Last weekend I read the chapter “Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All” (Richardson, 2006). What an incredible technology! I can hardly wait to start using one with a class.
Using a textbook has always bothered me a bit. Textbooks are expensive, cumbersome, and poorly-treated by learners. As a classroom teacher, obtaining enough of them and signing them out to learners at the beginning of the semester, as well as verifying their condition upon return and then signing them back in at the end of the semester, are time-consuming processes. Many learners make it a game to ‘forget’ to bring their textbook to class. Generally, only a portion of the textbook is used. Sometimes, typos are encountered that end up confusing learners. Often, in science textbooks, examples that were once relevant become dated, or information once thought to be accurate is superseded. For all these reasons, I am not a big fan of textbooks.
Richardson has an intriguing answer for this: replace your textbook with a Wiki. What a GREAT idea! When I first started using the internet to support what I did in the classroom, my initial posting was a set of notes I made based on the course textbook. In those notes, I reduced important items to point form, supplied organizers, and provided extra, detailed explanations of concepts with which my learners tended to struggle. This methodology, however, has at least three down sides. First, I did all the work. It took a lot of time to get the notes written, proofread, and posted before we studied the topic in class. Second, I received very little feedback from my learners regarding the notes I'd posted. I’m not sure which of my learners was actually helped, or by how much. Third, I think this did little to enhance learning. Downloading, printing, and (hopefully) reading notes made by someone else doesn't tend to do much to increase one’s understanding and retention of a concept.
Most of the time, experience has shown me that the value here accrues when one makes notes for oneself. Here’s where the Wiki can help. I can split the class up and make learners responsible for creation of one section of the Wiki. They will have to work collaboratively with at least one other classmate to author their entry. This will require them to learn “how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, [negotiate] with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance, and more. In essence, students begin to teach each other.” (Richardson, 2006, p. 65). That’s fantastic - real, meaningful learning will occur!
Another tremendous benefit of creating a Wiki to support a course is the ability to tailor the Wiki to both the needs of the course and the needs of the course participants. Relevant content can be added and explained, clearly and concisely. If content authors receive feedback that one section is hard to understand, they can go back and edit the confusing section. Content can be made interesting with the incorporation of relevant and interesting examples, current events, cutting-edge research, and oddball “Did You Know?” items. Detailed examples, accompanied by annotated, step-by-step solutions, can be provided. Summative assessment items can be used to check learner understanding. Explanations can be enhanced through interconnections made with other related topics, or by the addition of enriching content. And, at the end of it all, I foresee learners taking a great deal of pride in the finished product.
An exciting project I intend to try with my senior biology classes is an assignment I have used many times before: create a poster presentation on a disease relating to one of the organ-systems we are studying. Learners generally have little trouble finding facts about the disease, including cause, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. However, posting it to an open Wiki allows them access to resources not normally available in the classroom: people who actually have the disease, as well as their family members. I think it would be amazing for a learner to have their facts verified by someone suffering from the disease, and for either (or both) the person with the disease and members of their family to share their story / stories with members of the class. This would make the coursework come alive for learners, and allow them access to a part of the world normally closed to them. This would be a wonderful opportunity for learning!
However, my enthusiasm for Wikis is tempered by two concerns I have regarding the use of this technology. First, I fear that monitoring the site for vandalism will be an onerous, time-consuming task. And, should vandals strike, I’m worried about how long the malicious content might be visible before it is fixed. My second concern is regarding plagiarism. It is far too easy for students to copy and paste content and pass it off as their own. I’m not sure I’ll have the time available to monitor this adequately. That said, I’m sure others who have preceded me in using Wikis can offer tips and advice regarding how to deal with these concerns. And, by trying it out, I’ll learn first-hand about the pitfalls and advantages!
Reference:
Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Learning from the Experts: Student Advice Regarding What to Do and What to Avoid in an Online Course
Recently, I interviewed two university graduate students to find out about their experience as online learners in their respective master's programs. What I heard from them reinforced some things I already knew, and also managed to surprise me. Their insight and candor was very much appreciated.
Some of what they had to say were things I expected to hear. For example, both interviewees agreed that online learning allowed them to do coursework when they had time available. They saw this as a much easier way to balance the competing priorities of family, work, school, friends, and self. Readings and assignments could be completed when time was available, and learning could take place in self-managed chunks.
However, one of the biggest surprises to me was that one of my interviewees felt that a stronger, more vibrant learning community was created in one of her online courses than in any face-to-face class in which she had participated previously. She had a far more powerful sense that she was working with and supported by her classmates in this course. She also felt that the discussions and interpersonal interactions in this particular online class very definitely added to the richness of her experience. She felt that, in this class, the quality and depth of discussion was enhanced by learners having the opportunity to read comments posted by other learners, reflect on the comments made, research as need and interest dictated, and then post a thoughtful response. As a result, she felt that her thinking was far deeper and more comprehensive than what had occurred in many of the face-to-face classrooms discussions in which she had participated.
Throughout their interviews, both participants identified several online practices in need of improvement. These included:
1. Avoid Templating Class Discussions
One methodology employed by instructors is to create a response form for learners to follow when crafting a discussion post. It was felt that these professors wanted to ensure that learners communicated their responses in a standard format, consistently addressing specific points. My interviewee did not find this technique helpful. Her criticism was based on two problems she noted. First, she felt that her classmates tended to write overly lengthy responses to the assigned reading. When reading the posted responses, she felt that the underlying intent of her classmates was to prove that they had read the paper, rather than provide a concise, meaningful analysis of the content of the articles. Second, she felt that having to follow a pre-determined pattern of response to an article got in the way of having an authentic conversation about the topic.
Conclusion: Do not provide a template for students to follow for their discussion posts.
2. Help Students Create Learner Groups
Both interviewees found that creation of learner groups was challenging in some of their online courses. Although it is possible for learners to pair up on their own, the fact that they often didn't know their classmates well, the challenges of meeting and communicating with others in an online environment, the lack of availability of social cues in selecting partners, and the difficult logistics of communicating with classmates sometimes living several time zones distant created difficulty for people already under studying within significant time constraints. In some classes, student pairings were created randomly by the instructor. One of my interviewees found this method was more adaptable and efficient than picking her own project partners.
Conclusion: The instructor should create student groupings, especially for the first group assignment. The option of creating their own groups can be provided after the initial group assignment.
3. Enable Email Notification
While the course is in session, there potentially are a large number of postings to Forums and / or Discussion Groups. All of this information needs to be accessed, read, processed, and responded to in a timely manner. In order for all this to happen, learners need to be aware of what information is new. Moodle handles this in a couple of ways. One method has Moodle inform a learner when they login regarding what new replies and postings have been added since the last time they logged in. This method requires the learner to login regularly to check the status of the Forums and Discussion Groups to which they belong. One of my interviewees felt a far better method was for her instructor to enable the “Email Notification” feature in Moodle. In this way, she received an email whenever a new posting was added. This allowed her, with only one click, to access and read the new posting. She found this method to be far more efficient than continually logging in to her account, as it allowed her to read new posts any time she had a few minutes available during the day: for example, at coffee break or lunch time.
Conclusion: Enable email notification of new posts to Forums and Discussion Groups.
4. Follow User Interface Best Practice Guidelines
A number of design considerations impacted both interviewees' perceptions of the usability of their Moodle sites. One interviewee in particular complained of technical concerns she encountered while using the Moodle sites provided in many of her courses: many clicks were needed to access online resources, a significant amount of time was spent waiting for screens to load when trying to view resources, the amount of time it took to download an article was sometimes longer than going to a hard copy of the course readings would have been, the difficulty of organizing files in an online environment initially proved more challenging for her than doing the same in the physical world, and she found the lack of tactile sensation and feedback when handling files, folders, and documents frustrating.
However, over time, she felt that she benefitted from learning how to organize herself better in a digital environment. She stated that she now feels much more comfortable using the computer, can find needed resources more quickly, and has improved the methods she uses to organize herself, her files, and her file folders electronically.
Conclusion: Site design should provide access to needed resources within a maximum of two clicks, links to downloads should state file type and size, and provide a link to needed supports such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, and tips and training regarding how to organize resources, files, and folders on the learner’s computer should be provided as a time-of-need support.
5. Provide Meaningful Feedback
One of my interviewees noted that the instructor can add a great deal of depth to the material covered in the course through the type of questioning used. She found that some instructors added comments to Discussion Forums like “Good job!”. She felt that comments like this, while pleasant, did little to enhance the learning environment or promote analysis or critical thinking. Some of her instructors, however, made the Discussion Groups and Forums far more interesting and valuable by asking probing, thought-provoking questions that challenged the learners to think more deeply about what they were saying, or to analyze the situations they were sharing in more depth. She also found that when her instructors shared personal experiences, or, better still, added thoughts interpreting a personal experience they were sharing, resulted in the subject matter coming alive for her. She found this much easier to understand, remember, and apply to her own situation.
Conclusion: Keep the number of discussion groups and forums offered in the course to a manageable number. Doing so allows the instructor time to provide meaningful anecdotes, feedback, and thoughtful questions to their learners.
6. Clearly Delineate Communication Expectations
One interviewee noted that, at times, she felt overwhelmed by the multiple means of communication utilized in her online course. In a traditional face-to-face course, she knew that a pre-determined time was set aside each week for her class. Once there, she would be able to focus on a single mode of delivery, discussion. The discourse was structured in a predictable way, and usually predicated on her having read an article or two to both frame and stimulate the discussion.
In contrast to this, her online courses provided multimodal delivery of content: telephone, Skype, email, Forums, Discussion Groups, in person, or through shared editing of documents stored in the cloud (e.g., Google Docs). She found this to be both daunting and overwhelming. Upon further questioning, she decided that each communication method employed in her online courses did serve a useful function:
I listened carefully to my interviewees, and have already learned a great deal from them. I plan on incorporating all of the above conclusions reached into all future online courses I design. For these insights, I am grateful, as well as deeply indebted to them both!
Some of what they had to say were things I expected to hear. For example, both interviewees agreed that online learning allowed them to do coursework when they had time available. They saw this as a much easier way to balance the competing priorities of family, work, school, friends, and self. Readings and assignments could be completed when time was available, and learning could take place in self-managed chunks.
However, one of the biggest surprises to me was that one of my interviewees felt that a stronger, more vibrant learning community was created in one of her online courses than in any face-to-face class in which she had participated previously. She had a far more powerful sense that she was working with and supported by her classmates in this course. She also felt that the discussions and interpersonal interactions in this particular online class very definitely added to the richness of her experience. She felt that, in this class, the quality and depth of discussion was enhanced by learners having the opportunity to read comments posted by other learners, reflect on the comments made, research as need and interest dictated, and then post a thoughtful response. As a result, she felt that her thinking was far deeper and more comprehensive than what had occurred in many of the face-to-face classrooms discussions in which she had participated.
Throughout their interviews, both participants identified several online practices in need of improvement. These included:
1. Avoid Templating Class Discussions
One methodology employed by instructors is to create a response form for learners to follow when crafting a discussion post. It was felt that these professors wanted to ensure that learners communicated their responses in a standard format, consistently addressing specific points. My interviewee did not find this technique helpful. Her criticism was based on two problems she noted. First, she felt that her classmates tended to write overly lengthy responses to the assigned reading. When reading the posted responses, she felt that the underlying intent of her classmates was to prove that they had read the paper, rather than provide a concise, meaningful analysis of the content of the articles. Second, she felt that having to follow a pre-determined pattern of response to an article got in the way of having an authentic conversation about the topic.
Conclusion: Do not provide a template for students to follow for their discussion posts.
2. Help Students Create Learner Groups
Both interviewees found that creation of learner groups was challenging in some of their online courses. Although it is possible for learners to pair up on their own, the fact that they often didn't know their classmates well, the challenges of meeting and communicating with others in an online environment, the lack of availability of social cues in selecting partners, and the difficult logistics of communicating with classmates sometimes living several time zones distant created difficulty for people already under studying within significant time constraints. In some classes, student pairings were created randomly by the instructor. One of my interviewees found this method was more adaptable and efficient than picking her own project partners.
Conclusion: The instructor should create student groupings, especially for the first group assignment. The option of creating their own groups can be provided after the initial group assignment.
3. Enable Email Notification
While the course is in session, there potentially are a large number of postings to Forums and / or Discussion Groups. All of this information needs to be accessed, read, processed, and responded to in a timely manner. In order for all this to happen, learners need to be aware of what information is new. Moodle handles this in a couple of ways. One method has Moodle inform a learner when they login regarding what new replies and postings have been added since the last time they logged in. This method requires the learner to login regularly to check the status of the Forums and Discussion Groups to which they belong. One of my interviewees felt a far better method was for her instructor to enable the “Email Notification” feature in Moodle. In this way, she received an email whenever a new posting was added. This allowed her, with only one click, to access and read the new posting. She found this method to be far more efficient than continually logging in to her account, as it allowed her to read new posts any time she had a few minutes available during the day: for example, at coffee break or lunch time.
Conclusion: Enable email notification of new posts to Forums and Discussion Groups.
4. Follow User Interface Best Practice Guidelines
A number of design considerations impacted both interviewees' perceptions of the usability of their Moodle sites. One interviewee in particular complained of technical concerns she encountered while using the Moodle sites provided in many of her courses: many clicks were needed to access online resources, a significant amount of time was spent waiting for screens to load when trying to view resources, the amount of time it took to download an article was sometimes longer than going to a hard copy of the course readings would have been, the difficulty of organizing files in an online environment initially proved more challenging for her than doing the same in the physical world, and she found the lack of tactile sensation and feedback when handling files, folders, and documents frustrating.
However, over time, she felt that she benefitted from learning how to organize herself better in a digital environment. She stated that she now feels much more comfortable using the computer, can find needed resources more quickly, and has improved the methods she uses to organize herself, her files, and her file folders electronically.
Conclusion: Site design should provide access to needed resources within a maximum of two clicks, links to downloads should state file type and size, and provide a link to needed supports such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, and tips and training regarding how to organize resources, files, and folders on the learner’s computer should be provided as a time-of-need support.
5. Provide Meaningful Feedback
One of my interviewees noted that the instructor can add a great deal of depth to the material covered in the course through the type of questioning used. She found that some instructors added comments to Discussion Forums like “Good job!”. She felt that comments like this, while pleasant, did little to enhance the learning environment or promote analysis or critical thinking. Some of her instructors, however, made the Discussion Groups and Forums far more interesting and valuable by asking probing, thought-provoking questions that challenged the learners to think more deeply about what they were saying, or to analyze the situations they were sharing in more depth. She also found that when her instructors shared personal experiences, or, better still, added thoughts interpreting a personal experience they were sharing, resulted in the subject matter coming alive for her. She found this much easier to understand, remember, and apply to her own situation.
Conclusion: Keep the number of discussion groups and forums offered in the course to a manageable number. Doing so allows the instructor time to provide meaningful anecdotes, feedback, and thoughtful questions to their learners.
6. Clearly Delineate Communication Expectations
One interviewee noted that, at times, she felt overwhelmed by the multiple means of communication utilized in her online course. In a traditional face-to-face course, she knew that a pre-determined time was set aside each week for her class. Once there, she would be able to focus on a single mode of delivery, discussion. The discourse was structured in a predictable way, and usually predicated on her having read an article or two to both frame and stimulate the discussion.
In contrast to this, her online courses provided multimodal delivery of content: telephone, Skype, email, Forums, Discussion Groups, in person, or through shared editing of documents stored in the cloud (e.g., Google Docs). She found this to be both daunting and overwhelming. Upon further questioning, she decided that each communication method employed in her online courses did serve a useful function:
- telephone and Skype conversations were best for talking informally, building relationships between classmates, and brainstorming ideas
- Discussion Groups and Forums were effective means of having meaningful discussions. She liked it best when she was able to read a fellow learner’s posting at her own pace, pause and reflect on what her classmate wrote, research or fact-check anything of interest, think about the topic, and then respond. This slow, measured, thoughtful way of responding, she felt, produced far richer, deeper, and more scholarly communication than did most in-class discussions in which she had been involved.
- she found email only useful for notifications, i.e., check out this website or resource, I posted this to our discussion / forum, I edited this document.
- face-to-face communication, when possible, was great for building relationships with classmates and connecting with others in her learning community. She appreciated these opportunities being made available, especially since almost all of her course participants lived within a reasonable commuting distance of one another.
- she found Google Docs a fantastic method of collaboration. She felt that co-authoring papers / projects with another learner provided real-time, instant feedback, an organic feeling of the paper growing and coming together, and no worries associated with backing up or losing data.
I listened carefully to my interviewees, and have already learned a great deal from them. I plan on incorporating all of the above conclusions reached into all future online courses I design. For these insights, I am grateful, as well as deeply indebted to them both!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Where I'm At Now
A little bit about my background...
I graduated with a B.Ed. from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Education in 1984. A science geek, I majored in Biological Sciences, and minored in Physical Sciences. Wherever I ended up teaching, I knew I'd be teaching science.
After a bit of a bumpy beginning to my teaching career, I finally settled in a county west of Edmonton. Hired at a community school for K-9 students, I taught science to all of the Grade 7, 8, and 9 students, as well as a computer option to the Grade 7 students. It is here that I first saw the tremendous potential for computer technology to engage and support learners.
Looking back, what I taught my students about computers wasn't well-matched to how they actually used them. The curriculum consisted of units on computer hardware, keyboarding, and programming in BASIC. Listening to their informal talk, I realized that most of my students used their home computers for gaming; only a few used them for schoolwork.
At about the same time, some of my colleagues and I started to use computers ourselves. We created spreadsheets to track and calculate student marks, typed and saved lessons, activities and tests to floppy disks, and played around a bit with the Apple Macintosh program HyperCard. I quickly saw how regular use of my new Macintosh Plus would save me time down the road, after I created and organized my teaching materials in digital format. This was going to be much better than storing paper copies of everything in a large filing cabinet!
Fast forward ten years, and I'm now teaching at a high school. At that time, high schools were not Macintosh friendly. I worked on my Mac at home, and brought activities and tests to school to be edited and then printed. However, the amount of time I was spending on format conversions was onerous. The Mac had to be replaced, if for no other reason than to save me time. As a result, I entered the world of the PC. About the same time, I started posting text-based notes for my students on the internet, through the Edmonton Freenet. I had no idea how quickly I would come to spend most of my work day on the internet...
Fast forward another ten years, and I'm no longer teaching in a public school setting. The first part of my transition came with a secondment to Alberta Education. I accepted a position managing digital learning resource development for the LearnAlberta.ca project, where my first task was to coordinate the posting of a series of simulated physics labs programmed in Java. A later project resulted in my managing the creation, acquisition and licensing of a number of digital learning resources used to support the teaching and learning of Biology 20 and 30. I was tremendously excited by the ability of the new media to clearly illustrate complex ideas, ranging from nerve impulse transmission to photosynthesis. How could students fail to be excited about their learning, using these fancy new resources?
The second part of my transition came with a subsequent move to Vancouver Island. I spent part of a year working at Vancouver Island University, teaching a biology course to adult students while I worked as an educational technologist.Through conversations with educational technologists, instructional designers, and instructors, as well as through experimenting with my class, I heard a lot about what online practices do and do not support student learning.
Now I'm attending the University of Victoria, enrolled in the M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction program. Here I plan on adding some evidence-based background regarding the use of online learning resources to support my teaching practice. I will be using this Blog to track my progress.
I graduated with a B.Ed. from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Education in 1984. A science geek, I majored in Biological Sciences, and minored in Physical Sciences. Wherever I ended up teaching, I knew I'd be teaching science.
After a bit of a bumpy beginning to my teaching career, I finally settled in a county west of Edmonton. Hired at a community school for K-9 students, I taught science to all of the Grade 7, 8, and 9 students, as well as a computer option to the Grade 7 students. It is here that I first saw the tremendous potential for computer technology to engage and support learners.
Looking back, what I taught my students about computers wasn't well-matched to how they actually used them. The curriculum consisted of units on computer hardware, keyboarding, and programming in BASIC. Listening to their informal talk, I realized that most of my students used their home computers for gaming; only a few used them for schoolwork.
At about the same time, some of my colleagues and I started to use computers ourselves. We created spreadsheets to track and calculate student marks, typed and saved lessons, activities and tests to floppy disks, and played around a bit with the Apple Macintosh program HyperCard. I quickly saw how regular use of my new Macintosh Plus would save me time down the road, after I created and organized my teaching materials in digital format. This was going to be much better than storing paper copies of everything in a large filing cabinet!
Fast forward ten years, and I'm now teaching at a high school. At that time, high schools were not Macintosh friendly. I worked on my Mac at home, and brought activities and tests to school to be edited and then printed. However, the amount of time I was spending on format conversions was onerous. The Mac had to be replaced, if for no other reason than to save me time. As a result, I entered the world of the PC. About the same time, I started posting text-based notes for my students on the internet, through the Edmonton Freenet. I had no idea how quickly I would come to spend most of my work day on the internet...
Fast forward another ten years, and I'm no longer teaching in a public school setting. The first part of my transition came with a secondment to Alberta Education. I accepted a position managing digital learning resource development for the LearnAlberta.ca project, where my first task was to coordinate the posting of a series of simulated physics labs programmed in Java. A later project resulted in my managing the creation, acquisition and licensing of a number of digital learning resources used to support the teaching and learning of Biology 20 and 30. I was tremendously excited by the ability of the new media to clearly illustrate complex ideas, ranging from nerve impulse transmission to photosynthesis. How could students fail to be excited about their learning, using these fancy new resources?
The second part of my transition came with a subsequent move to Vancouver Island. I spent part of a year working at Vancouver Island University, teaching a biology course to adult students while I worked as an educational technologist.Through conversations with educational technologists, instructional designers, and instructors, as well as through experimenting with my class, I heard a lot about what online practices do and do not support student learning.
Now I'm attending the University of Victoria, enrolled in the M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction program. Here I plan on adding some evidence-based background regarding the use of online learning resources to support my teaching practice. I will be using this Blog to track my progress.
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