EDUCAUSE | pedagogy

ELI In Conversation: Web 2.0 Learning Tools- What are they? What is their role in higher education?

gbayne — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:12:04 -0600

In this podcast we feature a conversation with Barbara Sawhill, Director of the Cooper International Learning Center at Oberlin College, and Jude Higdon, Instructional Technology Support Team Coordinator at the University of Minnesota. This discussion was recorded at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Some technology experts question whether we can use the term "Web 2.0" in a meaningful way since many of the components have existed since the early days of the web. There are many definitions floating around for the term. What is meant by "Web 2.0", specifically from a pedagogical standpoint? And how can these tools be used to enhance learning?

Barbara Sawhill co-presented the session "Who's Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS? A Digi-Drama About Fear 2.0"at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Jude Higdon co-presented the session "Comparative Political Media 2.0: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, YouTube, and More" at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Show notes:

There are a few books and articles referenced in this conversation:

"Death to the Syllabus!", from Liberal Education, a publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities
"Teaching For Understanding", a project by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Project Zero.
"Teaching One Moment At A Time: Disruption And Repair In The Classroom", by Dawn Skorczewski

ELI Annual Video: Connectivism

gbayne — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:33:13 -0600

Video and slides for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. This plenary session is entitled, "Connectivism".

The waves of technological and social change have eroded the effectiveness of traditional views regarding what, how, and why to educate. To effectively educate learners, fundamental assertions need to be rethought: the design of schools and curriculum, the nature of knowledge in a connected world, the relationship between educator and learner, the means and methods of authenticating information and knowledge, and, perhaps most significantly, what it means “to know” in complex, rapidly developing, and chaotic environments. This session will present connectivism as a theory of learning that can bridge the rift between traditional and new educational approaches to prepare learners for the tomorrow they will inherit.

ELI Podcast: Connectivism

gbayne — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:39:13 -0600

In this 58 minute podcast, we feature a session by George Siemens, Associate Director for the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, entitled, "Connectivism". This speech was recorded at the ELI 2008 Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Improving Distributed Education Through Research: Three Studies of E-Pedagogy

drupal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:04:17 -0600

The demand for quality, effective online teaching environments is growing. Using three research studies (on social presence in distance learning, threaded discussion, and student technology usage), Academic Outreach proposed synchronous and asynchronous educational strategies to faculty and students in distributed/blended learning environments. Don't miss this opportunity to hear our results.

EDUCAUSE2006 Podcast: Putting Pedagogy First

Carie417 — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 13:33:19 -0500

In this 50-minute recording from the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, we'll hear from Edward Chapel and Richard Wolfson in a session entitled Putting the Pedagogy First: The Classroom 2008 Project. They explain the project, which explores how technology can be infused into the pedagogical practices of faculty as opposed to having faculty adapt to new technologies as they appear in teaching spaces.

SL/RL meetup at Spring ELI conference

joeclark — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 14:37:48 -0500

A number of SL users will be attending the Spring ELI focus session on Virtual Learning Environments, and there will probably be back-channel interactions going on in SL during the conf. Nick Noakes has created a wikipage where you can connect with other SLers who will be there in one avatar or another.

Rethinking Educational Dynamics in the Digital Age: Engaging with Todd Richmond

catherine — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:34:51 -0600

Via Axel Bruns, via Howard Rheingold, comes this post from DIY Media Weblog, which reports on a recent attempt by Todd Richmond to model the changing roles of producer-consumer and teacher-student in the digital economy.

Richmond is Adjunct Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television, and a Fellow at USC's Annenberg Center and its Center for Creative Technologies. The DIY Media post highlighted a recent presentation of his on October 19, at an Annenberg seminar.

Richmond's presentation highlighted the phenomenon of convergence, and its implications for the future of education, comparing "the future technology-triggered transformation of educational institutions" to "the 'perfect storm' that hit the music industry when several different factors intersected to disrupt the existing institutions for making, distributing, and monetizing music". It's a familiar argument -- and, to a degree, a self-interested one. After all, we're all in the business these days of promoting our own "disruptiveness".

Ah well, he evidently hit a nerve with one reader:

You have done a fabulous job of describing the inevitable. After the storm, out of choas a new order can be expected, where the cognitive structure of knowledge itself determines the patterns of learning resources. Just like the best Mentos video, the best osmosis tutorial will go viral.

Perhaps Merlot and Jorum are already opening the champagne...? If only! I've argued consistently in this blog that the very idea of learning objects is virtually worthless, without a conception of the meaning and value of educational context. Context is all in teaching and learning, context precisely defines what is understood and valued as "knowledge" by educational participants (or to use an uglier term, the "stakeholders"). It is always going to be easier to transfer learning designs than learning objects (however "granular") within and across different educational contexts. The idea of the "killer osmosis tutorial" is a phantom, although recent UK work on threshold concepts in education holds promise.

I was more interested in the pictorial models Richmond produced to convey his sense of the changing roles of educator and student. Yet, to me, these too seemed lacking in certain key respects. Prima facie, I dispute the pedagogical analogy that his proferred models appear to draw between educator/producer, and student/consumer. Students are "knowledge producers", too -- and were such long before the digital revolution. The educational dynamic in the Western tradition has never been a simplistic process of one-way transmission (what of Socratic dialogue?). And what of the context (social, geographical, cultural, economic) in which the interaction takes place?

I don't subscribe to a purely utopian vision of disruptive technologies, that is, Richmond's "perfect storm." Arguably, it is the digital age itself, with its associated "knowledge management systems", "digital repositories", "virtual learning environments" et. al. that commodifes and objectifies knowledge like never before, and which continually creates new skills barriers and monetary barriers to educational participation.

To me at least, the notion of interacting phenomena implies complexity. It implies unexpected consequences arising from a set of interacting variables, unfolding over time. Time is a crucial element for the development of an educational dynamic -- a dynamic that is not static, but which necessarily contains the potential for flux and change. A dynamic that contains the potential for development -- the teacher's development, as well as the learners'. I'd have liked to see this aspect acknowledged and developed.

An approach more deeply informed by educational theory and the dynamics of knowledge construction in organisations, such as Activity Theory, would have the capability to deliver far more powerful descriptive and predictive educational models for the digital age.

Are We There Yet?: Thoughts on the JISC-CETIS PLE Event

catherine — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:46:45 -0500

So, the PLE bit of the JISC's e-learning programme has nearly finished its reference model work.

I hope this doesn't mean that it's already too late to respond to some of the issues raised, and hopefully, to contribute to the direction it takes. Regular readers of my blog will know I'm not entirely happy with the PLE concept as it seems to be developing -- all the more reason for me to engage.

The Discussion notes from the JISC/CETIS PLE Event raise four key issues.

To try and focus my discussion, I'll restrict comments to the first three of these.

...There were opposing views on current institutional systems

Ie., we can't agree on whether existing systems enhance or detract from learning. Good. This debate is important, because it focuses on pedagogy and how best to support learner engagement - ground-up, first-principles stuff. May it flourish. But we've been sidetracked! Instead of discussing the benefits and constraints of existing support systems, there appears to be an emerging consensus that VLEs are Just Not Good, Mmmmkaaaaay. Instead, there's a battle going on between those for whom the PLE is really a VLE in sheep's clothing, versus those who believe the PLE is its antithesis.

Wait, wait! We're not there yet! Have we rigorously evaluated institutional VLE use? Is there a robust, evidence-based picture of VLE affordances and constraints? Where is the data? If data exists, does it go beyond the most basic, attitudinal stuff? What about cultural differences within the student body, what about learning styles -- how do these impact on VLE use over (say) a 5 year period? Does the size and funding status of an institution impact on VLE usage? We need to come back to the educational questions... isn't that what's driving this?

...There was some concern that the introduction of PLEs would be highly disruptive...

Hang on, surely we can't already be at the implementation stage? PLEs are very far from being just a management / process issue. At a deeper level, the nature of the relationship between IT and organisational change is itself disputed.

...There was an acknowledgement that the Web 2.0 tools and services ... would be an inevitable component of education in the future ... [Students] will arrive at college or university with considerable experience of these tools .... Failure to utilise [them] would alienate students and institutions would risk becoming technology ghettoes...
So now we're supposed to do PLEs "because they're inevitable" and because, without them, we can't "engage" students.

I particularly mistrust the discourse of inevitability, in relation to technology adoption, because it is so easily manipulated to a particular agenda. Talking about inevitability creates a sense of urgency. It generates social pressure. It becomes self-fulfilling. If we can get everybody to agree that PLEs are inevitable, they will become so. The interesting and generally neglected aspect of technology adoption, though, is complexity. Technologies generate unanticipated affordances and behaviours. We can't at this stage predict what effects adoption of a PLE might have on education, social context, or institutional processes. Or the way an institution sits in relation to other institutions, or the way that it affects (and is affected by) the broader socio-cultural context. At ALT-C, I heard way too many tired generalisations about the current generation of students, and their supposed level of familiarity with this or that device (Which students? In what institution? In what region?). Please, let's not reinforce this empty kind of talk.

The issues I've raised here are not cool, they're not fashionable, and they don't require new buzzwords... This is an a priori problem, because the role of organisations like the JISC and CETIS is precisely to facilitate "the new". Promoting innovation as a key organisational value - and method - has strong implications for sustainability. Technological development appears to generate its own dynamic of production and obsolescence, and this is as true for JISC as it is for any development-focused company or organisation. The downside of the drive to innovate is that quality measures can become subject to the constraints imposed by overarching funding systems and project processes.

Anne Galloway said it better: It is "socially difficult" to raise these questions when one's own career (and the continued existence of whole organisations) depends on maintaining a discourse of inevitability around technology.

Faculty Development Issue: When (And How) To Introduce Faculty to Technology

markmorton — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:35:18 -0600

In October of 2005, I emailed about forty individuals who have expertise in faculty development as it pertains to instructional technologies. In my email, I asked them this question: in a workshop or training program that's designed to help instructors learn to use online technologies in ways that promote active, student-centered learning, at what point should those instructors actually be introduced to the technology? That is, should one discuss the technology before discussing the pedagogy, or should one discuss the technology after discussing the pedagogy, or should one blend together the discussions of technology and pedagogy in an iterative manner? As it turned out, there was a clear consensus among the 37 individuals who responded to my query; I discuss that consensus in the attached PDF, which comprises a synthesis of the responses as well as an appendix that includes all of the responses in their entirety. -- Mark
PS I've replaced the original PDF, which wasn't opening in all versions of Acrobat. It now should open in any version. -m

eSchool News article on educational applications of Tagging

joeclark — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 08:55:05 -0600

Though I don't think it uses the word "folksonomy" anywhere, this article in eSchool News contains -- if you can wade through the gee-whiz style -- a couple of neat ideas for application of tagging tools in the classroom. The examples are provided by K-12 educators but could easily be adapted to any instructional context.

Faculty Development

markmorton — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 11:11:06 -0500

One part of my job as Instructional Program Manager is to help faculty members develop pedagogical strategies that work effectively in an online environment. There are a number of challenges to this, and the primary one is probably the looming presence of the technology itself: that is, the complex and powerful online course management system is there in front of the instructors -- they can almost stub their toe on it -- and so when they start to think about incorporating an online component into one of their face-to-face courses, the first thing that comes into their mind is "how do I use the technology" rather than "what do I do with the technology." In other words, they are well aware that they need guidance and probably even training with regard to the nuts and bolts aspects of logging on, making online quizzes, using the online gradebook, and so on. But this focus on the technology AS technology causes them to overlook less tangible things, such as the need to develop new pedagogical approaches, and the need (and opportunity) to make online learning as active and student-centred as possible. On a day to day basis, this problem is manifested in the fact that many of our faculty mistakenly think that our unit -- The Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (LT3)-- is a kind of "technology help desk," the place that they phone when they are having a problem with a computer or with software. In short, it's lamentable that LT3 sometimes gets confused with IST (Information and Systems Technology); and sometimes we are also confused with other quite distinct units, such as Distance Education.

Another challenge with regard to faculty development is simply finding time. Instructors are busy: with teaching, with research, and with life. It's hard to convince them to devote time to a workshop, even one that's designed to help them devise learning activities that will work effectively in an online environment. The workshop I offer -- called The E-Merging Learning Workshop -- demands upwards of twenty hours from a participating instructor. He or she first spends eight or so hours completing a series of online modules; then attends a two-hour coaching session; then completes another online module that requires another few hours; and then attends one final coaching session. We've had success with this workshop in the past, because it successfully gets instructors to re-think how they use "time and space." That is, they come to see the efficacy of using the online environment to do two things. First, to use the online environment to deliver some of the course content, so that the classroom time and classroom space can be re-purposed for more interactive activities such as discussions, question and answer, field trips, lab work, and so on. Second, they come to see the value of using the online environment to have students engage with content in an active and student-centered manner: that is, they're not just reading a posted lecture, but rather are completing online activities (quizzes, simulations, role playing, discussion groups, etc) that pull them into the material, and which allow the instructor to provide them with formative feedback. (We call this instructional model, which we developed at the University of Waterloo, the T5 model -- the "T"s stand for tasks, topics, tutoring (i.e. feedback), teams, and tools). However, despite the demonstrated benefit of the New Classroom Workshop, it's sometimes hard to get faculty members to sign up for it -- due, as I was saying, to their time constraints. And sometimes it's even hard to get the faculty members who do sign up to complete all of the online modules before the first coaching session (which is ironic considering that one of the "instructional challenges" that we discuss during the workshop is how to get undergraduates to come to class prepared!). At York University, in Toronto, they offer similar faculty development program (called doTEL), except that it's ten weeks in length rather than two weeks like our New Classroom Workshop. In the upcoming weeks I'll be looking further into their approach at York -- and I'd welcome suggestions or ideas from other engaged in faculty development. Feel free to leave them here as comments, or to email me directly at markmorton@LT3.uwaterloo.ca

"Effective Use of Virtual Learning Environments" from InfoNet

StuartYeates — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 08:50:49 -0500

The good people at JISC InfoNet have a new (at least, new at least to me) introduction to the effective use of VLEs. With sections ranging from "Models of Learning & Teaching" and "Accessibility Features Within a VLE" to "Evaluating Your Practice" and "Designing for Sustainability" it all looks like cracking stuff.

Using audio files in courses

hes8 — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:49:49 -0500

It used to take equipment, software, and a technician to make an audio file which could be put on the web or played in class.

Today's technology now makes this much easier and inexpensive. It is now possible to record from a microphone, a line-in, or from a radio station directly into mp3 files, and click/drag them as needed. All without the assistance of a technician.

So now it is easy to use audio files in the classroom, or in the online portion of a course. Where should this be done?

One obvious place is when an audio (vs. text) area is of interest - e.g. music, animal calls, etc.

Another area has to do with "learning style" preferences. I prefer to read text rather than to listen to text, but I can do either. Some people prefer to listen, and some have a lot of trouble reading, but listening isn't a problem for them. Is this a reason to provide alternatives?

It is easy - but should it be done? If so, where and under what conditions? I've got questions - do you have answers?

--henry

P.S. The technology I'm using is a Pogo Products Radio Your Way LX ( http://www.pogoproducts.com/radioyourway.html ) and Audacity software for editing (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - Open Source software.) I've been very happy with these, but there are many alternatives and tradeoffs.