VoiceThread at PSU: Hands On Training Session March 11, 2013

By MATTHEW N MEYER on February 27, 2013 2:35 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
For those interested in getting a hands-on training experience for using VoiceThread at Penn State, save March 11, 2013 on your calendar. This session, "Getting Started with VoiceThread", provides you the opportunity to try out the various functions of the VoiceThread platform with a facilitator overseeing your work, providing guidance and answering questions. Participants will explore uses for VoiceThread, which may include lecture delivery, student presentations, peer reviews, collective commenting on VoiceThread content, or collaborative project work.

How to Register
Go to the ITS registration page and select the Register button. 

When
This will be Monday, March 11 in Wagner Building at University Park from 8:30-10:30. 

What is VoiceThread?
VoiceThread is web-based interactive discussion tool that allows video, audio, and text commenting on uploaded images, videos, slide shows, documents and other shared content. It is a completely cloud-based application and is a Penn State centrally-supported platform.

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You Can Now Receive Email Notifications of Comments!

By MATTHEW N MEYER on February 14, 2013 9:46 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
VoiceThread at Penn State is announcing the release of a new feature that enables users to receive email notifications when another person has made a comment on a VoiceThread. The ability to receive such notifications has been a popular request, particularly from instructors that use VoiceThread. 

Instructors and students alike may find this feature particularly useful. Instructors may use this to help manage their work in providing feedback within the rubrics they created for VoiceThread assignments. Instead of having to go into VoiceThread to constantly browse for new comments, they can receive an email the moment someone has made a comment on a VoiceThread and who has made it. Students may use it similarly, using the notifications to manage workflows and cut time in surfing VoiceThreads trying to find new comments and feedback.

Changing Your Notification Settings
Each VoiceThread at Penn State user's notifications settings start with a default position of "off". To change them, do the following:

  1. Log in to VoiceThread at Penn State
  2. Navigate to your My Account page
  3. Once there, go to the Notifications page.

You will then be on the Email Notification Settings panel.

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You will have the option to receive email notifications of comments on VoiceThreads that you have:
  • Created
  • Subscribed to
  • Commented on (even if you did not create it)
  • Had shared with you (if someone has shared a VoiceThread with you but you did not create it)
Receiving Notifications
Once you turn on an email notification setting, you will receive an email whenever someone comments on a VoiceThread to the degree of what you have turned "on" in your settings. The email you receive looks like this:

VT_email_notification.png
Note that each notification provides an option to have VoiceThread stop sending you notifications. This allows you to unsubscribe immediately, without having to go back into VoiceThread to turn your setting to "off".

A Space to Discuss Pedagogy with VoiceThread: Yammer VoiceThread Advocates

By MATTHEW N MEYER on November 9, 2012 4:26 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
For instructors interested in participating in active dialog about experiences, designs and best practices around using VoiceThread for teaching and learning, we have created a new group in Penn State's Yammer network called "VoiceThread Advocates at PSU". Our goal is to make this Yammer group the active space for sharing, discussing and exploring opportunities around VoiceThread at Penn State.

Quick Background about Yammer at Penn State
We are employing the exciting new tool at Penn State, Yammer, as the platform for this community of practice. For those not yet familiar, Yammer is Penn State's official social networking platform. It is currently active in a "soft rollout", meaning it is fully operational but has not been communicated University-wide just yet. To learn more about it, go to the Yammer at Penn State service website at http://yammer.psu.edu.

How To Get to the Yammer Group
To get to the Yammer "VoiceThread Advocates at PSU" group:
  1. Go to  http://yammer.psu.edu and select the Go to Yammer link.
  2. If you have not yet created your Yammer account, follow the steps to do so, being sure to use your Penn State (.psu.edu) email address as your login. 
  3. Once in Yammer, use the search box in the top of the interface and type in "VoiceThread Advocates at PSU".
  4. Upon seeing the group listing, select it to go to the group.
  5. On the group page, click the + Join button
Yammer provides a fantastic platform for all kinds of users to discuss, share and collaborate around the use of VoiceThread. Please feel free to recommend this group to any and all you feel would benefit from joining the group. We hope to see you there!

Pedagogical Discussions for Using VoiceThread on May 10

By MATTHEW N MEYER on May 1, 2012 10:05 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
As part of it's annual SummerFest training sessions, Penn State's ITS Training Services is offering a one-hour workshop entitled, "Effectively Using VoiceThread for Teaching and Learning". 

When: May 10th 10:00am- 11:00am
Where: 210 IST
Who: Matt Meyer, Senior Instructional Designer in Education Technology Services (ETS) and the current service manager for the VoiceThread at Penn State university-wide service will lead this session. 

...and What
This workshop will focus on the pedagogical uses of VoiceThread, including discussions around real VoiceThread examples from instructors at Penn State, current best practices for integration into a course, and other strategies for using this tool in teaching and learning practices. It will also help more fully explain the type of support available, both technical and pedagogical, for any Penn State users of VoiceThread.

Register!
If you are interested in this workshop, be sure to register for it soon. We look forward to a lively discussion!

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Getting More Phone Minutes as a VoiceThread at Penn State User

By MATTHEW N MEYER on April 27, 2012 12:48 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Have you been using VoiceThread at Penn State's phone commenting feature but have noticed you are low on available minutes? If so, you can get more minutes added to your account simply by putting a request in to the ITS VoiceThread Help Desk.

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How It Works and What to Do
The VoiceThread at Penn State service provides each user a default amount of 3 phone minutes to utilize to make phone comments in VoiceThread. The service has a large 'pool' of additional phone minutes it can provision to any users who will need more.

If you would like to request more phone minutes, go to http://voicethread.psu.edu/ and in the Help block, select Ask VoiceThread at Penn State. Fill in your request and be sure to include your Penn State username and email.

What NOT To Do
Do not select the Add button from the phone number entry dialog box (see image above). This will send you down a path for paying for phone minutes. As a VoiceThread at Penn State user, you do not need to purchase additional minutes! 



VoiceThread to Deliver Student Accountable Online Lectures

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 26, 2012 10:35 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Dana Mitra: Associate Professor of Education, University Park

For the summer 2011 session, Dana Mitra, a professor in the Penn State College of Education, used VoiceThread in her "Education and Public Policy 420" course. This was a 10-week offering that was offered as an online course with an enrollment  of 15 students.

How She Used It
Dana Mitra used VoiceThread to create small, 5-10 minute interactive "lectures" that students could access from ANGEL. She included "question slides" in each VoiceThread lecture and required students to respond via the comment feature in VoiceThread. She provided these lectures in each week of the course along with other learning and support material.

To create these small interactive VoiceThread lectures, she:
  • Took her existing PowerPoint slides and divided them into smaller chunks of information
  • Then she uploaded them into individual slides in a VoiceThread
  • Next, using the comment feature, she recorded her lecture on a slide-by-slide basis. These made up her recorded lecture.
  • Within each small VoiceThread lecture, she inserted question slides and required students to respond to prompted questions in the presentation via the comment feature in VoiceThread.
  • Using a small rubric, she then assessed her students' responses to these questions as part of a participation grade. 

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Guiding Principle for Use: Ensuring Student Accountability to the Lectures
Because this course was a rather intense, online summer course, Dana felt that VoiceThread offered her a way to easily record and deliver asynchronous lectures that students could watch at their convenience. More importantly, she liked that VoiceThread provided various ways for students to interact with the online lecture via the comment feature (webcam, microphone, phone call text or audio file). She liked the fact responses could be given without having to leap out of the technology of the lecture itself. Requiring students to engage with the VoiceThread lecture this way would not allow her students to "stay invisible" to the online lecture material.

Her method for ensuring students engaged with the lecture was the inclusion of the question slides within each VoiceThread lecture. To keep comments spread out, she would typically put in 3 slides, each with a different question to her students. She then required each student to respond to 1 of the 3 questions, with a minimum of 5 students responding to each of the 3 questions.

Outcomes
Dana noticed that students adapted to using the technology fairly quickly. Here were some other things Dana noted:
  • She noticed as students provided responses to the questions in VoiceThread, she could see how they were "sharing and jigsawing" content together as a class. Students were able to build from classmates' responses to formulate their own.
  • Was a bit surprised at how some students "really got it" from her lecture material, even though it was all online.
  • There were a few students still did not participate in the lectures per her design, even though she communicated it was part of the requirement for their grading. She was not sure if it was because of problems using VoiceThread or a more general lack of engagement but she did note that she would like to be more proactive with students to enforce participation.

How She Found VoiceThread
Dana attended the 2011 TLT Symposium for Teaching and Learning this past March and attended Adena Schutzberg's session on her use of VoiceThread in the "Trends in Geospatial Technology" course she teaches. When asked if she attended any of the training offerings from ITS Training Services or referred to support material at the VoiceThread at Penn State site, Dana responded "no". She said she learned what she needed from the 45-minute session at Symposium.

Future Use and Issues
Dana clearly intends to use VoiceThread in her future teaching efforts. The following sums up some of her thoughts about her experience this summer and how she might apply it's use moving forward:
  • Can Leverage Already Existing Lectures. While the effort to develop each of her lectures in VoiceThread was an "enormous time investment", she sees a great opportunity to reuse them for future classes. She estimates that 95% of the lecture material she created this summer would not need to change in future deliveries of the course. And for the content she would plan on changing, the ability to edit by slide makes the content update process seem easy. 
  • Flipped Classroom? She even discussed piloting in a resident course in which she would pick one or two modules in the semester where students would consume the lecture(s) before coming to class. She would design in-class activities that would follow up the VoiceThread lectures, a design concept that is currently called "flipping the classroom".
  • More Student Responses via Text. Dana feels that she will probably have students provide comments via text more in future deliveries of these VoiceThreads. The main reason was that, during assessment, it was more time consuming to listen to responses than it was for her to read them.

Using VoiceThread for Weekly Peer Topic Discussions

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 26, 2012 10:23 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Sam Richards: Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University Park

This summer, the Sociology119 (Race and Ethnic Relations) course taught by Dr. Sam Richards and Dr. Laura Mulvey was taught online. To help create some of the remarkable student engagement that Sam's resident version provides, his teaching staff selected VoiceThread as one of the tools to utilize for the online delivery. They felt VoiceThread at PSU offered them a chance to create rich and engaging synchronous, online discussions among students.

To get started, one of Sam's TA's for the course, Michelle Thiry, requested a Design Consultation with a Learning Designer. She and the Designer came up with an approach to using VoiceThread that best matched the courses' needs in regards to peer-to-peer discussions.

How They Used It
Dr. Sam Richards and Dr. Laura Mulvey decided to create small 'discussion groups' of 6-7 students per group in their Sociology119 class. Once established, the TA's, Michelle and Salim Shane-Omar George, initiated each conversation by creating a VoiceThread for each discussion group and providing an initial prompt. 

For example, one of the prompts asked group members to share a story from their life in which they truly "felt your race". They also provided, in the prompt, some 'framing' statements to help them think about the issue.

Students were then required to respond to the prompt according to the following requirements:
  • Response to be at least 2 minutes long
  • Include one personal story
  • Include 2 questions to the other group members to respond to
  • Must comment in that particular VoiceThread discussion 3 different times during the assignment for the week

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During the week, Michelle and Salim would 'check in' to each VoiceThread to monitor the current conversation by listening to the student comments. They would then provide some type of feedback to the group that would either provide positive feedback on the current level of conversation or redirect the conversation based upon that particular group's general direction. Occasionally, they would provide additional information and ask students to re-think their own responses. This kept the conversations in the VoiceThreads flowing to each group's own dynamic.

Assessing The Students Performance in the VoiceThreads
At the end of the week, Michelle and Salim would visit each group's VoiceThread to assess student participation per the rubric created. Their rubric included assigning points to each of the requirements mentioned above. As the semester went on, the TA's did note that it was a lot of work to assess these comments but it did help keep student participation at high levels.

Guiding Principle for Use: Engage in Peer-to-Peer Conversations
The instructor and teaching staff's primary objective using VoiceThread was to facilitate student-to-student asynchronous conversations. In the past, they had used blogs and blog comments to carry out these conversations. They felt VoiceThread gave them a chance to take discussion to another level in an asynchronous environment.

Outcomes, Effectiveness
In talking with Salim, he admitted he was a bit skeptical of using VoiceThread for maintaining discussions for this course. However, upon reflecting on the experience at the completion of the semester, he felt that about half the groups were engaged in some very rich discussions and conversations. He noted that participation by the students was full.

Future Use
The Soc119 staff is still debriefing on the summer session overall effectiveness. Salim felt that the chances were "very good" for it's continued use in future deliveries of the online version of Soc119.

VoiceThread for Conducting Module Kickoff Discussions

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 26, 2012 10:05 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Megan Baril: Assistant Professor in Health and Human Development, University Park

Megan Baril, an instructor in Penn State's College of Health and Human Development, has been using VoiceThread in her "Introduction to Human Development and Family Studies 129"  course. She has been using VoiceThread in teaching this class through the Penn State World Campus for the last three semesters.

How She Uses It: "Discussion Kickoffs" for Groups
Megan's pedagogical approach to using VoiceThread in her course (HD FS 129) is to prompt students to think about and discuss the upcoming week's subject matter. She calls these pieces "Discussion Kickoffs" and here's how it works:

  • In her class of 60 students (30 students per section), she divides the students into groups of 7-8 that make up each VoiceThread discussion group for the semester.
  • She provides one VoiceThread assignment at the beginning of the week for each lesson and makes a version for each discussion group.
  • Megan sends the VoiceThread notice out on Monday and requires students post their comments by Wednesday of that same week.
  • To assess the comments, she had a basic rubric that asked comments to "Qualify as a substantive contribution and pushes class discussion forward". Points were awarded on an "all or nothing" basis; 5 points for meeting the rubric, 0 points if not.
To scaffold students into the assignments in VoiceThread, Megan creates the first VoiceThread assignment by telling her own story via a video comment. To record it, she decided to sit on the deck outside her house to create a more 'relaxed' mode. This is the first comment in VoiceThread that her students see in Week 1.

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Guiding Principle for Use: Students Share Personal Experiences to Relate to Lesson Material
Megan recognized that the nature of this course (stages of human development) lends itself to students being able to relate personal experience to the subject matter. She recognized VoiceThread as a way of getting students to share these experiences in their own voice with her and fellow classmates. The "Discussion Kickoffs" assignment had existed prior to using VoiceThread but she felt that using VoiceThread made it that much more effective, especially because this was an online class. Being able to see and hear fellow classmates' personal stories makes the assignments much more engaging. Megan noticed this engagement when she observed instances of students' having peer-to-peer discussions within a number of the groups. This was exactly the type of engagement she was hoping the mash-up of this assignment via VoiceThread would elicit.

Outcomes, Effectiveness
Here are some observations Megan shared about using VoiceThread in her course:

  • Builds a sense of community in an online course: She felt these assignments helped build community in an online course. Being able to see and hear the instructor as well as fellow classmates facilitates this sense of community. 
  • Students liked using it: In her course assessments, Megan has consistently seen that students like the "Discussion Kickoffs" assignment being done through VoiceThread. She considers that a very good sign for this online course.
  • Peer to Peer Discussions: As noted above, she was thrilled to see that students were addressing each other in a number of the groups and not just commenting to meet the requirement.

Future Uses and Issues
Megan continues to use VoiceThread for this course. Here are some areas she would like to improve upon in some way:

  • Get more microphone (voice) comments: She noticed that many students continue to comment via text. She is hoping more will use the microphone in the future.
  • Make onboarding to VoiceThread smoother: Megan said she is still noticing her students struggle at the beginning of the semester to properly use VoiceThread. She's not sure where the confusion is but she is wondering if a custom-made tutorial might be the answer. They latch on quickly but she is hoping to make this process easier.

Maximum Single File Size Increases From 100MB to 1.5GB

By MATTHEW N MEYER on February 23, 2012 9:18 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
VoiceThread has announced that they have changed the maximum upload size for single files from 100MB to 1.5GB. This applies to Pro accounts such as those for VoiceThread at Penn State.

Impact
This change reflects the amount of video uploads that VoiceThread has noticed from it's users. The increase to 1.5GB is intended to make uploading video much more manageable for it's Pro account users and makes VoiceThread a more viable platform for faculty and instructors who would like to share video with students.

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New Feature in VoiceThread: Comment Timestamp

By MATTHEW N MEYER on February 22, 2012 12:53 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Last week, VoiceThread released a new feature in it's interface. It allows you to rollover the segments in the comment timeline to view the following information on the comment:

  • The name of the user that made the comment
  • The date that comment was made
  • The exact time the comment was made
How it Works
Users can view this information by simply rolling their mouse over the segment without having to play that particular comment. Even if you are playing a different comment, you will be able to rollover other comments in the timeline to view this information.

In addition, when you rollover the comment in the timeline, the avatar of that commenter will highlight so that you can match up the user name with the visual that user has provided as their avatar, which is usually a picture of their face.

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Impacts for Instructors
For instructors that are assessing VoiceThread comments from students, this feature is extremely beneficial. Without having to actually play comments now, instructors can more quickly determine:

  • When it was submitted: Instructors can view the precise date and time a comment was submitted by an individual and compare that to the actual deadline that students had been given for the assignment.
  • How many comments: This feature also allows instructors to quickly scan a comment timeline to see how many comments a particular student may have made on a specific slide in VoiceThread.

Try It for Yourself!
The best way to see this new feature in action is to try it yourself. Simply sign in to your VoiceThread at Penn State account and open any of your VoiceThreads; the feature should already be working for you.


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