Charge on! Fostering First Year Persistence Through Digital Tools
Zoe Corwin
University of Southern California’s Pullias Center for Higher Education and the Get Schooled Foundation partnered with California State University – Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) to address the tenacious challenges of bolstering college student retention and success through the Charge On! Campaign geared towards first-time freshmen in the 2018-2019 academic school year. Our approach educates students about campus resources and skills conducive to college success and is designed to be engaging, meaningful, scalable, and cost-effective through a digital ecosystem, including tailored content on a digital platform, a 1:1 textline connecting students with guidance experts, and gamification strategies to increase understanding around key areas and incentivize engagement. Presenters will highlight the campaign, the impact on persistence outcomes, lessons learned, and potential for scale-up to other CSUs and other post-secondary institutions across the United States.
Practera: An Online Platform to Support and Scaffold Experiential Learning
Andrea Humez, Nikki James
Experiential learning projects with real-world connections, embedded into the curriculum, help students recognize the relevance and applicability of their classroom learning to the STEM workplace, build awareness of the range of STEM career options available, develop the professional skills employers value, and expand their professional networks. At Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies, these virtual internships give students the opportunity to work on short-term, real-world projects to complement their academic work. Students are matched with sponsors from industry, who play the role of the client, supplying the project, setting expectations for deliverables, and reviewing the final product. The cloud-based Practera platform structures and supports such experiential learning programs, to help everyone involved get the most out of the experience and promote student learning outcomes, sponsor retention, and educator best practices. Practera supports collaboration among students, sponsors and faculty through features such as sponsor feedback loops, team chat, peer review of professional skills and ‘pulse checks’ designed to un-earth potential collaboration issues. Educators are provided with real-time learning analytics that highlight how the student/sponsor collaboration is going, where support or coaching may be required, and recommended interventions to help resolve identified issues. This presentation will share how Northeastern University is using Practera to tailor the scaffolding of experiential learning based on the readiness and academic level of the students, as well as the needs and preferences of educators.
Connecting Learners: Testing an Integrated Approach to Building Community Engagement
Andrea K Flores, Dalia Abbas
In this presentation, we will discuss a test design for an integrated approach to building community in an online, personalized, foundational course being piloted this summer for students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. First, we will discuss how we used learner journeys to visualize the learner ecosystem and identify hidden opportunities for community building that went beyond the boundaries of the LMS. Then, we will explain how we used these insights to arrive at our test design, and explain the rationale for each facet of our approach. Finally, we will discuss any preliminary data we are able to gather from the pilot this summer as well as any questions and challenges that we encountered. Our aim is to leverage the Connected Learning Community for feedback and recommendations to inform and iterate on the design for the next run of the course.
Networked Narratives: Digital Alchemy, Take 3!
Mia Zamora
Seeking to transform what is possible in the real world via a fictional community and exercising collective civic imagination, Networked Narratives or #NetNarr is a three year experiment in “digital alchemy” (http://netnarr.arganee.world).
In Spring 2017, 2018, & 2019, Mia Zamora and Alan Levine have conducted an open online connected course that has been co-located at both Kean University in New Jersey and the University of Bergen in Norway. Although the course has always included traditional university students, it also has a following of “open participants” who do not share the same institutional affiliations.
#NetNarr-ians have considered the darkness off the open web (i.e. exploring questions regarding the effect of data tracking, algorithims, AI and machine learning, the attention economy and filter bubbles) and they have also sought the light (participants have inhabited personas, remixed digital media, and explored the role of multiple identities in networked spaces). #NetNarr has included “virtual field trips” - live video visits with international artists & scholars to explore the latest in digital storytelling, electronic literature, digital poetry, fan fiction. In addition, the #NetNarr community has explored cryptography, bot making, interactive fiction, #netprov and collaborative web annotation with hypothes.is.
This showcase will account for the development of #NetNarr as an open stortytelling community, as we consider the intersection of co-learning, networks, civic imagination, pedagogy, and digital writing/making. What was successful, what has failed? It will feature new selections of digital artifacts and networked writing as well as key “take-aways” from the experiment.
