I've talked previously about the principle of offering practical advice. This is referring to the level of abstraction you employ when talking about the design of the learning experience. My gut feeling is that because researchers are often employed in Learning Technology positions the tendency is to more be too abstract. This is a completely anecdotal assertion (this blog gives me this kind of freedom of expression).
Aside from this, what are the qualities I need to possess to have the maximum positive impact? By positive I mean giving people a good understanding of key issues with regard to LTs allowing them to make informed decisions on their appropriate use. I will list some qualities:
Good communication/good teaching:
I'm realising more and more that's being a good communicator and teacher is priority number 1 for this job. I need to be able to communicate my message in a variety of fora and a variety of contexts. I need to be able to communicate well and where possible teach well so that I make maximium advantage of each opportunity. I've been a lot recently on what it means to give practical advice on LTs particular with regard to designing a whole course. I think an important principle is making order out of simple but disparate concepts and ideas. It's very common for discussion to flit around lots of different issues, so if you can give order, structure and context for all of this then that's is really useful. Often what you come up with sounds obvious. Don't worry about this, it's still useful. For example, colleagues at the Institute of Education have found it useful when I say think about:
- Start time/finish
- Aligning topic with time periods
And then for each topic, think about:
- What bespoke content you want
- What readings you want
- What learning activities you want
There's much, much more to think about but this is a good basis. Sounds like common sense but key points are easily overlooked and mashed together causing confusion.
Finding opportunities to spread the word
It is often about manufacturing situations where you have a captive audience, placing myself in environment where people will listen. Ideally, people come to something you have organised where they want your help and support. In an ideal world this is one-to-one tuition or group training sessions. However, these can be difficult to manufacture so other situations have to be sought. Working groups for sharing practice are a good idea. You can always slip in advice at strategic points.
Adapting your message to the audience
This is about not banging the drum too hard with the wrong audience, in the wrong context. Because technology can be an emotive issue with some, the context needs to be right before you think about delivering your message. Also, if educators come to learn about, say, a particular tool or technology you can also give some learning design advice within this to give it context.
Initiating and taking control of your own learning
This is probably the hardest part. Clearly it's a principle which could apply to any profession. For LTs, at a simple level, it's about staying on top of new software and environments and ensuring that you understand how to work tools before the edcuator gets to it. This is hard enough but then you add to it, trying to keep abreast of the latest thinking in research terms with regard to LTs. A third strand which I try and do is reading and reflecting on the latest thinking on LTs outside the academia. I am talking about the the blogosphere and the micro-blogosphere. This is hard and involves making time to read and share what you can. It's valuable because it makes you think outside your narrow world. With any job there are times when learning gets swamped by being too damn busy but it's worth the effort when you get a chance. Taking control of your own learning and ensuring that you keep abreast on all three fronts is hard and sometimes overwhelming. But I'm always glad when I do. In fact, this is one of things that keep me interested in my job. Being able to easily find information and opinion and turn this into knowledge by reflecting on it in light of my context.
It's interesting rating yourself against these criteria. I come out ok, but that's probably because I picked the criteria. Mind you, there lots of room for improvement.
Levels of abstraction - Practical vs pedagogy
I've done a lot of work these past few months on helping academic colleagues who are thinking about converting their courses from face-to-face to be delivered through blended learning or purely online. This is unsurprising as this is a core component of my job! However, things have been pretty active recently as HE looks for additional modes of delivery to bring in more students and, by consequence, more money. Whatever the motivation, I'm happy.
As a result, there's been lots of learning that needs consolidating. Firstly, I had an interesting discussion the other day about the levels of abstraction. This is in terms of how abstract you discuss things with educators when helping them design an online course. I've always tends to try and grounds things in reality and talk in terms of practical components/examples/templates rather than pedagogical models. This is probably partly because its in my nature to do this but also because my experience is that this is what they want - or at least this is what I think they want. There are a number of reasons for this which I won't go into here. But getting the balance right on the scale of abstraction is a judgement call that a constant issue for any learning technologist. It's certainly important to be able to talk pedagogy if the need arise but it is the best starting point? I don't have the answers. My instincts and practice keep such dialogue in my back pocket. You might be thinking why not do both, why not do everything. Well, you need to be careful. Educators often approach you looking for clarity, looking for answers. Clarity is so, so important and I guess this is the heart of the matter. You have to choose what to say first and how to say it to give maximium benefit to the educator. This will be different for each person but common is the need to practical guidance on how a course could look online and what key decisions need to be made first. My next post will reflect upon the practical advice I've been championing in this post.
As a result, there's been lots of learning that needs consolidating. Firstly, I had an interesting discussion the other day about the levels of abstraction. This is in terms of how abstract you discuss things with educators when helping them design an online course. I've always tends to try and grounds things in reality and talk in terms of practical components/examples/templates rather than pedagogical models. This is probably partly because its in my nature to do this but also because my experience is that this is what they want - or at least this is what I think they want. There are a number of reasons for this which I won't go into here. But getting the balance right on the scale of abstraction is a judgement call that a constant issue for any learning technologist. It's certainly important to be able to talk pedagogy if the need arise but it is the best starting point? I don't have the answers. My instincts and practice keep such dialogue in my back pocket. You might be thinking why not do both, why not do everything. Well, you need to be careful. Educators often approach you looking for clarity, looking for answers. Clarity is so, so important and I guess this is the heart of the matter. You have to choose what to say first and how to say it to give maximium benefit to the educator. This will be different for each person but common is the need to practical guidance on how a course could look online and what key decisions need to be made first. My next post will reflect upon the practical advice I've been championing in this post.
Looking outside the VLE is not a crime
Note to self - must blog more.
It's good to reflect back on my thinking last year and how things have moved on. I've been reflecting on my Web 2.0 model. I still think it's a useful guide for making sense of what's out there and, although it could probably be refined, I don't think its worth the effort as the changes would be minor. I've said in the past that integration of internet based tools and Virtual Learning Environments will get better over time. The rate of this improvement is frustratingly slow. Our institution, the Institute of Education, uses blackboard. When it comes to integration with internet-based tool, it's not good. Moodle is much better and our potential switch to this VLE would be very welcome from this point of view.
The issue of going outside the VLE doesn’t fit well with formal education. The instinct of an educational institution is to cover its back with anything it uses. As a result, the rules comes first. For the few that want to use something “out there”, they are forced to justify this position against whatever criteria deemed appropriate. The result is that most will not bother. Why risk doing something wrong especially since there is no often nothing to counter balance these rules and regulations and no intensive to think outside the box. I’m talking about resources that portray web 2.0 tools in a good light and champion their potential for teaching and learning. Such resources would be difficult to keep up to date but its a worthwhile endevour. It falls under the category of “seeking to improve how we teach and learn”. Surely this is worth doing.
This issue is related to whether you are proactive, going out there and trying to display what’s positive about learning technologies; or whether you are reactive, giving advice and support when people want it. The norm is the latter whereas I think we should be doing more of the former. I can see the argument for adopting both positions and perhaps I am drawn to the stance that feels like marketing sometimes because it is a minority position. It should be pointed that often lack of resources dictates how proactive you can be with regards to learning technologies.
On the internet based tools front, future VLEs will certainly have to cater for more integration. I can see them acting as a hub for pulling together everything the educator and the learners want to use. However, this probably won’t happen any time soon.
The self-motivated learner
I was struck by this headline in a mashable article - The internet empowers self-motivated learners. This is a good way of putting something that is blindingly obvious. But is it therefore not good for learners who are not so self-motivated? The internet is well suited to learners who are completely self-regulated, aggregating learning resources from a variety of sources, seeking out their own channels of support and collaboration. There has never been a better time to manage your own learning experience. However, where you have learners who are not motivated the management of the learning experience is done by someone else. In formal education this is always what happens. All learners have to be catered for and, even where the teacher wants to give free rein, its easier to set a strict agenda.
This is probably why there are so many tensions with online learning. For better or for worse learning is synonymous formal education in 2011 (happy new year) and with formal education more time is spent on managing the learning experience than anything else. This is the way it's always been online or offline. From the learners perspective I also believe that the habit of active learning is sorely lacking. Self-regulation and control is something closely guarded by educators. As a result, when given the opportunity to take control many don't know what to do. They neither want it or expect it. This is a rejection of the ethos of managing your own learning rather than a rejection of technology. Unfortunately, things are often interpreted incorrectly.
This is probably why there are so many tensions with online learning. For better or for worse learning is synonymous formal education in 2011 (happy new year) and with formal education more time is spent on managing the learning experience than anything else. This is the way it's always been online or offline. From the learners perspective I also believe that the habit of active learning is sorely lacking. Self-regulation and control is something closely guarded by educators. As a result, when given the opportunity to take control many don't know what to do. They neither want it or expect it. This is a rejection of the ethos of managing your own learning rather than a rejection of technology. Unfortunately, things are often interpreted incorrectly.
There's blended learning and there's blended learning!
Wow, it's been ages since I blogged. Certainly, I've been busy (and ill) over the last few weeks but I need to keep in mind the value of this process.
Blended learning has lots of different definitions. In addition, there are the different balances struck between the face-to-face elements and the online elements. I've reflected previously (in Promoting Distance) about the different attitude with which students approach blended vs purely online learning. Here, I will examine how the structure of the course can have an impact on this.
I'll give you two scenarios in my higher education context:
1. The course begins with a face-to-face day or two - often the preferred term here is residential. The course is explained, the course begins, participant get to know eachother and bonds are formed. Importantly, the online environment is introduced with a hands on practice if necessary. More importantly, the educator can (and should) show commitment to facilitation of any communication/collaboration online activities. The rest of the course is taught online with perhaps another face-to-face event at the end of the course. So the only organised way students can interact or collaborate on the content is by engaging in the online activities.
2. The course consists of 8 face-to-face days that occur on a weekly basis. Between these days online activities are run. Each face-to-face session delivers the core content. The online activities build on this after each session or prepare them for a session.
There are various points to make about these two models of blended learning. Firstly, the latter is far more common. The reasons for this are wide-ranging but high up on this list is the fact that fundamental learning design issues are set up almost out of habit. Rooms are booked, sessions are numbered, this is how teaching happens. Afterwards, there is a vague notion and directive from some policy about e-learning. A Learning Technologist is consulted (sometimes) only for the functionality of a couple of interactive tools (usually the discussion board) and that box is ticked. As a result, even if the tutors are committed and diligent in their e-facilitation of the online element there are tumbleweeds blowing across the online forums. Let’s think why? There’s a clear message about the primacy of face-to-face. The online aspect feels and is subservient to this. You couple this with a blended learning student’s natural inclination to think this way anyway (see Promoting Distance) and you are left with what is essentially a face-to-face course.
Compare this with the first example. The key point is that at certain points the learning from a particular subject is delivered online ONLY. In this example, it’s most of the course. This makes is easier for the students to get used to this idea and just run with it. Give a student in 2010 the alternative and face-to-face wins most of the time (in my context anyway). Take away this choice and there might be a bit of grumbling but they soon get on with it.
Another crucial weakness of the second example is lack of time for the online activities to take place. There’s a conflict between the need to think in terms of time periods online and sessions lasting a few hours in face-to-face. If the face-to-face sessions are sorted out first, it’s common for an online discussion to last only a few days. Just as they get going they stop. So for effective blended learning to occur you want careful spacing in the learning design. This is easily achieved if each mode is given equal status in the planning.
Blended learning has lots of different definitions. In addition, there are the different balances struck between the face-to-face elements and the online elements. I've reflected previously (in Promoting Distance) about the different attitude with which students approach blended vs purely online learning. Here, I will examine how the structure of the course can have an impact on this.
I'll give you two scenarios in my higher education context:
1. The course begins with a face-to-face day or two - often the preferred term here is residential. The course is explained, the course begins, participant get to know eachother and bonds are formed. Importantly, the online environment is introduced with a hands on practice if necessary. More importantly, the educator can (and should) show commitment to facilitation of any communication/collaboration online activities. The rest of the course is taught online with perhaps another face-to-face event at the end of the course. So the only organised way students can interact or collaborate on the content is by engaging in the online activities.
2. The course consists of 8 face-to-face days that occur on a weekly basis. Between these days online activities are run. Each face-to-face session delivers the core content. The online activities build on this after each session or prepare them for a session.
There are various points to make about these two models of blended learning. Firstly, the latter is far more common. The reasons for this are wide-ranging but high up on this list is the fact that fundamental learning design issues are set up almost out of habit. Rooms are booked, sessions are numbered, this is how teaching happens. Afterwards, there is a vague notion and directive from some policy about e-learning. A Learning Technologist is consulted (sometimes) only for the functionality of a couple of interactive tools (usually the discussion board) and that box is ticked. As a result, even if the tutors are committed and diligent in their e-facilitation of the online element there are tumbleweeds blowing across the online forums. Let’s think why? There’s a clear message about the primacy of face-to-face. The online aspect feels and is subservient to this. You couple this with a blended learning student’s natural inclination to think this way anyway (see Promoting Distance) and you are left with what is essentially a face-to-face course.
Compare this with the first example. The key point is that at certain points the learning from a particular subject is delivered online ONLY. In this example, it’s most of the course. This makes is easier for the students to get used to this idea and just run with it. Give a student in 2010 the alternative and face-to-face wins most of the time (in my context anyway). Take away this choice and there might be a bit of grumbling but they soon get on with it.
Another crucial weakness of the second example is lack of time for the online activities to take place. There’s a conflict between the need to think in terms of time periods online and sessions lasting a few hours in face-to-face. If the face-to-face sessions are sorted out first, it’s common for an online discussion to last only a few days. Just as they get going they stop. So for effective blended learning to occur you want careful spacing in the learning design. This is easily achieved if each mode is given equal status in the planning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)