Due to the Coronavirus pandemic that has been ripping around the world in recent months, Sonoma State University has transitioned from in-class, face-to-face instruction to completely remote instruction. This disaster has provided students and university faculty with the opportunity to experience a new learning technique that many have not experienced before now. With this comes a variety of challenges that primarily focus on the transition between learning platforms and the maintenance of the high levels of instruction we had been receiving prior to this transition. We will discuss some of the goods and the bads of this learning shift and dive into some of the observations that I have made about my personal work habits in this new environment. 

Before this transition to completely remote instruction, I had already taken two online courses offered by Sonoma State University. One spanned the duration of a full semester while the other was limited to a two week period during the school’s winter break. The course that lasted a full semester was done asynchronously, meaning that students could watch pre-recorded lectures on their own time and assignments were due at the end of the week and could be completed at any time before the due date. I found myself to be very disconnected from the course, having never directly interacted with any of my classmates or my teacher. I slacked on the reading and got lucky on the quizzes. The class did not feel like a class but rather a quick 20-minute task I had to complete every week. In retrospect, although I was happy to pick up an easy grade and easy general education units, I wish that the course had been more interactive. I know that I certainly would have gotten more out of it. 

This past winter intersession I took a two-week course that provided a stark contrast to the course I just discussed. This instructor held online meetings Monday through Friday and required each student to use their webcam. They prompted students to participate and held individual presentations and speaking periods for each participant. I found that I was far more invested in what I was learning in that course and was able to maintain my attention during class sessions much like I am able to in face-to-face environments. From these two experiences, I do not think that I can stress the importance of webcams and encouraged participation more. Although remote instruction can prove to be challenging for both teachers and students alike, I think that it is important for participants to mimic normalcy as best as possible. Of course, differences are omnipresent, but if participants approach this experience with a similar mindset to how they would face-to-face instruction, the experiences of participants will be maintained and our learning environments will retain legitimacy.  

The differences between student participation and interaction in a face-to-face environment versus a remote software environment is quite profound. In my experience, face-to-face interaction keeps students accountable and requires more from them in terms of attention and participation. It is easier to ask questions and non-verbal social cues go a long way for maintaining students attention and keeping them honest. This accountability can be maintained in a remote environment when participants are required to have their webcams on at all times. I can tell you from personal experience that when those face cams go down, my attention and engagement levels follow suit. In general, offering ideas and asking clarifying questions are far more difficult in a remote environment than in a face-to-face one. Without webcams, participants, myself included, have less of an incentive to actually devote their attention to the material being presented in the remote environment, and the effectiveness of the learning environment diminishes.

The course material covered in most of my classes has remained the same for the most part. Although I would assume that that may not be the case for general education classes and other lower-division courses. With that being said, although specific concepts are still being taught as they otherwise would have been, the workload of several of my classes has declined significantly. Midterms and final projects have been canceled and have been replaced by smaller projects and quizzes. Although the same material is being taught, the remote environment that we are now utilizing can only support so much, resulting in the omittance of a good chunk of the work we would have had to complete in a face-to-face learning environment. 

Steve Harrison and Paul Dourish’s seminal work of media spaces “highlights[s] the critical distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’”(Harrison, Dourish). They describe the importance of “place” as a notion that supports interactive behavior. The aspects of a place and the behavioral patterns of individuals in those places can be translated into a virtual environment by designing these novel environments “around the same affordances for action and interaction that the everyday world exhibits”(Harrison, Dourish). Harrison and Dourish go on to say that it is not so much about an individual’s physical surroundings but rather the sense of a place and the feelings and interactions that accompany that that make all the difference. This directly relates to the observations I made above in both the negative and positive cases I outlined.

In an environment that prompts intellectual growth, resources certainly hold their fair share of importance, but the space that is forged between teacher and student is arguably more beneficial to an educational setting. Even away from the standard face-to-face classroom, a “place” can be formed remotely that promotes educational growth and student success. In contrast, without the right attitude and approach, that “place” could be unreachable. As I outlined above, tactics like encouraging participation and constant webcam usage can be useful tools in the motivation of class participation and student engagement. The key, as Harrison and Dourish mention, is to treat virtual environments as physical ones in the sense that there are real interactions between real people occurring in these spaces and therefore, although virtual, these “places” force very real interactions. 

Harrison, Steve, and Paul Dourish. “Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems.” Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. 1996.

Mark Weiser’s seminal work on Ubiquitous Computation or UbiComp, discusses the potential improvements that ubiquitous computation could provide in our everyday lives. It focuses primarily on a size hierarchy of these computers in an office setting. Ranging from small “Tabs” to a larger “boards”, each of these sizes provides a wide amount of possibilities for application of computers’ services with each size supporting its own purposes. Weiser discusses the three technologies necessary to make these computation devices a reality in an office setting and beyond; Cheap, low-power computers that include equally convenient displays, software for ubiquitous applications and a network that ties them all together. Weiser goes on to describe the challenges in harnessing this technology. After expressing all of these technologies he almost discredits them by very candidly explaining that all that he has written is a prediction of what could come and although it may be necessary for a world of ubiquitous computing, it fails to “really give a sense of what it would be like to live in a world full of invisible widgets” (Weiser, 9). Weiser then creates a story for the reader, following a woman named Sal who seems to lead a normal life with the help of ubiquitous computers. He describes the obvious benefits of this technology but also goes into some potential hazards, namely privacy. Weiser goes on to conclude that he and his colleagues at PARC believe that ubiquitous computing will “gradually emerge as the dominant mode of computer access over the next 20 years” (Weiser, 10).

The first thing that I thought of when I saw the playfulness element of democratized practice was a kid’s watch. It makes the kid happy and allows them to have a flashy cartoon character watch while also giving them the opportunity to both learn how to tell time and determine the time once they have learned how to. I think that although watches were already developed at the time that Weiser came out with his vision of UbiComp, they do a good job of representing his vision. A watch is a super small device that sits on your arm and is essentially invisible to the wearer until it is necessary. Now, with things like an apple watch, we can link these time-telling devices to our phones and receive calls, send texts, and more. 

This makes me think that the vision Weiser held for UbiComp is approaching fruition. It seems that we certainly have the technology to achieve what he was hoping for, but its more a question of determining what we want, how to develop them, and how to ensure that they do not lead to any ethical issues. In general, with the amount of technology that surrounds us, we certainly are in an age of ubiquitous computation even if our current reality does not fall directly in line with what Weiser predicted. 

Right off the bat, I would like to establish that, although crowdsourcing and its purpose is pretty ubiquitous, I had never really heard about it, nor understood its importance in the development of artificial intelligence and other applications. The first thing that I thought of when visiting this topic was this website that I had used in high school called freerice (https://freerice.com/) which basically prompts users to complete vocabulary and spelling challenges in order to donate a certain amount of rice depending on the correctness of your answers. It was a fun little game that utilized human skills to donate rice to countries in need. Now, I was never sure if that rice was every actually being donated, but I do know that I liked the idea of being able to login at any time and “make a difference” with minimal effort. This prompted my thinking that such a simple task, spread out across a large population could really lead to a difference being made which, falls directly into the purpose of crowdsourcing principles. With that being said, before I made an account with Amazon for their own “crowdsourcing marketplace”, Mechanical Turk, I went into the experience with an open mind, hoping to help some people out and make some quick, easy money. The idea of having a super loose schedule while working remotely, paired with the prospect of making money made for the possibility of a really pleasurable experience with MTurk. So I gave it a try and, unfortunately, it requires you to wait a couple days before you can register as an “employee”, so I had to select a different crowdsourcing technology for this particular assignment, although I do intend to test out MTurk when I am cleared to work on their HITs (Human intelligence tasks). Instead of MTurk, I decided to try out a game that supports the study of unfolding proteins found at  https://fold.it/portal/. This website does not provide a monetary incentive but rather a motivation to further the understanding of proteins and the development of disease cures. Foldit requires you to download some software in order to contribute, which is super straightforward and took about 3-5 minutes to download. After you have the software downloaded, you can hop right into the game which is super intuitive and easy to learn. If you have any issues understanding your tasks, there is always a tutorial with pop-ups that prompts your next moves to get you closer to completing the puzzle for each level. The game itself is pretty satisfying, especially when you get to more complex structures. There is also an extremely low margin of error, making the experience significantly more enjoyable. It reminds me a lot of a airport or waiting room game that people would use to take up time, but with the added incentive to do good and contribute to the scientific community, it actually leaves the user feeling like they just spent their time doing something meaningful rather than wasting it. Despite the lack of monetary compensation, I think that this game captures your attention and even motivates the user to continue playing by utilizing its ease of use, availability of hints, and contribution to a noble cause. Although I did not have a chance to try out Amazon’s MTurk technology, I think that this software is an effective application of crowdsourcing and embodies characteristics that maintain a strong user base; effectively furthering its mission to improve research opportunities in disease and protein study and its appropriate applications.

The first product that I chose to look at is actually one of my favorite kitchen tools due to its ease of use. I decided focus on a cutting board with a cheese slicer attached to the cutting board itself as my example of a positive design. Check it out.

The beauty of this product is that it seems like such a normal household item but the addition of the cheese slicer really takes it to a whole new level. It really speaks to the design of this product when I say that operating it doesn’t require a degree in rocket science. The concept is extremely straightforward, intending the user to utilize the board itself as a cutting board and the added wire cutter as a cheese or other food product slicer. In terms of design techniques, it has an incredibly straightforward conceptual model and it really isn’t trying to do anything above what it is intended for. The handle on the cheese slicer allows the user to look at that thing and know exactly what it is supposed to do, proving to be an efficient signifier to its purpose. It isn’t only incredibly easy to immediately see what this product is used for, but also super easy to use the thing (depending on how hard your cheese is). I can say that, in my personal experience, the ease of use of this product paired with the delicious byproduct after use makes for a very satisfying experience.

For my second and arguably less intuitive design piece, I chose a relatively common classroom appliance. Although I have seen been seeing this machine for years I am still uncertain of how to use it, despite its ultimate purpose being clear. Check out this good ol’ fashioned classroom page projector.

For everyone that has been exposed to this, the purpose is clear, but for those exposed to it for the first time, that purpose may not be as obvious. The good news is that this machine has a very pronounced On/Off button paired with a common wall plug which immediately allows the user to realize that it is a machine that indeed requires electricity to operate. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as the signifiers of this design go in terms of allowing a user to know how to operate it. The conceptual model is relatively difficult to get a grasp on without a pre-conceived notion about what it is used for and how it should be operated which, unfortunately, defeats the purpose of a conceptual model. The good news is that it will likely only be found in a classroom or presentation setting which allows users to at least formulate a guess as to the purpose of this machine. I think the main confusion as to how to operate it stems from it’s dependence on other machinery to operate in the manner it was intended. I would like to see more labeling on the focus lens and an indication as to what type of port to plug the machine into in order to project its output. Then there is the question of what type of paper to put under the lens itself, which users would have no idea about unless the “plastic film” were either provided when purchasing the machine or specifically referred to somewhere on the machine itself. This machines dependence on other machinery and specific materials in order to operate it properly paired with minimal explanation on how to actually operate it have led me to the determination that it is poorly designed. Of course, you could just read the manual, but who wants to do that?

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