Author: Max

I graduated from Northern Illinois University in 2020 with a PhD in Instructional Technology. Some of my interests include: inquiry-based learning, medical education, libraries (former librarian here!), and acceptance / use of educational technology.

Theoretical Frameworks In My Brain

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As I’m working on a mini-proposal for a class on mixed methods research this semester, I’m trying to be sure I am choosing the ‘right’ theoretical framework for my proposed study. I don’t want to go too much into my proposal idea (partially because I’m a little paranoid that someone else will do it before I get to it!!)

When I was on campus recently, I met with my advisor, Dr. Cindy York. As I was telling her a bit about my ideas, she thought I might want to look at the Intention to Integrate Model. When I scoured the literature (as only a good librarian can), I couldn’t really find a lot on a theory with that name. What kept on coming up though were two other theories: Planned Behavior (TPB) and Reasoned Action (TRA).

Planned Behavior was a theory that Dr. Icek Ajzen created.  The three considerations that drive human nature:

  1. Behavioral beliefs
  2. Normative beliefs
  3. Control beliefs

According to the theory, these three considerations lead to the intention of performing a behavior. It is primarily used in health outcomes studies, such as, what is the likelihood of a person with HIV to take their prescribed medications regularly. I want to use it to determine intention to perform a behavior. As Dr. Ajzen writes on his site, Planned Behavior includes behavioral control as a mechanism whereas Reasoned Action assumes behavioral control and focuses a bit more on reasoning in making decisions. I do have to investigate both of these further, but I would like to figure out if I need to incorporate Bandura’s theory of Self-Efficacy in the mix.

Going back to Intention to Integrate – it’s actually the Integrate Model (IM). It becomes so minor in the literature that I don’t know if it can stand on its own or not. Fortunately a copy of one of his books came in the mail today so I can spend the weekend reading it to get a better handle on it.

Why am I feeling anxious about this!?

iPads for All!

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I came to UIC College of Medicine in late 2013 and had just left a short stint at Rush University as the Director of the McCormick Educational Technology Center (METC). In that role, I had worked on a large project to get iPads to incoming medical students. As with any large project, there are a lot of lessons learned. When the college at UIC started talking about this as well, I was able to bring a lot of ‘what not to do’ issues.

The biggest issue: We neglected to give any faculty members an iPad so while we were directing the students how to use it, the faculty really had no idea how to use these tools – so that was a minor failure.

We had numerous meetings here at the college about potentially doing a similar project, but after numerous meetings with Apple, it never got off the ground.

However.

I was able to convince the administration that purchasing iPads for faculty is a great idea – we did a pilot with a few faculty members and it was successful. For the anatomy faculty, we purchased iPad Pro’s with Apple Pencil. The reason for this, is there are some fantastic apps for anatomy that use the 3-D functionality on the iPad pretty well. An example is Complete Anatomy. You can “draw” spurs on bones and the harder you press, the larger the spur. Pretty cool. I just don’t want them for real.

Next steps – work with administration to get more iPads for other faculty so they can use for teaching. We have Apple TV’s in most of our lecture / active learning sessions, and I’ve been working with the faculty to step away from the lectern – and roam around the room displaying their content via the monitors in the room. When the faculty do it, they end up loving it.

This gets into a bigger topic for another time – technology adoption, and barriers to adoption!

Different Methods of Recording a Narrated PowerPoint

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Here at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, our faculty have been busy making what we are calling “micro-lectures,” or short, salient videos to help describe concepts to our students. I did not want to give our faculty too many options with which to make these videos, so we narrowed it down to the following:

  • OfficeMix
    • Only available for PC at the moment; it creates an additional tab in PowerPoint and is easy to use.
  • Explain Everything
    • Works on tablets (Android and iOS) and is also fairly easy to use. Just read on their site it also works with Windows!
  • Echo Personal Capture
    • This is a tool we have access to here at UIC. We use Echo360 to record our lectures, and there is a standalone tool that faculty can use to record themselves or their screen. For the PC, there is an additional program that can create a tab in PowerPoint, like OfficeMix.
  • Camtasia
    • I recommend this product over others because as a more ‘souped up’ program, our faculty find it easier to use than Adobe Captivate.

What tools would you recommend and why?

All Work and No Play Makes Max a Dull Boy

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On Monday, October 2, 2017, I was out in DeKalb, IL at Northern Illinois University to attend the last face-to-face doctoral class with the group of people with whom I started this PhD journey. We have additional coursework, but this is the last time we will all be together.
Photo of PhD GroupFrom left to right in this photo: Ade, Catherine (front), Danielle, Karen, Rabab, Flora, (me in the back), Dr. Psu, Brigitte (who joined us this term after taking a year off), Kristin, Ahmad, and Rakez. In a strange twist of the universe, Kristin and I were in the same class during our masters in library science program at FSU many (many) years ago. Cool how the universe brings people back to you. I’m learning a lot from these people!

At the same time, I’m a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class at NIU. This is my second term doing this – and so far it’s run quite a bit smoother than the last term. Perhaps part of it is experience – I know a bit more what to expect from these students, like what questions and issues they run into during the semester.

Not to keep myself overly bored, I’m also working full-time in my “day job” as an instructional designer at the University of Illinois College of Medicine – Chicago Campus. We are going through a pretty significant curriculum change, so it’s been a very stressful year as we have been preparing for it, and now implementing it.

Let’s see what I can do to take care of myself during this period, so I keep myself sane and healthy!