The outlook, post-ONL18

The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS at CERN | by Image Editor

So now ONL18 is over and I can look back over it all and see what I think with a little distance. I can say that it was not a fun beginning for me, but two things kept me going. First, I know that part of my personality is to feel stress and frustration as soon as something is not easy for me (trust me, I have been working on this!). Second, the wonderful people in the group and facilitators grounded me; they seemed to take it all in flow and I tried to follow their lead.

The tough beginning did not last all that long, however. Once we got going with the topics, it seemed to all make sense and I started to feel like I was catching on. As documented in previous blogs, I came across many questions in the work I did with the group. And I came up with some answers. Now I am thinking about how I might use all that I have learned if I am going to adapt one of my traditional classroom courses into something more blended. At the most basic level, I know exactly what an online course looks like and feels like now. I could sit down and organize one right away because I just went through the experience of being in one. That is valuable! Putting it all together, I consider the following points to be the most important.

 

1. Pay attention to variation in digital literacy

I learned tons of new great digital tools in this course, which means I am well prepared to design the physical infrastructure of the course. Care needs to be taken, however, not to throw too many new ones at students all at once and to provide support for those who will be doing something new by using the digital tools. Perhaps even offer a brief intro to digital literacy and create the perspective that this is something students will benefit from working on.

 

2. Learn before arriving in the classroom

This is basically what the flipped classroom idea is all about, as promoted widely by Eric Mazur (perusall.com). To me, this is a teaching design principle that is absolutely essential if we expect students of heavy static content to engage in collaborative learning. Provided with good resources, students should be able to get a basic understanding of concepts and information that they can then put into practice with group exercises.

 

3. Complexity matters!

Problem-based learning (PBL) (Dolmans et al. 2005) is a brilliant and simple idea: embed learning in a contextualized and constructed problem for students to solve collaboratively. In this course, we were guided in the PBL method through the use of the FISH model. Honestly, I did not get the value of using the Fish model. It helped structure the work a bit in terms of what we talked about when in the course of the two weeks. But it also felt limiting, in the sense that we felt we should talk about what the focus could be for an entire session, what we should investigate during the next session, etc., instead of moving more quickly to putting together ideas when we could. Of course, it could be that other groups used the tool differently and it worked brilliantly. What I learned about collaborative work and learning is that the level of complexity should be rather high for it to bring benefits over that of working independently (Kirschner et al. 2009). This brings to mind a quote by Peter Higgs (hence the pic above of the Hadron Collider): “…it has become obvious that on the experimental side, there has been a huge evolution in the number of people who have to collaborate because of the gigantic size of the instruments used, but also because of the enormous task that is data analysis”. Okay, maybe it is a little grandiose to liken anything I am doing to the mind-blowing collaboration in the world of physics, but I do think pushing the frontiers of science increasingly requires collaboration of great minds. This is particularly the case if we are to transcend disciplinary boundaries and open up new research directions. My point here is that I don’t think the value of collaboration comes across unless the task is too much for one person to manage well or requires diversity of skills beyond what most of us have.

 

4. Social integration

I had no idea social integration is of key importance to student retention in online courses before this course. But it makes sense. And I have no doubt that my growing connection to the people in my group made me show up to more meetings and try harder to fit in all the work I should do. As mentioned in a previous blog, I believe the teacher’s role in fostering social integration should be hidden. We have to trick students into it or else many serious, self-motivating students will balk at our efforts. Which brings me to my final point…

 

5. Gamification of courses

What better way to lighten the atmosphere and get people interacting than to introduce a few well-designed and well-timed games? I think this also may have the effect of increasing students’ commitment to learning material, as most will want to do better. Being confronted in a fun way with the fact that you don’t know something may even increase the desire to pay attention. As Stefan Lagrosen wrote in his blog, gamification can “tickle the competitive spirit”. This blog also provided many leads on gamification tools out there. I particularly thought Nevin et al. (2013) was interesting. Check it out!

 

To wrap up what is turning out to be an unusually long blog, I should mention that I have the sense that university administrators perceive “going blended” as a way to free up classroom hours and, hence, cut costs. We did not get into this in our course, but I think I can say quite definitively that teaching online is not a way to cut hours. It could if care for quality was dropped: I could record a lecture once and use it year after year. But providing teaching, cognitive and social presence goes well beyond recorded lectures. There is much more to do in some ways to make sure the scaffolding and support are there for the students, especially if we don’t want retention affected.

 

References

Dolmans DJM, De Grave W, Wolfhagen IAP, Van der Vleuten CM. 2005. Problem-based learning: Future challenges for educational practice and research. Med Educ 39:732–741.

Kirschner, F., Paas, F., & Kirschner, P. (2009). A Cognitive Load Approach to Collaborative Learning: United Brains for Complex Tasks. Educational Psychology Review, 21(1): 31-42. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-008-9095-2

Nevin, C. R., Westfall, A. O., Rodriguez, J. M., Dempsey, D. M., Cherrington, A., Roy, B., Patel, M. & Willig, J. H. (2014), “Gamification as a tool for enhancing graduate medical education”, Postgrad Med J, Vol. 90 No. 685-93.

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.

Context is King

Photo by Valario Davis on Unsplash

In this topic, our group tackled the issue of what needs to change in our teaching style and design when going from classroom style to blended or online learning. As I have written before, there are examples out there in the MOOC world in which not much is different—video recorded lectures and regular exams. But shifting teaching to a different context obviously provides lots of scope for innovation and development, as well as restrictions and challenges. I had a hard time seeing more than the latter at the beginning. I am happy to report that I think I figured out how to address the limitations of online or blended learning as well as can now identify the gains from moving to an online format. For example, I love the idea that students’ contributions to online chat discussions must be written and are semi-permanent, as this should be an impetus for deeper, more careful reasoning on their part. I also think students remember more what they see/read than what they hear.

What I have learned ranges from the small and pragmatic:

Teach with many more slides than when in person because you won’t have body language and activity to keep students’ minds from wandering (City University London 2016).

to the grand, such as ideas like a “community of inquiry” (Vaughan et al. 2013), where

“students listen to one another with respect, build on one another’s ideas, challenge one another to supply reasons for otherwise unsupported opinions, assist each other in drawing inferences from what has been said, and seek to identify one another’s assumptions” (Lipman, 2003, p. 20).

This quote struck me as reflecting the ideal of collaborative learning the most and is super motivating. I also found Vaughan et al.’s (2013) distinction between teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence very helpful in identifying the role I play as a teacher and thinking about how these roles change if I try to adapt to collaborative, PBL or online learning. To be clear, this specific discussion of teaching and learning is not necessarily relegated to blended or online learning, but rather to any good teaching that involves students as more than passive recipients of content.

One area of difficulty in my experience of this topic is the strong focus on social integration. Social integration is key to student retention (van Ameijde et al. 2018) and losing students has been likened to social suicide in Tinto’s Student Integration Model (1975) because it reflects a failure social integration (among other things). While I agree that social integration made my experience of this ONL course more enjoyable and cemented my commitment to the course and group, I struggle with how it can be fostered in a classroom setting (online or in person).

If I imagine beginning a course that aims to teach heavy static content, I might be agitated on the first day to be wasting time with lengthy introductions or stories about ourselves, course experiences related by alumni, or a learning preference inventory (all tools suggested in Vaughan et al. (2013)). So, in my view, there is a disjuncture between what makes sense when teaching content and when teaching collaboration (such as in this course). My challenge from this topic is then how to make the process of generating social integration among the students hidden.

 

References

City University London. (2016). Online Facilitation Techniques.

Everson, M., Garfield, J. (2008). An innovative approach to teaching online statistics courses. Technology Innovations in Statistics Education, 2(1).

van Ameijde, J., Weller, M. and Cross, S. (2018). Learning Design for Student Retention. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, Vol 6 | Issue 2 | pp.41-50. 

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.

Collaborative learning: Politeness vs. complexity?

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So I seem to be living out a pattern in this course. Each topic brings new forms of skepticism and new discoveries related to collaborative learning and OOE (online open education). First, I find it super interesting but a little weird to be studying the very process in which we are engaged, like some reflective learning experiment. Of course I do think that there is no better way to learn about collaborative learning and OOE than by doing collaborative learning and OOE. But that doesn’t tell me much about how collaborative learning and OOE will work with teaching theory or methods. If the learners don’t know the material or skills, and where the skills lead, can they really help each other get there? Brindley et al. (2009) refer to some courses as having “static content” and do not include those types of courses in their cases studies for their assessment of learning processes online. I believe that is what I am teaching, so is that omission important? Is that where the boundary is? I can see that collaborative learning could be uniquely suited toward applications of skills learned. This prerequisite basis is one of the recommendations in the Brindley et al. paper. One of my group members in PBL8 also described the importance of prerequisite courses in his experience.

I also wonder about the part of collaborative learning that is based on peer feedback and critique, another prominent topic in the Brindley et al (2009) study. You have to be able to respond to each other’s ideas for collaboration to occur. You also should be able to understand a peer’s contribution. Peer review does not really work without careful orchestration sometimes. In my teaching the greatest problem I see with peer evaluation is that students are at such different levels that they can’t easily be helpful to each other. If a class is small enough and I take the time to do some sort of assessment and then match them on the basis of capabilities, then the exercise becomes more useful, but that is not always possible. In my PBL group, our expertise vary widely but we seem able to follow each other’s ideas well. In group meeting, we can riff off of each other’s ideas and the conversation develops nicely. But an unspoken boundary comes up when talking about anything written already. So when we contribute, that initial contribution stands untouched and is presented. In this topic’s presentation, we discussed overthrowing this boundary, and this time around we asked questions at least about the text that was written. But still, nothing developed further once a written contribution was submitted to the group. I interpret this as an healthily developed culture of niceness in our group, which I certainly appreciate.  I don’t feel frustrated at all with the group or the group work, as documented among online learners in Capdeferro and Romero (2012) study, probably for this very reason.

One interesting study I came across in my reading was a study by Kirschner et al. (2009) where they showed that the benefits of collaborative learning show up when the complexity of a task is high. The idea is that the more cognitive capacity you pool together, the more likely you are to be able to meet the cognitive demands of a given task if they are high. I do not think the tasks we are assigned in this course are complex. They certainly could be made complex, but there is no impetus for doing so because there is no set idea of how much depth the presentation should have. This made me wonder how different the process would look if we were to be given a complex and demanding task that we must do well on in order to complete the course successfully. I suspect it would look very different. I suspect it would be a lot more stressful. I suspect the course organizers have a reason for not setting up the course this way.

References

Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3).

Capdeferro, N. & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences?. The International review of research in open and distance learning, 13(2), 26-44.

Kirschner, F., Paas, F., & Kirschner, P. (2009). A Cognitive Load Approach to Collaborative Learning: United Brains for Complex Tasks. Educational Psychology Review, 21(1): 31-42. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-008-9095-2

Open, closed, open, closed…?

Image: James Wainscoat

 

The basic idea of openness in education is easy to digest and even easier to celebrate: education for all! No barriers, no exclusion, free sharing of knowledge. I was amazed at how quickly the idea of openness became more complicated and difficult to grapple with once thinking about it in action more concretely.

Students

First, on the student side: How can we offer education that is truly open to all? Bates (2015) plainly acknowledges that “No teaching system is completely open (minimum levels of literacy are required, for instance)”. Internet is also required it seems. We struggle with the boundary of openness in our student body all the time in our department. We want to keep the master’s program open to people from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible to make the cohort more interesting and bring in a variety of different perspectives. But allowing students from some academic backgrounds means they will not have the skill set to take on the work they must do. The question then becomes how can you teach students with no prior knowledge of some things without lowering the expectations of how far they will come in a certain time period? This question may be why Kortemeyer (2013) unhappily notes that “OERs have not noticeably disrupted the traditional business model of higher education”. So, open education is simply providing something other than what universities provide? Weller (2014) describes open education as a bridge to formal education, not a competitor. As a university lecturer, do I need to be on top of OER trends then? I have come to the conclusion that I do, as I will explain in a roundabout way.

Teachers

Then there is the teachers’ perspective on open education, and here I must confess I am guilty of Wiley’s Ted Talk characterization of the old-fashioned way of thinking that is upheld by law: Mine!!! It makes me nervous to think about sharing carefully prepared lecture slides and notes for anyone to “reuse, redistribute, revise, remix and retain”. When I think about this more, I am not entirely sure why except that there is a general discomfort around needing to keep track of everything and get credit for everything I do in order to get tenure, etc. But I know the benefits of open sharing of resources first-hand. The greatest improvements to my lectures often come from innovative ways other teachers have found to make a point or demonstrate a technique that they generously posted online. (of course I give credit in my slides to them, but they do not know that)

Teaching style

So those are the two reservations I discovered I have about open education. Then I realized I did not have a clear sense of how teaching differed in an open vs, traditional classroom setting. I sensed that it was different, with problem-based learning being central, and learners managing learning themselves (Bates 2015). This made no sense to me as a teacher of statistics, for example. Students have no idea what they will be learning until they learn it, so how can they discover it? I did some reading to try to discover if there was some sort of guide for taking top-down knowledge like this and putting it into a different format that may facilitate open learning. I was not successful at finding any such guide. So then I explored what learning statistics looks like in open online learning. I was disappointed (and slightly relieved) to discover it does not look much different to how it is done in the classroom. I read many,  many reviews of teachers and courses, paying attention to how students described the course and the main mode was video lectures. What I realized in discussion with my group, however, is that there were elements of a different approach. For example, courses are self-paced. Also, whereas in a classroom we often have question and answer periods during classroom time, in good online courses students mentioned whether the teacher was active in chatroom discussions about the material and assignments. The unique opportunities this provides for more discussion and openness are clear to me.

So, my eyes are open to the possibilities and looking forward to identifying other ”open” practices to bring into my teaching!

 

References

Bates, T. (2015). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning.
(This is probably the best guide there is today to teaching in a digital context. Worth reading the whole book but for this unit you can focus on Chapter 10, Trends in open education.)

Kortemeyer, G. (2013) Ten years later: Why open educational resources have not noticeably affected higher education, and why we should care. Educause Review, Nov/Dec 2013. Retrieved from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2013/2/ten-years-later-why-open-educational-resources-have-not-noticeably-affected-higher-education-and-why-we-should-care.

Weller, M. (2014). Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. London: Ubiquity Press.
(If you can, try to read all of this excellent overview of the whole question of openness but if you can’t, focus on Chapter 4, Open Educational Resources, and Chapter 5, MOOCs.)

Wiley, D. Open education and the future, Short TED-talk

Digital literacy and PBL

 

“Embracing the fog” (Caroline Cruard during PBL8 online meeting)

The approach on which this course is based (problem based learning) relies on problems actually being authentic (Hmelo-Silver 2004). The scenario for Topic 1 could not have been more authentic to me! I had technical difficulties at the beginning of both of my online meetings in the office. I got to know about a new potential presentation source (Google Tour Creator) but could hardly follow what was done to create the presentation. Not a start to inspire confidence!

It is not that I felt completely literate in this digital age before the course began. I have always found it difficult to navigate different programs and remember how they work, are linked, etc. I am also not sure it suits the way my brain works. I find I am much more distracted by things and stray off task when I have to jump from one page to another and I am more likely to lose track of things when they are all in different places (Google +, Drive, ONL171 webpage). In addition, I suspect I will never enjoy the way information flows in a tweet chat. Alistair said that it is like dipping a tow in a flowing river, and I like that idea, but I want to know the content of the water in total and have it provided in an organized fashion. J

If I think of my digital identity, I would say it is only halfway formed. I was quick to get online and use email and software for specific purposes, but slower to adopt social media. ONL participants have been writing and talking a lot about the importance of attitude. It is true: being curious and positive about the digital world helps. I recently read that social media is one of the main tools of social activism these days, and that made me a lot more inspired about exploring the digital world.

So, attitude is important, but I also wonder how high our expectations should be. Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society (Jisc info net). Individual’s lives and needs can look so incredibly different. I don’t think most people learn for learning’s sake (after finishing their education anyhow), but rather learn what they need to know. This means that until this course, my digital literacy was super high—because I had the capabilities to live my life in the digital society. I may never be a natural “resident”, but I have been able to survive quite well as a “visitor” (White & Le Cornu 2011).

I think this first topic was challenging not only because of expanding my own digital literacy but because of figuring out how to do PBL with a group of new people. Our group was very small (only 2 or 3 in each meeting), but the members themselves were great and the facilitators very helpful. I read on another ONL18 member’s blog about the six thinking hats (de Bono 1985) and after reading about this approach I think it could be quite interesting to pair with the FiSH model. Something to consider…

Source: https://lo.unisa.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?id=611321&chapterid=100453

Even if I have found this course uncomfortable at times, I have already learned new things. I will be able to use many new tools after this course. And now I am writing my first blog. Exciting times! But it will be nice when some of the fog clears.

 

References

de Bono, E. (1985). Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management. Little, Brown, & Company.

Hmelo-Silver, C.E. Educational Psychology Review (2004) 16: 235. https://doi.org/10.1023/ B:EDPR.0000034022.16470.f3

Jisc info net. http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http:/www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/

White, D., & Le Cornu. A. (2011) Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, Volume 16, Number 9 – 5 September 2011.

Intro

Hello! First blog post ever. Not sure I will have any personality online, but bear with me. 🙂