And Welcome to Today's ELI Webinar. This Is Adam La Faci. I'm the Professional Development

Educause 022717 ELI Webinar

And welcome to today's ELI Webinar. This is Adam La Faci. I'm the professional development online event production manager here at EDUCAUSE, and I'll be your host today. The ELI is pleased to welcome today's speakers, Kathy Jacobi, Gary Pavlechko, and Trenda Whiteman. I will introduce them in just a moment, but first let me give a brief orientation on our session's learning environment.

The online room is subdivided into several windows. Our presenters' slides are now showing in the presentation window, which is the largest of the five. The tall window on the left is the chat window where you can type comments, share resources, or pose questions throughout the session today. And we'll do our best to address some of the questions throughout the presentation, but if you don't receive an immediate response, we'll circle back around address pending questions during the ending Q&A period.

We encourage you to type your questions into the chat throughout the webinar, so feel free to take advantage of that now. It's wonderful to see some greetings popping in there as well. If you're tweeting, please use #ELIweb, that's ELI W-E-B. And if you have any audio issues, click on the link in the lower corner of the screen. It's actually right next to the attendee list there. And, at any time, you can direct a private message to technical help or support by clicking in the top right corner of the chat and questions pod, selecting "Start chat with," selecting either "Hosts" or a specific support person's name from the top of the attendee's list.

ELI webinars are supported by Panopto. Panopto is the leader in higher education video platforms. Since 2007, the company has been a pioneer on campus video management, lecture capture, and flipped classroom software. Today, more than five million students and instructors rely on Panopto to improve student outcomes and personalize the learning experience. And now let's turn to today's presentation, Supporting Teaching in 21st-Century Environments: How the Connectivist Model of Instructional Design Serves the Purpose.

And we are going to be introducing our three presenters, who are all joins us from Interactive Learning Space Design at Ball State University. Kathy Jacobi is the Assistant Director of Faculty Development; Gary Pavlechko is Director of Teaching; and Trenda Whiteman is Administrative Coordinator. And with that, it's my pleasure to turn the floor over to our first speaker today. Gary, thank you for joining us.

Adam, thank you so much for having us. Welcome everyone from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. We encourage your questions and comments in the chat and questions area and we'll respond accordingly this afternoon. We're really excited to be here with you and appreciate this opportunity to engage in professional dialogue about college teaching support.

We will identify our approach, which has sustained itself for its sixth year. Our office has been in operation since 1987, but it embraced its opportunity to advance our college teaching culture through an effort named "Interactive Learning Space Initiative," as a means to address 21st-century thinking and practice about college teaching and learning. I'm pleased to have our staff share our story that continues to be written as we speak.

Our instructional system is served through a connectivist approach of design and two of the influential authors, George Siemens and Steven Downes, contribute to our thinking. So we'll be very excited this afternoon to be able to converse with you about their approach but also what we perceive to be an excellent way of staying connected with our faculty and our students about something very dear to us, learning space.

This afternoon we'd like to be able to discuss connections and interactions as the focus of our efforts. We'll describe in detail the interactive learning space instructional design tenets that serve as our architecture for our program. And we will also offer reflections on our success in sustaining our approach to professional learning.

Ball State is a mid-sized school. It's approximately one hour northeast of Indianapolis, and as you can see by our demographics, we're pretty typical for a mid-American college university. Our office is small. There

1 Educause 022717 ELI Webinar are three of us. But we successfully uphold our responsibility to positively effect learning experiences focused on engagement.

To begin, we'd like to share how internal and external partnerships not only play a role in this approach, we are very dependent on them. These include steel case education and research, our channel group for furniture and technology business furniture out of Indianapolis, Sharp Electronics, and a person who is near and dear to us, as many of you I'm sure will recognize, Lennie Scott-Webber, Founder and president of INSYNC currently.

Internally we are supported in areas that include technology integration, wiring, air control, lighting, interior design, architecture, and project management -- no small task -- in order to be able to keep our five interactive learning spaces advancing through each of the semesters that we participate in.

We use knowledge as our network of connections and relations that are continuous explorations about patterns' finding. As you see from this graphic, we're in a process that is just ongoing, and we continue we'll talk about cyclic design. But as we speak, we certainly are going to share some interesting and unique stories how our project has been able to advance itself through these six years.

I hope this graphic offers some inspiration, everything from the wonder of unintended consequences to harmonious insights to significant experiences, and the value can of phenomenological inquiry. These components and those that are left blank, those we're still waiting to uncover, basically contribute to our thought of how a connectivist approach inspires us each day to be able to continue the relationship building that is so pertinent to our program.

Mindful and thoughtful effort leads to decision-making tasks that necessitate intentional interactions that comprise a spectrum of passive to interactive exchanges between inhabitants of our learning spaces. As many have observed steel case inspired thinking about the echo system of pedagogy, space, and technology, as well as others who have written about. Our connectivist approach encourages the addition and focus on the inhabitant in all situations as the lived learning experience exists.

Trenda is going to describe our five learning spaces and a bit of the history of them, and Kathy and I will be interjecting some comments about them.

Hello, all. First of all, faculty are exposed to all of the rooms so they are familiar with all of the aspects and assets of the island spaces. However we do like to try to keep new cohort members in the three spaces located on our floor in Teachers' College. These spaces are close to our office so we can provide support when it is needed.

All of our spaces with distinctively designed to be consistently updated based on feedback by users, which are the students and the faculty. We have several things that are specific to all rooms. We have observation cameras in the rooms. These cameras record and store movement so we can view this from APC and Gary's office any time. We can collect data from these observation cameras as well.

We have triangularization display services so students can see multiple screens from anywhere they may be sitting. We also wanted the user to have complete control of the lighting in each of the spaces. Students are in control of both natural and artificial lighting configurations. They can adjust the lighting in all the sections of the room to meet the individual needs of the user. This has proven to be highly beneficial to many users, including those with disabilities.

The rooms are integrated so that users have access to technology. Each space has a touch-screen monitor to work from. There are connections for all other surfaces in the space. We have multiple wall plates throughout the space for wire connections, and we have wireless connectivity in all the space as well. Each space has an AMX panel that controls the space, and AMX panels are the same in each the spaces. They were expertly designed by our integration team and something we're quite proud of. All of our space also have swipe card access, which allow faculty and students to utilize the spaces whenever they wish.

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The furniture that we have in all the spaces allows for reconfiguration of small groups. The furniture in each of the spaces is probably our biggest asset. Each piece of furniture in the space allows for ease of movement throughout the space. In four out of the five spaces the user can manipulate the furniture in any format they see fit to best suit individualized needs. I'll take a few moments to go through each of the spaces.

As you can see, the slide we have up now is the TC 411. This is our smallest space and seats 18 people. Many of the users in this space enjoy the more intimate setting this provides. This is the only ILS space where we could deploy various colors, and it's proven to be an inspiration to many users. In this space we have verb tables, buoys, soft seating, and personal tables. These various forms of furniture, they do allow us for ease of movement, and allows for various configuration throughout the spaces. There are plenty of white boards, both fixed and movable for the user, along with multiple projection displays. And as you can see, we do have Apple TV in that space as well. We have Apple TV in all of our spaces and Epson short throw in here as well.

The next space is our 412 space, and this is often referred to as our Node room. This seats 24 people. It allows for many, many various configurations. There are multiple white boards, both fixed and movable. Three monitors in the space allows students to display from multiple surfaces, and there is a small breakout session in the back of the space to allow for small-group work or individualized discussion with students and/or faculty. And you can see we have doc cams, Apple TV, hover boards, individual white boards as well.

Our next space is the 414 space. This space is our Media:Scape room. There are four Media:Scape tables with seating for six. These tables have six pucks that each student can plug their laptop into display at any time. With the push of the puck, any student can display his or her work on the monitor. The instructor has control of the stations with the AMX panel on the wall by the instructor card, and she can hand over control to the students any time to display what is on their laptop. This allows for collaboration in the spaces, which is something that is very important to our initiative.

The next space you will see here, RB 109. This is space is in the Robert Bell building, which is just down the road from Teachers College. This room seats 36 people and has various types of seating arrangements to allow for collaboration. This space has a lot of natural light. But, again, the lighting can be completely controlled by the user.

And I want to apologize. On this slide, we didn't catch it in time, but we do not have the correct pictures up for this. This space now has all Node chairs, but it is an important aspect of our space to tell you that we these spaces are constantly being designed, redesigned and ever changing. For example, we moved furniture from BB 109, the next space I'll show you, into this space, because there was too much clutter in one space. So having this ease of movement with all the furniture allows us to be constantly listening to our faculty and our students so we can better make changes in those spaces. This space also has four Epson short throw projectors, five white boards on the wall. We have hover boards, individual white boards, doc cams, Apple TV. So it's fully connected as well.

The last space we have is our BB 109 space. This is our largest space. This will seat 76 people. This is a wonderful space with a lot of natural light. In this space we have a combination of verb tables, buoys, and soft seating as well. As you can see by the picture, there is several white boards, hover boards, and individual boards. There's a Sharp touchscreen in the space, as there is in most of our islet spaces. We have six display monitors in the space, which allow the user to display on any surface at any time.

We did purchase Barco ClickShare for the space due to the large span of the space. Barco will allow us wireless connections to be displayed. The seats in the middle of the space that are on the inside perimeter, it was hard for them to find connections without being connected to the wall. So Barco allowed us buy pucks so the student can input a USB puck into their computer and then they can connect wirelessly to any display in the room. So it's been very beneficial to our wireless connectivity in that space.

All the furniture is movable and can be easily configured to meet the needs of the user. In all of our spaces we encourage a more collaborative approach to learning. We encourage faculties to take the spotlight off themselves and let students take control of the attributes in the space. All the attributes in our spaces allow for this to happen more naturally and effectively.

There was a question regarding the observation cameras that I'd like to address. It's really important to note that they are not used for surveillance. The cameras themselves are set up, and they do archive all of the video in each of the rooms when the cameras get activated when movement occurs. But they were designed as a system for study of the spaces, for the movement, as well as for observation of how the participants are using the spaces when we do make new design changes.

We do have a professor in our Interior Design Department that has been working with these cameras now. This will be the second semester, as well as an observation software that we purchased called Dot. Dr. Kanakri, the instructor, and her students use archived video, as well as live face-to-face observations to be able to track movement, and see use of not only the equipment and the amenities in the space, but also the different sections or zones in the classrooms. So we have just begun. As I said, this is the second semester, first full semester that she is using this software product that allows her students to be able to do those observations of the video. But the video is archived and is usable for faculty whenever they would like with regard to their research.

Just one other thing, too. Excuse me, Trenda mentioned about disabled student development. And I do want to make sure that we inform you that we are in constant communication and interaction with that office, even to the point where one of our cohort members this semester, the assistance director, is teaching in our space, in one of our spaces, so she is active in our faculty learning community. And we really want to make sure that we inform everyone how we do consult with disabled student development regarding apparent, as well as non-apparent disabilities. And what we're finding now, with regard to different quality control issues in the spaces, whether it be lighting or sound, that those features are really important to be able to address the needs of our students, to the point where we have air-handling systems shutting down for one hour two days a week from 5:00 o'clock until 6:00 o'clock, so that it can accommodate an instructor with autism, as well as another student with a hearing impairment and some other non-apparent issues.

This is Kathy. I'd like to talk about a couple issues, questions that came out while Trenda was speaking about our spaces, and then I'm going to actually get into the faculty development, special development aspect of our initiative. The question was regarding scheduling of the classes, which is something that I do. So as I talk through the next element of our presentation, I will try to kind of explain how I do that.

Another question was do faculty have input on the design of the spaces. And our first two spaces, the Node Share TC 412 and TC 414, the media safe room, were designed with the assistance of steel case in our fall space interior designer. At that point, once we got faculty in those spaces we continually asked them and the students what they think of each of the items, the assets, and that then leads us, when we add new spaces, kind of guides us in how we're going to approach those spaces, what we're going to repeat, what we're going to change, and things of that nature. So, although faculty didn't have input -- had a little bit of input on the first two spaces, but since then, they have continued to have input. We have them keep in continuous contact regarding the spaces and how it works.

I would like to talk about the initiative, and hopefully it will answer a few questions that came up during the field trip through our spaces, as well as the pictures. Our initiative started in 2011, in the fall. Our floor was going to be going under renovation, and we had two classrooms on our floor, and it gave us an opportunity to have some funds where we could reinvent the classrooms. The footprint stayed the same, but what was inside of it was completely gutted, and we were able to then design the spaces in an effort to kind of reach that 21st century learn. So we look at our initiative as the blending of pedagogy, obviously interactive learning and teaching, the actual learning space design, how will space, how will the design of the space, how will the asset for the space impact and support the interactive pedagogy, and as well as technology.

Now, as many of you who are teaching now or working with current instructors, it sometimes the technology aspect of it that seems to scare people the most, because it's kind of the newest component in teaching in higher education. And it's sometimes takes the forefront in their thoughts, and we are continually reminding them the technology is just the support. It's really the pedagogy that happens. So that's always something -- we're revisiting that issue all the time with our faculty.

Our initiative gives us a chance to bring people from all across -- our faculty across all colleges, all departments together in working in our spaces and teaching in our spaces and doing research about the spaces. So one of the aspects that we have heard from a focus group that I and a couple colleagues had run through a couple years ago, the first two cohorts, some of the things they said they appreciated most about it was the chance to work with people across disciplines, both in teaching and talking about teaching, and then also able to approach some research. So we were pleased to hear that, because we were hoping that would be the case, and we were also hoping the case would be just to literally impact the teaching and learning across campus, whether in our spaces or not, and we heard that as well from many of the faculty; that it cannot help but change their teaching across campus, even though only one class may at one time may be taught in our spaces.

So our design for the professional development aspects is based on three tenets. We started this, kind of creating this aspect of it, actually in March, following our start, which was in the fall. It kind of has evolved over the course of our time. We definitely don't feel like we're stagnant at all, but we're continually developing and changing, evolving as our spaces, our faculty, and our students do as well. So we feel the tenets of our program are faculty-driven programming, ongoing dialogue, and planning and reflecting.

Faculty-driven programming, our faculty are involved as they apply to the program, which they must do to be able to teach in our spaces. They participate in a faculty develop week, which occurs right following the spring semester of classes. We spend the afternoons that following week talking about pedagogy in the spaces, the technology of course, which is on their mind, and just getting them thinking about what course they're going to teach in the space and how they might change it or enhance it.

We also have a mentor program, so the faculty are working with each other. They're having previous ILS faculty mentors and new faculty coming in. They also involve in scholarship of teaching and learning, and this is -- we are insistent as we can be that they do some scholarship as a result of their time with us. So that looks a little bit different for each one. And, again, some scholarships presented have been done collaboratively across departments. And then we also offer sessions, offer workshops through the summer. [Inaudible] is one of those that kind of evolved when faculty would say I use this particular technology or this particular software or this particular application. Then we typically will ask them if they would do a quick workshop for other faculty to kind of introduce them to that technology.

Ongoing dialogue is our second tenet. We are constantly talking. Talking with our faculty about what they're doing in the space. It has several aspects of it. We meet in the fall, the fall and the spring, with learning communities every three weeks. With the amount of faculty we have in our spaces currently, which is 50 faculty teaching in our spaces currently, we run five faculty learning communities in an effort to involve as many people as we can, based on various schedule.

Also, in the summertime we don't have learning communities, but we hold summer conversation hours, time for them just to come and gather and talk. We have a Blackboard community site. Blackboard is our learning management system here at Ball State. The Blackboard community we had hoped would be more of an interactive, as it were. More at this point, it's more of a repository resources, which is fine. But we're still looking for a way to continue the dialogue in an online experience.

And then the other one listed there, weekly updates, is just an e-mail message that I send out, started out sending it weekly when we first started this initiative. The classrooms were not -- we were under renovation, as I had mentioned. The classrooms were not done, of course, at the beginning of fall semester, so we weren't going to be in the spaces until October, so I started sending them a weekly updates just to keep them encouraged, say we got the white boards installed today, or whatever it

5 Educause 022717 ELI Webinar happened that particular week, just to keep them excited about the fact that they would be in the space soon, even though it wasn't for the start of fall semester.

Weekly updates have continued from that point on, although I must admit sometimes they're ever other week, depending what my schedule is. But I do try to touch base with them at least twice a month with the e-mail. And this update goes to absolutely everybody who is involved in the initiative. We have had over a hundred faculty now involved in our initiative, and right now we have 50 of them teaching. So the other 50 still get my weekly updates, unless they ask to be taken off the list. But I think I've only had two people say "Could you release me" from my list. So I guess [inaudible].

And the third tenet is planning and reflecting. So that starts with, of course, redesign and development. Some faculty will completely redesign their course because they've been in a full lecture mode for many years. Other faculty will have already been teaching in a very interactive way and they're finally getting a space that lets them do what they want to do, so their course in redesign may be very minimal. But none the less, they're thinking about their course redesign, how they're going to develop that course, and what it's going to look like when it's in ILS, as opposed to traditional classroom.

We also do class observations as they're entering into the initiative, where we encourage them to come and see different faculty teaching in the space to not only give an idea of what the space has to offer, but what they might want to do with their classes once they are in the spaces as well. They do a mid-point reflection, which comes halfway through their first time in the space just to touch base as to what has gone well, what they would like to do in the future, and then finally, end of intake recap, which comes at the end of their initial time in our space.

The participation process is basically two years. I consider it kind of the six semester process if you consider the summer a semester. So what occurs, for example, we are spring one for cohort six. So I have sent out the call for applicants for cohort six. They're applying to the program. We will identify them probably in mid-April. They will be come to an introductory meeting to meet with us and to start the conversation on why they have applied, what course they're thinking they want to teach in our space, and to also get them on the floor, if they haven't already been here, to see the spaces, and to also have them observe some classes prior to their faculty development week.

Summer one, so that begins with the faculty development week right after spring final exams. They're also in the summer, hopefully doing some course redesign. They are considering their scholarship agenda. We certainly don't expect them to have their research question if they're going to do a full-blown research experiment while they're with us. However, we have had a few faculty where they came with us right after faculty development week and said this is my research question, and they were ready to go with it. The first fall they are in our program. They are not teaching yet. They're still developing their course. They're being mentored. They're still observing. They're writing some reflections. And they're, of course, attending our faculty learning community.

The second year, then, starts with spring two, which is where they're actually final in our spaces teaching their course. So how that works is they give me their class meeting times, and I work them into the schedule first as a new student cohort. I have been, at this point, lucky enough that a few of them have had the ability to open to their time of day and days of the week that they need to be in the space, so I have been able to place anyone who wanted to be in the space in the space at a time that works for them.

Once I have placed a new cohort in the space, then I will go back to the former cohort and ask them if they would like to return to our spaces, and if so, then I place them in as I can with the open spaces. Also spring two they're attending the faculty learning communities continued and they're hopefully starting to implement their research study or they continue to identify their scholarship.

Second summer is they now become -- through our faculty-driven programming, they become the facilitator for the faculty development week incoming cohort. So during the spring we talk about what they think the new cohort coming in should have at their disposal during that faculty development week. And

6 Educause 022717 ELI Webinar although I do the scheduling, then they are the facilitators. So the faculty-driven programming is first and foremost in their mind as we work through that programming.

Summer two they're also considering courses redesigned. They've already been in the spaces for a semester, so many of them are tweaking what they did, so that gives them the option to do that. They also then become a mentor for new cohort members. This has worked out well. We leave it open to them as to how they meet. It might be through e-mail. It might be literally going and having coffee. But as long as they connect with a new incoming cohort member is what's important. And then of course continuing with their scholarship project, which hopefully, by now, they have started.

Fall two is the second and final time they're in the space for their intake. They're teaching their course again. They continue to attend faculty learning communities. They're hopefully doing a scholarship write- up, or well into their scholarship, attached to their time with our space, and they are considered teaching in transition spaces, which might be, actually, returning to our core, or also going to the two larger spaces, which are at either end of the campus.

So I see a couple questions. I'm going to talk about the instructors in the program. It varies. It just depends on how many classes you can fit in the space. So, for example, this semester we have 60 faculty teaching in our spaces. There are 69 courses and 1,459 students in our program right now for this semester. So there you see kind of an image for what we have for this spring. We have five of our eight colleges represented. We have 26 departments. Again, the 69 courses, 60 faculty, and the number is actually 1,459 as far as students. Over the course, since fall of 2012, we've had 110 faculty over those years, we've had 411 courses taught, and we've had 8,600 students, a little bit over, that have taken classes in our spaces.

I'd also like to address a question regarding the space design. One of the participants mentioned about information technology being designers of the space. In our case, it is not that. Interactive learning space design is responsible to our office. Our office is the group that interacts and makes those connections internally and externally in regard to design. We're constantly communicating with our Steel Case regional educational consultant, as well as the learning space design specialist with business furniture about what current furniture is being produced by Steel Case. We are a Steel Case university. We purchase only Steel Case furniture.

We're always looking at what other universities or other locations are doing with learning space design. We're constantly in communication with our faculty, but it is an academic affairs initiative as far as learning space design, which makes it very, very productive for us. We use, definitely, the information technology, integration planners, and we're constantly in communication, even as far as when we were doing the AMX panel, integration box panel design. We were working with other IT personnel graphic designers, web designers to be able to create a system that certainly is not confusing, so we ran it through pilot initiatives with our faculty, and, again, what we're really looking for as well is that the students are also participants with that particular device.

Just talking about connectivism a little more, our ILS initiative is about individual program elements that make up the instructional system. It's a strong example of how instructional system serves the university's operational function to support learning and teaching. The system is on autopilot since or faculty are driving the program, and the students, as daily participants, are providing feedback for them, and, as well, through our own surveying that we do of the students.

We serve as an administrative facilitator group, as cohort members relay their experiences along with those of their students to us on an ongoing basis, especially since we have the Faculty Learning Community Program as an instrumental way for us to be able to do face-to-face communication with our faculty. But, again, since we have students that are on our floor taking classes in these intake rooms, it gives us a prime opportunity to be able to converse with them, and I personally teach an honors colloquium every spring in one of our intake rooms, and so that provides me with a wonderful opportunity to get student feedback.

And, lastly, this program is based on an effort to advance scholarship, as well as teaching. And, like all universities, we have a sponsored programs office. We interact with them on an ongoing basis, but we certainly are supporting the scholarship of teaching and learning initiatives and one of our cohort members is actually facilitating a faculty learning community on SoTL to be able to advance faculty members' efforts.

I'd also like to share some successful results, and these are just a few. But it is really important for us to be able to hear about how our faculty insert interactive pedagogy in traditional learning spaces after they've experienced our rooms. We don't have many faculty who can teach all of their classes in our five spaces, so most of them are teaching in those traditional environments, and yet, what we're proud about is the fact that our faculty are going out and carrying on pedagogical practice that is interactive, even in spaces where the furniture is traditional and movement is certainly not as conducive and effective in the spaces.

This continuum moves along capacity-building thinking. It's a philosophy of continuous parallel learning of students and teachers and thoughtfully and strategically looking at the design of additional interactive learning spaces based on this initiative. We are a university who is looking to advance the number of spaces on our campus through state funding, and we hope that the lessons learned through this initiative will certainly be responsive to the future needs.

We do have a program on our campus that does not fall under our immediate observation, but it is a learning space in our Bracken Library, and it is based on the Math Emporium concept, so math courses 108 and 111 are conducted in that space. And we've had significant improvement in performance data that shows our students are engaged in learning mathematics in that program, and they are going on to other mathematics courses and are producing at a higher level, which was really important for our university to be able to see, because those two courses are introductory courses. And we want to be able to note how not only space but, again, the pedagogical practice in an environment like that really makes a difference.

Some reflections, we certainly feel that, as we reflect on these six year, that we are probably more flexible thinkers and that interactive learning instructional design is the means to address assessment of performance in cognitive and social learning environments. We almost always have some element of discussion in our faculty learning communities about assessment; that traditional assessment methods using standard multiple choice or objective-driven questions is not the way faculty are doing formative and summative assessments in our spaces. They are thinking through, again, the performance evaluation model, and we find that students are very responsive to that.

As well, as I mentioned earlier in the discussion, our architecture of interactive Learning Space Initiative is cyclic. We keep coming back and asking the question, how can we advance college teaching in the 21st century? In the 27 years that I've been involved at the college level as an educational developer, and 40 years total in education, I feel as if we can't ever be satisfied with current practice when we continually, now, engage ourselves with generationally different learners and college faculty.

As reports have come out, generational change appears every four years. We realize that as our students come in, as the faculty come in, that we need engaging and inspirational components here at Ball State, and we've had the pleasure of being able to be a part of a system that certainly moves this type of thinking forward. We aren't stopping. We never stop. And that is what makes coming to work so much more special, and as well, everything that we do, not only with our internal but our external partners.

And lastly, we did have a question about those partnerships. We certainly want to draw attention that no matter what we do as learning space designers and pedagogical consultants, that this would not work without the partnership mentality, which certainly draws on the positive elements of the connectivist model.

So we're feeling very strongly about where we are right now. These spaces are -- it may seem like a small number of them to many of you at larger schools. But as I stated, this program is about learning what

8 Educause 022717 ELI Webinar works well. So this is always in a pilot mode, and everything that we learn, all that's produced goes back into the system and continues to be recycled for future learning space design and professional learning here at Ball State.

I don't have anything else.

I'm not sure. I have to look back to the questions. If anybody has questions here, we're happy to take those.

We certainly could use the help of Adam on this as well, as we're looking through these.

You can to address Craig's question, Craig Miner [ph].

That's an interesting question, Craig, that you raised in regards to IT refresh cycles. We are not reliant financially on IT for our spaces. This comes out of our operating budget. Anything that we do in our spaces comes from our budget. We certainly get the assistance of the expertise, the human expertise, coming out of IT and facilities, but we pay for that when necessary or required. And IT has been really wonderful in regard to the integration part. That is not a chargeable service. But we certainly, when we want to make additions to those rooms, we always consult with our integration experts in regard to what it would take.

For instance, we are currently planning the implementation of emotion detection devices that have been created be a developer in our I-Learn Integrated Learning Institute Online Support Learning team. And he built those 20 devices. He's going to be putting them on the tables. And we're using our experts in unified communication over Spring Break to do the wiring, to be able to run the cabling from the Media:Scape tables under the flooring to the computer system. That is an example of how we rely on the assistance of IT. But, again, in regard to this new technology that we'll be implementing the second half of the semester, again, it is something that has come from other units like the I-Learn Group that wants to study the impact on motion detection on learning.

Wonderful. Thank you. And I see another question that came in a while ago. I'm wondering if you could share some examples of interactive learning activities that work well in particular rooms.

I would say -- let me think. For example, the rooms that our spaces -- the spaces on our floor, the Media:Scape room definitely really supports a fee base or collaboration approach. The six tables have six people at each table, so they work in teams. Some faculty will assign teams for the entire semester. Other faculty will have them switch halfway through the semester. Other faculty puts them up very often. In our teaching for 12, which is our Node room, that lends itself with movable chairs to be the large group, small group, partners, trios in a moment's notice during a single session.

Kind of the low-tech things that actually get the students engaged are the smaller white boards that cab come off of the rails that we. We obviously have the wall-mounted white board. We have white boards that are smaller. They can hang up on rails above the white boards, and then we have [inaudible] white boards as well. And I remember once asking the faculty if we couldn't recreate the space with all the bells and whistles, what would you want, and definitely overwhelmingly they said the movable and the small individual white boards, because that gets students engaged. Whether they're brainstorming some ideas or they're writing a question, those are used very, very frequently in all of our spaces. So anything of that nature, it happens pretty regularly in our spaces.

I would also add that when you're talking about the Media:Scape obviously collaborative writing is really important. But it's kind of interesting that the blend of courses that succeed in the Media:Scape room. Besides writing classes you have gender studies who are working constantly in small-group projects. We have genetics. We have an upper-level genetics class where the students -- many of the students now are in their third semester being in that space, and what they have found to be able to develop teams in being able to move forward with the curriculum, and for presentation purposes, as well as an advanced English class that does a digital literature review product at the end.

But I was just doing a midterm feedback in our largest space this morning, for a new cohort member who teaches chemistry. And what's kind of interesting about this system of ours, or educational development, our office is responsible for midterm feedbacks, and so we go out into the spaces upon the request of the faculty. And this professor I've done now for almost three years in one of our older buildings, the science building. And I noticed her teaching in a couple different locations in that building, and it provided an opportunity for Kathy and me to be able to interact with her, talk about what we observed in regard to her learning space, and what was happening with her teaching evaluations, and then be able to encourage her to think about joining our cohort group.

And I watched her this morning before I did the feedback session. I watched her do problem solving in the room that has ten display surfaces. So her students had opportunities to see and interact with the content, with the problem solving at any of the stations, and this was a class of over 70 students. And I also want to add something before I forget, and that is, our new faculty academy, which is going to be starting its third year this coming fall semester, which also is out of the associate provost's office, under which we are located, they do interactive learning, professional learning in this program, about college teaching for any of our new tenured track faculty, and then they offer additional sessions for our full-time contract faculty.

But the leadership, in regard to our university with New Faculty Academy, ensures that the professors get experience in these course sessions in our spaces, in our interactive learning space, so that they can become a part of what those spaces can do for them as teachers and participants. And it gives us a wonderful opportunity to be able to build relationships with these new faculty about coming into our program.

And something that makes Ball State really a very unique university -- and I've been here for almost 27 years -- it's the fact that our new faculty are not discouraged from engaging in programs that will possibly affect their teaching. As a matter of fact, they are encouraged. So our associate provost and provost and interim president have been really strongly encouraging our new faculty, as they participate in New Faculty Academy, to think about joining our initiative and working in one of those five classrooms. So that, again, is a wonderful example, in my opinion, of how the connectivist model or professional learning at a college level can prove to be very successful.

Ian had a question about ensuring that interactive teaching is occurring in the spaces. You know, we don't tell teachers how to teach. We don't do that. But because our program is based on the tenets that Kathy shared with you, the faculty are constantly in communication with others. We encourage them to always do observations of their peers. We can make subtle suggestions to a faculty member if we see maybe that their students aren't moving in these classrooms as much as maybe they could or should, and that the faculty member is doing more of the speaking and disseminating of information. So we have eyes that can then be turned into a positive process of how we can get people more involved with other faculty. And that's what makes our program special with these three rooms that are right on our floor, and the other rooms that we always are observing as well.

You see any other questions, Adam, that you would like addressed? I'm looking at the ones that just came in.

Yeah. Let's turn our attention to the one that just appeared here. Have you written about implementing connectivist models into your interactive spaces and the impact?

Actually, I'm probably the strong proponent of this model. Many of our faculty are proponents of the constructivist approach. But since I've been in instructional design for these 27 years, after graduating, I saw that Penn State was one of the universities that are on this webinar. I got my degree there. I came here. I was a personnel member in developing course work for faculty, teaching in distance education, which is what it was referred to, not online, many years ago.

And, you know, we worked through the traditional instructional design models and then constructivism came out. And there were many of us that were almost considered to be radical in following that program.

But once at a conference at Ohio State University I heard George Siemens speak, and I'm a daily reader of Stephen Downes, and participating authors on his blog site, OLDaily. And I would say that, whenever possible, we're always talking to our faculty about this approach. But they certainly understand that it's not just a theoretical approach for instructional design, but within the classroom, that making connections, not only with the content but with each other and the instructor, is really what this is about. So, to me, it seems the connectivist approach is probably the most basic and sensible approach. And, yes, we are constantly talking about it and interacting with our faculty regarding this theory.

Excellent. Thank you. I see that we just have a few minutes left here, so I wonder if the three of you have any closing remarks you'd like to make. And then if we have time for one more question, we might just squeeze that in before our wrap-up.

I guess my closing comment, I return back to that focus group that I had referred to, a research study that I had worked on, actually, with two faculty members involved in the initiative, both in family consumer sciences. They were interested in what the impact the ILS had on the -- kind of the as to the motivations of the faculty. And going through those focus groups, it was just cohorts one and two at that point, and we're up to cohort five now, so I need to do this again, I think. But just to hear them talk about how it's changed them, how they look at spaces in completely different ways or [inaudible] than they ever did; how they can't help but be a different teacher, which is, of course, what we had hoped.

So I think those are some of the comments that have stuck with me, as well as some who have said, you know, I still wouldn't want to be teaching if I hadn't had this shot in the arm. So those are certainly gratifying comments to hear when you put so much energy and time and commitment into the faculty and into the initiative.

And I'd like to say that don't be afraid to allow something to happen that you didn't expect. And we started with our program not being able to come in at the beginning of the fall semester, but we made the best of it, and we came in for only half the semester, but then we realized that this program could be built on a teach spring and fall calendar, and that has proved to be an incredibly effective outcome for us. So, again, be open-minded to what you think might be a failure, but realize the benefits afterward, and include as many people as possible in the thinking of this design process.

Excellent. Well I just want to say thank you so much, Gary, Kathy, and Trenda for sharing these interactive learning spaces with us and the way that you've helped faculty and students engage with in such a positive way that just continues to evolve.

There's some great conversations that we're opening up here in the chat box. And I do want to say a big thank you to all of our participants and everyone signed on today. On behalf of the teaching and learning community, thank you for joining us and for engaging in the session and conversation.

Now before you sign off today, please do click on the session evaluation link. You'll find that at the bottom of the screen in the two-minute evaluation pod. You'll also see that we have it hyperlinked on the main slide on the screen as well. Your comments are very important to us. We'd appreciate your feedback.

The session's recording and presentation slides will be posted to the ELI website later today, so please feel free to share it with your colleagues. And we hope that you'll join us for the next ELI webinar. We're putting some information up on the screen here for you. That's "Designing Effective Online Courses: Proven Organizational Structures and Models." And that's taking place on March 27th at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. And with that, on behalf of EDUCAUSE, this is Adam La Faci. Thank you for joining us today.