As K-12 teachers experiment with iPads in the classroom, Twitter streams in the backchannel, and TEDtalks as the new textbook, university professors are figuring out what to make of massively open online courses and how it will affect their classroom. After reading the barrage of stories this past year on new innovations in education technology, from the flipped classroom to edX, I began to wonder why K-12 teachers reported feeling empowered by the new technologies while massive open online courses (MOOCs) seemed to pose a threat to all private higher education institutions that’s so indecipherable most are unsure how to react. Why were stories on the flipped university classroom so rare this past year? With our upcoming course on Social Media and Technology Tools for Research in mind, we wanted to find a model that was actually leveraging tech tools in a way that was improving higher education learning on a broad scale.

We found Dr. John Boyer of Virginia Tech, who has been innovating and enlarging his World Regions classroom for the past decade. When he started he was in a classroom of 50 students using an inherited world regions textbook that leaned heavily on Western history. Now he is in a 3,000 seat auditorium, using the 6th edition of his own textbook and a companion website for digital and social media content that more than twenty other universities have adopted. We came across him in the same way that many have–through his plea to Aung San Suu Kyi for a Skype interview (which she agreed to) and the ensuing visits from Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Invisible Children’s Jason Russell. “We hope to have President Obama visit, which would make a lot of sense for him. Why wouldn’t he want to have 3,000 screaming university students tweeting and facebooking his interview?” He told me that those celebrity visits are not planned in the syllabus but come about organically, which also reflects the nature in which he adopts technology into the classroom.  From my chat with him I gleaned three questions for university educators to ask themselves as they adapt hybrid classroom methodologies.

1. Will it improve communication between the professor and students?

Effective teaching depends on the way that information is communicated to the learner. Professor Boyer literally brings his curriculum to the fingertips of his 3,000 students on his website, plaidavenger.com. While his textbook may cover very recent issues in its sixth edition, the website covers global news and issues of the week. Students can easily scan video interviews, articles, and twitter streams and they can earn credit by participating in class dialogue over social media networks.

In a class of 3,000, students can easily feel distanced from their professor, but his online office hours and regular availability on Twitter and Facebook provides a safety net of communication. In my worry that he was online all day and night communicating with students he reassured me, “just a very small percentage actually use it and having the safety net of knowing it’s there satisfies the rest.”

2. Is tech interaction built into the syllabus?

As opposed to traditional pedagogies where students start out with an A and then lose points as they respond incorrectly, his students start with nothing and are rewarded for each activity they complete. Grades are determined by gross point accumulation and students can choose the way they want to earn those points. They can go the traditional route and take standard tests, fill out atlas quizzes, and write papers, or they can earn it through interacting with world leaders on Twitter, commenting in global news reports, or listening to podcasts.

According to an article in The Atlantic, flipping the learning model in the university setting in this manner leads to more personalization of the learning process. Professor Boyer’s exemplifies this by allowing the student to choose the assignments (not a single one is required, not even tests) that fit their learning method best. From the start of the semester, students have the flexibility and the accountability to complete the class how they want to.

3. Am I offering technology that students already use or can easily start using?

Virginia Tech is not only at the fringe of the flipping the university classroom, but physically it’s at the fringe of an urban-rural divide. Located in Blacksburg, Virginia, 60% of the town’s 42,000 are students and many come from rural communities. Students may not be used to many of the newest apps or devices. “I would love to start using foursquare to have students check in for attendance but I’m pretty sure only 1% of my students even know what it is,” Dr. Boyer told me. Despite some limitations, he is able to use quite a diverse tech toolset in his class. He uses (most links go to the unique class page) Delicious for bookmarking articles, online discussion forums on the class page, international movies, iTunes U, Skype, UStream for online office hours, Turntable.fm for their class international playlist, and one of my favorites, PollEverywhere, is used to instantly poll to students on what they want to learn that day. These tools offer a plethora of options rather than required tools to use so that the students can involve themselves in the way they like.

Each of these questions asks what kind of options do the students have to learn the material and how they will be awarded for it. The hybrid classroom puts more accountability on the student to take the time to learn the subject matter, but also allows them the freedom to choose how they want to learn it. Dr. Boyer is evolving his classroom depending on the way that his students use technology and not the other way around. It won’t be long until university students are expecting the hybrid “flipped classroom” experience, especially when they have come from high schools that have already been implementing it.

 

If you are interested in international peacekeeping, consider taking our next course, Social Media and Technology Tools for Research, starting Monday, August 20th.

If you are interested in using technology for peacebuilding consider taking our course, Technology for Conflict Management and Prevention, starting July 23rd. 


 

Social media plays a major role in raising awareness about mass atrocities. In the most visible example, Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video has garnered more than 90 million YouTube views. But the utility of social media for preventing atrocities goes beyond advocacy—a utility that the U.S. government (USG) should explore and embrace. How can the USG best leverage these tools for its atrocity prevention efforts?

For one, the White House should commission a study that assesses the value of creating a Mass Atrocities Prevention Center (MAPC) to collect, analyze, and distribute intelligence on atrocities from all relevant sources including social media platforms.

There are, of course, dangers in establishing new bureaucratic structures. In many cases, they muddle lines of communications and authority. But, certain new structures have significantly enhanced the USG’s response to complex threats. One such example is the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which could serve as a model for the MAPC.

The NCTC was created as a fusion center for intelligence from a range of disparate sources on terrorist activities.

As with terrorism, there is a wide range of potentially useful sources for garnering intelligence on atrocities. Social media platforms that are household names—YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook—can be used for documenting and warning about atrocities. Less well-known but equally useful initiatives such as Ushahidi and Small World News can serve a similar purpose.

Organizations are already using these tools to bring atrocities into the public eye. Amnesty International’s Eyes on Syria and Resolve’s LRA Crisis Tracker are two notable examples in this regard.

The USG should now look at ways to leverage the information from these and other “open” (i.e. unclassified) sources in its atrocity prevention efforts.

The MAPC would thus build a strong working relationship with the intelligence community’s Open Source Center given that, based on the center’s stated mission, it’s theoretically best positioned to collect intelligence from social media platforms.  As an independent center, the MAPC would then be able to synthesize open source with classified intelligence on atrocity threats.

A challenge brought by social media and other technological developments is the tsunami of information now available on any given event. In fact, humans today create as much information every fifteen minutes as collected by the Library of Congress in over two centuries. And endemic in the information overflow is falsehoods and untruths.

The 2008 Albright-Cohen task force on genocide prevention readily recognized these challenges:

“The bounty of information—which can only be expected to grow in the future—does not necessarily ease the analytic challenge. First, the amount of material can be overwhelming, and second, it is hard to judge the accuracy of the reporting. For example, a crucial and difficult task for analysts is to distinguish systematic killing of civilians from more general­ized background violence, as most if not all mass atrocities occur in the context of a larger conflict or a campaign of state repression.  The accuracy of analysts’ warnings will also depend on the extent to which they can identify warning signs or indicators of genocide and mass atrocities.”

The MAPC should have a directorate—based on the NCTC’s Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning (DSOP)—that develops an analytic framework for managing the high volume and veracity of intelligence flows. The MAPC’s version of the DSOP would inter alia identify the most relevant sources, develop a framework for analyzing social media, and create a comprehensive mass atrocity prevention intelligence strategy that synthesizes open and classified sources.

In sum, social media could be an important tool for improving the USG’s intelligence on mass atrocities. But the intelligence community and policymakers won’t be able to leverage these sources unless the USG has the bureaucratic structure in place do so. As of now, this structure doesn’t exist. The White House should consider standing up a MAPC to change the status quo.

 

Andrew Miller recently participated in TC104: Global Innovations in Digital Organizing. He works on conflict prevention at a Washington, DC think-tank and can be found on Twitter at @andrewmiller802.

On May 16th 2011, Washington DC’s Newseum – interactive media museum that instills an appreciation of the importance of a free press and the US’ First Amendment – hosted the Journalists Memorial Rededication honoring the journalists who died covering the news in 2010.

Between 1837 and 2010, 2,084 courageous journalists lost their lives while staying dutiful to their profession – 59 of which died in 2010 – determined to report the truth and inform citizens, regardless of the consequence.

(more…)

Last month, the government of Sudan declared a “cyber-jihad” against youth groups and other anti-government organizations organizing protests in that country. Responding harshly to earlier protests with beatings and arrests, the government of Sudan has now turned its attention to cyberspace with teams managing what the Government calls “online defense operations.” Internet agents infiltrated organizers’ websites in an attempt to determine the identities of leading activists. The result: their Facebook accounts and phone networks compromised, activists spent upwards of 12 days in jail and were subject to the brutality of security forces. Though many have been released, they are now wary of utilizing almost any organizational strategy involving telecommunications. (more…)

The BBC reported today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12976254) on the value that Twitter has provided to stock traders.  This is an example of how social media, when well filtered, can have a verifiable positive effect .  For our purposes, it also shows that humanitarian organizations and NGOs can leverage Twitter as a less expensive means of deriving on-the-ground information that is actionable and reliable.

(more…)

This past week, I had the valuable opportunity to step out of my usual role as a graduate student at Georgetown and instead, for one day, serve as a teacher/facilitator for a graduate seminar on non-violent conflict resolution. I had been invited to come speak on behalf of TechChange, make a presentation and lead the discussion on a week devoted to the intersection of new technologies and non-violent civil resistance. The timing of such a course could not be more appropriate considering the recent and ongoing uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Algeria and other parts of the Middle East/North African region.

(more…)

Today marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, whose priority theme centers around “access and participation of women and girls in education, training, science and technology,” according to this year’s Commission on the Status of Women. Despite the fact that women still earn less than men (about 80 cents per dollar) and are still less likely to hold senior-level positions, the future in technology and social media is looking bright for women. (more…)

 

Mohamed Bouazizi was three years old when Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took power in Tunisia. His self-immolation in protest of harassment by corrupt government officials 23 years later toppled the regime and triggered repressed populations across the region into action. (more…)

The recent demonstrations in Belarus, Tunisia, Bahrain, and especially Egypt have all recently demonstrated the importance of the Internet and social media as an organizing tool for popular protest.  Twitter and Facebook have been crucial tools for organization and mobilization.  Governments have noticed this as well, and begun to target the internet. (more…)

Update 13:30 EST 1/31
As the protests continue unabated, the internet remains largely blocked with the exception of Noor ISP which serves roughly 8% of Egyptian traffic. Internet activists have galvanized into a group called WeRebuild which is working to bypass restrictions. Their most interesting strategy so far has been to coordinate with international ISPs to provide international numbers which Egyptians can call with dial-up modems. Also fascinating is the steps ordinary Egyptians are taking to protect themselves, the TOR anonymizing service has seen a quadrupling of users from those lucky enough to be connected through Noor. The most promising possibility is in further development of wireless mesh networking. The Serval Project and the implementation of Wi-Fi direct mean we could only be a few years from a time when activists can set up ad-hoc networking that would be invisible to government detection.

Update 20:24 EST 1/28

I think today’s events have demonstrated that Maria Popov was right to call Malcolm Gladwell #wrong for decrying the use of social media for social change. More information does make a difference. We’ve seen important germination of these revolutions being conducted online before the governments were able to close down information networks. Wired has a fascinating account of the IT department of Tunisia and how Ben Ali was only barely cognizant of the danger of social media in facilitating coverage and organization. While Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak at least turned off the network, he only did it after there was enough online social networking to spark more real life gatherings. Another difference is the rise of Al-Jazeera and other satellite networks which are able to show coverage from different areas of the country. However, I think the biggest driver of these revolutions is demography, the youth bulge from high birth rates and declining mortality is causing bloated corrupt societies to start to show signs of age.

—-

This post was originally going to be about Wikileaks, specifically the Swiss banker recently convicted for leaking the information of hundreds of ludicrously wealthy tax fraudsters. However the live-blogged revolution in Egypt makes for much more pressing discussion. (more…)