Leading Lines

In this episode, we feature an interview with Lynn Ramey, Associate Professor of French here at Vanderbilt. She is the author of multiple books and essays, including most recently Black Legacies: ‘Race’ and the European Middle Ages. Lynn is currently engaged in several ambitious digital projects exploring the use of video games and 3D environments as means to explore how societies and cultures have interacted in the past. She recently sat down for a conversation with Ole Molvig, an assistant professor of the History of Science and Technology, and a member of Vanderbilt’s Institute for Digital Learning. The two discuss the challenges of employing complex digital tools in the humanities, these tools’ promise for teaching, research, and outreach, as well as Lynn’s path and experiences in the digital humanities.

Links

• Lynn Ramey’s faculty page: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/lynnramey/

• @lynnramey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lynnramey

• Unity game engine: https://unity3d.com/

• Blender 3D creation tool: https://www.blender.org/

• Global Middle Ages Project: http://globalmiddleages.org/

• Virtual Placensia: http://globalmiddleages.org/project/virtual-plasencia

• Voyages of St. Brendan (preview): http://www.discoveriesoftheamericas.org/explorers/brendan-of-clonfort/experience-brendans-world/

• Students as Producers on the Center for Teaching blog: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/tag/students-as-producers/

In this episode, we feature two interviews conducted by Cliff Anderson, the Director of Scholarly Communications at the Vanderbilt library. Both interviews focus on Neo4j, an open source platform that can be used to visualize and analyze data and connections among data.

Cliff interviews his Vanderbilt library colleague Suellen Stringer-Hye, Linked Data and Semantic Web Coordinator. Suellen has worked with a number of faculty members and students here at Vanderbilt, helping them use Neo4j in their research. In the interview, she talks about some of those projects and how a database tool like Neo4j can be easier to use than one might think.

In the second interview, Cliff interviews Michael Hunger, who handles developer relations for Neo Technology, the company that has developed Neo4j. Michael shares a few more examples of how Neo4j has been used and how it supports collaborative data visualization and analysis.

Links:

• Suellen Stringer-Hye’s staff page: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/staffmember.php?staff_id=140

• @suellenshye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/suellenshye

• Getting Started with GraphGists: http://heardlibrary.github.io/workshops/edtech/2016/06/01/graphgists.html

• Michael Hunger on the Neo4j community: https://neo4j.com/blog/contributor/michael-hunger/

• @mesirii on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mesirii

• Neo4j GraphGist site: https://neo4j.com/graphgists/

In this episode, we feature an interview with Lee Forester, Professor of German at Hope College, and Bill VanPatten, Professor of Spanish and Second Language Studies at Michigan State University. Stacey M. Johnson, Assistant Director for Educational Technology at the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, sat down with Forester and VanPatten at a language teaching conference last summer. Both faculty members have developed online learning materials, including textbooks, for language instruction, and Stacey’s conversation with the two professors explored ways that instructors use digital textbooks and publisher-provided learning platforms.

As a companion to this podcast episode, Stacey Johnson has created a new teaching guide on working with publisher-provided online platforms, shared as part of the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching’s collection of more than 70 teaching guides on various topics. The new guide features more audio from Lee Forester and Bill VanPatten, as well as other language instructors Stacey interviewed recently.

More on this episode’s guests:

Lee Forester is Professor of German at Hope College, where he teaches all levels of German. He is the co-founder of a small textbook publishing company called Evia Learning, and co-author of three language textbooks: Auf geht's! (beginning German), Weiter geht's! (intermediate German) and Ritmos (beginning Spanish). His research and curricular work focus on effective use of technology, intercultural learning and creating language materials that promote personal transformation for students.

Bill VanPatten is Professor of Spanish and Second Language Studies at the Michigan State University. He has published seven books, seven edited volumes, six language textbooks (including the movies Sol y viento, Liaisons, and the tele series Destinos), and 120 articles and book chapters. Two of his articles are listed in the top ten citations for articles in Studies in Second Language Acquisition and he has received local and national awards for his research, teaching, leadership, and mentoring. He is a frequently invited speaker within the United States and abroad. He is also the host of a popular podcast on Second Language Acquisition called Tea with BVP.

Links:

• Lee Forester’s faculty page - http://www.hope.edu/directory/people/forester-lee/index.html

• Bill VanPatten’s faculty page - https://sites.google.com/site/bvpsla/

• Tea with BVP, Bill VanPatten’s podcast - http://www.teawithbvp.com/

• @teawithBVP on Twitter - https://twitter.com/teawithbvp

• Principles of Communicative Language Teaching, from the University of Texas - https://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/modules/teacher/03/

• Digital Textbooks: Working with Publisher-Provided Online Platforms, a teaching guide by Stacey M. Johnson - https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/digital-textbooks-working-with-publisher-provided-online-platforms/

In this episode, we feature an interview with Jeff Rice, inaugural chair of the Department of Writing, Rhetoric & Digital Studies (WRD) at the University of Kentucky. Rice also holds the Martha B. Reynolds Chair in Writing, Rhetoric & Digital Studies, and he’s the author of multiple books and essays, including his most recent book, Craft Obsession: The Social Rhetorics of Beer. Rice recently sat down with John Sloop, Vanderbilt’s Associate Provost for Digital Learning, at the Rhetoric Society of America conference in Atlanta, where the two discussed the mission of “digital studies,” the role of open online education, and the relationship between craft beer and digital communication.

More on Jeff Rice and WRD:

* University of Kentucky faculty profile: https://wrd.as.uky.edu/users/jri236

* Writing, Rhetoric, & Digital Studies at UK: https://wrd.as.uky.edu/

* Yellow Dog, Jeff Rice's blog: http://ydog.net/

* Jeff Rice on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drfabulous

In this episode, we feature an interview with Mike Sharples of the Open University in the United Kingdom. The Open University is a public research university committed to increasing access to college through open admissions and online learning. It’s been around for more than 40 years, and it currently has more than 250,000 enrolled students from the UK and beyond. The Open University also runs FutureLearn, a venture that offers free online courses to the world. Not only does Mike Sharples hold a chair in educational technology at the Open University, but he is also the Academic Lead at FutureLearn. In his interview, he draws on that experience to describe the kind of social, collaborative learning that can happen online when you have hundreds or even thousands of learners.

Sharples is interviewed by Gayathri Narasimham, Associate Director at the Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning, also known as VIDL. VIDL is, among many other things, Vanderbilt’s production shop for massive open online courses (MOOCs), which is why Gayathri was interested in talking with Mike Sharples about his experience designing and assessing MOOCs.

More on Mike Sharples:

• Open University faculty profile: http://www.open.ac.uk/people/ms8679

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sharplm

• FutureLearn: https://www.futurelearn.com/

When we started brainstorming ideas for a new educational technology podcast, we knew we wanted to include Vanderbilt instructors who use technology in innovative ways. We talk to colleagues regularly who impress us, and we wanted to share their ideas and perspectives beyond our own campus.

In this episode, we feature our first Vanderbilt guest, Corbette Doyle. Corbette is a lecturer in organizational leadership in the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Peabody College of Education and Human Development. She came to Vanderbilt in 2008 after a successful career in the healthcare industry, where she focused on strategic planning, diversity in the workplace, and risk financing. In her interview, she talks about the ways she uses technologies like Google Plus and Poll Everywhere in the service of very intentional teaching objectives, and she reflects on how she approaches adoption of new educational technologies.

More on Corbette Doyle:

Faculty Website - http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/bio/corbette-doyle

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/corbettedoyle

Twitter - https://twitter.com/corbettedoyle

George Siemens is executive director of the Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge Research Lab at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is an internationally known expert in digital, networked, and open learning. Among his other accomplishments, he co-taught the very first massive open online courses (known as MOOCs) back in 2008. His “connectivist” MOOCs featured peer-to-peer learning through blogs, Twitter, and other platforms. These days, George continues to lead research efforts into MOOCs and other forms of digital learning.

George was on campus at Vanderbilt in the spring to give a talk as part of the Schmidt Family Educational Technologies Lecture series, and he was kind enough to sit down to talk about the present and future of educational technology. We’re honored to have him as our first guest on Leading Lines.

More on George Siemens:

The LINK Research Lab at UT-Arlington: http://linkresearchlab.org/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gsiemens

Blog: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/