Success for All?

My blog posts have had a dry run of late: my excuse is that I have been heavily involved for the past 6 months in preparing for the re-validation of our course (in Health and Social Care) whilst my teaching has also been halved, so less to talk about.

I think too that I am going through something of a reshuffle in terms of where I stand on technology enhanced teaching and learning. For the first time in a while I haven't submitted any conference abstracts or even booked myself a place on anything remotely techy.

Don't think for a moment that I have reached a point where I believe I know everything (as if!) or that I am bored with the whole shebang. No  - I think it is simply that my focus has necessarily been shifted to new challenges.

Another issue which I have to recognise is that when I arrived as Course Leader, hot from having delivered a distance learning programme at another institution, I was the Tech Queen in a world of paper addicted Luddites (and that was their description, not mine!).

In the past 7 years I have seen the course move to 100% e-submission of assignments; greatly improved use of the VLE; widespread use of Socrative, Poll Everywhere and Padlet to enhance lectures; lecture capture as standard; more colleagues opting for Scale Up type delivery and several modules now requiring students to submit blog posts, build websites and create video documentaries.

Of course, this wasn't all my doing: we have a digital skills strategy in the University and a project aimed at developing interactive teaching methods, which, together with considerable capital investment in the infrastructure has made a huge impact on what it is now possible to do and I am no longer needed as the pathfinder, or even, too often, as a mentor.

Students too are different now: 7 years ago my intro to digital skills sessions took place in a computer lab where I had to start by teaching students how to switch on the PC. Now they arrive on the first day with their Lenovo Yogas and iPads having already formed social bonds through our course Facebook group.

So what are my new challenges? I think primarily it is about narrowing attainment gaps: between BTEC and A level students, BME and white students, disabled students and not, the mature and the young, men and women.

I don't know if this is even possible but I know there is a huge drive to attempt it and I am really interested in the debates. Widening participation in education is a Good Thing in and of itself, but making a success of University education does require skill, dedication, focus - and I am talking here about teaching staff. It takes effort and imagination to prepare students to succeed.

On our course we have tried a number of new approaches in the past year.

One such was the Undergraduate Research Conference aimed both at developing research skills in our own students and at raising awareness in prospective students currently studying BTEC courses.

Another, was a Welcome Week activity focused on Diversity and Equality. This was based on research suggesting, amongst other things, that opening up discussions about identity and values at an early stage helped to increase students' sense of belonging. To kick start the activity, we used an Open Learn module as pre-reading then simply got students engaged in conversations about what "identity" meant to them. The discussions were fascinating, uncomfortable, moving and hugely valued by the students.

Another recent event was based on the Human Library idea, with students volunteering to be human books for others to explore different experiences.

Obviously, there isn't a silver bullet: increasing the number of BME staff, developing more of a global focus on the course, individual tutor support, more inclusive teaching practices and a review of assessment practices are all part of the recipe for success. I think you will agree we have our work cut out.

And will technology enhanced teaching and learning have a role in all of this?

On the one hand, it can be a great leveller in terms of inclusive teaching - especially simple things like posting lecture notes to the VLE, lecture capture (ok - that's not all that simple) and using Padlet and polling software in lectures. Working in Scale Up with lap tops available also can help bridge the digital divide as I can sit with students and demonstrate, hands on, how they can achieve certain tasks. But our "widening participation" students are often the least confident, the least well equipped with technology, the least proficient in English, and so trying to create a digital artefact outside of class, navigating their way around online platforms, is often the biggest challenge.

So this year I have given my final year students a number of options for the completion of their reflective digital stories that allow them to use simpler technology or familiar formats. Not the end of my love affair with technology, by any means, just a pause for reflection.

Opening the doors on peer to peer learning

A couple of weeks ago my colleague and I ran our mash-up/open-door session for first and second years on "choosing your research topic"

I term it "open door" because we literally had partition doors opened between our respective classes that run at the same time on a Monday afternoon. My colleague takes the second years for a research skills module whilst I am next door teaching the first years a general introduction to studying in HE, which is presently focused on developing a group reseach project.

We planned the session as a "world cafe" event to give students from one year an opportunity to meet as many in the other as possible. Each table had a "host", a question to be discussed and flipchart paper and pens.

The questions were:

A= What are the big issues currently in the news concerning health and social care?

B = What issues in health and social care do you think are neglected? (could benefit from more research)

C = What are the best resources to help you with your research?

D = What makes a group project/presentation really successful?

E= How does work experience help with understanding subjects studied on the course (and vice versa)

F = What are your career plans and how could your research help you achieve them? 

The event went pretty much as planned and there was a fabulous level energy in the room - LOTS of chat and laughter and the table hosts fed back using a hand held mic, to general applause.

At the end of the session we used audience response "clickers" to get some instant feedback. In general, the reaction from the students was very positive - 66% of all responses indicated that meeting other students and learning from one another were much appreciated, just 10% felt it was NOT useful.

When asked if they wanted a repeat session, the first years were 65% against and the second years 66% against. However, there were slight variations in the two iterations of the session.
In group one (76 students), which was actually quite crowded (most students preferred the earlier start time and came along depsite what their timetable said...) the feeling was more pronounced - particularly amongst the 2nd years (76% said no). In the second session, a much smaller number overall (46 students), the second years were actually more positive and 60% voted in favour of a repeat session. This second group contained a number of mature second year students who reported that they had enjoyed taking on a mentoring role with the younger students.

52% of all students said that overall the session had helped them to understand the importance of research on the course but only 20% felt they were any clearer about their actual choice of research topic. In a sense this is not that surprising as it is still very early in the term and such decisions have yet to be finalised. And for the first year students, this was the first time they had been asked to think about this question.

There were however some tangible outputs in the form of flipcharts full of research topic ideas, (which we also photographed and later posted on the VLE).

Before embarking on this session I had crowdsourced a bit of advice. One comment that really stood out from Joan Mahoney at the HEA  was to really think about what you are trying to achieve.

With hindsight, I suspect we were trying to achieve too much, too soon; asking for some volunteer mentors to help the first years think about designing their research topics might work better, whilst this could also provide a more structured experience for the 2nd year mentors, especially with better advance briefing or training.

Having now set the first year students off on developing their group research projects, I do feel that they have a better grasp of current issues and are ready to engage with them, so the "topics brainstorm" element of the open doors session was definitely helpful. The other thing I have noticed is a major increase of late in traffic on the course Facebook groups (first and second years) where students have lately been posting relevant articles, book recommendations and even guidance on how to select a research topic - including references back to the joint session we ran. Second year students have also suggested that they would welcome some joint teaching with Year 3 around research.

So nothing conclusive from the experiment, but definitely food for thought for future research teaching across all three years.

Facing Up to University II

Trust

https://www.flickr.com/photos/marilynjane/5877663279 

Some thinking I have been doing in advance of the APT conference in July "Connected Learning in an Open World".......


What makes a classroom connected and open and how do these factors change the behaviours of both teacher AND student?

For me openness has many facets. It's about being open to change, open to student centred strategies, open to students taking over the content and design, going beyond the closed environment of the traditional classroom to encompass the wider world and even encroaching on the students' and the teachers' private space and time.

Connected can mean a classroom that is connected to the internet, but also means students being connected to one another - working together to solve a problem, both in the classroom and beyond it. Connected too to the teacher in new ways - through social networks as well as email or face to face in classroom time and tutorials.

Once you start to change the teaching environment you change the way learning happens. Until very recently the traditional classroom had not changed its appearance in over a century and our traditional expectations of student behaviours match this environment - students who are attentive, facing forward, sitting in rows and following instructions. Teachers who are standing, speaking and directing. In the connected and open classroom, these boundaries, like the boundaries between classroom time and personal time, teaching space and social space, start to be eroded.

Clearly things are changing and the typical classroom is being disrupted technology. This is a visualisation submitted by a masters student at the University of the Balearic Islands in Ibiza on the impact of ITC in the classroom. This is a great video, exemplifying the notion of connectedness and openness on so many levels: the student uses You Tube to submit his assignment and he adopts a meme - the Harlem Shake - which itself symbolises both collaboration and disruption.





So yes, we think of BOYD, wifi,  technology in the classroom, the internet, flipped approaches etc, as being the disruptive elements that bring about connectedness and openness, but there's something else that makes a difference - and again we saw it in the video: seating arrangements.

In the US there has been developing a movement? known as Scale Up which is changing the shape of classrooms. There are some variations but essentially the space is dominated by large round tables seating 9 students in 3 groups of 3. Round tables are especially important because they enable the student to look at other students and not at the teacher, symbolising a less teacher dependent and more collaborative way of working.

This has an impact on how we structure teaching sessions: to make full use of this new type of space, it is necessary to rethink the curriculum and the pedagogy. As an example - when I first started to teach this module it was known as Study Skills. Students completed their main assignment by visiting the library and finding and photocopying three journal articles about a particular group of users of health or social care services, they wrote a short precis of the three articles and submitted an individual hard copy (this is just 4 years ago). Now the module is known as Research and Professional Practice: students work collaboratively in groups to research a particular group of users of services, but this time using electornic databases, websites and social media as their sources. They submit their final projects using an internet based platform such as Pinterest or Tumblr. The curriculum focus on digital citizenship and skills and instead of lectures and seminars, there are active workshops where over 100 students come together to learn, work and create.

I'd love to be able to tell you that this module is a big success and that all the students are over the moon about the new classroom . They are not. They sometimes find it hard to see the relevance of what they are doing to a career in health and social care. They find the classroom noisy and unfocussed. They find the tasks too demanding - or not demanding enough. Attendance has not improved. Grades have not improved. The workshops and the planning that goes in to them are exhausting for the teaching staff too. But we are doing something difficult here, running just one module in this way - sowing the seeds of change - in a first year that is delivered 80% traditionally - 1 lecture/1 seminar. I like what Dewey said about the familiar....

Familiarity breeds contempt, but it also breeds something like affection. We get used to the chains we wear, and we miss them when removed. ~ John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum (1902)

First year students in particular like and expect the traditional lecture and seminar format - they feel this is where and how they actually learn something. Freeing them from their familiar chains is going to take time.

SCALE UP stands for Student Centred Active Learning Environment with Upside down Pedagogies - essentially the flipped classroom approach is used with students studying learning materials at home and coming to class to participate in activities which demonstrate the theory.

In Scale UP US style - which actually originally focussed on Undergraduate Physics - students are tested, ranked and then assigned to mixed ability groups for the activities and group assignments. Each student in the three-member group also has a secific role - which alternates each week. These are generally the recorder or note taker, the investigator/experimenter and the sceptic or questioner who challenges the group's assumptions.

My institution in the past 12 months have adopted the Scale Up methodoloy and I volunteered to be one of the "early adopters" for my first year module in Study Skills.

My own classroom looks superficially like the MIT set up, but with considerably less space, which does cause some problems of noise and restricted movement. I also don't test students and place them in mixed ability groups. However, my students are provided with Mac Books. This is also a feature of more recent iterations of Scale Up, the group of three students share one lap top so that the emphasis is on shared learning and collaboration.

This contrasts with the way I used to teach the "techie" bits of my module - that is, as distinct topics, in one off sessions in a computer lab, where each student had their own pc and where their focus was still predominantly on following what the teacher was doing.

So in the Scale Up classroom, round tables are helping to provide more connectedness. Another important aspect is the wifi - which in this classroom is generally reliable and fast. This allows the students to turn their faces even further away from the teacher, and makes the classroom walls even more permeable or open to the outside world.

In my module I see this having an impact on two levels: firstly by enhancing the independent learning of the students - i.e by encouraging them to find their own answers ("Google It!!"). Secondly by supporting them to develop "digital competencies" - using effective search strategies, evaluating what they find on line, bookmarking and storing information safely, presenting information in innovative ways, using social media appropriately and developing an online identity that is congruent with their future roles as health and social care professionals.

Having a connected and open classroom has changed the form of the assessment. Last year it was classroom tests and essays about the value of social media in education. This year its a presentation of their research using social media - both as the source of information and as a presentation platform (e.g a Pinterest board about homelessness; a Tumblr blog about fostering and adoption).

So now, a funny story that almost completely undermines everything I have been saying about classroom design. In April I went to the University of Murcia on an Erasmus exchange to witness for myself some really advanced work in the use of TEL. My hosts in the Faculty of Education have an international reputation in this field.

Due to some losses in translation, I was expecting an open and connected classroom not unlike my own. I had been asked to conduct an interactive workshop on using social media for research (Pinterest) for a group of teachers in training on a module which focuses on the use of ITC in the classroom. What I found was a traditional raked lecture theatre, students who brought in a variety of devices of their own and, on that particular day - no wifi. After an initial panic, the students simply downloaded the phone app and did the exercise that way, sharing information with one another until each group was able to get on line and start on their pinboards. The teachers didn't intervene or help in any way (to be honest I had forgotten 3G and phone apps in my panic and dismay at everything going wrong). This is part of the ethos in the team that runs this programme. They told me that they used to give quite a lot of instruction to students about platforms and tools they could use; now that support is minimal. The students complain and get distressed that they can't manage these new ways of working without teacher input, but gradually they go away and get on with it. And they are proud of their achievements.

At the end of the day this is not really about technology, it is about decreasing students' dependence on the teacher as the fount of all wisdom and coming to view themselves as thinkers, creators and teachers.

So, the moral of the story is that what really makes for a great pedagogy in the open and connected classroom is not the technology, not the tables, not the wifi, not even the flipped classroom. What is most important here is TRUST - of the teacher in the student and of the student in himself.

As I reflect on my experiences home and abroad over the last year, and look forward to the reshaping of the curriculum for the next one, it is this notion of trust that I am going to try and embed into my plans. Trust isn't the same as blind faith. I know things will go wrong, but I also know that there will be something to learn. So I guess I'm going to have to trust myself on that too.

Un-learning pt 2 - #FutureEd #digilit

We are coming to the end of the main phase of my Leading Teams module. The group projects have been completed, the peer feedback uploaded, the self and tutor assement is done and I am just about to release the groups' grades.

The group projects are presented using an online tool - such as Blogger, Wordpress, Wix - and the groups have  a free choice of leader to focus on. Usually a film is selected and its main characters analysed against the main leadership theories and models. This year we had 3 Coach Carters (I banned Toy Story on the grounds that it had been done to death in previous years, I may have to subject Samuel Jackson to the same cruel fate). The Iron Lady and Twelve Angry Men cropped up again but new choices included Mean Girls, Robin Hood, Remember the Titans and The Shawshank Redemption. One group chose to focus on Lord Alan Sugar.

Each presentation is completely different from every other - colourful, interactive, full of images and even humour. Working in groups seems to make the students a little more adventurous and I get very few questions about format, style or even technical issues as they tend to find the support they need from one another.

Stage 2 is a personal reflective assignment, completed individually. At this point I get an endless stream of queries via email. This tends to make me doubt my ability to give clear guidance, so I try giving more in the form of FAQs, but that's not enough either. The levels of anxiety seem to be particularly high amongst the more able students. They find the idea of writing from a personal perspective very challenging and they want instruction about what theories to use, what structure to use, which headings to use.....

Left to their own devices some of these students seem to get lost - or as one put it in an email to me yesterday (and she wasn't intending this as a Good Thing): "this way of writing is so different, it's really making me think". .

Well, that was the idea! In fact I'd hope that by the end of three years at University, thinking would be something students would be really good at. But maybe all we have done is made them really good at passing assignments.

In the History and Future of (mostly) Higher Education MOOC, led by Cathy Davison of Duke University, we have been looking this week at the way education got made over using "scientific" methods to ensure it was able to turn farm hands into factory workers. I don't have a problem with employability as a goal for university education, just with the idea that students who don't know how to be creative, thinking indivduals are actually employable, especially as they are no longer very likely to find themselves working on the factory floor (or at least not in the UK).

This MOOC and Prof Davidson's book Now You See It, is really making me think (and I do mean that in a good way!) about how I teach and why I teach the way I do, what I believe about education and what makes me sad about it, and helping me to understand how we got to where we are in the current education system, and about maybe being part of changing it.

At the same time as I am pondering ways of getting my students to think for themselves, my daughter is training to be a primary school teacher where the aim seems to be to prevent that at all costs. Six year olds are being trained for their SATS tests by learning how to write "Experts say..." and "It is a well known fact that...." when beginning a factual sentence. Next week they will be experiencing aboriginal art by colouring in a pre-printed outline, in the colours specified by the teacher. They are not allowed to go to the toilet except in break times. A "My Favourite Story" theme week has been cancelled so the children can begin work on the text they have to memorise for their SATS test.

I could go on but I think you get the picture. There is much for students entering University to unlearn if they are to become successful, independent, life-long learners. There is also much for me to unlearn about teaching.

...........................................................................................

As a footnote, I should add that I feel really guilty about having jumped off the Rhizo14 MOOC to join FutureEd. I feel a little capricious - or maybe I'm just being rhizomatic afterall! What I do I know is that I felt totally out of my depth in the Rhizo14 Facebook group and that this Coursera MOOC has come along at exactly the right moment for me, with exactly the stuff I need to learn about.

Resources to aid engagement #digilit

I created a Prezi with some suggestions for using web based resources in and outside of the classroom: http://prezi.com/5nqhwsfqw0qi/ten-resources-to-easily-engage-students/


 

New pencil case

Image: Paula Silva on Flickr

Ah! It's that time of year - a whiff of autumn in the air mingled with late summer sunshine, hungover students arriving for their induction session.... a new pencil case used to be the order of the day, now it's a re-organised virtual learning room.

Over the summer I have had to sharpen up some of my own digital skills as I got to grips with the upgraded VLE (Desire2Learn vn 10). I have to admit to liking what I am seeing - a more intuitive user interface, better overall layout and appearance, some handy new features which allow me to highlight the essentials of each session.

The new VLE layout also complements beautifully the Scale Up or flipped classroom approach that my modules are taking this year as I can create or curate interesting content that is accessible out of class as well as plan, design and publish group learning activities that we will do in the workshops.

For my first year module, the aim is to develop digital information literacy. Where in past years I have had to start with fundamentals like "how to switch on the computer" (I kid ye not...) this time we hope to hit the ground running with an exploration of digital citizenship.

To illustrate the layout of the VLE - and as an example of a session from the module- here is a screen print of one of my new sessions on Social Media and Research:

A key element which is informing the evolving design of the module is students' response to a "Digital Skills" survey which I conducted with them as a pre-Induction activity. You can download the survey here if you are interested.

The responses tell us the sort of things students are worried about and where they already feel confident. A similar module last year attracted some criticism because students felt we were going over ground they were already familiar with. This year we have a better idea of students' capabilities and knowledge before we meet them and so have been able to tailor the module accordingly.

For example, recognising that a lot of them are already familiar with blogging and Twitter, we can now spend more time looking at online identity and using social media for research than we do in teaching them how to use email and submit assignments.

Having today met the first year students face to face for the first time, I am feeling excited about beginning the module next week despite needing to get to grips with the unfamiliar physical teaching environment and wondering how to manage sessions with such large numbers (see earlier posts about this: Enhancement and Risk Management). Designing the virtual  learning room is, by comparison, a quiet, contemplative and creative process which I have actually enjoyed over the summer. Whether the reality matches up to the dream is another matter. I'll be keeping you posted.

Finally, I have to report that the pre-induction Facebook group has been a great success this year. Over 50% of students are already members (and more have joined today since the induction workshop). Students have raised questions about everything from reading lists to bus stops, queried timetables and asked about the difference between seminars and lectures (I forget how many assumptions we make about this kind of thing) and have been holding private chats with one another about their hopes and fears.

Social networking's ability to initiate genuine - and genuinely helpful -  relationships should not to be underestimated - nor allowed to be cheapened by the horror stories about grooming and bullying we hear on the news. The success of the Facebook group really came home to me today when I realised how many faces I already knew and how friendly and at ease the group seemed with me - and perhaps more importantly with one another  - having already made those vital, virtual connections. A great start to the term - and I didn't even need a new pencil case!

#digilit #digitalidentity 2FB or not 2FB?

My relationship with Facebook is undergoing a change. I have set up a closed group for incoming first year students and we have 40 members already, with still a month to go until Induction. Also, unlike last year's experiment with a FB Page, there is quite a bit of discussion and some messaging going on which is mainly around joining and preparing for the course. We don't have any student mentors on the group as yet as we are still in the process of recruiting these for our Digital Literacy project, but I am hoping once they are on board we (tutors) can relinquish control and quietly slip away.

On a personal & professional level I also sense a change. In the last few months I have joined more professional FB groups, liked a lot of education related FB Pages and find myself sharing posts from fellow educators and techie types whose posts I find relevant and interesting - much like on Twitter.

Twitter would still be my first port of call for interesting ed tech links but it is surprising how much goodness is emerging from good old FB. Earlier this year I had considered leaving it all together but now I'm possibly more hooked than ever.

Apart from the whole student engagement advantage of having a new students' Facebook group, my aim is also to use the group in my teaching this year - in particular to kick start a debate about digital citizenship and digital identity.

A resource I am planning to use is the "This is Me" workbook  which draws on examples of profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In and asks students (or health care professionals or the retired etc) to consider the impact of their own public digital personas. It's a really useful and simple downloadable text which should work well as either a class based or homework activity.

Facing up to University

I have been working this weekend on putting together a poster for a conference at my University focusing on how I set up a Facebook Page for students transitioning into HE.

I have written elsewhere about this FBPage and its diminishing returns.I have now started to read some interesting papers exploring these issues which tend to confirm my developing hypothesis that too much tutor presence is bad for encouraging interactive student spaces.

In my poster I contrast 3 different scenarios:

Case Study 1:
Description: Open student led Facebook Group set up by 2nd year Student Mentors for incoming 1st year. Group is now into its second year. 93 students have joined and over 50% of these are regularly  active. Some involvement also by student mentors and other final year students. No tutors involved.
Aim: originally set up as a space where prospective students could meet prior to Induction.  No tutor involvement.
Method: students initially find Facebook page via Induction Website; later  on are added by friends
Outcomes:
Posts are grouped broadly as follows (in order of number in category)
Requests for information: Hi can someone from Group 6 message me when we are meeting?
Requests for support with learning and assessment: is anyone doing the healthcare bill question for -- [module]? i can't find much information on it :/ x
Advice and information related to learning and assessment:   “choose a theoretical perspective like the Marxist perspective and build up your knowledge on this perspective i.e. how the perspective has changed over time and relate it to health and illness in general, adding in other perspectives like phenomenology, social construction, etc to back up the points you've made about Marxism …. Hope this helps xx
Expressions of  emotion: So struggling!! …. I'm so confused on this assignment xx …..
Congratulations/encouragement: Okay everyone, so our results are out tomorrow so a VERY GOOD LUCK EVERYONE :D
Criticisms of staff: no word of a lie three emails and not one has been replied to, it's a joke!
Social arrangements: HUGE night at Gatecrasher on weds…also, it's my 21st birthday that night! be cool if you came :)

These exchanges link to Garrison’s (2009)  Community of Inquiry Dimensions: Social Presence, Cognitive Presence and Teaching Presence. Rambe (2012) observes that self directed online groups present a “student regulated space” which subverts the normal hierarchy and power relations of educational establishments, giving a platform for complaint but also allowing shyer students a voice and permitting them to take on a teaching role.

Case Study 2: 

Closed Facebook Group set up in Term 1 by Social Work tutors in response to student requests. Currently has 50 members (about 1/3 of the student body). The posts are largely Tutor-led though one particularly active student (who is a student “social media ambassador” also dominates). Very little interaction between students so this functions more as a notice board. Staff concerns about privacy have led them to set up second accounts, official identities with which to manage this group. Lack of participation by majority of student body is possibly due to dominance of tutors.

Case Study 3:

VLE discussion Boards

Level 1 activity: Research a topic related to the module and post a link/commentary on Discussion Board. Add a comment in response to another student’s post. 80% of students did the first part of this successfully but very few (2-3%) completed the second part. Tutor responded to every post. 

Level 3 activity(Health & Social Care): work in small groups to develop a presentation. Use a closed Group Discussion Space in the Learning Room to organise and discuss progress. All students participated in this and there was good evidence of interaction amongst them. Tutor could see the group discussions but did not participate.

Level 3 activity (Social Work): take a personality quiz and work out your “type”. Post results in Discussion Board and add commentary. Comment on another student’s post. 50% of students participated and 70% of those also completed part 2. Tutor did not respond to posts.

Ke (2013) observes that frequent posting by instructors leads to shorter discussions and does not encourage student posts. He goes on to recommend interaction arrangements that prioritise student to student contact because these  lead to more elaborative and knowledge constructive interactions. Structure and leadership are needed to create deeper learning but this can be provided by students - not solely by instructors. Follows Majeski and Stover 2007 in asserting that deep learning is highly collaborative and interactive.

References:

Chelliah, J. Clarke, E (2011),"Collaborative teaching and learning: overcoming the digital divide?", On the Horizon, Vol. 19 Iss: 4 pp. 276 - 285

Ke, F (2013) Online interaction arrangements on quality of online interactions performed by diverse learners across disciplines. The Internet and Higher Education, Volume 16, Pages 14–22

Garrison, D. R. (2009). Communities of inquiry in online learning: Social, teaching and cognitive presence. In C. Howard et al. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distance and online learning (2nd ed., pp. 352-355). Hershey, PA: IGI Globa

Poutanen, P. Parviainen, O. Åberg, L (2011),"Conditions for self-organizing and creativity in blended learning environments", On the Horizon, Vol. 19 Iss: 4 pp. 286 - 296

Rambe, P. “Constructive Disruptions for Effective Collaborative Learning: Navigating the Affordances of Social Media for Meaningful Engagement” The Electronic Journal of e-Learning Volume 10 Issue 1 2012, (pp132-146)

Dystopia now

Blade Runner cityscape

On the EDCMOOC this week readings and videos consider utopian and dystopian views of technology.
Generally I have considered myself in the utopian camp .... for the last 4 years I have been waxing lyrical about Twitter and my PLN; I have spent the last couple of years advocating the use of wikis, Facebook and blogs to my students as a way of collaborating, connecting, learning and engaging. However this week I have been sensitive to some of the down sides.... 250000 Twitter accounts hacked.....loud personal conversations on mobile phones on the bus.... a teenager's relationship suddenly thrown off course by the injudicious posting of a photograph on Facebook..... The Life Scientific on Radio 4 discussing the use of robots in combat ...

I haven't come to any conclusions but this heightened awareness is interesting and I will no doubt be exploring it more as the mooc progresses.

The more pressing dystopian vision for me concerns the future of teaching in higher education. Again I tend to be of a fairly cheery and optimistic outlook, but in a week when - over on OLDSMOOC - I have been looking at the art and science of learning design, I came face to face in a recent meeting with the real issues that shape how education is delivered (and I realise even that phrase has contentious and dystopian overtones). This consisted of a a conversation that centred not on pedagogical principles, nor even on what learners need, but how to make optimum use of classrooms and reduce staff input whilst making the KIS look good. And the message that it is not for the teaching staff to determine how best they can deliver their subjects but that this will be dictated by senior management. Grainne Conole's 7 C's of Learning Design need expanding to include an eighth - Constraints.

But to end on a positive note..... I teach a module for final year social work students which requires them to develop an online presentation of  a group project. The first year I ran this, blogs and Facebook were the tools most chose. Last year I introduced the group to wikis which was a modest success.

Last week in a classroom exploration of possible topics and platforms for this year's set of projects, one group proposed a complex but exciting way of working. Each group member is to maintain an individual blog  applying the main theories and concepts of the module to their chosen case study (Barack Obama in this case) as well as reflections on the group process; a group Twitter account is to be set up so that each member can Tweet links to the relevant posts in their blogs  and indeed to other "curated" resources - as a way of developing an aggregated resource on the topic of leadership. Frankly, if I had suggested this as a modus operandi I would have had a revolt on my hands, but watching and listening as the group developed their plan - even with some clear digital native/immigrant divide in evidence - was very exciting for me. I will be eagerly anticipating the outcome!

#oldsmooc #digilit still a bit misty

Image: Jane Challinor

I can't believe this is only the end of week 2. I feel as if I have been at it for weeks already. Spent the whole weekend grappling with force maps and personas and clearly haven't really got the hang of it.

I could see how if the force map were to be generated by a design team and involve users, a rich picture of the context could well emerge. But I feel all I have done is drawn a picture of what I already knew and reconfirmed my own beliefs.

So my sense is that I am not really doing this properly.... the discussion forums and reading others' scenarios highlights similar concerns, so that is a relief.

_____________________________________________________________

In other news... some synchronicity. I attended the VLE Steering group at my University this week and the discussion was all about teaching digital literacy skills to staff, the advent of MOOCs and setting up an interest group to look at distance learning options. I got so excited I nearly fell off my chair!

This morning, en route to my office, a colleague stopped me to tell me with great enthusiasm that she was setting up wikis for her PG students as collaborative and reflective spaces and was using a "how to do wikis" wiki I had designed a year ago.

Other things I have enjoyed this week: Helen Crump sharing her dissertation with me about academic staff and Twitter (excellent!);reading Dave Cormier on Rhizomatic Learning; joining the FB groups for this and the edcmooc;discussing the MOOC with my Spanish tutor, (on Skype).

Helen's work articulated for me the different attitudes of staff towards social media and helped me write another persona.

In Dave Cormier I found reassurance about my lack of engagement with the context mapping. Too neat for my head possibly?:

The rhizome is, in a manner of speaking, a kind of network. It’s just a very messy, unpredictable network that isn’t bounded and grows and spreads in strange ways. As a model for knowledge, our computer idea of networks, all tidy dots connected to tidy lines, gives us a false sense of completeness.

The Facebook groups and Twitter streams for the moocs have that organic, serendipitous, rhizomatic, nomadic feel to them that makes me feel at home. Lots of links (hyper and personal!) to be harvested here.

My Spanish learning journey is deeply nomadic (to quote Cormier again)

The nomads make decisions for themselves. They gather what they need for their own path.

I have attended f2f classes, listened to teach yourself CDs, read grammar texts - but what I do now is pay a teacher to talk with me (about anything...)  so I can listen to her and she can listen to me as I practise. I also read lots of novels and articles and tweets in Spanish, listen to podcasts, and somehow just get the feel of the language. On Monday night I was frankly dreading my session as I was exhausted from work, the mooc experience and the gym, but in fact it was the best I have had - flowing and fun. Maybe because I was tired and not too inhibited.... the point is, I have been on this Spanish learning journey for 8 years, gathering what I need, online and off, to the point where I am beginning to feel pleasure and at-home-ness in the expression and understanding of the language.

I don't know how to teach others how to be learning nomads. Maybe that's not the point. Maybe I just need to get out of their way and let them "become".

#oldsmooc #digilit the skies are clearing

image: jane challinor (Sky over the Trent)

Decided to organise myself a bit and put links to those clouds (or pages) that I NEED altogether on my learning journal page - creating my own PLE within the MOOC!

Some interesting ideas for developing a design through exploring context, using scenarios and personas. Today onto mapping tools. I think this is a useful way to articulate what I have had in my head for a few years now and should hopefully help me to design something that could work instead of my usual "suck it and see" method.

Having a buddy really helps. Helen C developed a scenario for a mature student and I did one for a "traditional one". Despite never having met or even really discussed my course, her scenario was uncannily accurate. The mature student she described is definitely one I recognise from my current cohort!

Some other thoughts about context - the staff side of things. Within the course team I think I am one of only three members of staff who have a FB account. Two of us are on Twitter. None of these uses these sm platforms for anything other than social contact. One other besides me uses wikis with her students but confesses to never having used a wiki herself. None do social bookmarking or have what could be described as a (virtual) PLN.

Use of the VLE varies and the quality of design of those learning rooms which are well used  is highly inconsistent. The preferred way of organising teaching and learning is:

Lecture - notes/PPT on the VLE - seminar group discussion - individual assignment handed into school office - feedback sheet with grade and brief comments. Occasionally, group work involving Power point or an A3 poster. Rarely, VLE Discussion Board activity which is mainly student to teacher oriented with little student to student interaction.

Having discussions in the team about e-submission of assignments causes anxiety; mention of Twitter,FB or wikis for learning evokes a) terror b) moral panic c) derision d) awe

I think therefore that I need to add some new personas into my scenario because I need to recognise that without wider acceptance within the team of the need for digital information literacy, this module is not going to change things at the rate and to the extent needed to be really effective.

Working in favour of change is the team's recognition that research skills among our students are poor and levels of independent learning low. Poor academic practice is also rife and student engagement could definitely be better.

Ultimately, my dream is that a  well designed digital information literacy module should  provide support for the course as a whole.

Student engagement and social media

Not got a lot to post this week, back to work on Monday so I may get back into the swing of things then. In the meantime - here are some thoughts on the continuing FB group/page experience

Latest reading: http://www.academia.edu/394232/Social_Networking_and_Education_Using_Facebook_as_an_Edusocial_Space 
In the Pamela Pollara article above it was very evident that not all mentors (staff) were fully engaged in the FB group and this had an impact on students' engagement both on and off the page. Mentors worried about privacy and also felt technically incompetent. Where mentors did engage, mentor/mentee relationships were experienced as more positive.

In other news:
A third Facebook group - private, tutor administered, has been established for Social Work students. Early days so far, but level of engagement is low. So far dominated by tutor posts and one particularly media savvy student. A theme has been established around social media and their relevance to students. I suspect the SW team may also want to use this as a medium for supporting NSS uptake.

A couple of students are beginning to exchange information and a desire to work together on a particular issue. Some have also expressed an interest in University events and an external conference which has been plugged by tutors, but this is largely institution driven. I'll probably just maintain a watching brief and see how it develops. One good thing is that there are three active tutors posting, so the burden doesn't rest on just one.

Starting to think about developing a research project - based on in depth interviews with students about engagement, social media and the VLE. With two years of FB student group, 93 students, and a current cohort of 78 first years on the FB page there is a good sized population that should yield useful data.

First though I need to get on with some reading. Here are some articles saved to my "pocket" for reading later:

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet28/irwin.html
http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no4/english_1208.htm
http://www.eurodl.org/?article=334

Freedom to Learn

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesawyer/

In trying to develop further my thinking about the whole VLE vs Facebook student engagement debate, I have been revisiting learning theory. Donald Clark's Plan B blog has been a godsend in this respect as he has helpfully been providing a quick overview of some of the most respected ones (as well as offering a critique of the downright disreputable -see the one on Bandler/NLP for example!).

Using a social medium such as Facebook maybe fits best with a social constructivist view of learning  - especially in the student run group where students are learning from one another how to negotiate the course and their assessments. Of course there is nothing to stop it being used in a more traditional way - in the banking mode coined by Freire  - where the tutor simply makes deposits and expects students to absorb what has been posted for later "withdrawal" in assignments. Perhaps this has been the problem with a FB Page which is really designed for broadcast rather than interaction.

My experience of the Study Support Page has been diminishing returns - initial high interest in the page, gradual waning of activity (readership) as evidenced by the regular stats emailed to me by Facebook, but at the same time increased membership of the student only (closed) group and activity in the VLE Discussion Forums. For me this parallels the process of engaging fairly remotely with the pre-enrolment student body, supporting their safe arrival in Induction Week, and gradually transferring activity over to the VLE where the "real" work is now to be done.

Over on Don't Waste Your Time, David Hopkins asks what etiquette had been taught to my students, and how clear was it what they were mean to DO on the FB page. I think this is a legitimate question.

What I could have done is set up a CLOSED GROUP for the pre-induction activity and continued to use that as the main platform for discussions, in place of the VLE. I could also have taught students about privacy options to reassure those who are nervous of social networking and trained the staff team to be able to post and interact effectively. If this in turn were linked to research on the use of social media in health and social care organisations, this page could then have a clearer purpose, and possibly greater engagement. So with this in mind, a Social Work colleague and I are now thinking of setting up just such a closed group for final year Social Work students.

[A recent book  Social Work in a Digital Society (Transforming Social Work Practice) by Sue Watling and Jim Rogers attempts to put use of social media in Social Work education into context and usefully discusses privacy, cyber bullying and the like. I also liked this project http://storify.com/Akali65/combining-facebook-and-enquiry-based-blended-learn  which sets out directly to address these issues.]

The problem is that most students still expect a lecture and timetable constraints, delivery models and the emphasis on research led teaching - all point to this expectation too.

This is evident in this little story I came across on Twitter last week:
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/students-prefer-good-lectures-over-the-latest-technology-in-class.aspx

On the face of it, the fact that students like lectures is music to the ears of lecturers.On the other hand, is this good news?

Students are old school – they want lectures. They want to listen to a professor who’s engaging, who’s intellectually stimulating and who delivers the content to them [my emphasis]

Contrast this with Illich - here's Donald Clark's useful summary:

It [schooling] is all based on an illusion, he claims, the illusion that most learning is the result of teaching. Most people acquire most of their knowledge outside of school. Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Most learning is, in fact, a by-product of some other activity defined as work or leisure.

This feels right to me - it certainly reflects a lot of my "mature" learning experiences. I learnt to be a counsellor mainly by practising the skill and having professional supervision. I learnt Spanish mainly by teaching myself in my spare time, reading lots of novels  and having lots and lots of conversations with Spanish people on holiday, on Twitter, whilst playing Angry Words, and on Skype.

I also learned how to use social media by doing it, in a supportive community of friends and through the generosity of those who were prepared to share their experience through blogs, tweets, YouTube videos, SlideShare and webinars. And I go on learning by sharing my journey and listening to the feedback and reading and asking stupid questions.

More from Illich caught my eye this morning, (I have now progressed to reading the original text which can be found here.)

He talks about the madness of wasting educational resources on those citizens who "have outgrown the extraordinary learning capacity of their first four years and have not arrived at the height of their self-motivated learning"

Whilst I would not entirely agree with this, it does remind me that the difficulty of the task of facilitating learning in undergraduate classes is in part to do with the habits of dependence induced by "schooling" and in part to do with lack of maturity. Perhaps I am inclined to immerse myself in informal educational experiences because I have simply reached an age where I am ready to do so? And maybe, the formalities of teaching in traditional school and University environments provided me with a thirst for knowledge and a life long habit of learning.

Student engagement - differences between the VLE and facebook

Pink Floyd: The Wall

A colleague and I are currently thinking about a conference paper on student engagement and the amazing success we have had in using the Discussion Boards on the VLE.

In sharp contrast to our "official" module Facebook Page, two recent exercises involving use of the Discussion Board have attracted a large number of posts.

In the first week, a discussion about reading logs had responses from 73 unique respondents. Very few though added any comments in response to other students.

The second discussion forum, on the subject of finding journal articles had 33 unique respondents with again only one or two responding to another student's post.

Over on my colleague's Module Learning Room, a mandatory discussion board activity set in lieu of a cancelled seminar provoked around 100 responses. (This was the same cohort of students as those completing my module). Student interaction was at much the same level as in my Learning Room - i.e.  just one or two examples of communication between students.

From this brief look at the current Level 1 Discussion Boards it seems that students seem to be regarding the "Discussion" Forum as in fact a place to post your homework. As such it is nonetheless very valuable for developing a collaborative (or at least shared) learning space. However passively, students are at least ABLE to learn from one another's' posts. And here, tutors can comment, encourage, correct, model and facilitate through their responses.

[One thought that strikes me is that it might be really useful to incorporate discussion board activities into tutorial groups - to maintain contact, reinforce some of the main learning and teaching activities as well as maintaining contact with students whose attendance is more patchy.]

Student to student contact seems very sparse using the official VLE platform, just as student to tutor contact seems rare on the public  Facebook Study Support Page. By contrast, students report that they do use the Facebook Student Only Group to comment, ask and answer questions and catch up socially with one another.

I don't have access to the student only group on Facebook for this year's level 1 cohort - a decision I reached after discussion with the student reps - but last year's student group has always been an open space and I am able to view their interactions. I am guessing that the interactions this year are pretty similar.

The class of 2011 has 91 members of which 50 have contributed at least once in the last 6 months.
An analysis of the main posts (that is, the original wall post and not the succeeding comments) shows that by far the biggest proportion of posts are concerned with asking straightforward fact based questions - where is x? how do I email y? what time is z? etc

The next biggest category is support based - what have I missed? how do I revise for this? what should I write? anybody got any good theories I can use (!); how do I reference this? Students respond generously to these types of request - outlining missed lectures, explaining how to find lecture notes on the VLE, sharing their own essay titles or useful texts, posting links etc. Interestingly there were a couple of instances here of  students from the year above offering advice.

Students also offer unsolicited information and advice - to watch a TV programme on a module related theme, reminders to check their timetables or results, offering text books for sale (final year students again), letting people know when lectures have been cancelled etc

Next comes emotional support and expressing emotion - this ranged from child care problems to lack of confidence in writing and fear of failure in exams. This was one of my favourites:

"can someone make me feel better by saying that they too have left it last minute like me!! :s *she says while watching Britains got talent* lol"

I found only two examples of students arranging social events using this page and only three occasions when personal criticism of a tutor was posted (on two occasions this related to not answering emails, whilst the third related to the quality and comprehensiveness of lecture notes). There was also a flurry of complaints about timetabling at the start of term which mainly focused on the late publication of timetables, inconvenient times of seminars and lectures and the lack of a "reading week".

In the main, the Facebook page, which is run by and for the students without tutor involvement, is centred on support for learning and skills development and in every case I saw, answers to problems that emerged from discussions were factually correct. In addition, the students offer one another impressive levels of support and encouragement. From the evidence of their own Facebook group, then, students are not unwilling to work and learn collaboratively.

I am left wondering therefore if there is an  unspoken etiquette at play here - a set of norms which, in attempting to use social networks for tutor:cohort interaction, we as educators are somehow transgressing?

One hypothesis about this etiquette might be that to talk to tutors on a public social network is desperately uncool for many and too much of a step into the unknown for others unused to or afraid of online socialising.

Another is that the VLE is seen as the place to give and receive WORK and that interaction with anyone other than the tutor is unnecessary - possibly even threatening. Because tutor's comments/replies to posts tend to be of the evaluative type, maybe students are nervous about offering anything which might be construed as a judgement on a peer's work. (Of course there are many excellent examples of peer assessment using Discussion Boards where this is happening - I just feel it is unlikely to emerge spontaneously in a relatively new group at least). 

Interaction on the Facebook Group site is NEVER evaluative of another's work. Indeed students are at pains to be particularly self deprecating when offering advice or support ("I'm rubbish at this, but hey, here are my thoughts for what they're worth").

I think for tutor:student and peer:peer evaluative interactions to happen, the students would need

a) a walled garden (VLE Discussion Board)

b) specific direction as to what they need to do

c) a link between this activity and assessment/grades to encourage participation

d) a clear pedagogical purpose to the activity 

I think in such instances we could get students to comply.

But if what we want is genuine peer to peer engagement and collaboration, I think maybe we had best leave them to it.The observations I have made in a year of Facebook Student group interactions suggests that they are quite capable of supporting one another's learning.

So, set up the Face Book group by all means so they can find one another and then Hey! Teacher - leave them kids alone.....

the VLE vs Facebook - what do students think?

As the first term progresses it is interesting to see how students are coping with the Virtual Learning Environment. We do a lot of handwringing here about whether or not our VLE is fit for purpose - often mainly focusing on how easy (or not) it is for academics to use.

So two weeks in to the course, what do our students think? (response rate: 62 students or 60% of those enrolled)

86% are staisfied/very satisfied with the ease with which they can find module and  assessment information
85% are saistfied/very satisfied with the way learning materials are organised
90% are satisfied/very satisfied with the module news and messages from tutors
87% are satisfied/very satisfied with the range of links to other web based resources or links to other resources within the University.

Some comments:

• I think its a great way of using technology and effective communication - its a quick and easy way of finding the modules.
• very easy to understand and really liked the layout
• I particularly like how the sessions are set out in weeks and terms as it makes it easier for me to access the specific session I am after. [NB not all Learning Rooms are set out this way]
• I like the fact that not only for this module but for every module it has the hand book, that is useful for me to keep looking at and getting my head around it
• the layout of information was a bit confusing but I'm becoming more confident the more I use it.

Difficulties include: syncing the timetable to their mobile phone using ical (most manage it OK); accessing from home; difficulty downloading some documents and some issues about navigation, given that every module is laid out in a slightly different way.

As part of my investigation into the use of Facebook in my module, I have also been getting their feedback on that too. They have completed an online survey and also responded to a blog post about Facebook in a learning context, via a short essay.

93% of those responding had a Facebook account before coming to university and they use it predominantly for keeping in touch with friends and family (85% rated this as important or very important). However, 65% felt it was also important/very important  to join the Facebook group to interact with other students on their course and over 70% felt it was important/very important to access the Facebook Study Support page run by their tutors.

85% of students responding to the survey had visited the Study Support Facebook page and of these, they expressed 85-90% satisfaction with the links, posts and resources it contains. Suggestions for improvement included posts by course reps and more interaction with other students.

In the short essays, students predominantly come down AGAINST using Facebook for learning, replicating pretty much the dominant conclusion from last year's assignment on this theme. The main reasons cited are:

1) worries about privacy and cyber bullying (reason not to have FB at all)
2) worries about getting distracted from the real work of studying
3) lack of tools to support learning
4) the fact that not everyone has or wants a FB account

On the positive side there is this quote:

"Bringing education in to something that we use day to day, I believe, encourages education."

and another 

 "Since starting university, facebook has become a learning method for me as I was introduced to the Health and Social Care study support group. This I have found very helpful as everyone from the course can comment and help each other out from something as small as the room for our next lecture to advice on our latest essay." ( I think this student is referring here to the students-only group, rather than the tutor-led Page, which singulalry lacks any student comments or posts) 

So whilst not conclusive this again provides some evidence to add to the debate about using social networking in education. Early thoughts: social media definitely add to the experience of coming to University and maybe help with early engagement, but the VLE ain't dead yet......