Yianna Vovides | Georgetown University (original) (raw)

Papers by Yianna Vovides

Research paper thumbnail of Storytelling: Discourse Analysis for Understanding Collective Perceptions of Medical Education

Using discourse analysis, the goal of this exploratory project was to determine what practitioner... more Using discourse analysis, the goal of this exploratory project was to determine what practitioners of medical education in Sub-Saharan Africa considered key achievements, within the scope of their Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) activities, after their initial two-year implementation efforts. To do so, a series of 58 video stories were analyzed from a 2012 symposium that took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Analysis of the video stories followed an ethnographic method of analysis. Through this analysis common themes emerged from the collective discourse, which unsurprisingly were tied directly to the MEPI themes themselves. The use of discourse analysis helped confirm that the project themes were very much aligned with actual practice. It also enabled a level of transparency of results across all stakeholders. This approach is therefore recommended for informing and supporting future programmatic decisions.

Research paper thumbnail of A Systems Approach to Implementation of eLearning in Medical Education

Academic Medicine, 2014

How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearni... more How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearning at four African medical schools and one school of pharmacy, all part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) eLearning Technical Working Group, highlighted the need for five factors essential for successful and sustainable implementation: institutional support; faculty engagement; student engagement; technical expertise; and infrastructure and support systems. All five MEPI schools reported strengthening technical expertise, infrastructure, and support systems; four schools indicated that they were also successful in developing student engagement; and three reported making good progress in building institutional support. Faculty engagement was the one core component that all five schools needed to enhance.

Research paper thumbnail of Design-Based Approach for the Implementation of an International Cyberlearning Community of Inquiry for Medical Education

Research paper thumbnail of Fostering critical thinking through online student collaboration across Universities

Through the use of the Blackboard Learning System (v. 6) an online collaboration course was set u... more Through the use of the Blackboard Learning System (v. 6) an online collaboration course was set up to foster critical thinking via collaborative learning among students from two different universities. The course design using the Blackboard Learning System focused primarily on the use of the discussion boards to generate two-way communication among students and faculty. Evaluation instruments for both the learning outcomes and the learning process were developed for use.

Research paper thumbnail of Student Engagement Doesn't Just Happen, or Does it?

In a review of the faculty definitions of engagement, there is an understanding that challenge do... more In a review of the faculty definitions of engagement, there is an understanding that challenge does not equal engagement, but that engagement is observed when students are eager to learn on their own, participate in discussions inside and out of the classroom, ask questions (including inquiring into nuances of homework and examination problems. Faculty are engaged in their own class when there is interaction between faculty and students, not a one-way discussion or presentation. Our panel will address the issue of engagement from ...

Research paper thumbnail of Building communities of practice: MEPI creates a commons

Academic Medicine, 2014

The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity developme... more The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity development, retention, and research in Sub-Saharan African institutions. Today, MEPI comprises more than 40 medical schools in Africa and 20 in the United States. Since 2011, the MEPI Coordinating Center, working with the MEPI schools and the U.S. government, has laid the groundwork and served as a catalyst for the creation and development of MEPI "communities of practice" (CoPs). These CoPs encompass seven components, some of which are virtual while others are tangible. They include technical working groups, principal investigator site visit exchanges, an annual symposium, a MEPI journal supplement, the MEPI Web site, newsletters, and webinars. Despite certain challenges and the question of sustainability, the presence within the MEPI network of an organization focused on promoting group consciousness and facilitating collaborative projects is an asset that is likely to continue to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

Research paper thumbnail of The art of knowledge exchange : a results focused planning guide for development practitioners

Research paper thumbnail of A Systems Approach to Implementation of Elearning in Medical Education: Five Mepi Schools' Journeys

Academic Medicine, Aug 1, 2014

How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearni... more How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearning at four African medical schools and one school of pharmacy, all part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) eLearning Technical Working Group, highlighted the need for five factors essential for successful and sustainable implementation: institutional support; faculty engagement; student engagement; technical expertise; and infrastructure and support systems. All five MEPI schools reported strengthening technical expertise, infrastructure, and support systems; four schools indicated that they were also successful in developing student engagement; and three reported making good progress in building institutional support. Faculty engagement was the one core component that all five schools needed to enhance.

Research paper thumbnail of Examining Learners’ Cognitive Presence in MOOCs

This study examines a corpus of 4,825 discussion forum posts from 495 participants in a Georgetow... more This study examines a corpus of 4,825 discussion forum posts from 495 participants in a GeorgetownX MOOC on globalization for insight into the cognitive presence of learners and its implications for course performance. By analyzing the use of key terms linked to core course concepts as well as estimated level of language abstraction in the discussion forum, we examine the relationship between the results of this analysis, achievement, and video content engagement. By combining these varied analytics, we aim to get a better sense of learners' cognitive presence.

Research paper thumbnail of The Art of Knowledge Exchange

http://wbi.worldbank.org/sske/resource-library/art-knowledge

Research paper thumbnail of Declaration of the Americas on diabetes: implementation and baseline evaluation

Research paper thumbnail of A model for reflective sensemaking: Implementing Cohere in courses (Poster)

  1. How do we capture, measure, and map the individual and social aspects of reeective sensemaking... more 1) How do we capture, measure, and map the individual and social aspects of reeective sensemaking? How can learning analytics support reeective sensemaking of ill-structured problems in online learning environments? We explore the use of student-centered learning analytics as a driver for systems of learning and we propose a dashboard combining learner-instructor interaction and discourse analysis.

Research paper thumbnail of From Planning to Launching MOOCs: Guidelines and Tips from GeorgetownX

Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2014

This paper presents guidelines and tips from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) creation proce... more This paper presents guidelines and tips from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) creation process at Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS). Topics address the initial planning phase; core elements for MOOC design; the overall instructional design process; the video planning and production process; documentation; copyright; and quality assurance. This paper is meant to provide general guidelines and points to consider but is not intended as a complete guide for MOOC creation.

Research paper thumbnail of Investigating the Impact of Learning from Hypermedia

Distance education via the internet is now one of the most viable options for delivery of informa... more Distance education via the internet is now one of the most viable options for delivery of information to people in different places and because of this the concept of hypermedia is gaining in popularity. In the healthcare field it is crucial to reach people and update their knowledge in their area of expertise due to the direct impact this has

Research paper thumbnail of Building Communities of Practice

Academic Medicine, 2014

The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity developme... more The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity development, retention, and research in Sub-Saharan African institutions. Today, MEPI comprises more than 40 medical schools in Africa and 20 in the United States. Since 2011, the MEPI Coordinating Center, working with the MEPI schools and the U.S. government, has laid the groundwork and served as a catalyst for the creation and development of MEPI "communities of practice" (CoPs). These CoPs encompass seven components, some of which are virtual while others are tangible. They include technical working groups, principal investigator site visit exchanges, an annual symposium, a MEPI journal supplement, the MEPI Web site, newsletters, and webinars. Despite certain challenges and the question of sustainability, the presence within the MEPI network of an organization focused on promoting group consciousness and facilitating collaborative projects is an asset that is likely to continue to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

Research paper thumbnail of A Systems Approach to Implementation of eLearning in Medical Education

Academic Medicine, 2014

How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearni... more How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearning at four African medical schools and one school of pharmacy, all part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) eLearning Technical Working Group, highlighted the need for five factors essential for successful and sustainable implementation: institutional support; faculty engagement; student engagement; technical expertise; and infrastructure and support systems. All five MEPI schools reported strengthening technical expertise, infrastructure, and support systems; four schools indicated that they were also successful in developing student engagement; and three reported making good progress in building institutional support. Faculty engagement was the one core component that all five schools needed to enhance.

Research paper thumbnail of The use of e-learning course management systems to support learning strategies and to improve self-regulated learning

Educational Research Review, 2007

The adoption of Course Management Systems (CMSs) for web-based instruction continues to increase ... more The adoption of Course Management Systems (CMSs) for web-based instruction continues to increase in today's higher education. A CMS is a software program or integrated platform that contains a series of web-based tools to support a number of activities and course management procedures . Examples of Course Management Systems are Blackboard, WebCT, eCollege, Moodle, Desire2Learn, Angel, etc. An argument for the adoption of elearning environments using CMSs is the flexibility of such environments when reaching out to potential learners in remote areas where brick and mortar institutions are non-existent. It is also believed that e-learning environments can have potential added learning benefits and can improve students' and educators' self-regulation skills, in particular their metacognitive skills. In spite of this potential to improve learning by means of using a CMS for the delivery of e-learning, the features and functionalities that have been built into these systems are often underutilized. As a consequence, the created learning environments in CMSs do not adequately scaffold learners to improve their selfregulation skills. In order to support the improvement of both the learners' subject matter knowledge and learning strategy application, the e-learning environments within CMSs should be designed to address learners' diversity in terms of learning styles, prior knowledge, culture, and self-regulation skills. Self-regulative learners are learners who can demonstrate 'personal initiative, perseverance and adaptive skill in pursuing learning' . Self-regulation requires adequate monitoring strategies and metacognitive skills. The created e-learning environments should encourage the application of learners' metacognitive skills by prompting learners to plan, attend to relevant content, and monitor and evaluate their learning. This position paper sets out to inform policy makers, educators, researchers, and others of the importance of a metacognitive e-learning approach when designing instruction using Course Management Systems. Such a metacognitive approach will improve the utilization of CMSs to support learners on their path to self-regulation. We argue that a powerful CMS incorporates features and functionalities that can provide extensive scaffolding to learners and support them in becoming self-regulated learners. Finally, we believe that extensive training and support is essential if educators are expected to develop and implement CMSs as powerful learning tools.

Research paper thumbnail of Integración de capacidades metacognitivas en el diseno de objetos didácticos

… sobre Diseño, Evaluación y Descripción de …, 2005

Resumen Estudios recientes han demostrado que la formación especıfi-ca sobre estrategias metacogn... more Resumen Estudios recientes han demostrado que la formación especıfi-ca sobre estrategias metacognitivas permite mejorar el conocimiento de la materia objeto del aprendizaje, la exactitud de la monitorización del conocimiento y la aplicación de estrategias de aprendizaje en ...

Research paper thumbnail of Confessions of a Learning Object using novice

Learning objects, digital units for instruction, are the'hot'topic in the worlds of edu... more Learning objects, digital units for instruction, are the'hot'topic in the worlds of educational uses of technology. Based on this simple definition of learning objects, this paper provides a case study of one university educator's attempt to access a variety of learning object repositories in the expectation of being able to find, evaluate and use components that would fit into an existing course on computer networks. The paper includes examples of the learning objects and concludes that the current scope and quality of the ...

Research paper thumbnail of Enabling Meaningful Certificates from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Data-Driven Curriculum E-Map Design Model

At a time when higher education is under pressure to produce more college graduates to meet the d... more At a time when higher education is under pressure to produce more college graduates to meet the demands of future workforce needs, the dropout rate in U.S. institutions is the highest it has ever been. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) provide an opportunity to expand access to postsecondary and adult education. This chapter explores access, retention, and recognition issues in relation to MOOCs. It argues that formal education models of curriculum design need to be refined to take advantage of the massive open online space. It concludes by describing a conceptual model that proposes an integrative learning analytics approach to support student retention and achievement.

Research paper thumbnail of Storytelling: Discourse Analysis for Understanding Collective Perceptions of Medical Education

Using discourse analysis, the goal of this exploratory project was to determine what practitioner... more Using discourse analysis, the goal of this exploratory project was to determine what practitioners of medical education in Sub-Saharan Africa considered key achievements, within the scope of their Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) activities, after their initial two-year implementation efforts. To do so, a series of 58 video stories were analyzed from a 2012 symposium that took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Analysis of the video stories followed an ethnographic method of analysis. Through this analysis common themes emerged from the collective discourse, which unsurprisingly were tied directly to the MEPI themes themselves. The use of discourse analysis helped confirm that the project themes were very much aligned with actual practice. It also enabled a level of transparency of results across all stakeholders. This approach is therefore recommended for informing and supporting future programmatic decisions.

Research paper thumbnail of A Systems Approach to Implementation of eLearning in Medical Education

Academic Medicine, 2014

How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearni... more How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearning at four African medical schools and one school of pharmacy, all part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) eLearning Technical Working Group, highlighted the need for five factors essential for successful and sustainable implementation: institutional support; faculty engagement; student engagement; technical expertise; and infrastructure and support systems. All five MEPI schools reported strengthening technical expertise, infrastructure, and support systems; four schools indicated that they were also successful in developing student engagement; and three reported making good progress in building institutional support. Faculty engagement was the one core component that all five schools needed to enhance.

Research paper thumbnail of Design-Based Approach for the Implementation of an International Cyberlearning Community of Inquiry for Medical Education

Research paper thumbnail of Fostering critical thinking through online student collaboration across Universities

Through the use of the Blackboard Learning System (v. 6) an online collaboration course was set u... more Through the use of the Blackboard Learning System (v. 6) an online collaboration course was set up to foster critical thinking via collaborative learning among students from two different universities. The course design using the Blackboard Learning System focused primarily on the use of the discussion boards to generate two-way communication among students and faculty. Evaluation instruments for both the learning outcomes and the learning process were developed for use.

Research paper thumbnail of Student Engagement Doesn't Just Happen, or Does it?

In a review of the faculty definitions of engagement, there is an understanding that challenge do... more In a review of the faculty definitions of engagement, there is an understanding that challenge does not equal engagement, but that engagement is observed when students are eager to learn on their own, participate in discussions inside and out of the classroom, ask questions (including inquiring into nuances of homework and examination problems. Faculty are engaged in their own class when there is interaction between faculty and students, not a one-way discussion or presentation. Our panel will address the issue of engagement from ...

Research paper thumbnail of Building communities of practice: MEPI creates a commons

Academic Medicine, 2014

The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity developme... more The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity development, retention, and research in Sub-Saharan African institutions. Today, MEPI comprises more than 40 medical schools in Africa and 20 in the United States. Since 2011, the MEPI Coordinating Center, working with the MEPI schools and the U.S. government, has laid the groundwork and served as a catalyst for the creation and development of MEPI "communities of practice" (CoPs). These CoPs encompass seven components, some of which are virtual while others are tangible. They include technical working groups, principal investigator site visit exchanges, an annual symposium, a MEPI journal supplement, the MEPI Web site, newsletters, and webinars. Despite certain challenges and the question of sustainability, the presence within the MEPI network of an organization focused on promoting group consciousness and facilitating collaborative projects is an asset that is likely to continue to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

Research paper thumbnail of The art of knowledge exchange : a results focused planning guide for development practitioners

Research paper thumbnail of A Systems Approach to Implementation of Elearning in Medical Education: Five Mepi Schools' Journeys

Academic Medicine, Aug 1, 2014

How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearni... more How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearning at four African medical schools and one school of pharmacy, all part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) eLearning Technical Working Group, highlighted the need for five factors essential for successful and sustainable implementation: institutional support; faculty engagement; student engagement; technical expertise; and infrastructure and support systems. All five MEPI schools reported strengthening technical expertise, infrastructure, and support systems; four schools indicated that they were also successful in developing student engagement; and three reported making good progress in building institutional support. Faculty engagement was the one core component that all five schools needed to enhance.

Research paper thumbnail of Examining Learners’ Cognitive Presence in MOOCs

This study examines a corpus of 4,825 discussion forum posts from 495 participants in a Georgetow... more This study examines a corpus of 4,825 discussion forum posts from 495 participants in a GeorgetownX MOOC on globalization for insight into the cognitive presence of learners and its implications for course performance. By analyzing the use of key terms linked to core course concepts as well as estimated level of language abstraction in the discussion forum, we examine the relationship between the results of this analysis, achievement, and video content engagement. By combining these varied analytics, we aim to get a better sense of learners' cognitive presence.

Research paper thumbnail of The Art of Knowledge Exchange

http://wbi.worldbank.org/sske/resource-library/art-knowledge

Research paper thumbnail of Declaration of the Americas on diabetes: implementation and baseline evaluation

Research paper thumbnail of A model for reflective sensemaking: Implementing Cohere in courses (Poster)

  1. How do we capture, measure, and map the individual and social aspects of reeective sensemaking... more 1) How do we capture, measure, and map the individual and social aspects of reeective sensemaking? How can learning analytics support reeective sensemaking of ill-structured problems in online learning environments? We explore the use of student-centered learning analytics as a driver for systems of learning and we propose a dashboard combining learner-instructor interaction and discourse analysis.

Research paper thumbnail of From Planning to Launching MOOCs: Guidelines and Tips from GeorgetownX

Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2014

This paper presents guidelines and tips from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) creation proce... more This paper presents guidelines and tips from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) creation process at Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS). Topics address the initial planning phase; core elements for MOOC design; the overall instructional design process; the video planning and production process; documentation; copyright; and quality assurance. This paper is meant to provide general guidelines and points to consider but is not intended as a complete guide for MOOC creation.

Research paper thumbnail of Investigating the Impact of Learning from Hypermedia

Distance education via the internet is now one of the most viable options for delivery of informa... more Distance education via the internet is now one of the most viable options for delivery of information to people in different places and because of this the concept of hypermedia is gaining in popularity. In the healthcare field it is crucial to reach people and update their knowledge in their area of expertise due to the direct impact this has

Research paper thumbnail of Building Communities of Practice

Academic Medicine, 2014

The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity developme... more The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) supports medical education capacity development, retention, and research in Sub-Saharan African institutions. Today, MEPI comprises more than 40 medical schools in Africa and 20 in the United States. Since 2011, the MEPI Coordinating Center, working with the MEPI schools and the U.S. government, has laid the groundwork and served as a catalyst for the creation and development of MEPI "communities of practice" (CoPs). These CoPs encompass seven components, some of which are virtual while others are tangible. They include technical working groups, principal investigator site visit exchanges, an annual symposium, a MEPI journal supplement, the MEPI Web site, newsletters, and webinars. Despite certain challenges and the question of sustainability, the presence within the MEPI network of an organization focused on promoting group consciousness and facilitating collaborative projects is an asset that is likely to continue to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

Research paper thumbnail of A Systems Approach to Implementation of eLearning in Medical Education

Academic Medicine, 2014

How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearni... more How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearning at four African medical schools and one school of pharmacy, all part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) eLearning Technical Working Group, highlighted the need for five factors essential for successful and sustainable implementation: institutional support; faculty engagement; student engagement; technical expertise; and infrastructure and support systems. All five MEPI schools reported strengthening technical expertise, infrastructure, and support systems; four schools indicated that they were also successful in developing student engagement; and three reported making good progress in building institutional support. Faculty engagement was the one core component that all five schools needed to enhance.

Research paper thumbnail of The use of e-learning course management systems to support learning strategies and to improve self-regulated learning

Educational Research Review, 2007

The adoption of Course Management Systems (CMSs) for web-based instruction continues to increase ... more The adoption of Course Management Systems (CMSs) for web-based instruction continues to increase in today's higher education. A CMS is a software program or integrated platform that contains a series of web-based tools to support a number of activities and course management procedures . Examples of Course Management Systems are Blackboard, WebCT, eCollege, Moodle, Desire2Learn, Angel, etc. An argument for the adoption of elearning environments using CMSs is the flexibility of such environments when reaching out to potential learners in remote areas where brick and mortar institutions are non-existent. It is also believed that e-learning environments can have potential added learning benefits and can improve students' and educators' self-regulation skills, in particular their metacognitive skills. In spite of this potential to improve learning by means of using a CMS for the delivery of e-learning, the features and functionalities that have been built into these systems are often underutilized. As a consequence, the created learning environments in CMSs do not adequately scaffold learners to improve their selfregulation skills. In order to support the improvement of both the learners' subject matter knowledge and learning strategy application, the e-learning environments within CMSs should be designed to address learners' diversity in terms of learning styles, prior knowledge, culture, and self-regulation skills. Self-regulative learners are learners who can demonstrate 'personal initiative, perseverance and adaptive skill in pursuing learning' . Self-regulation requires adequate monitoring strategies and metacognitive skills. The created e-learning environments should encourage the application of learners' metacognitive skills by prompting learners to plan, attend to relevant content, and monitor and evaluate their learning. This position paper sets out to inform policy makers, educators, researchers, and others of the importance of a metacognitive e-learning approach when designing instruction using Course Management Systems. Such a metacognitive approach will improve the utilization of CMSs to support learners on their path to self-regulation. We argue that a powerful CMS incorporates features and functionalities that can provide extensive scaffolding to learners and support them in becoming self-regulated learners. Finally, we believe that extensive training and support is essential if educators are expected to develop and implement CMSs as powerful learning tools.

Research paper thumbnail of Integración de capacidades metacognitivas en el diseno de objetos didácticos

… sobre Diseño, Evaluación y Descripción de …, 2005

Resumen Estudios recientes han demostrado que la formación especıfi-ca sobre estrategias metacogn... more Resumen Estudios recientes han demostrado que la formación especıfi-ca sobre estrategias metacognitivas permite mejorar el conocimiento de la materia objeto del aprendizaje, la exactitud de la monitorización del conocimiento y la aplicación de estrategias de aprendizaje en ...

Research paper thumbnail of Confessions of a Learning Object using novice

Learning objects, digital units for instruction, are the'hot'topic in the worlds of edu... more Learning objects, digital units for instruction, are the'hot'topic in the worlds of educational uses of technology. Based on this simple definition of learning objects, this paper provides a case study of one university educator's attempt to access a variety of learning object repositories in the expectation of being able to find, evaluate and use components that would fit into an existing course on computer networks. The paper includes examples of the learning objects and concludes that the current scope and quality of the ...

Research paper thumbnail of Enabling Meaningful Certificates from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Data-Driven Curriculum E-Map Design Model

At a time when higher education is under pressure to produce more college graduates to meet the d... more At a time when higher education is under pressure to produce more college graduates to meet the demands of future workforce needs, the dropout rate in U.S. institutions is the highest it has ever been. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) provide an opportunity to expand access to postsecondary and adult education. This chapter explores access, retention, and recognition issues in relation to MOOCs. It argues that formal education models of curriculum design need to be refined to take advantage of the massive open online space. It concludes by describing a conceptual model that proposes an integrative learning analytics approach to support student retention and achievement.