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Okay so we volunteered to go last in part because we're willing to flex but

it's really great that we did because we're gonna be talking a little bit

about something that's running in parallel with what Alicia was talking

about but is it's somewhat similar and that is sort of how do you build a

course around emerging technologies in this case our AR/VR so augmented and

virtual reality and why would you build a class around emerging technologies.

So this is the class we just finished it it was caught this past spring and the

title is exploring using applications of augmented and virtual reality.

It is a Praxis independent study fieldwork seminar, we will explain what that means. (Laughter)

But we had six students very heavily leaned towards computer science students

however being Bryn Mawr students and Haverford students they all had

something besides computer science that they were doing right so and that was

cities, we had so yeah math physical science so a pretty good mixture none of

them interestingly Museum Studies students we have a Museum Studies

Program so that part of it was a little different for them and the idea really was to look

at so augmented and virtual reality you know the question for me as an

educational technologist is typically when I'm helping faculty integrate

technology into their teaching its off-the-shelf kinds of things right

things that have been around for a while things like PowerPoint it's things like

maybe using an online web conferencing program or something like that right.

This is not all the show this stuff is like really just out there people are

still developing for it there's no idea what it's going to do.

There's the sense that it will be what it is now what the iPhone was maybe ten years ago right.

So this is what our students will be working with and so this is where sort

of educational institutions are grappling with is what do we do with this

thing right it's not really there yet.

Museums are actually grappling with this

as well and one of the things that I found very interesting was the kinds of

questions we're having about what you know how do we what's our responsibility

we don't have expertise in this right these are things that museums are also

grappling with so it was a really nice way of getting students to think about

sort of the implications of a technology how a technology fits into a culture.

We talked to some practitioners in museums the sort of tech people and

the museum people think very differently and how they had to come together to

talk about conferences.

So it it really was a really nice sort of intellectual

space for them to be in and then also the idea of them

in a praxis courses we will talk about in a minute is that you're not only

learning you're learning by doing we're looking at experiencing.

Okay so it's not just that you are actually reading about these things or maybe hearing guest

lectures but you're also going to try something right and in this case the

trying was developing an AR/VR app or installation or an exhibition of some

kind that was related to this.

So our students just finished that a couple weeks

ago presenting their projects that we had three teams one was Twitter vision

which was sort of an augmented reality goggles to imagine you have these

goggles on and it's superimposing Twitter messages with certain hashtags

in front of you and you can move them around.

The other one was Databition

talking about visualizing different data but in 3D all around you so again with

those sort of goggles that superimpose the virtual on top of the world around you.

And then the last one Blockroom is an app an OS app for Google cardboard so

if you put it on your phone and then put your phone into a Google cardboard about

15 bucks you sort of can see this little game that they created actually

this probably using this URL this QR code if you want.

So where did this come from the idea of the course?

One thing that was really interesting Palak and I were we had been able to sort of show you the

history of how we got involved with these devices but we had to play around

with the augmented virtual reality thing and we saw this this webinar on AR/VR

for experiencial learning we were like great this is exactly what we want to do.

You know we get in and what they meant by this was programmers and some

area experts creating these simulations like a simulated lab or simulated

environment that students could have a field trip in for the students to experience.

Which is great and it's important and the work that they're

doing is really interesting but we don't want our students to just be sort of

passive consumers of technology we also want them to be critical makers and

developers of technologies and this comes into something that Alicia alluded

to which is our digital competencies program which is really about sort of

how do we help students reflect on how they're using technology think about

that to build their skills to also articulate what it is that they've

learned and it really is not just the skills themselves but also how

technology impacts the way we do things the way we generate knowledge the way to

communicate.

So the question that Palak and I have been asking was can we create an experiencial

learning experience around having students develop right AR/VR again.

I believe very strongly that this is the technology that's going to be if they're

going to be working with when they get out into the world so you know having a

little bit of experience with knowing it what it is is really important some concerns.

This is pictured Palak saying these

things but Jenny we don't have any technical expertise so there's multiple

times so and just we'll leave you with these and we'll sort of explain where we

went with that in a minute but we were worried or Palak was worried.

So why experiencial learning?

There's a huge body of research out there showing that

it engages students again Bryn Mawr is (inaudible) but also that it supports retention

persistence and also that it improves learning outcomes both sort of

disciplinary outcomes and the kind of critical skills thinking type things.

And it is just for example the basis of half of the theory of Kuh's high-impact

practices right experiencial learning is sort of five practices there.

So just to give you a little bit of context about what we've developed and

what we've done with our students we got these HoloLenses I think in August

2016 we've had them for a few years now and based on student interest we had

done sort of workshops and sort of informal focus groups with faculty and

staff and students across campus.

Based on that students said hey can we do something more with this can we try and learn how to create things

for this and with that we actually ended up creating a three week long winter

internship for four students and in three weeks they were actually able to

create what you're seeing here which is called "holomusic" it's essentially a

it's a storyboard that is what they created for a virtual basically a

virtual Orchestra learning experience where you could sort of go through it

and learn about different instruments like get involved in that utilize an orchestra.

Based on that we actually had two students who were both rising

sophomores at the time join us for a summer two-week long summer internship

and they actually made a museum which

essentially lets you put on this pair of goggles and walk around statues

as if you were staring right at them in person in real life without the

hindrance of a glass barrier or you know the fear of destroying thousands of

years of history in front of you.

So they actually were able to develop

that we also had another student in our fall 2017 internship develop a physics

app that was explaining the ideas electromagnetism which that idea already

is way over my head but this actually made it tangible and accessible.

So if you notice one of the things that we have we had in these internships was that we

only had about two, four? Two uh four students two students and one students so we had a

great little number of students that were able to be able to engage with this technology over a period of time.

Which led us to you know do this experience where we actually have six

students joining us in front of this course so that they can actually get

experience controlled is a loose term but in a setting

in which they would actually be able to work collaboratively and work together

to actually develop different technologies so.

And one of the things that we discovered when we and so our internships are done very much as

Alicia runs her fellowships and that they have a lot of control over what you

know they have we worked with them to sort of scope out what their project

ideas were what they wanted to do they did a lot of the learning unity to

figure out what needed to happen this was where I said the college will learn

with them and actually I think really they probably learned more than we did.

So it's really the students figuring out how to do these things on their own we

can certainly help we've seen some of the problems that have come up we've

been able to warn them you know make a port to your device quickly because

that's going to be one of the hardest things but we are certainly not experts

nor did we actually need to be and one of the nice things about I think

emerging technologies as the students very quickly discover that no one is the

expert and so they're actually talking to folks at Microsoft they're talking to

about sort of HoloLense development community to solve problems that

everybody's having as well.

So we wanted to talk a little bit about why did we go from the internship model

to the praxis course and Palak hinted that one of the things and that was really time.

So we had four students that could commit to doing a winter break

type thing not everybody could do that.

We had we actually wanted to have more students over the summer.

We had the problem that students had a bunch of

different sort of opportunities over the summer not everyone can afford to stay

on campus not everyone can do an internship.

Similarly when we tried to do

internships during the year it's really hard for them to balance out with their

course load.

It's also hard for us to manage that with the course loads and consultations we might be having

so the amount of time that we might have been able to spend in the summer is reduced during the school year as well

So we actually had a student who had signed on to do a summer internship who

then got another summer internship offer and chose to go that direction because

it really made the most sense for that student and that student then came to

the Praxis office which is where I work and said I'd really like to turn this

experience that I could have done the summer into an independent study course

for the fall semester and work with Jenny and Palak to do this.

So we started exploring what that could mean and initially it really was going to

mean a single course.

My office or program the praxis program is the

community based learning program on campus the next slide is actually going

to tell you more about that but I was kind of not sure how best to introduce

this information so I'll start with what we do the umbrella that we fall under.

So praxis is part of the civic engagement office which is part of the leadership

innovation and liberal arts center.

It's a virtual Center as such we have offices

all over campus but the the core pieces are the career professional

development office and civic engagement and then we have all other kinds of

experiential learning opportunities from intensives to work with alums.

We also worked with a set of broad-based competencies for professional developmental and behavioral.

So we tie very neatly with our LITs counterparts

with the digital competencies so that's why I provided this in part because it

shows you a little picture of who all participates in LILAC then some of

the competencies that we work on.

Praxis as the community based learning

program on campus it's really the only way that students during the academic

year can get credit for a course that has field work in it so we don't at Bryn

Mawr students do not receive credit for internships or field work alone it's a

course that they're working on and so there are three levels of Praxis.

Praxis one and two courses are lower level engagements in the field generally tied

to a certain number of hours two to six over the course of the semester and

they're part of a departmental course that meets regularly once or twice a

week and then we have what this student was seeking which was the praxis

independent study or now we also have these praxis we've changed it since

Jenny would have written this the praxis seminar courses and these are courses

where either we have a single student a faculty advisor and a fieldwork

component come together to design by the student over the course of a semester

where they spend eight to ten hours a week in the field and then they meet

regularly with a faculty advisor one of whom is sitting in this room or we

have a group of students in field sites that are similar to each other or have

similar are confronting similar issues or topics and then those students meet

together in a seminar format with a single faculty

advisor and address the material over the course of the semester with core academic content.

So Palak and Jenny made this a Praxis seminar course and

that's how we got to be able to turn it into a course and incorporate more students.

The student who had decided to do a fall independent study ended up

just doing it as a Fall internship because she ended up not needing the

course credit but but that's how we got where we are with a course [instead of a?]

And I would say that there

are yes so what about those worries and so you know thinking about the pros and

cons of this one that we don't have enough expertise we don't have the funding equipment.

We actually discovered that the technical expertise again we've

been able to learn along with the students nobody has the technical

expertise so we're learning you know everyone in the world is learning right

along with them which I think can be a very powerful experience for them.

The funding equipment we could have gone really crazy and bought like all of

these you know the devices that you plug into a

high-powered computer and stuff like this but when we turned it to the sort

of educational technology or looking at it from the sort of Howard museums and

cultural institutions using this they also are faced with this sort of

cost-benefit analysis and so looking for cheap ways to do this was actually

relatively useful and and really useful for them for them to think about what

are sort of the trade-offs right.

We had we made some great connections with

the Franklin Institute for example and they've thought a lot about how they

want to do augmented and virtual reality.

They are a science museum they believe

very strongly that they have a role in making sure that a wide range of people

has access to this technology and so thinking about that thinking about who

gets to play with AR/VR right?

It isn't just because you belong to this fancy school is it just because you know you do we want to put

devices in the hands of everyone do we want to use something that they couldn't

go off and develop for the kids that did block room they can download the app to

their parents phones get a $14-$15 Google cardboard and their parents can see it.

The kids who did hololens you know without that hololens device

which cost like three thousand five thousand dollars no one else can see it

right so they did actually video of their projects you can kind of get a

sense of what it was like but so we had to talk through all of these things

right and they talk through all of these things and they talk through all of

these things with museum professionals.

Another worry that comes up around somewhat

the internships but more maybe when you're taking this into the course realm

is this vocational training?

Should we be doing this in a liberal arts college right?

Is this the kind of thing that we really want to get into?

We have our definite sort of thinking about that but we might open that up to you.

Another is to should students receive academic credit for this kind of thing right?

There's the in the praxis model there is a sort of academic course that is built

around this the students have readings you know we have theoretical discussions

we have sort of when we apply theory to particular ideas.

But is that a good thing? Is that a not good thing? I think there are also maybe

institutional sort of questions around here again around who gets to take a

praxis course you know who gets to take a course who gets to do an internship

who gets to that's sort of what what opportunities are closed out to

different people because of the choices that were made about how we did this.

So we'll leave you guys with those questions I don't know if they've been

answered and then we can take questions for everybody now.