Instructional Technology Grad Students to Present Papers at Prestigious International Conference - July 7th, 2010

Dr. George Veletsianos

Research papers submitted to the E-Learn 2010 international conference by 10 students in Dr. George Veletsianos’s Current Issues in Instructional Technology graduate course have been accepted for presentation at the conference, and the students have been invited to submit their papers for publication as part of the conference proceedings.

"Most attempts at analyzing Wikipedia have focused on establishing the validity of or understanding the revision process involved in the development of a select group of high-quality articles. My study, however, attempts to take a holistic approach to researching the collaborative nature of Wikipedia by analyzing the content and context of 1,271 randomly selected articles' revision cycles. The goal is to develop a clearer vision of what collaboration on Wikipedia actually looks like in order to support better understanding of the organic nature of open collaborative communities."

—Royce Kimmons, whose paper "What Does Open Collaboration on Wikipedia Really Look Like" was accepted by the E-Learning conference

The E-Learn World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education will be held in Orlando in October 2010.

“Graduate students constantly hear about the conferences they’ll need to attend and papers they’ll be expected to submit as part of their professional careers after they graduate,” said Veletsianos, who is an assistant professor in the College of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, “so this last spring I had my students submit their final papers to an international conference – one of the top conferences in the field of instructional technology, in fact - just to give them experience with the whole process and the preparation of a paper that meets conference guidelines. The outcome was a total surprise – of the 10 students who sent their papers in, all were accepted! This is quite rare.”

"I teach at John B. Connally High School, where I've innovated two courses, an advanced computer applications course and online computer course, based on the knowledge and skills I learned in UT's instructional technology program. The paper accepted by the E-Learn conference is the beginning of a larger project to investigate the application of course management systems at the high school level. I was able to get an ABC grant from the Junior League of Austin which will purchase three course management sites and will be used by teachers at Connally High School during the 2010-11 school year."

— Renata Geurtz who, along with co-author Michelle Read, had their paper "LMS/CMS Integration: Common Issues and Practices" accepted for the conference

According to Veletsianos, who joined the College of Education last January, students’ submissions included both empirical and theoretical studies and covered topics such as collaborative activity on Wikipedia, Learning Management System use in kindergarten through college classes, engineering education in virtual worlds and the educational potential of social networking sites.

“While going through the process of submitting a paper to a professional conference was more important than the outcome,” said Veletsianos, “the result of this activity was extremely gratifying for my students. Not only are our students acquiring knowledge through their classes, but they’re also creating and sharing knowledge. Other individuals will benefit from my students work, not just me.

"My paper examined user intent in shared bookmarking systems by exploring the bookmarking and tagging behavior demonstrated in a publicly-available dataset from the shared bookmarking service, del.icio.us. The question the research sought to answer was whether shared bookmarks were used as personal tools or as social objects, and this was done by examining the behavior of users."

— Michael Anderson, whose paper "Shared Bookmarks: Cognitive Tools or Social Objects" was accepted for the E-Learning conference

Veletsianos’s main research and instructional focus is the design, development, and evaluation of digital learning environments with special interest on the notion of “participatory cultures,” an idea which describes the transformation from the public being receivers of knowledge from a few select experts, to a culture in which all have an opportunity to contribute media and content that contain our ideas, perceptions, opinions and views.

“Looking at this in relation to education in particular,” said Veletsianos, “we must ask, ‘Is education about receiving information from an expert or about becoming a critical contributor, becoming an expert yourself over time, with the support of others?’ In a world of technological saturation where individuals with access to the Internet have opportunities to contribute, how have these ideas been used in online learning? It’s of value to investigate how we can offer our students participatory learning experiences, taking advantage of resources like social media and ideas like networked online participation.”

—Kay Randall, University Communications, 512-232-3910