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Lessons Learned-GENERAL

Page history last edited by Catherine Weldon 11 years, 4 months ago

 

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SPECIFIC LESSONS LEARNED RELATIVE TO THE DEPLOYMENT OF NANSLO IN DENVER ARE FOUND HERE.

 

THIS VERSION OF LESSONS LEARNED INCLUDES BROAD TOPICS OF INTEREST TO PI OR PROJECT COORDINATORS WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN CREATING A NANSLO NODE.

 

Faculty Philosophy

  • ·         Faculty with exposure to online instruction

The NANSLO project includes faculty together from sixteen different institutions. Each member brings unique teaching background and differing levels of experience with online instruction.  Comfort with the use of remotely accessible scientific equipment tends to be stronger among faculty members who have a history of instructing online. Faculty members with online courseware development background tend to illustrate the highest levels of comfort.

 

  • ·         Entrepreneurial vision excites and challenges

Even among faculty who have experience with online instruction, embracing RWSL requires imagination. Faculty members who are comfortable imagining the remote lab experience and how to optimize it through the use of remote equipment have an easier time creating lab experiments.

 

Leadership

  • ·         Roles and responsibilities

Based on the proposal and project Outcomes and Milestones Chart, we formalized several Roles and Responsibility documents. Each staff member’s roles and responsibilities are clearly identified. Additionally, the Advisory Board and Discipline panel also has a Roles and Responsibilities document. R&R are useful in review of quarterly tasks and in reminding the team of various responsibilities.

 

Collaboration

  • ·         Use of a wiki for shared collaboration

A wiki provides several services for distributed teams. Wikis can be private or publicly accessible. NANSLO’s wiki is open. This means that anyone can access any of the pages found at the wiki. Anyone can read team member comments at the wiki, however only members can post comments or upload files to the server. Wiki’s provide an excellent platform for sharing files. Project members can access and share documents easily. Wikis are useful for collaboration in review of content. Wiki members can access a wiki page and contribute edits and comments as collaborative development is underway.

 

  • ·         Use of listserv for private collaboration

Email turns out to be the most comfortable means of electronic communication by team members. The benefit of a listserv over simple email includes the ability to use one single address when communicating with a community of recipients, and the ability to easily review archived communication via listserv software options.

 

  • ·         Effective use of topical experts

The NANSLO project included 3 panels of seven to nine faculty members from the academic disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. Discipline panel members were nominated by Advisory Board representatives from each of the NANSLO partner institutions. Panel members were recommended due to their expertise and interest in online learning. Members met one another initially online via email, wiki updates, and through a project kick-off conference call. Two months later, panel members met at a retreat-style workshop.  Panel members who engaged in online discussion and collaboration prior to the meeting had an enriched experience during the face-to-face workshop. These panel members had a sense of shared purpose and an understanding of their role in the working sessions.

 

  • ·         Identifying natural leaders

Workshop breakout sessions required facilitation of both discussion and collaboration among panel members. Leading up to the workshop, prospective leaders from each panel were identified based on their input to the online discussion and their sense of ownership and contribution to the collaborative work that had been completed leading up to the event. Outreach to members who identified themselves as being invested in the projects outcome resulted in enthusiastic volunteer efforts to facilitate working sessions. Those individuals continued after the workshop to engage at a deeper level online.

 

  • ·         Research library to inspire and motivate

The NANSLO wiki contains a research library containing academic citations for publically available and subscription-based resources designed to educate the team and promote discussion on efforts similar to NANSLO. Faculty had no prior exposure to the remote laboratory technology used in NANSLO prior to this project, and many of them shared legitimate concerns regarding the viable application of robotically accessible equipment in science classrooms. The research library offered easy to access research on the use of NANSLO-like equipment and student outcomes.

 

Comments (1)

Pat Shea said

at 9:22 am on Sep 13, 2012

Catherine--please add lessons learned from lab review process? Thanks.

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