A significant problem facing Multi-Access courses with a limited number of face-to-face and online seats, is accommodating students who want or need to move between modalities without imposing an onerous administrative burden on instructors. One possible solution is the Seat eXchanger mobile web app under development in the TIE Lab at the University of Victoria. The Seat eXchanger app allows students to reserve and exchange of “seats,” depending on availability, and move seamlessly between modalities. At the beginning of the semester students indicate their primary mode of participation in the course, and then as needed or desired during the semester, they can use the web app to reserve a “seat” in a different modality for a session. For example if a student whose primary modality is face-to-face, wants to attend via remote video, they use the web app to reserve a virtual seat, which frees up their face-to-face “seat” in for someone else to use. The project roadmap includes: - Release of source code under an Open Source license to allow others to contribute code and documentation back to the project. - Integration with Moodle for authentication and seamless access for students. - Waitlist functionality for students to add themselves to a waitlist if no seats are available in their desired modality for a session. During this session, we will briefly demonstrate typical use cases for the software from the administrator and user perspectives, and then engage participants in a discussion about future functionality, features, and opportunities to contribute to the project.

1. Seat eXchanger: The Mobile, Open
Source, Web App that Facilitates
Flexible Multi-Access Class Participation
Rich McCue - University of Victoria, Valerie Irvine - University of Victoria & Ryan McCue - Camosun College
The 9th Collaboration for Online Higher Education & Research (COHERE) Conference
October 2015, Victoria & Halifax, Canada

2. Overview
• Introduction to Multi-Access &
Seat eXchanger.
• Demo.
• Technology Used & Project Road
Map.
• Questions & Discussion.

3. What is Multi-Access?
Multi-Access Learning enables "student choice and agency"
by allowing learners to participate in a class where and when
it is convenient or most conducive to their learning (Irvine,
Code, & Richards, 2013).
Face-to-Face -or- Video Conference -or- Recorded Lecture
OR...

4. A significant problem facing
Multi-Access courses
A significant problem facing Multi-Access courses
with a limited number of face-to-face and online
seats [NEXT], is accommodating students who
want or need to move between modalities...
Accommodating Student Needs with a
limited number of physical & online seats

5. Administrative Burden
Extra Room Space or Video
Conference Seats

6. ● We couldn’t find anything else available that easily fills
this gap.

7. The inspiration and guidance for this Open Source project comes from:
Dr. Valerie Irvine and her TIE Lab.
The project manager is Rich McCue, and
Lead developer is Ryan McCue.
Seat eXchanger Project

8. ● During this session, we will briefly demonstrate typical use cases for the
software from the student and instructor (or admin) perspectives, and
● then engage in a discussion about future functionality, features, and
opportunities to contribute to the project.

9. The project is at a very early stage of development, and we are looking for and people and organizations using the multi-access
pedagogy who interested in helping out.
● suggest features
● documentation
● translation for multiple languages.
● coding

10. Seat eXchanger
Demonstration
Site Under Construction

11. Teacher Perspective

12. Teacher Perspective: Create an account

13. Teacher Perspective: Create a Class
● Click on “Create a Class” button.

14. Teacher Perspective: Fill Out Create Class
Form

15. Teacher Perspective: Fill Out 1st Access
Mode

16. Teacher Perspective: Add Additional Modalities
● Click on “Add additional Access Mode” to add additional modalities available for the class.
● Done!

17. Teacher Perspective: Add Additional Week
Day
● Click on “Add additional weekly Lecture Day” to add another weekly lecture day and time (e.g. “MWF” or “MTh”).
● Done!

18. Teacher Perspective: Create Class!
● “Create Class” when the class modalities and lecture days have been added to the form.
● Done!

19. Student Perspective

20. Student Perspective: Invite & Registration
Student receives an email. Click on link that takes them to a registration page to add a password to their account… they are
then automatically logged in.

21. Student Perspective: Default Modality
Their default modality is assigned by the teacher based on their “campus” registration.
For example an out of town student’s default modality would probably be “videoconference” or “VC Robot.”

22. Student Perspective: Changing Modality
● Student goes to Seat eXchanger web app and select the class that they want to change modes.

23. Student Perspective: Select Class to Change
● Then click on date on which they’d like to switch modes.

24. Student Perspective: Confirm Change
● View Course to confirm that the modality change has been made.
● Done!

25. Project Roadmap & Tech

26. Seat eXchanger -> Open Source
Code released under an Open Source license to allow others to contribute code and documentation back to the project.
Lesser GPL to facilitate use with closed source software down the road.
Will be on GitHub

27. Seat eXchanger -> Use with Other Platforms?
Integration with Moodle for authentication and seamless access for students.
Will look at potentially using Google, Facebook and other authentication mechanisms.

28. Road Map Highlights
Release 0.1 - 2015-09-01 - Released
Release 0.2 - 2015-10-28
● Create/edit users
● Create/edit class
● Class layout like airplane
● Add other modalities - not just F2F and online
Release 0.3 - 2015-11-28
● Change/add class admin
● Wait list or request a seat option if none currently available in desired modality.
● Sign in with Facebook & maybe with Google & Twitter.
● Set up community website for the project.
● Release as Open Source license with LGPL license.
Release 0.4 - ???
● Timezones
● Edit class schedule
● Send email notifications for “Request a seat”
Release 0.5 - ???
● Moodle integration, including authentication

29. Technology
Tech: LAMP, Laravel PHP framework, Mailgun.org.

30. Thank-you & Questions?
Project Website: http://seatexchanger.org/
Research available at: http://richmccue.com/presentations/
This presentation: http://slideshare.net/richmccue
Contact:
rich@msys.ca
ryan@msys.ca
@richmccue on twitter
@_valeriei on twitter
Photo credit: Got Credit

31. Special Thanks to the Creators of the Creative
Commons Images used in this presentation:
http://www.deviantart.com/art/The-Chair-Project-312353585
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bishwa_Iztema_2013_Phase_II_on_train_01_by_Mayeenul_Islam.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Daily_Burden,_Ethiopia_(9927966264).jpg
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/paysanne/interesting/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prise_en_main_d%27un_Nexus_S.JPG
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Ashs-teacher-and-students.jpg
http://www.public-domain-image.com/free-images/people/crowd/african-american-female-talking-with-meeting-participants
http://www.geograph.ie/photo/2804138
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baby_Roger_3D.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Under-construction5.gif
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecture_hall
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Mike%27s_students_at_First_Year_Seminar.jpg
http://creativecommons.org/tag/school-of-open
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:License_icon-lgpl-88x31.svg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/appleboy/13158675193
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moodle-logo-large.jpg