Last week, I received notification that the faculty led short term experiential education abroad program I proposed to the UTampa Office of International Program was approved. So, who is coming with me to Switzerland? The name of the program is “Teaching and Learning in Switzerland.” The study abroad advisor from the Office of International Programs mentioned that alumni can join as “non-degree seeking students.”
Save the dates: May 6 – 15, 2018
More info coming soon!
Received notification today that the book chapter I wrote for the book “Digital Tools for Seamless Learning” published by IGI Global is now available. The title of the book chapter is: Social Media in Higher Education: Enriching Graduate Students’ Professional Growth Outside the Classroom. Here is a copy of the abstract:
“This chapter discusses the current use of social media for professional growth, focusing on a case study that uses social media to increase instructional design graduate students’ awareness and participation in professional growth opportunities. Social media metrics were analyzed from three social networking tools (Facebook Page, Twitter account, and/or Google+ community) that are used to communicate with the students in the program. Additional data was collected using an electronic questionnaire with open and closed-ended questions. The results show that graduate students’ participation in the social media initiatives for professional growth provided awareness of self-directed, voluntary, and informal learning opportunities; engaged students in conversations with their peers and the instructors; and allowed the learners to expand their learning experience outside the traditional classroom format.”
If you are interested in reading the rest of the book chapter, please feel free to contact me. I will gladly share it privately so that I do not break any “copyright” rules. Here is my email: eromerohall@ut.edu
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting to the UT Honors Programs students and faculty as well other UTampa colleagues and staff members. I presented on the topic: “Use of Social Media by Graduate Students and Programs.” This is a research area that I am currently exploring and I was able to share some preliminary results. Click on the image below to access the link to the complete Prezi presentation:
Click on the Image to Access the Slides
Here are the images I was able to capture during the IFDS in Seville last week. I figured it was best to post this sooner rather than later because I wanted to acknowledge the amazing people that we (the seminar attendees) worked with during our time in Seville. Thank you to Oscar Ceballos, Carlos Pineda, Miguel Romero, Antonio Perez, Carlos Sanches, Ruben Diaz and Emilio Gonzales Ferrin. I would also like to thank the six ladies with whom I shared and collaborated with during the seminar: Collete, Rebecca, Nancy, Kaitlin, Ellen, and Rylan. Learned so much from you ladies!
Hopefully you have read my previous posts and understand the context of this post. Just in case: I am doing an international professional development seminar in Seville in which I am learning and practicing communication strategies (and using digital media). One of the assignments in the seminar was to record sounds of the city during our stay in Seville. We finally used those sounds today during the production and recording of a radio podcast. It was a two hour preparation time of scripting and sound editing before recording our radio show. I am really impress with the final product!
I have to upload more sounds that I captured this week (they are now updated). I have many more, including interviews and more street sounds. However, I want to share our radio podcast. Big thank you to Radiopolis for letting us use their space to work on the project and their recording studio.
Here is our story, narrative, experience:
IFDS Communication Strategies in Context Summer 2016 Radio Show
The Assignment
As part of the seminar I have a bit of homework and will be sharing (or at least try) to share it every day. The homework consist of audio recordings of sounds, conversations, audio reflections, interviews, and other audio recorded during the next few days in Seville. Each audio recording should be no more than two minutes long.
The Recordings
CIEE Seminar Director: Oscar Ceballos:
Walking Tour of Old Town Sevilla:
Reggaeton on the Streets of Seville:
Morning Walk to CICUS (Universidad de Sevilla)
Visual Narrative (Operation Just Cause)
The Importance of Context [Games of Thrones Example]
First Impressions of Seville [Nancy & Enilda]
Horse Carriage
Church Bells
What is information?
Interview in “El Corte Ingles”
Coffeeshop Conversation with Local Sevillanos
Note: Here is the updated post with all the audio recordings from Seville, Spain.
In February, my students in the Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology course (EME610) and myself visited and toured The HIVE. Then, this past April a group of students and myself attended the Gulf Coast MakerCon event. Both of this activities were an attempt to learn more about Makerspaces and the Maker movement as learning spaces. In all honesty, I initially thought it was all about 3D printers. What I learned since then is that Makerspaces really focused on design thinking. Some spaces are technology heavy (hardware and software), others are more about crafting, others are about innovative ideas, and the lists goes on. Basically there are various views as to what constitutes a markerspace.
From talking to those involved in the markerspace movement here in Tampa, I also learned that the term Makerspace at times seems too crafty. A few weeks ago I toured a school in Tampa in which there are different Makerspaces for students in different grade levels. It was interesting to talk to instructors from the different grade levels. One instructor in particular expressed some concern over the term “makerspace.” He though that the maker movement should be more focused on design thinking. He was very interested in having students master design thinking with simple tools like paper and pencil before even allowing them to use more advance technology. This instructor also expressed concern with the total lack of guidance in some makerspaces. I consider myself an academic novice on makerspaces (as I am still learning and educating myself on the topic) but I do agree with the notion that design thinking requires guidance and supervision. I practice this in my systematic instructional design course. The graduate students and myself spend a significant amount of time going over different elements of their instructional design projects.
Another interesting aspect of Makerspaces that I learned about recently, while attending AERA, is the lack of diversity. One of the “working poster sessions” (we need more of this at AERA — great session format) I attended was on makerspaces reaching diverse audiences which include individuals in different genders, socio economic status, and cultural backgrounds. There were a total of 7 or 8 posters in the session (below is a screenshot from the AERA online program). If you are interested and want to learn more about inclusive makerspaces, I strongly recommend reading the abstracts and following up with the authors.
I wanted to write a couple of posts about things I experienced this last semester and then life happened! So, I am merging it all into this post. Please forgive the imperfection of my writing. I probably will not take the time edit and re-edit. What you are about to read are the words as they flow from my brain to the keyboard to this blog.
Since I last wrote a blog post (not an announcement but an actual blog post) I became a mom. This time last year, I was in Switzerland in a Faculty Exchange program. It was exactly during the exchange that I discovered that I was expecting a baby. Yes, the pregnancy test results read “Schwanger.”
Many things have happened in my personal/professional life in the last year (since I found out I was pregnant) and I want to share them in my blog. However, I am still trying to figure out how to best express those experiences and feelings in a blog post (or maybe more than one). I hope to take some time to write about this experiences in the near future.
What I do want to share in this blog post is that I have officially completed my third year in a tenure track position. At the beginning of the Spring 2016 semester, I submitted all my materials and by mid March had received all the pre-tenure letters. This is a minor milestone but I still consider it a milestone. I guess the questions that I need to answer now is: what is happening past pre-tenure? Well, pretty much just keep on working hard. I have a long term “to-do list” that I have to tackle and of course, the everyday “to-do list.”
The last three years served to connect with really amazing faculty and graduates students with whom I have found common ground (topics of interest) to work on projects. Some of these projects are strictly related to the instructional design practice and others are more multidisciplinary. I am very excited about this projects and some of them will presented in conferences later this years (currently working on getting some manuscripts out for review). Other projects are just starting so more details coming soon.
I also want to quickly mention that I also started professional service with the AERA SIG Design & Technology as a Technology Liaison. I am excited for this opportunity and very much looking forward to working with colleagues in the SIG. This previous sentence reminded me that I wanted to mention how much I enjoyed attending AERA 2016. I did not present a paper but instead had the opportunity to participate in a mentoring program sponsored by the AERA SIG Design & Technology. I met two outstanding graduate students, Amanda and Yi.
I hope the SIG continues the mentoring program in the future. It was a great opportunity to share my graduates student and faculty journey. Most importantly, it was an opportunity to listen to the concerns of graduate students and, hopefully, provide guidance. I also learned from the graduate students in the process. Both graduate students, Amanda and Yi, shared conferences, resources, and research groups that were completely new to me.
During the conference I also participated as moderator in a panel discussion on the past, present, and future of the design and technology field. The panelist included Elizabeth Boling, Pat Hardre, and George Veletsianos. It was nice to listen to the panelists’ perspective on the current state of the field as well as suggestions for graduate students and faculty doing research on topics related to design and technology. The current Graduate Student Representative of the SIG Design and Technology board, Shonn, live tweeted the panel presentation. If you are interested in reading more about it, you can check out the AERA SIG Design & Technology Twitter stream.
That is all I have for now. Hoping to be post more in the near future. Hopefully, future post will not be as lengthy.
This year the AECT conference was held in the wonderful state of Florida, just 3 hours northeast of the Tampa Bay area, in Jacksonville. It was a conference that I was looking forward to attend because several of the students in the UT ID&T program [Follow the program in Facebook and Twitter] were attending and presenting!
The first day of the conference for me was the Wednesday afternoon, two grad students from the UT ID&T program were presenting and I wanted to be there for their session. They wrote the initial version of their proposal as part of a midterm paper assignment in a course I taught in the Fall 2013 semester (my first semester as a faculty member). The topic of their papers were mainly related to motivation elements in the learning process. Their session was well attended and I felt extremely proud of their first conference presentation. Several attendees of the sessions had comments and questions about the topic of the presentation as well as feedback on their research topics. It was also nice to see the support from other UT ID&T classmates and faculty that attended the session. This was definitely a highlight of the conference for me.
Another important part of the conference was to meet with my colleagues and friends from the AECT Research and Theory Division to discuss important topics related to future conference proposals, the professional development webinars, and future elections. I was not able to attend the RTD board meeting but I was there for the membership meeting, which included all the board members. It was nice to catch up with all of them, I know some of my fellow board members for many years now. One of the decisions that was made during the meeting is that the division will continue to elect a PD webinar facilitator for future webinars. I am glad that the RTD Professional Development Webinars started by Dr. Min Kyu Kim and myself as a suggestions Dr. Michael Grant will continue to be a part of the RTD division mission. While at the conference the PD webinars were recognized by the AECT leadership as well as the RTD board members.
I will continue to participate in the RTD board for one more year as Secretary. One of my primary roles will be the RTD newsletter and I am excited to make it happen. I want them to be fun, creative, and interactive. I am considering running another RTD position in the future but I am still thinking about it.
During the conference I presented in two sessions. One of the sessions related to a new research effort on the use of social media initiatives and strategies for professional development. In my particular case, I discussed the social media initiatives started for the ID&T program at the University of Tampa. The presentation discussed the current strategies implemented for the professional development of the instructional design graduate students. I also discussed the second phase of this research effort which includes data collection using qualitative and quantitative data. The other presentation that I had during the AECT conference was an informal panel presentation in which a group of international faculty (including myself) discussed with international graduate students the lessons learned during the first year in a tenured track faculty position and the tenure process in different universities. I am halfway through my second tenure-track year so it was nice to share my experience of the first year with the audience. In a way it helped me reflect on my experience. It was also nice to hear the experiences of other colleagues.
One of my favorite social gatherings during the AECT conference was the UT ID&T dinner. We were a small group of seven but it was such a nice and relaxing time. We talked about the AECT experience, the people we had met, the topics of discussion in different sessions, and we talked about our own program. As I mentioned in my tweet about the dinner: “Good food and good conversations!”
I look forward to AECT next year (as I always do)! I hope the UT ID&T program continues to have a graduate student presence and that the students in the program continue to present at the conference. I also hope that next year I have more time to chat with so many colleagues and friends. It was very nice to see them and it really reminded me of how lucky I am to be part of such an amazing professional family. See you all at #AECT15 in Indianapolis!
Design Goodiness 
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