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Overworking the essay assignment and getting stuck in mental concrete aggregate
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| From E-Learning V |
Fig.1. Over doing the reading
I’m trying to put to bed what might be my 27th assignment: the last three have been non-OU but the same rules apply: whether tutor marked assignment, end of module assignment or an essay.
Have I ever been cut out for this?
Clearly, getting from TMAs in the 50s and a couple of EMAs in the 40s to TMAs in the 80s (and beyond) and EMAs in the 60s and 70s (though never beyond) indicates that I’ve learnt how to provide what is required … and by default, that I have also learnt something (though my brain will complicate, and bury everything that goes in so fast that it’s like putting rotten tomatoes onto the compost heap).
This is what I prefer by far: ‘writing from the hip’ I call it, or ‘jazz writing’ where a stream of consciousness, or drivel, fills the page.
I am taking a moments break from the nightshift.
This nightshift, awake at 2.00 am and writing by 2.30am has, over several years, become my default position whenever I need a three hour run at something; even the dog is asleep. I have to struggle to hear much more than a buzz in my head and either the tapping on this keyboard or scratching away of pen on paper.
Can I bring to some kind of conclusion this ‘learning journal’ in relation to writing ‘the perfect essay’?
Despite my best wishes I am NOT a strategic worker or thinker: my curiosity is too much of a pull. I do exactly what I was warned against a year ago – ‘vanishing down rabbit holes’. I am the White Rabbit and Alice combined; an intriguing reference enthrals me so off I go. If I can I will source the paper, even get the long out of print book – I may even read the thing, take notes and then pop my head of this hole and wonder what the feck I’m playing at.
An essay needs a copse, not a forest. Imagine what it is like trying to turn an forest into an essay: too much wood (far too much paper). Not simply tough to digest, but any intrinsic pleasure from the act of writing at last is diminished by my knowledge of how much I will have to leave out.
In the dead of night.
Giving up alcohol and coffee has not helped.
In every respect the alcohol was by far the easiest thing to cut back and cut out – just the conclusion to a ten year minor skirmish that ultimately was or is a medical irritant (allergic to it). Last week I managed 48 hours, or as it 36 hours without coffee. Hardly an achievement given that I was comatose, walking wounded or asleep for the duration. A mug first thing since has found me taking an afternoon siesta and still sleeping for seven + hours. I am sitting with the requisite jug of coffee now.
I’ll get to the end of this and do it justice
‘On reflection’ the couple of EMAs in the 40s I received was because having done the work, and got reasonable TMAs I blew it with this last struggle and deadlines ending up submitting the latests draft as the seconds disappeared. This time I have had months, really, months and even now I have another three days. I just want to do what I know has to be done: get a good draft finished a few days before, then do the re-read and edit. Nothing less will do and only then can I feel I’ve done all that I feel I am capable of. The truth is this does not, nor never has come naturally to me. I prefer being up on my feet doing and taking part with a team of people.
Take a nap, then, trusting to my wits and the fresh sea air, I’ll be bobbing around offshore by mid-morning taking part in some global sailing charity event.
Time to write
Fig.1 H809 EMA Mindmap (for fellow H809 / MA ODErs I’ve added a PDF version in the TMA Forum) Created using Simpleminds.
- H809 – Practice-based research in e-learning
- MA ODE – Masters in Open and Distance Education
- TMA – Tutor Marked Assignment
- PDF – PDF
Yonks ago I realised for me the best time to study was v.early in the morning. 4.00 am to breakfast isn’t unusual, 5.00 am is more typical. All it costs is an early night. This is easy too – no television. Its move from the shed to the dump is imminent.
A week ahead of schedule I find I have an EMA to complete – this’ll give me a three hour, exam like run of it. Even the dog knows not to bother me.
For those on the same path the mindmap of my H809 EMA is above.
Ask if you’re interested in a legible PDF version.
This gorse bush off density has patterns within it that I can decipher. The net result ought to come out somewhere around the 4,000 word mark too. This approach could not be more different to my earliest TMAs and EMAs three years ago – they were too often the product of what I call ‘jazz writing’ (this kind of thing), just tapping away to see where it takes you. This process used to start on scrolls of backing wallpaper taped to my bedroom wall. Now it goes onto a whiteboard first.
As always this blog is an e-portfolio: most notes, moments in student forums and references are in here.
I recommend using a blog platform in this way. You can default to ‘private’, or share with the OU community … or ‘anyone in the world’. One simple addition to this would be a ‘share with your module cohort’.
By now I have clicked through some 165 posts taggeed H809 and can refer to H809ema for those picked out for it.
One split occured – I very much wanted to explore the use of augmented reality in museum visits, but found instead a combination of necessity and logic taking me back to the H809 TMA 01 and a substantial reversioning of it. Quite coincidentally this proposed research on adherence to preventer drugs amongst moderate to severe asthmatics had me taking a very close interest on a rare visit to a hospital outpatient’s. Nasal endoscopy must look like a circus trick to the casual observer as the consultant carefully ‘lances’ my skull through the nose with a slender and flexible rod on which there is a tiny camera and light. ‘Yes, I can see the damage from surgery’ he declares (this was 33 years ago), ‘but no signs of cancer’.
There’s a relief.
An unexplained nose bleed lasting the best part of 10 weeks was put down to my good-boy adherence to a steroid nasal spray that had damaged the soft tissue. And the medical profession wonder why drug adherence can be so low? 20% to 60% 33 years on and courtesy of the OU Library I found a wholly convincing diagnosis – allergic rhinitis. The ‘paper’ runs to over 80 pages excluding references and has some 20 contributors (Bousquet, 2008). I’ll so miss access to the online library as most papers appear to cost around the £9 to download. This desire to remain attached by a digital umbilical chord to such a resource is one reason I wish to pursue yet more postgraduate studying and potentially even an academic career. I get extraordinary satisfaction browsing ‘stuff’ to feed my curiosity.
When I stop diddling around here I’ll pick off this mindmap in a strick clockwise direction from around 1 O’Clock.
Simpleminds is great as a free App. It’s taken me a couple of years to get round to paying £6 for a version that can be exported into a word file though I rather enjoy the slower, more considered ‘cut and paste’ which adds another opportunity to reflect, expand or ditch an idea.
REFERENCE
Bousquet, J, Khaltaev, N, Cruz, A, Denburg, J, Fokkens, W, Togias, A, Zuberbier, T, Baena-Cagnani, C, Canonica, G, Van Weel, C, Agache, I, Aït-Khaled, N, Bachert, C, Blaiss, M, Bonini, S, Boulet, L, Bousquet, P, Camargos, P, Carlsen, K, & Chen, Y (2008) ‘Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) 2008 Update (in collaboration with the World Health Organization, GA2LEN’, Allergy, 63, pp. 8-160, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 June 2013.
Mobile devices, mobile learners and Web 2.0
Fig 1. At World of Learning, 2012 – Video Arts offer video vignettes for mobile learning in the Tech Area
From materials and commentary prepared by John Pettit (2008)
Of course it is learning if it is on a mobile phone or any other device. Do we mean informal or formal learning? Vicarious learning or didactic? Stumbling across knowledge, or reading formerly to pass an exam? Does it matter? These devices blur the distinction between a means of educating that may eventually look dated and specific to an era.
Do we need campus based universities?
Kids can have their kicks in Ibiza then study online while holding down their first job.
Give the campus over to the retired and unemployed.
Do we need schools?
And if so, instead of being at the centre of a child’s education, perhaps they become as tangential as a visit to the leisure centre of supermarket because you are better linkedin to the educators and the content when you’re away from the place and all its distractions.
When do you ever not learn even if you don’t know it?
It depends entirely on what the device is being used for. Apps have shown how versatile we are at throwing activities and qualities at these devices. People want this stuff.
Is a laptop mobile? What about the old Apple Classic? I used to take it out into the garden on an extension cable and view it inside a cardboard box while sunbathing. Was that mobile? I can read in the bath on a Kindle and click through RSS feeds on the iPad while the Kettle boils. Might it simply feel as if all these people are following me around?
There are degress of mobility. Working in TV we carried around with us monitors to watch content back during a shoot. The thing was no more portable than a hod stacked with bricks.
When I read formal and informal learning I wonder if this equates to whether the learning is hard or easy. I have acquired knowledge in a formal setting and had a laugh, equally in an informal context without the self-motivation and will I have found informal learning very hard to do.
It is sometimes claimed that handheld digital devices allow students to learn at anytime, anywhere. A more nuanced position argues that the devices have the potential for ‘any time anywhere’ learning but that many other factors come into play.
For example, some devices may be easy to handle but have small screens that don’t allow easy reading.
Far from being hard to read the small screen is better suited to the narrow field of close vision that we have. So what if it is like looking through a letter box. If you want to concentrate why look at more?
A device can become too small. Too portable. As a video producer I have seen kit shrink so much that a device the size of a child’s shoe will generate a HD image and for $75 a day you could hire a camera that delivers 35mm quality. Making a film though with a device so small creates instability, you need some weight on your shoulder if you want to keep the image steady.
The portability and size of screen is less relevant than the affordances of the device, the fact that an iPad doesn’t support Flash, or Android is having problems with Google Apps, that is, if you are using learning materials that require specific functionality that isn’t working.
As for screen size, people may watch a blockbuster movie on a giant screen at the Odeon Leicester Square or on a Smartphone or palm-sized gaming device that is no bigger than a spectacle case; here what matters as with any movie, is the quality of the narrative, not the size of the screen.
Where a device’s portability comes into its own, as the person who recently made a phone call from the top of Everest, is the portability. Another extreme might be a cave diver with a device the plots the route for a cave system, or a glaciologists relaying pictures of a feature in a Greenland ice-sheet to colleagues thousands of miles away that informs the research.
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)
Is an apt way to express a new term being used in the Open University Business School to describe applied or practice-based learning that gets away from the ‘distance’ tag, that is to call it ‘nearness’ learning. (Fleck, 2011). I also like the idea of ‘intense but provisional,’ people’s attitudes are brand specific, with the Mac vs. PC split of computing now a split between Windows, Mac and Android (and others).
People chose brands to simplify the choices that have to be made between a plethora of devices, between Sony, Nokia, Goole and Windows, as well as between network suppliers, be that O2, Vodafone or others.
There is another way of looking at it though, if you come to see that all these devices offer the same sets of services and tools, from QWERTY keyboards, to a camera, from messaging to phone calls, to the hundreds of thousands of Apps, and in the case of the latest Windows phone … Windows software from Outlook to Docs, PPT to Excel.
Is size such an issue?
People have managed needlepoint for centuries and once painted miniatures. There is an appeal for the tiny sometimes, just as there is for the massive. In this respect the device becomes a reflection of the person’s personality, as well as the depth of their pockets, the availability of others services, from a signal to 3G (or not), even to the power to charge batteries.
Personal choice, celebration of variety, offering a smorgasbord rather than the continental breakfast.
‘That well-known random-access device consisting of ink on bound sheets of paper may still have plenty of life in it yet!’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28) expressed in 2007 is how in 2011 writers in the e-magazine Reconstruction 6.4 describe the ‘long-tail’ of the blog, that definitions have become meaningless, suggesting that the varieties of ways to do or have what we have continued to call a ‘blog’ is as varied as the ways we have over many centuries come to use paper.
Drawing on a paper written in 2007 on research presumably undertaken a couple of years previously, it strikes me that ‘the world has moved on’, to say the least – though not enough. This exercise is looking at the extraordinary capabilities and uses for a device that in 2011 can offer somewhat more than was possible four years ago. This doesn’t mean to say we have the things.
From my own perspective I came into the MAODE (this time round) with an eight year old iBook that had trouble with some software, things as simple as PDFs and the latest versions of Flash as I was unable to upgrade the operating system. Working from a smallish screen I found myself printing off too. For the second module I had access to a better laptop and plugged it into a good-sized screen that allowed me to see a page of A4 at a time or to swivel the screen and have two windows open side by side. During the course of my third module (this one) I found myself without a particular device, but with access to a desktop, a laptop, even an iPad (and have used a Kindle to read some 16 books). Here I found myself putting everything online, into a blog and e-portfolio so I could access whatever I wanted wherever I was (or whichever device was available), as well as having the cataloguing, aggregating, sharing affordances that this has given. Any device, however mobile, and whatever size, can tap into this content.
The problem now, isn’t simply, for me at least, is the overwhelming volume of content I have put online, which despite adopting various approaches to keep track of it, has split into a number of blogs (OU, Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr), a number of cloud galleries/warehouses in the sky (Flick, Dropbox, Kodak and Picasa Galleries, My Stuff, Pebblepad).
It is apt that I blog under the name ‘my mind bursts’, because it has, and is.
Like having a thought, or recalling some event or fact seemingly on a whim, I find I stumble across these ‘mind bursts’ quite by accident, forgetting the number of blogs, for example, that I for a period started only to abandon so that ‘serendipity’ has a role to play through the myriad of links I’ve also made. None of this has helped by finding myself with three Facebook accounts and unsure how to delete the ‘right’ one.
The attitude can only be to ride this like the web surfer of a decade ago – to run with it, rather than try and control it. You meet friends coming off a training a Liverpool Station, you do not need to know who else is on the concourse, the timetables for every train that day, week or year. To cope with the overwhelming quantity of stuff tools to filter out what matters to you at that moment is coming to matter most.
Currently I find myself repeatedly drawn to the activities of Hugo Dixon, a former Economist and FT journalist, who set up a business he called ‘Breaking Views’ to counter what he already by then perceived as a deluge of online information and the old print-based expression ‘Breaking News’; we would come to need as some pundits predicted fifteen years ago, ‘information managers’ or ‘information management systems’.
I wish I could reference the expression properly but ‘Freedom is lack of choice’ is one of my favourites; sometimes filters and parameters have their place. I enjoy using a Kindle as much for its limitations; it is something I can take to bed knowing that it’ll send me to sleep, while an iPad keeps me up all night.
REFERENCES
Fleck, J (2011) Association of MBAs Conference Video 2011
Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
The Digital Scholar : Martin Weller (Notes)
11 Sep 11
COVER TO COVER
I developed a craving a year ago to read a book from cover to cover, rather than reading papers or bits of papers. Initially I got the book in the post, then to a Kindle. And now on an iPad and iPhone too. So the last three days I’ve read Martin Weller’s new book ‘The Digital Scholar.’ Read on, or read to me on the Kindle while I took notes on the iPad.
Notes run to several pages, all rather cryptic at the moment.
If you’e doing the MAODE the other books I would recommend are:
- Diffusion of Innovations. (5th Ed 2005) Rogers.
- Educationl Psychology. (1926) Vygotsky
- Rethinking Pedagogy in a Digital Age. (2007) Beetham & Sharpe (eds)
This is one of fifty+ points I’ve noted from the book
‘This is a period of transition for scholarship, as significant as any other in its history, from the founding of universities to the establishment of peer review and the scientific method. It is also a period that holds tension and even some paradoxes: it is both business as usual and yet a time for considerable change; individual scholars are being highly innovative and yet the overall picture is one of reluctance; technology is creating new opportunities while simultaneously generating new concerns and problems’.
Weller (2011)
How to use your blog for Tutor Marked Assignments
This is my approach, it works for me.
Everything goes in here: notes from what I read or come across, sometimes so I didn’t lose track of them, course related comments I post on people’s blogs too.
A good deal of this remains hidden (private), however I will sometimes ‘expose’ notes and cryptic thoughts in case someone can make sense of it for me, or chivvy me along to construct some rounded thoughts and sentences with the stuff.
There’s some random stuff too.
Tagging matters immensely.
‘Search’ leaves it to chance, which might help you serendipitously to come across a thought or note you had, but is scrappy and can be time wasting, rather be tag happy and have a system.
Everything gets the module reference, if there is an activity reference this is added as a single word such as ‘h807activity3.4’ or some such so that it can be searched for and found with ease.
Come TMA time I revisit all the content from that block and start adding the tag, for example, ‘h807tma2’, or as I’m currently doing ‘b822tma3’.
Gathered in one search list I then go through each relevant post refining my thinking.
At some stage I may add further tags to identify arguments or to give it a chronology if that isn’t apparent. I then cut and paste to a word document.
I MAY assemble in PowerPoint simply to help shuffle ideas around.
A system?
Hardly. Each to their own. I panic like anyone else over an assignment but know the stuff is here and having done the reading and activities and having shared my thinking and had this coloured and shaped by others that I ought to be able to assemble a cogent case.
Tags are strategic, Search is more random.
I switch between the two when revisiting note
Related articles
- A Talk With Ted About Growing Up With Aspergers, Revisited (lifeandink.com)
How to use a blog to prepare an asignment
Fig.1. The tutor at work
This is my approach, it works for me.
(At The OU they are called Tutor Marked Assignments or TMAs)
Everything goes in here: notes from what I read or come across, sometimes so I didn’t lose track of them, course related comments I post on people’s blogs too.
A good deal of this remains hidden (private), however I will sometimes ‘expose’ notes and cryptic thoughts in case someone can make sense of it for me, or chivvy me along to construct some rounded thoughts and sentences with the stuff.
There’s some random stuff too.
Tagging matters immensely.
‘Search’ leaves it to chance, which might help you serendipitously to come across a thought or note you had, but is scrappy and can be time wasting, rather be tag happy and have a system.
Everything gets the module reference, if there is an activity reference this is added as a single word such as ‘h807activity3.4’ or some such so that it can be searched for and found with ease.
Come TMA time I revisit all the content from that block and start adding the tag, for example, ‘h807tma2’, or as I’m currently doing ‘b822tma3’.
Gathered in one search list I then go through each relevant post refining my thinking.
At some stage I may add further tags to identify arguments or to give it a chronology if that isn’t apparent. I then cut and paste to a word document.
I MAY assemble in PowerPoint simply to help shuffle ideas around.
A system?
Hardly. Each to their own. I panic like anyone else over an assignment but know the stuff is here and having done the reading and activities and having shared my thinking and had this coloured and shaped by others that I ought to be able to assemble a cogent case.
Tags are strategic, search is more random.
I switch between the two when revisiting notes to keep the ideas flowing.
Images / Visualisation
REF: Gray (2011) H800-11B / EMA Tutor Group Forum / h800 overview framework Janet Gray Post 1. 26 August 2011, 16:01h800 overview framework (accessed 6SEPT2011)
At Learning Technologies, 2011.
Kerfoot,B,P (2008) Interactive Spaced-Education to Teach the Physical Examination: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Armstrong,E.G., O’Sullivan,P.M., JOURNAL OF GENERAL INTERNAL MEDICINE Volume 23, Number 7 Harvard Medical International.
| 1. Spore | 2. External hypha | 3. Intracellular arbuscule | 4. Vesicle |
| 5. Intercellular coiled hyphae | 6. Mycelial strand | 7. Sheath | 8. Hartigs net |
|
9. Intercellular net with penetrating hyphae
|
10. more or less loose sheath | ||
Metaphor used by Yrjo Engestrom, illustration from http://www.microbiologyprocedure.com/mycorrhizae/ectomycorrhizae.html
From Amazon.co.uk Kindle
History of Kings and Queens
Davies, N. (1999, 2000) The Isles. A History. MacMillan.
Engeström, Y. (2007). From communities of practice to mycorrhizae. In J. Hughes, N. Jewson & L. Unwin (Eds.), Communities of practice: Critical perspectives. London: Routledge
Illustration by Vernon (2011) Ideas expressed by Elliot (2008). Elliott, B. (2008)
Assessment 2.0: Modernising Assessment in the Age of Web 2.0 [online], Scottish Qualifications Authority; available from http://www.scribd.com/doc/461041/Assessment-20 (Accessed 1 February 2010).
Randy Pausch Last Lecture: (2007)
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Carnegie Mellon University. Peer Feedback. Three people per team, Five Projects. Fifteen data points making it statistically valid. A bar chart on how easy you are to work with. Hard feedback to ignore. Last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals, this included the importance of collaborating in a team effort when undertaking a project.
From first known use Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives. Management Review, Volume 70, Issue 11(AMA FORUM), pp. 35-36.
From Spaced-Ed (Accessed 8 September 2011)
Technology Enhanced as taught by the Open University Masters in Open & Distance Education (MAODE)
End-of-module assessment question (EMA)
Length: 6,000 words. Cut-off date 26 September 2011
- consolidate and reflect on your experience this year
- pursue your interests within a specified framework.
EMA, Part A. Digital technologies: experience and evidence (about 2,500 words)
Choose two digital technologies that you have used this year as a learner.
If you have doubts about whether your choice of technologies is appropriate, please consult your tutor.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For each technology that you choose, explain how it has been used for teaching and learning, and what you judge to be the strengths and weaknesses of such use(s) in one or more contexts that you specify.
- FORUMS
- MOBILE
Support your arguments by providing evidence from all of the following four sources:
- Your own experience of the technology within and/or outside H800 and, if possible, the personal experience of other learners – for example, H800 students, or others outside H800. Include examples and, where appropriate, brief quotations to illustrate your own and others’ experiences.
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings in the H800 materials – the web pages on the website and/or materials (readings, blogs, YouTube, webcasts and so on) linked from the site.
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research that you find outside the H800 website – through your own searching and/or through sharing with other learners inside and/or outside H800.
- Brief numerical evidence – for example, of the kind that is explored in the first paper in TMA04 – from within or from outside H800. Use it to back up your arguments about one or both of your technologies.
INTRODUCTION
‘The first decade of the 21st century is already on the wane and we stand at an interesting point as regards the use of technology to support and enhance learning and teaching. The fact that we still refer to much of this enhancement as e.learning (and still disagree about what the term actually means) signals that the relationship between technology and learning is not as yet an entirely comfortable one.’ (REFERENCE JISC 2007 (Introduction)
- High-performance computing and advanced networking are ubiquitous
- Internet has matured
- Becoming a viable educational platform
- Have cell phones
Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning June 24, 2008
FORUMS online may be synchronous or asynchronous, that is experienced in real time or not. They may, particularly when synchronous, be voice-led whilst asynchronicity lends itself to text. Increased speeds, experience, improving, competing and complementary technologies has produced and is producing a plethora of choices regarding the affordances and popularity of particular forums and even puts into question the way a virtual learning environment competes and complements a personal learning environment.
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
MOBILE online learning differentiates between static systems such as a desktop computers, whether at home, the workplace or educational institution, and devices, through increasing miniturisation have become more and more portable, from laptops, to increasingly ‘smart’ mobile phones and most recently tablets, touchscreen computers of A5 size or less. To be mobile implies away from a desk, unhindered by cables, with a device that is portable, even pocket portable rather than in a brief-case or shoulder carrier.
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
ONE
FORUMS online became possible as the technology, connections and broadening availability and use of computers allowed institutions to attempt to recreate what would occur face-to-face in terms of formal tutorials or peer-group gatherings. There has always been a dichotomy between institutional offerings and what students did themselves, on the one hand building on old practices in the new world of what was still called ‘new media’ a decade ago whilst developing innovative and new ways of doing things. At the forefront of developing computer-based learning the OU through the Institute of Educational Technology and Knowledge Media Institute began to offer ways for students and educators to meet and share online in the late 1990s, signed up for H801, the original Masters in Open and Distance Learning, I have first hand experience of the ListServe forum that in essence aggregated short messages in a feed that was ostensibly asynchronous unless people happened to be online at the same time (in which case we’d debunk to Microsoft messaging). A decade later the advance of computing, the increasingly seamless interaction online, the development of intuitive, playful, reliable tools with broadband speeds and robust devices has seen increasing successful recreation of the affordances of live, face-to-face tutorials, seminars, lectures and conferences from the intimate to the arena in scale, while also new ways of doing things are constantly being developed, trialed, used, improved, drop in or out of favour and funding. Crucially, longitutdinal research has been vital to understand and track the trends, but also we have moved from a decade in the 1990s where ‘change’ was becoming a corporate way of life, to an online experience today that is fluid and not just invasive but part of many people’s everyday lives – all day, wherever they maybe.
- Personal experiences of others in H800
Week 12 Activity 1. Interpretting John Naughton. In which Joanne Pratt tries again after reading Amanda’s blog, then offers examples of a lexigraphic explanation of the minutiea of John Naughton’s persuasive writing style. (2 May, 21:12 (accessed 7 May 2011) Identified, shared with further notes in my blog (Ecphonesis! Lots of work to do here – fun times ahead. 7 May, 06:45 In response to a fellow students H800 Week 12 blog entry)
I comment ‘This is why these conversations are so vital; it brings the exercise alive and takes you in directions the learning designers could never have imagined. My head hurts, yet there is no less a desire to understand the terms used to describe rhetoric as there is a desire to revisit quantitative and qualitative analysis, the various correlation techniques and interpretations used, in order to be able, eventually, to draw my own conclusions from Richardson’s research’. Having had
TO JANET AND JOANNE (12 May 2011)
<<For me, this is a key point relating to learner choices, ownership and boundaries. Should a learner be required to ‘open up’ their personal networks to include tutors/education institutions?>>
The idea of and value of ‘exposure’ has been debated since the early days of blogging. I could call up entries from 2001/2002. The feeling, amongst those of us who felt like blogging pioneers, was that by opening up we shared our common humanity and in many respects become less lonely souls as a result (not that I didn’t need additional companionship being happily married to my soul mate with two small children at the time!). This kind of blog is a genre in its own right amongst the thousands of genres on 120 million + blogs.
A formal forum discussion that engaged, running from the 8th to the 20th May, 67 entries, student initiate, 9 participants, over 12,000 words. (Wk 13: Activity 1c: The Learner Experience 9 May 2011, 17:48 Janet Gray Post 14 in reply to 8 ) http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=470597
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings in the H800 materials
The world of work is increasingly collaborate driven by increasingly the global and cooperative nature of business. Horizon 2011
‘Consider this medium as like talking with your fingers – half-way between spoken conversation and written discourse.’ (Hawkridge, Morgan and Jeffs, 1997, quotes in Salmon 2005) REFERENCE Salmon, G (2005) E-moderating. The Key to teaching and learning online.
What matters is engagement.
Someone may need to act as the ‘eyes & ears’ for the group until it is established. Introductions have to be made, conversations started and moved along … if anyone is rude, they should be quietly put in their place; if anyone is being like a door-mouse, they need support.
‘The essential role of the e-moderator is promoting human interaction and communication through the modelling, conveying and building of knowledge and skills’. (Salmon, 2005:4)
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings outside the H800 materials
Discussion is the key. The tutor DOES NOT need to be a subject matter expert. See my interview with Oxford Senior Lecturer Dr Zbigniew
Pelczynski.H800 51 Wk11 Why this is like talking with your fingers
FROM MY BLOG (25 April 2011)
Why I participate in some forums and not others.
- Start the ball rolling
- to get through the week’s work
- no one else has made a start.
- I may fret about covering all bases
It can be like chosing a restaurant
- You want to go where there’s some buzz already, though not so much that you feel you will never be able to join in the conversation.
- This is an asynchronous beast. If I come in late I may read every post with care before I respond, which can result in a long response.
- People should feel just as comfortable simply answering the question, ignoring others at first .. or just reading the last couple of posts and responding to them.
- I might quote them in my own group. There have been times when lifting the thread of catalyst that got them going in another group will do the same in your own.
- It is tempting to respond to someone in a DIFFERENT tutor group
- At Harvard they use as system called ‘Rotisserie’ in some asynchronous threads/forums which, like playing pass the parcel (or pass the microphone) require people to take it in turns to say something.
- It matters that activities have been designed that get people engaged without the need for a tutor all the time.
‘Structured, paced and carefully constructed e-tivities reduce the amount of e-moderator time, and impact directly on satisfactory learning outcomes, adding value to the investment in learning technologies’.(Salmon, 2002a)
(Blog 19 January 2011) My interpreation, visualised, of what life-long means from H807.
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)
(Blog 25 September 2010) Why do the Plenck 2010 forums work?
Many themes. It is your choice to join. Updates are sent to your email. You read and add, return to the parent, and comment.
They are seasoned e-educators and lucid. It is more jamming around a piano.
You have three hours in which to return to your post and edit, add or delete.
People don’t question the set up, they just get on with it. Do we write about what it is to put words onto a sheet of paper with a pen? Or do we say something?
(Blog 9 September 2010) A tutorial works best one-to-one (like therapy), face-to-face, or in a small group, say six at most, discussing in an synchronous environment.
(James Turner, Policy Director at the Sutton Trust suggested supplementary tutoring of school students one-to-one was most common, two-to-one worked even better because of the collaboratory experience. BBC Radio 4 10.00 Tuesday 7th September 2010, Accessed again 16.00 Saturday 12th September 2010)
- Numerical evidence
MOBILE
“[Mobile learning involves the] exploitation of ubiquitous handheld hardware, wireless networking and mobile telephony to facilitate, support enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning”
(www.molenet.org.uk/about)
The increasingly portable nature of computing hardware and technologies has progressed for three decades or more as the earliest efforts of mobile wordprocessing – the Microwriter, the popularisation of computing with the BBC micro-computer, then on to laptops that become ligher, smaller, faster and more robust, to palm devices such as the Psion and hand-sized PDAs, and the gradual merging of all manner of peronsonal, portable devices that carried music, organisers, phone technology and more, with MP3 players popularised by ipods, then the spread of mobile phones, in particular inexpensive communicating through text that brings us to 2011 and light, very powerful two-part keyboard and screen laptops, single part touch-screen tablets of various sizes that are becoming indistinguisable from smartphones. Uptake and support for various devices has been made possible as networks spread, the technology became faster, less expensive and widespread, and importantly a combination of content and communication made the devices increasingy appealing, powerful and personal.
- Personal experiences of others in H800:
Fig 2.1. Types and functionality of mobile devices. Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler (2005:07)
REF: Kukulska-Hulme, A. and Traxler, J (2005) Mobile Learning. A handbook for educators and trainers.
The mobile promise – “that individuals will engage in learning at times when formerly they would have been doing something else; that they will be motivated to learn partly because the devices are attractive; that the devices enable communication from places where formerly it wasn’t possible; that formal learning can mesh with existing patterns of self publishing and online participation; and that mobile devices are particularly suited to multitasking, said to be one of the strengths of the ‘millennial generation’ (McMahon & Pospisil, 2005).”
REF: MacMahon, M., Pospisil, R. (2005 pp421-431) Laptops for digital lifestyle: Millenial students and wireless mobile technologies.
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/49_McMahon%20&%20Pospisil.pdf
Attendance at Learning Technologies 2011 and subsequent use of a Sony Flip for itnerviews and surverys.
Armed with a Kindle with the Swim Drills book loaded I was poolside teaching and coaching swimmers for three hours.
For the last year I have run programmes based on drills in ‘The Swim Drills Book’ and have relied on lesson plans and sometimes laminated print outs.
Today I took the Kindle
From The Swimming Drill Book (2006:04) ‘Standing Streamline Ruben Guzman.
Never before have I found the swimmers so attentive, coming close to the side of the pool to look at the pictures.
Here is a great drill to develop streamlining
From The Swimming Drill Book (2006:06) ‘Streamline Float’ Ruben Guzman.
They start in what we call ‘Dead Swimmer’ then straighten up, arms first, then legs into the ‘streamline position.’ They then kick off, add a few strokes and continue up the pool.
They got, far quicker than my efforts to demonstrate and talk them through.
- Simple.
- The pictures say it all.
- Is this mobile learning?
- Whatever it is, this works.
- Producers
‘Our findings indicate that institutions planning to offer mobile apps should build on the existing preferences of students for social communication. Listening to audio, watching video and reading short texts if the apps are successfully to enhance the learning experience’. (Kukulska-HUlme 2011:32
Personalisation
“Learners can be active makers and shapers of their own learning. They should be supported in using technologies of their own choice where appropriate”. (JISC, 2009, p.51)
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings in the H800 materials
Mobile computing not just with laptop computers but also with cellular phones, internet-telephony, videoconferencing, screen sharing, remote collaboration technologies, and immersive graphical environments make distributed collaboration and interaction much richer and more realistic. Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning June 24, 2008 (REFERENCE wk21-22)
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28) REFERENCE Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings outside the H800 materials
Many Open University students combine work and study; consequently learning in a number of places, or on the move, becomes a habit.
Informal learning and social interactions are also increasingly recognised as important components of a person’s ‘learning life’. Academic and support staff are part of this revolution.
Mobile learning is very flexible: it can be the sole mode of delivery, a significant learning activity, or just a small part of a print-based or online course.
The key points (largely from an IET Agnes Kukulska-Hulme Report Kukulska-Hulme, 2010:10)
Mobile learning is:
- Very flexible
- Appropriate/supportive
- New
- Convenient
- Contemporary
- Practical
- Beneficial
- Has its own unique affordances/advantages
- Personal/personalised
- Spontaneous
- Immediate
- Extends access to materials not replacement technology)
- Locational
- Universal (ish)
- Leap-frog technology in Africa
- Engaging
- Expected
REFERENCE LEARNING AND TEACHING GUIDES FROM IET. MOBILE LEARNING. Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, with case studies by Anna Page.
Kukulska-Hulme (2010) says “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years’ time it may no longer be distinguishable from ‘just learning’.”
‘E’ is a fact of learning life, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (2010) is quoted thus in the JISC Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review, “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years’ time it may no longer be distinguishable from ‘just learning’.”
A distance learner’s mobile device (at the Open University) can be used as a way to:
- carry around study materials
- aces new or additional content
- build up a series of personal notes
- help make or maintain communications between different contexts
Supported by VLE 2.0 and Moodle 2.0
- organised personal learning schedules
- give feedback, opinions or answers
- get quick information or support
- communicate with other learners or tutors
The initial aim of the group is to develop applications around four key areas:
- Enhancing Open University brand and awareness
- Attracting students to new courses
- Making existing course material accessible for mobile study
- Prototyping innovative learning concepts
Woodill (2010:53) identifies seven main affordances of mobile learning:
1. Mobility
2. Ubiquity
3. Accessibility
4. Connectivity
5. Context sensitivity
6. Individuality
7. Creativity
Personalisation. user generated content. Bruns (2005) Produsers
- Numerical evidence
We agree with Kennedy et al (2008) that ‘an evidence-based understanding of students’ technological experiences is vital in informing higher education policy and practice.’ (p. 109)
(93% UK penetration by 2008, presumably more in 2011). More from Mobisite
More in Cloudworks
2% of OU students (4,000 or so) use tablets (not just iPads). 11% use SmartPhones (not just iPhones).
Smartphone Survey (http://testkitchen.colorado.edu/projects/reports/smartphone/smartphone-survey/)
Smartphone Stats, The Digital News Test Kitchen, August 2011
http://testkitchen.colorado.edu/projects/reports/smartphone/smartphone-survey
Martin Weller implies that a VLE constrains because ‘There are so many fantastic tools out there that are free and robust and easy to use.’ (WK21-22 Activity 2d VLE vs. PLE who wins? REFERENCE)
It is the combination of physically being ‘free’ to roam with a robust mobile device, as OU MBA students Lt. Col. Sean Brady put it, a ‘university in your pocket’ (REFERENCE) and a playful, personalisation and desired ‘freedom’ to do things your way at a time and place that suits you, that enables learning to take place away from the learning institution, library or desk, unfettered by a bag of books and files. Mobility and immediacy, exposure to new, or similar products and tools, fashion, peer group, nature of the subject they are studying, their ambitions, who they are, how much time they have, their kit, connection and inclinations, let alone the context of where they are going online and most importantly the means to communicate this instantly through microblogging, blogging, social networks, email and text facilitates and fuels further development, the millions of people online making development commercially viable.
Taking advantage of participation (Seely-Brown), learning on the periphery (Seely-Brown), vicarious learning (Cox) and if you can get your tongue around it ‘serendipitous learning.’ (me I think). (WK21 Activity 1c Web 2.0 Tools for learning REFERENCE) Conole (2011) invites us to use ‘metaphors for meaning making’.
- traffic light
- nurture
- swimming
- hub
- serendipity
- water-cycle
Expressed in various forms in charts from Dion Hinchcliffe.
Accessibility: Regarding the failure to turn a 4 day face-to-face course into a blended course of one day face-to-face, then online with four additional option. ‘Most of these problems seem to be rooted in bad connectivity which made communication difficult and audio discussions impossible’.
University of Derby, Online delivery of MSc Strategic management in Africa (Rachel Stern’s blog 5 March 2010)
(http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/derby/index_html1)
One in three of com 2011
10 % of all UK web traffic
100,000 in Indonesia learning English through SMS messages.
INEQUALITY
300 million fewer than male worldwide (women and mobile: a global opportunity
See issues of accessibility from H807 and H810.
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Inaugural Lecture, August 2011
‘Furthermore, since the use of a mobile device represents a new technological means of reading books, articles and news, this might have an impact on how, and how much, students read, however further research would be needed’. (2011:33)
This cover 20 benefits of mobile learning though.
‘We consider that learners who use handheld mobile devices (e.g., their phones and mp3-players) to support their learning constitute a minority at the present time. We agree that their age seems less important than their position as early adopters and instigators of change through their influence among their peers and through their networks’. (2011:19)
PART A CONCLUSION
Both Forums and Mobile
In an age when “communities are jumping across technologies” as needs and trends evolve (Wenger, 2010), educators and researchers also have to stay informed about how learners use personal technologies as members of communities that may be social, work-related or educational’.
REFERENCE
Belshaw (201) Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review 2010 Doug Belshaw, JISC infoNet
Brady, S. http://blogs.ft.com/mba-blog/2011/06/22/distance-learning-or-nearness-learning/#axzz1WbbnlExG
Bruns, A. (2005) ‘Anyone can edit’: understanding the produser. Retrieved from http;//snurb.info/index. php?q=node/s86
Guzman, R (2007) The Swim Drills Book
JISC. (2009). Effective Practice in a Digital Age: A guide to technology-enhanced learning and teaching. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2009/effectivedigital-age.aspx
Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
Kerfoot, B.P., Armstrong,E.G., O’Sullivan,P.N., (XXXXX) Interactive Spaced-Education to Teach the Physical Examination:A Randomized Controlled Trial
Rogers, E.M. (2005) Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.) New York, NY: Free Press
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Learning in a Mobile Age’ (International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 1(1), 1-12, January-March 2009)
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Students and mobile devices: choosing which dream’ (in ALT-C 2009 “In dreams begins responsibility” – choice, evidence and change, Traxler, John (Professor of Mobile Learning, University of Wolverhampton)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EMA, Part B. Digital technologies: your recommendations (about 1,250 words)
For each of the two technologies you have chosen, set out your key recommendations for other practitioners in terms of how they might use each one, making sure that you specify the context(s) you are referring to. Include some brief numerical evidence (as with Part A) to support one or more of your recommendations in Part B.
For each recommendation, indicate how confident you can be (‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low’) in the light of the evidence you have used in Part A, explaining your reasons. Conflicting evidence, for example, is likely to lead to a ‘low’ or ‘medium’ rating.
For each technology, state the areas where you consider additional research is needed into the ways in which that technology can be used.
EMA, Part C. Digital technologies: your design or specification (about 1,250 words)
For one of the technologies that you wrote about in Parts A and B:
- Design a learning activity, or create a specification for a module or training package, that uses this technology.
- Explain: the characteristics of the learners; their previous knowledge (as far as you can tell) both of the technology and of any subject matter; the context(s) in which they will be learning; and how (if at all) others will support these learners. The context does not have to be the one(s) you wrote about in Parts A or B.
- Explain any potential barriers your learners may face – including cost, accessibility for students with disabilities, issues of cultural diversity and convenience. Explain how your design or specification takes these into account.
- Set out the learning outcomes that you expect the learners to have achieved by the end of the module/package. (If you’d like guidance on what constitutes a learning outcome, please see H800’s outcomes and/or search the web.)
- Explain your reasons for your design or specification, drawing on the bullet points above and on your thinking in Parts A and B.
- Do not submit the learning material itself; instead, tell your reader what the activity consists of: you may provide a written description, sample text, screenshots, etc. You may use one of the tools introduced in Weeks 8 and 9, or another tool of your choice, to clarify your design. (If you take this route, you may insert the diagram in your main text or – cross-referenced – in the Appendix.) But you can also use text, provided that this will enable the markers to understand what you intend.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
‘The psychological conclusion demands a distribution of repetitions such that some of them should be produced at a later time, separated from the first repetition by a pause’. (Vygotsky, 1926:Location 2686)
OBJECTIVES:
The objective of the study is to investigate the efficacy and acceptability of a novel online educational methodology termed ‘interactive spaced education’ (ISE) as a method to teach the physical examination.
DESIGN:
Randomized control trial.
PARTICIPANTS:
170 second year medical students.
MEASUREMENTS:
- Spaced-education items (questions and explanations)
- Validated by two experts
- Piloted and 36 items selected for inclusion
- 6 spaced-education e-mails each week for a 6 week cycle.
- Students submitted answers to the questions online and received immediate feedback
- An online end-of program survey was administered.
Students do the training, but may still have poor recall a year later. Spacing works.
The spacing effect is the psychological finding that educational encounters that are spaced and repeated over time (spaced distribution) result in more efficient learning and improved learning retention, compared to massed distribution of the educational encounters (bolus education). (P973)
As Vygotsky expressed it 80 years previously:
‘It should also be emphasized that every person has his own customary rate of response, and that any change in this rate, either speeding it up or slowing it down, weakens the force of recall’. (Vygotsky, 1926:Location 2686)
Micro-learning is favoured over more substantial time being given to this. I can imagine many applications.
Mobile over web.
This finding is in stark contrast to the strong resistance we encountered when conducting a recent trial of web-based teaching modules among 693 medical residents and students. In this trial focusing on systems based practice competency education, trainees were expected to spend 20 minutes per week over 9 weeks completing web-based teaching modules (interactive web-pages and online narrated slide presentations). (p977)
And a finaly word from Lev Vygotsky.
‘Rhythm plays a decisive role in the learning process, unifying some of the material, conferring on it a sequential symmetry, and, finally, organizing the various elements into a unified whole’. (Vygotsky, 1926)
REFERENCE
Kerfoot, B, P (2006) SPACED EDUCATION. Interactive Spaced-Education to Teach the Physical Examination: A randomized Controlled Trial.
Vygotsky, L (1926) Educational Psychology
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EMA, Part D. Digital technologies: individual and collaborative learning (about 1,000 words)
As your conclusion to your EMA and to your work on H800, think back across your experience of H800 and give your answer to the following:
- To what extent do you find the concepts of ‘individual’ and ‘collaborative’ learning useful in understanding your experience of learning this year – whether on H800 or elsewhere?
Give brief examples to illustrate your experience, and draw on some of the debates and theories in H800 to explain your position (for example, the work of Sfard, Brown, Engeström, Wenger, Säljö). If possible, indicate how your ideas have changed since you wrote TMA01.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Week 20: TMA03 (1000 words) Jonathan Vernon (T7400886)
Part A. Digital technologies: experience and evidence
Which two technologies do you currently expect to choose, and why?
1. Forums
2. Tablets
Forums as asynchronous and near-synchronous places to listen, comment and contribute have become the online equivalent of the one-to-one, face-to-face tutorial, the face-to-face tutor group, small class, even those moments of serendipity when you meet someone in a corridor, Junior Common Room or by the water-cooler.
Mobility is just one facet of the affordances a tablet offers to the learner; the fascination is to understand how the devices are used, rather than what they were designed to do. From research, blogs and forums the experience of the ‘tablet enabled’ learner suggests that unlike almost defunct hand and palm-held devices, this format will endure.
2. Which of the two technologies (if any) have you used on H800, and which (if any) have you used outside H800?
Forums
Since their development and my being active online since 1999 and starting the MAODL in 2001.
Tablets
Through their proposed exploitation with the new OU MBA and so having a tablet for the last month to explores its educational and other values to learners and the Faculty.
3. Briefly: how has each of these two technologies been used for teaching and learning?
My experience is both as an OU student, primarily for the last 18 months, but including a valuable dip into this environment for seven months in 2001 and now as a member of staff with the OU Faculty of Business and Law.
Regarding the use of tablets for learning, not only using one to do the MAODE it also holds OU MBA course content and incidentally it greatly facilitates the engagement in forums through RSS feeds, email alerts, near instant uploading to forums and the qualities of the tablets themselves in relation to screen size, speed reading, ease of response and so on.
4. For which context(s) will you be discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each technology?
The value to postgraduates working in international organisations on the OU Business School part-time MBA.
5. Briefly: what material will you provide in relation to your own experience of each technology?
Regarding Forums I have both the written record (research, papers, blog entries from 2001) to compare to 2011, as well as the experience of working in both the formal institutional setting, and as a student, embracing and engaging in external forums – all for teaching and learning purposes and blogging about this throughout.
Regarding tablets I have one device and can speak to others using different devices about their experiences with them. Some of this qualified by my blog and forum entries of others regarding their learning experiences with them.
6. Briefly: what material, if any, can you draw from the experience of other learners?
There are fellow students on the MAODE whose permission can be requested regarding their blogging on the use of tablets, indeed these postings informed my request to have such a device. There is research published in 2011 that provides a sound basis for discussion, though the rapidity of change requires something current this can in part be informed, with permissions, by asking specialists in the field of versioning content for Tablets for e-learning in Higher Education.
Where permissions are possible and confidentially isn’t compromised questions can be put to Faculty members regarding the way in which the use of forums for learning online has been conceived.
7. Which H800 materials do you expect to draw on? And which numerical evidence will you draw on, either from within or from outside H800?
Reports can be referred to as they are published. The desire is to draw upon evidential research, both qualitative and quantitative reports, particularly those from the OU Institute of Technology. Resources offered in H800 will be reviewed and the most recent publications identified.
8. If you have already found materials from four sources outside H800: which materials do you expect to draw on, and – in a sentence or two – what is their significance to your EMA? If you have not yet found (all of) them yet, where do you expect to look for them?
Forums
Linkedin Forums on e-learning and social media. Various publications on use of Forums in education including reports from JISC. Research of OU Library current papers.
Tablets
Reports and discussions in various forums, such as NMK (Westminster Metropolitan University) and eLP (Linkedin, moderated by Epic), as well as new publications.
Part B. Digital technologies: your recommendations
9. Briefly: which area(s) of additional research do you think are needed?
The interplay between the Tablet (part Smartphone, part Laptop) and therefore the ease with which it can be used as a communications device enabling live and as-live (synchronous and asynchronous) participation in Forum discussions.
Longitudinal studies of a cohort with these devices coming from undergraduate and postgraduate study.
Niche research on the use of forums and devices in business, particularly collaboration in multi-nationals.
Part C. Digital technologies: your design or specification
10. What type of learning activity or specification do you currently envisage, for which learners and in which context? What do you intend the learners to have learned when they have carried out the activity?
A useful resource would be a specific learning activity related to the management of projects carried out across different cultures with differing management systems.
11. How, in outline, will your design or specification deal with any potential barriers that your learners might face (including cost, accessibility for people with disabilities, cultural diversity and convenience)?
‘Device Agnosticism’ as The OU puts it is as important as other issues regarding access; neither affordability nor disability should be insurmountable barriers.
Part D. Digital technologies: individual and collaborative learning
12. What is your current response (possibly very tentative at this stage) to the question: ‘To what extent do you find the concepts of “individual” and “collaborative” learning useful in understanding your experience of learning this year – whether on H800 or elsewhere?’
Engestrom via Vygotsky.
Digital Technologies : Experience and evidence.
Fig. 1. My conception of lifelong learning building on Elliot (2008)
Why I participate in some forums and not others.
- Start the ball rolling
- to get through the week’s work
- no one else has made a start.
- I may fret about covering all bases
It can be like choosing a restaurant
- You want to go where there’s some buzz already, though not so much that you feel you will never be able to join in the conversation.
- This is an asynchronous beast. If I come in late I may read every post with care before I respond, which can result in a long response.
- People should feel just as comfortable simply answering the question, ignoring others at first .. or just reading the last couple of posts and responding to them.
- I might quote them in my own group. There have been times when lifting the thread of catalyst that got them going in another group will do the same in your own.
- It is tempting to respond to someone in a different tutor group
- At Harvard they use as system called ‘Rotisserie’ in some asynchronous threads/forums which, like playing pass the parcel (or pass the microphone) require people to take it in turns to say something.
- It matters that activities have been designed that get people engaged without the need for a tutor all the time.
‘Structured, paced and carefully constructed e-tivities reduce the amount of e-moderator time, and impact directly on satisfactory learning outcomes, adding value to the investment in learning technologies’.(Salmon, 2002a)
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)
(Blog 25 September 2010) Why do the Plenck 2010 forums work?
Many themes. It is your choice to join. Updates are sent to your email. You read and add, return to the parent, and comment.
They are seasoned e-educators and lucid. It is more jamming around a piano.
You have three hours in which to return to your post and edit, add or delete.
People don’t question the set up, they just get on with it. Do we write about what it is to put words onto a sheet of paper with a pen? Or do we say something?
James Turner, Policy Director at the Sutton Trust suggested supplementary tutoring of school students one-to-one was most common, two-to-one worked even better because of the collaboratory experience. BBC Radio 4 10.00 Tuesday 7th September 2010, Accessed again 16.00 Saturday 12th September 2010)
- Numerical evidence
“Mobile learning involves the] exploitation of ubiquitous handheld hardware, wireless networking and mobile telephony to facilitate, support enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning” Molenet
The increasingly portable nature of computing hardware and technologies has progressed for three decades or more as the earliest efforts of mobile wordprocessing – the Microwriter, the popularisation of computing with the BBC micro-computer, then on to laptops that become lighter, smaller, faster and more robust, to palm devices such as the Psion and hand-sized PDAs, and the gradual merging of all manner of personal, portable devices that carried music, organisers, phone technology and more, with MP3 players popularised by iPods, then the spread of mobile phones, in particular inexpensive communicating through text that brings us to 2011 and light, very powerful two-part keyboard and screen laptops, single part touch-screen tablets of various sizes that are becoming indistinguishable from smartphones. Uptake and support for various devices has been made possible as networks spread, the technology became faster, less expensive and widespread, and importantly a combination of content and communication made the devices increasingly appealing, powerful and personal.
Fig 2. Types and functionality of mobile devices. Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler (2005:07)
The mobile promise – “that individuals will engage in learning at times when formerly they would have been doing something else; that they will be motivated to learn partly because the devices are attractive; that the devices enable communication from places where formerly it wasn’t possible; that formal learning can mesh with existing patterns of self publishing and online participation; and that mobile devices are particularly suited to multitasking, said to be one of the strengths of the ‘millennial generation’ (McMahon & Pospisil, 2005).”
Attendance at Learning Technologies 2011 and subsequent use of a Sony Flip for interviews and surveys.
Armed with a Kindle with the Swim Drills book loaded I was poolside teaching and coaching swimmers for three hours.
For the last year I have run programmes based on drills in ‘The Swim Drills Book’ and have relied on lesson plans and sometimes laminated print outs.
Today I took the Kindle
From The Swimming Drill Book (2006:04) ‘Standing Streamline Ruben Guzman.
Never before have I found the swimmers so attentive, coming close to the side of the pool to look at the pictures.
Here is a great drill to develop streamlining
Fig.3. From The Swimming Drill Book (2006:06) ‘Streamline Float’ Ruben Guzman.
They start in what we call ‘Dead Swimmer’ then straighten up, arms first, then legs into the ‘streamline position.’ They then kick off, add a few strokes and continue up the pool.
They got, far quicker than my efforts to demonstrate and talk them through.
- Simple.
- The pictures say it all.
- Is this mobile learning?
- Whatever it is, this works.
- Producers
‘Our findings indicate that institutions planning to offer mobile apps should build on the existing preferences of students for social communication. Listening to audio, watching video and reading short texts if the apps are successfully to enhance the learning experience’. (Kukulska-HUlme 2011:32
Personalisation
“Learners can be active makers and shapers of their own learning. They should be supported in using technologies of their own choice where appropriate”. (JISC, 2009, p.51)
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings in the H800 materials
Mobile computing not just with laptop computers but also with cellular phones, internet-telephony, videoconferencing, screen sharing, remote collaboration technologies, and immersive graphical environments make distributed collaboration and interaction much richer and more realistic. Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning June 24, 2008 (REFERENCE wk21-22)
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings outside the H800 materials
Many Open University students combine work and study; consequently learning in a number of places, or on the move, becomes a habit.
Informal learning and social interactions are also increasingly recognised as important components of a person’s ‘learning life’. Academic and support staff are part of this revolution.
Mobile learning is very flexible: it can be the sole mode of delivery, a significant learning activity, or just a small part of a print-based or online course.
The key points (largely from an IET Agnes Kukulska-Hulme Report Kukulska-Hulme, 2010:10)
Mobile learning is:
- Very flexible
- Appropriate/supportive
- New
- Convenient
- Contemporary
- Practical
- Beneficial
- Has its own unique affordances/advantages
- Personal/personalised
- Spontaneous
- Immediate
- Extends access to materials not replacement technology)
- Locational
- Universal (ish)
- Leap-frog technology in Africa
- Engaging
- Expected
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (2010), with case studies by Anna Page.
Kukulska-Hulme (2010) says “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years’ time it may no longer be distinguishable from ‘just learning’.”
‘E’ is a fact of learning life, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (2010) is quoted thus in the JISC Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review, “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years’ time it may no longer be distinguishable from ‘just learning’.”
A distance learner’s mobile device (at the Open University) can be used as a way to:
- carry around study materials
- aces new or additional content
- build up a series of personal notes
- help make or maintain communications between different contexts
Supported by VLE 2.0 and Moodle 2.0
- organised personal learning schedules
- give feedback, opinions or answers
- get quick information or support
- communicate with other learners or tutors
The initial aim of the group is to develop applications around four key areas:
- Enhancing Open University brand and awareness
- Attracting students to new courses
- Making existing course material accessible for mobile study
- Prototyping innovative learning concepts
Woodill (2010:53) identifies seven main affordances of mobile learning:
1. Mobility
2. Ubiquity
3. Accessibility
4. Connectivity
5. Context sensitivity
6. Individuality
7. Creativity
Personalisation. user generated content. Bruns (2005) Produsers
- Numerical evidence
We agree with Kennedy et al (2008) that ‘an evidence-based understanding of students’ technological experiences is vital in informing higher education policy and practice.’ (p. 109)
(93% UK penetration by 2008, presumably more in 2011). More from Mobisite
More in Cloudworks
2% of OU students (4,000 or so) use tablets (not just iPads). 11% use SmartPhones (not just iPhones).
Smartphone Survey (http://testkitchen.colorado.edu/projects/reports/smartphone/smartphone-survey/)
Fig. 5. Smartphone Stats, The Digital News Test Kitchen, August 2011
http://testkitchen.colorado.edu/projects/reports/smartphone/smartphone-survey
Martin Weller implies that a VLE constrains because ‘There are so many fantastic tools out there that are free and robust and easy to use.’ (WK21-22 Activity 2d VLE vs. PLE who wins?)
It is the combination of physically being ‘free’ to roam with a robust mobile device, as OU MBA students Lt. Col. Sean Brady put it, a ‘university in your pocket’ (REFERENCE) and a playful, personalisation and desired ‘freedom’ to do things your way at a time and place that suits you, that enables learning to take place away from the learning institution, library or desk, unfettered by a bag of books and files. Mobility and immediacy, exposure to new, or similar products and tools, fashion, peer group, nature of the subject they are studying, their ambitions, who they are, how much time they have, their kit, connection and inclinations, let alone the context of where they are going online and most importantly the means to communicate this instantly through microblogging, blogging, social networks, email and text facilitates and fuels further development, the millions of people online making development commercially viable.
Taking advantage of participation (Seely-Brown), learning on the periphery (Seely-Brown), vicarious learning (Cox) and if you can get your tongue around it ‘serendipitous learning.’ (me I think). (WK21 Activity 1c Web 2.0 Tools for learning REFERENCE) Conole (2011) invites us to use ‘metaphors for meaning making’.
- traffic light
- nurture
- swimming
- hub
- serendipity
- water-cycle
Expressed in various forms in charts from Dion Hinchcliffe.
Accessibility: Regarding the failure to turn a 4 day face-to-face course into a blended course of one day face-to-face, then online with four additional option. ‘Most of these problems seem to be rooted in bad connectivity which made communication difficult and audio discussions impossible’.
University of Derby, Online delivery of MSc Strategic management in Africa (Rachel Stern’s blog 5 March 2010)
One in three of com 2011
10 % of all UK web traffic
100,000 in Indonesia learning English through SMS messages.
INEQUALITY
300 million fewer than male worldwide (women and mobile: a global opportunity
See issues of accessibility from H807 and H810.
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Inaugural Lecture, August 2011
‘Furthermore, since the use of a mobile device represents a new technological means of reading books, articles and news, this might have an impact on how, and how much, students read, however further research would be needed’. (2011:33)
This cover 20 benefits of mobile learning though.
‘We consider that learners who use handheld mobile devices (e.g., their phones and mp3-players) to support their learning constitute a minority at the present time. We agree that their age seems less important than their position as early adopters and instigators of change through their influence among their peers and through their networks’. (2011:19)
Forums and Mobile
In an age when “communities are jumping across technologies” as needs and trends evolve (Wenger, 2010), educators and researchers also have to stay informed about how learners use personal technologies as members of communities that may be social, work-related or educational’.
REFERENCE
Belshaw (201) Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review 2010 Doug Belshaw, JISC infoNet
Brady, S. http://blogs.ft.com/mba-blog/2011/06/22/distance-learning-or-nearness-learning/#axzz1WbbnlExG
Bruns, A. (2005) ‘Anyone can edit’: understanding the produser. Retrieved from http;//snurb.info/index. php?q=node/s86
Guzman, R (2007) The Swim Drills Book
JISC. (2009). Effective Practice in a Digital Age: A guide to technology-enhanced learning and teaching. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2009/effectivedigital-age.aspx
Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
Kerfoot, B.P., Armstrong,E.G., O’Sullivan,P.N., (2008) Interactive Spaced-Education to Teach the Physical Examination:A Randomized Controlled Trial
Kukulska-Hulme, A. and Traxler, J (2005) Mobile Learning. A handbook for educators and trainers.
MacMahon, M., Pospisil, R. (2005 pp421-431) Laptops for digital lifestyle: Millenial students and wireless mobile technologies. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/49_McMahon%20&%20Pospisil.pdf
Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
Rogers, E.M. (2005) Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.) New York, NY: Free Press
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Learning in a Mobile Age’ (International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 1(1), 1-12, January-March 2009)
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Students and mobile devices: choosing which dream’ (in ALT-C 2009 “In dreams begins responsibility” – choice, evidence and change, Traxler, John (Professor of Mobile Learning, University of Wolverhampton)
University of Derby online survey (http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/derby/index_html1)
Related articles
- Activity designed to provide an insight into scripting content that is image rich for the visually impaired (mymindbursts.com)
- Call for papers – Learning, Media and Technology (hastac.org)
- James and Jane Bond learn to swim slinky, silent and smooth front crawl (mymindbursts.com)
- 25 benefits of mobile learning (mymindbursts.com)
- Tablets pushing other technology to evolve (lenovo.com)
- Learning in the Mobile Age (slideshare.net)
- What is Deep Understanding? | Learning Zone (sharingtree.wordpress.com)
- Summary of ISTE 2012 (academicbiz.typepad.com)
Virtual Learning Environment vs. Personal Learning Environment. Who wins?
- John Petit
- Martin Weller
- Niall Sclater
Stephen Downes – Students own education
·How much do they actually differ in their views?
·What is my perspective?
·Freedom is lack of choice
·Parameters work
·Creativity is mistakes
·Have rules, the mischievous or skilled will break them anyway
·The end result counts.
a)This isn’t a debate. Neither takes sides and the chair interjects his own thoughts. A debate, whether at school, university or in a club, or in a court of law or the House of Commons, is purposely adversarial, people take sides, even take a stance on a point of view they may not wholly support, in order to winkle out answers that may stand somewhere between the two combatants.
b)During the MAODE this might be the second such offering as a ‘debate,’ the last being as weak. What is more I have attended a Faculty debate which shilly-shallied around the issues with at times from an audience’s point of view it being hard to know whose side the speakers were on?
c)As well as deploring the lack of rigour regarding what should or should not be defined as a debate, the vacuous nature of the conversations means that you don’t gain one single new piece of evidence either way. Generalities are not arguments, neither side attempts to offer a knock-out blow, indeed Martin Weller seems keen to speak for both sides of the argument throughout.
When Martin Weller implies that a VLE constrains because ‘There are so many fantastic tools out there that are free and robust and easy to use.’ I would like a) example b) research based evidence regarding such tools, which do offer some compelling arguments, these commercial and branded products have to offer something refreshing and valuable.
Unlike some university offering they are therefore not only effective, but vitally, they are fun, tactile, smartly constructed, well-funded, give cache to the user, are easy to share, champion and become evangelical about, explored, exploited and developed further. Here I compare Compendium with the delight of bubbl.us.
Here I compare blogging in the confines of the abandoned cold-frame that is the Victorian OU student blogging platform compared to the Las Vegas experience of WordPress.
I can even compare how WordPress performs externally compared to the shackled version provided by the OU. On the one hand there is a desire to treat students like sheep; there is even a suggestion in this chatty-thing between Niall Sclater and Martin Weller than OU undergraduates ought to offer the most basic environment in which to operate. Access is an important point, but you don’t develop players in an orchestra by shutting everyone in a hall and giving them a kazoo. And if that Kazoo requires instructions then it deserves being ignored. Having lived with it for a year the OU e-portfolio My Stuff might best be described as some kind of organ-grinder with the functionality and fun-factor of Microsoft DOS circa 1991.
Martin Weller makes the point about tools that might be used this before, during and after their university experience. There is a set of ICT tools covering word-processing, databases, number manipulation, calendars and communications that are a vital suite of skills; skills that some might already have, or partially have … or not have at all. The problem is in the accommodation of this widely differing skill set.
JV Exposure to new, or similar, experience of better as well as weaker programmes/tools, fashion, peer group, nature of the subject they are studying, their ambitions, who they are, how much time they have, their kit, connection and inclinations, let alone the context of where they are going online.
In this respect Martin Weller is right to say that ‘some kind of default learning environment’ is required first of all.
Caveat: You are going to need people to use the same kind of things in order to be able to communicate.
·University blog vs. their own bog.
·University e-portfolio vs. their own portfolio.
·Elluminate vs. Skype.
·Mac vs. PC,
·Tablet vs. laptop.
·Desktop vs. smartphone.
·Paper vs. e-Reader.
·University Forum vs. Linked in or others.
·Twitter vs. Yammer.
Swimming analogy: training pool, leisure pool, main pool, diving pool, Jacuzzi.
Niall Sclater makes a point about a student using an external blog that doesn’t have a screen reader. Do browsers not offer this as a default now? Whilst I doubt the quality of translation I’ve been having fun putting everything I normally look at into French or loading content onto an e-reader and having it read to me on long car journeys. The beauty of Web 2.0 and Open Learn is that developers love to solve problems then share their work. Open Learn allows these fixers to crack on at a pace that no institution can match.
Perhaps issues regarding passwords is one such problem which is no longer a problem with management systems. Saving passwords etc.: Other problems we have all see rise and fall might include spam. The next problem will be to filter out spam in the form of ‘Twitter Twaddle’ the overwhelming flack of pre-written RSS grabbed institutional and corporate messages that should without exception be ‘flagged’ by readers as spam until it stops. I never had a conversation with a piece of direct mail shoved at me through my letter box, or spam come to that matter. Here largely the walled, university environment in which to study, is protected from the swelling noise of distraction on the outside,
Niall Sclater talks about the Wiki on OU VLE, in Moodle ‘comprises what we consider is the most useful functionality for students. The OU ‘cut out a lot of the bells and whistles you find in MediaWiki’. New to wikis I enjoyed being eased into their use, but like a keen skier, or swimmer, having found my ‘legs’ I wanted incremental progressions. Being compelled to stay in the training pool, or on the nursery slopes, to return to by Kazoo metaphor, is like having Grade 5 flute, but having to play with six novice recorder players in Kindergarten. We move on and therefore what is offered should move with us.
Universities fail abysmally to sell their products to their captive audiences.
Commercial products are sold, invitingly to everyone who comes within earshot. There is a commercial naivety and intellectual arrogance sometimes over stuff created that must be great, because it is the invention of brilliant minds … and that its brilliance will be self-evident even if it sits their within its highly branded overcoat waiting for some time to take an interest and take it out for a test drive. Creators of these tools forget that a quick search using some of the terms related to the affordances of the product being offered will invariably produce something more appealing from the likes of Google, Adobe, Apple or Microsoft.
Nail Sclater points out that some students can be confused by too much functionality. I agree. If there is a product that has far too much functionality, it is Elluminate. And even for a library search, it ought to be as simple as the real thing … you go to a counter and ask for a title. Google gets it right. Keep it simple. Others are at last following suit. Or is the Google God now omnipresent?
Martin Weller stumbles when he says that Nail ‘hits on two arguments against decentralised PLEs by
a)Giving three arguments
a.Authentication
b.Integration
c.Robustness
b)He is meant to be in favour of PLEs.
i.e. academics are incapable of debate because they are, to use of Martin Weller’s favourite terms ‘contextualised’ to sit on the fence. A debate should be a contest, a bullfight ideally with a clear winner, the other party a convincing looser.
You wouldn’t let a soldier chose his weapons then enter the fray. There has to be a modicum of formal training across a variety of tools, and in a controlled, stepped fashion in order to bring people along, communally, for retention and to engender collaboration and participation and all that benefits that come from that.
Who at a time of change is going to declare their role, or department redundant? Brought into a new role, Social Media Manager, I feel I will have succeed in 12 months if I have handed over the keys to others, spread some of the glory about. That’s how I see it, a little bit of everybody’s lives. You can wordprocess, you can do some aspect of Social Media. There are other functions though that long ago were circumvented by clever software. Web 2.0 deplores the gatekeeper. It wants to put everything ‘out there,’ enabling everyone and anyone to make of it what they need and please.
Personally I’ve been loading content, text and images, in diaryland since Sept 1999 and have never had an issue with access, yet I have repeatedly found my OU e-portfolio failed, or that while composing a response in a forum the system fell-down and I lost what I was doing.
Nial Sclater argues in favour of VLEs to ensure usability, access, extension to students, common ground on terms of tools, opportunity and form an assessment point of view, use of content too.
While Martin Weller wants to ‘Support’ – an argument for VLEs. (I’ve now made the point several times that Martin Weller seemed unsure of which side he was on, and by personality and from experience, will never take a side in any case).
We DO want people going away being able to use package X. Do we turn out Roy Castle types who can play loads of instruments not very well, or a virtuoso performer who can at least play the cello well?
JP stepping in ‘as my confidence grew I got to know that and my confidence grew across the year as I got to know that and one or two other very limited and well-supported tools’
Nial Sclater’s point that the same tool is required for collaboration and assessment. This applies also to reading the materials provided and doing the activities so that these are the points of reference for assessments (as currently practised). How can a Tutor mark an assessment that is based on vegetables from a walled Victorian kitchen garden, when the student offers flowers grown from seed in a tub? To return to my sporting analogy, how might I judge a person’s ability to swim after 12 weeks if they’ve been learning how to sail?
Parameters have a purpose.
The greatest resistance to a writer is having no sense of purpose, no goals, no parameters, no set pieces, no one to be on their case. A free for all, perhaps as the new London Business and Finance School is finding, is that just giving students the lot and telling them to get on with it is not conducive to a viable learning experience. (Nor do I think it’ll deliver someone is able to work with others).
Mind Bursts 