
Right.
And so I think some of this emphasis on
creating with the language, getting out of
your comfort zone, interacting, offering
to help people, asking for help when
needed, are, are very important aspects
that could help in all realms of life.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And kind of.
Building off of that point, you know,
how do you see this as something
that may contribute to, you know,
this kind of understanding of each
other and, and sharing their stories?
You mentioned kind of asking for help
or, um, offering help may contribute to,
you know, a deeper desire to understand.
People from other cultures, even if you
may not yet speak the language, you know,
getting being comfortable kind of seeking
things out from people that that are may
not be like you, but may be able to, or
you may not initially think are like you,
but finding that, kind of common ground.
Yeah.
Well, I think students, students,
they, they often, yeah, they have to be
reminded of this, but they almost every
student has interacted with someone
that doesn't speak English very well.
And so reminding the students that
that person engaged you in conversation
and while, while you understood them.
So now you're that person.
Right.
That's you now, right?
And so when they kind of see it in that
way, I think it enables them to, to, to
understand that, Hey, you know, at the
end of the day, even if I say all of the
wrong things, it doesn't really matter.
It's just, I'm, I'm trying and,
you know, continue, continue to
try, I guess, in linguistics,
it's called your affective filter.
You know, how self conscious you
are to say certain things, you know,
that you're not that good at yet.
Um, but, you know, students work
towards that, but yeah, I, I, I'm just
a huge fan of just students, act...
Students engaging with other
students in a collaborative way.
I feel like that has
promoted the most success.
And, you know, bringing it back to
the Portfolio and the Portfolio also
contributes to this, even outside
of the classroom, you know, for,
for the, for I always go back to
the concept map activity or students
getting started on the final projects.
If I don't know, or maybe I've been
dragging my feet or, you know, maybe I've
been partying too much, or maybe this
could maybe have too much stuff going on.
I just couldn't get to it.
If I, I know I can go log on to, and look
at, see what Kelly's done so far and get
an idea of, okay, so this is the standard.
So let me see what if I can get right.
Or this is some, she has
some things like this.
Oh, that's a good idea.
You know?
So I think even outside of the class, the
virtual community that's provided by the.
It's not something you're
going to get on Canvas.
Like, I just did a whole master's program
on Canvas at the University of Virginia.
And every time they would ask us to go
back and comment on something someone
else said, it took 30 minutes to find it.
You know, it's like, you don't
have that issue with Digication.
It's like, I know exactly where
it is, what I'm looking for.
Yeah, yeah, I know that's a
little all over the place, but
no, but I, I think it's a good point
because you know, when you are in this
kind of setting, creating that community
and level of comfort with one another
to kind of break down the barriers
of, um, You know, feeling, you know,
feeling uncomfortable, but being able to
engage with other people that are also
in that kind of similar uncomfortable
space, you know, maybe at different
levels, um, you know, it's something
that, you know, it, it can be scary and
sometimes people have to kind of bravely.
Seek out what expectations are.
And I imagine that, you know, once
they start looking to see what
other people in the class are doing,
that they're naturally kind of
connecting with some of those people
when they're in the course, too.
Or maybe continually going back to
look at some of the same students,
kind of, work because they've seen
it as an exemplar and something that
they want to, you know, a level that
they would like to be able to reach.
Um, and I do think that, you know,
because it's oriented around the
individual, it's easier for students
to be able to, to find each other.
And get inspired by one another.
Um, you know, even within a learning
management system, if you're able to
kind of dig down into an assignment and
see that it's something that someone
submitted, it's not connected to a
body of work that, that they've done.
So you may be able to access an individual
document, but you wouldn't be able
to kind of go through and click and
browse and learn about that person and
see other things that they've done.
And, you know, they kind of become
these launch points to learning
other aspects of who the individuals
are that are that are in their
course, I think, in a different way.
So I, maybe I also spoke about it in
a roundabout way, but I completely
understand what you're saying, and it's
an intentional part of what we created.
Right?
Um, you know, when we were teaching,
we wanted that kind of, um,
motivation that happens when you can
see the success of other students.
You know, it creates a, it lights a fire
under you and helps you kind of have a
vision for what you might grow into also.
Yeah,
I agree.
Yeah.
So, um, I know we're getting close
to the end of our time today.
Um, but I did want to just kind
of touch quickly on, so we were
talking a little bit about students
being able to, you know, share
their stories with one another.
And I was curious if you've.
experienced students sharing some things
that maybe you hadn't anticipated and
if, you know, how other students in
the course may have responded, um.
You know, you touched a little bit on
students kind of maybe feeling some
more empathy towards each other because
they were finding themselves in, in
similar kinds of places, but do you have
something like that, that you might share?
So there's always students that, that
take assignments to the next level, right?
That, that, and so like, we're talking
of exceptional examples and the
professional portfolio is, is one of
those where I give them a pretty basic
template, you know, and encourage them
to, to definitely make it their own
again, as their professional template.
And so students have taken, take
a few students over the couple of
years that I've done this, have
taken this to another level, right?
So they've added other
pages and just read.
Information in a more efficient and
concise way that I've then, then
adapted that into the template, right?
Cause these are just exceptional ideas.
Students also surprised me with the
concept map activities, you know, like I
give them some examples and most students
either follow those sorts of examples,
but you know, students will take the
final project to the next, to the next
level, or with topics that, I never
really thought about before, you know,
I give them a bunch of suggested topics.
I remember one very vividly a couple
of semesters ago, a student, a student
did a project on what happens to the
clothes that don't sell in the world.
Like where do these clothes go?
Apparently they go someplace like in
Chile or Columbia or something like that.
There's just like this huge kind of
mountain of just brand new clothes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I was like, wow, this is just
such a creative, a creative topic.
I haven't had very many situations
where students do any, any sort of
things that, you know, maybe share
something too personal or something
like that on a portfolio that, um.
You know, but students, students
regularly, regularly comment that their
portfolios, looking at other people's
work on the Portfolio was a main, a
main source of to gather information?
Sure.
But also to know where they,
how they need it to perform.
So it kind of makes it like this, you
have to put your best foot forward
because all these other students are too.
And, and you know, if you're not right,
if you get a grade, if you get a C and,
you know, I often tell students, if
they ask like, why did I score so low?
I'm like, well, why don't you go look at
X, Y, and Z's portfolios and you can see.
You can see where, and I'll, I
always let students resubmit.
That's something that I always do.
Like if I, if you're going to engage more
with the material, I'll change your grade.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, go do it.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's good for students
to look at other students work, but
also it kind of engenders this kind of
competition in the class and yeah, and
students just bond because, you know,
they know they got to get through it.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
Well, Matthew, thank you again
so much for joining me today.
It was wonderful to have this opportunity
to speak to you and I'm very excited to
be able to share your, your stories and
experience with, with our listeners.
Thank you so much, Kelly.
It's been an honor to, to chat with you.
I'm very excited.
So thanks.
Absolutely.
Take good care.
Alright.
Bye.
Bye.
Coming up next, we'll be chatting
with Kate Sonka, Executive
Director of TeachAccess.
Here is a quick preview.
Everybody should know a little bit.
Um, so one of the phrases that
we like to use a lot is we are
about breadth more than depth.
Um, and you, you kind of hinted
at this in a few different ways.
Um, but this idea that we're really
trying to get a lot of people
to know at least a little bit.
Um, of course that doesn't
mean that it will take care of
all the accessibility needs.