College of Education and Human Development

Congratulations Immersion Program LATIST Team !

Instructional Technology immersion students lead by Dr. Nada Dabbagh and Dr. Kevin Clark win the 2010 Sloan-C Effective Practice Award for the LATIST: Learning Asset Technology Integration Support Tool project. The Sloan Consortium is an institutional and professional leadership organization dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education, helping institutions and individual educators improve the quality, scale, and breadth of education. Membership in the Sloan Consortium provides knowledge, practice, community, and direction for educators. Originally funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sloan-C is now a non-profit, member sustained organization.

LATIST stands for Learning Asset Technology Integration Support Tool. This performance support tool enables faculty to integrate Advanced Learning Technologies (ALT) such as social media, mobile technologies, games, simulations, and virtual worlds into their online and technology supported course designs. Specifically LATIST has three components: (a) Explore Research which allows users to explore what the research says about a specific ALT and examine its advantages, disadvantages, and best practices in teaching and learning contexts; which allows users to select instructional strategies and technologies based on course objectives and factors such as bandwidth and budget; and (c) Apply Technology which allows users to view real world examples of ALT use in educational and training settings as well as practice using a selected technology.

The LATIST Home Page introduces the purpose and capabilities of LATIST, providing two video links that further explain what LATIST is and how to use it. LATIST provides many global features. Users will be able to quickly access the three main components: Explore Research, Select Best Technology, and Apply Technology, as well as access any one page of content using a Technology quick links function. Users will be able to log in to add personal features such as rating articles, uploading content, and taking personal notes. An advanced search function would be programmed to locate all resources based on filtering agents such as date, title, keyword, and author. A dictionary would be included to provide quick reference on what a technology is and define the influential factors significant to the selection of ALT. A Help feature would target technical issues related to system features such as uploading documents to LATIST.

The Explore Research component of LATIST is a research-based body of knowledge on ALT organized into three broad categories: (1) Social Media, (2) Virtual Worlds / Games and Simulations, and (3) Mobile Technologies. While one user may be satisfied with reviewing a technology overview, advantages, disadvantages, and best practices of a specific ALT, another may want to pursue more in-depth research by reviewing the available literature of that technology. It is envisioned that DAU faculty and staff will be able to print, share, add, upload, mark their favorites, rate resources, and select articles rated highly by their peers. Additionally, the system will provide “Amazon-type” recommendations for other resources for the user to review based on tagging or other such classification type metadata. Users will be able to easily and intuitively move within the different information sections of the Explore Research component and across all LATIST components.

The Select Best Technology component of LATIST guides the users to make informed decisions about which technologies to integrate into learning assets in a pedagogically sound manner while taking DAU specific criteria into consideration. This component has two subcomponents: the Decision Aide and the Factors Grid. Through the Decision Aide, users select a learning objective level that matches the learning objective for an identified DAU course or learning asset. The Decision Aide responds by providing a list of potential instructional strategies for that learning objective level. Based on the user selected instructional strategy, the system returns a “best technology.” The Factors Grid allows the user to evaluate technologies based upon criteria specific to DAU such as bandwidth, information stability, development cost, maintenance cost, and speed-to-market. This is scalable to other factors depending on the organization's needs and constraints.

The Apply Technology component enables the user to learn how to apply a specific technology by providing options to learn how to implement it; view real world examples of use in a DAU context and other business, military, and educational contexts; and gain hands-on practice. The user can access the information through a combination of embedded or hyperlinked videos, text documents, or URLs to external websites. The information provided in the Apply Technology component will allow the user to incorporate a selected technology suitable for an online course.

The LATIST Home Page introduces LATIST to new and occasional users while the three components of LATIST work hand-in-hand to facilitate the understanding, selection, and integration of ALT by DAU faculty and staff into online course designs.

Please visit LATIST at http://cehd.gmu.edu/LATIST