Home » Posts tagged 'h807' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: h807
Reflections on e-learning – September 2010 to September 2012
New Software
Things I was starting to get my head around in 2010:
- Skype (a phone call for free)
- Delicious (don’t get it, yet … or need it?)
- Outlook (Never used it ’til last week not being a PC person)
- Google Docs (Up there and loading docs. Hear good things from all)
- Compendium (Created a map for an e-tivity based on my H807 ECA. Populating this to share content with a producer).
- Zoho (signed in but not sure)
- Mahara (But Google does it for free and has seamless interplay with all your other favourite Google tools)
- Pebblepad (Mixed reviews)
- Adobe Share (Been using Adobe products forever so this should get my attention)
- Internet Explorer (new to this Mac user!)
- Dropbox (I’ve always been a box person)
Where I stand in 2012:
- Skype (use often to friends globally, notably for a job interview with Getty Images, conducting an interview about Spaced Education and on an iPad passing my brother and my nephews around a room of cousins between the UK and South Africa at Christmas)
- Delicious (Still struggle, not least as I have more than one account and because I don’t see the need to bookmark anything as to Google is quicker and with cookies enabled takes me into my choices)
- Outlook (formerly trained at the OU on Outlook – training on a 2010 version while we had a 2011 in our office. Still hate it having been raised on all things Mac. Outlook has the look, feel and functionality of Microsoft DOS c 1992)
- Google Docs (Use as a store to aggregate content, sometimes to share, wiki-like with fellow OU students who are more up to date with the technology than I am)
- Compendium (Can’t stand it – prefer a variety of free iPad Apps, including SimpleMinds, Bubl.us and several others).
- Zoho (signed in and gave up)
- Mahara (signed in a gave up)
- Pebblepad (signed in and gave up – initially making do with the OU’s MyStuff, which has been discontinued. Find it easier to aggregate content, while I’m an OU Student in my OU Blog, then cut and paste into one or more WordPress blogs – I had 16 at the last count)
- Adobe Share (Don’t have the budgets, may be of interest once back in a commercial office)
- Internet Explorer (Never. Over the period have slowly migrated away from Firefox, like family, use Google Chrome almost exclusively)
- Dropbox (Not really)
- PicasaWeb – download for all images from camera, iPhone and iPad. Fix then post to some 50 albums, some with over 1000 images (the Picasa limit), pay for extra space. Uncertain or lack confidence though in degree of privacy, especially if screen grabs and other images are automatically uploaded to Google + images (same PicasaWeb account in a different format)
Where I stood in 2010 compared to 2012:
Old Software
- Word (Yes, but far less often. I write far more often on the iPad using the AI Writer APP, emailing this to a PC to edit, or uploading into a blog to edit there)
-
Filemaker Pro (No longer. I ran it on Macs and iBooks from its inception but others don’t preferring of all things the ghastly Excel). Have Bento, baby FileMaker, on the iPad.
- AOL (still with AOL, but prefer Gmail and still thinking about changing supplier to BT or Sky)
- Power Structure (Didn’t upgrade, my iBook died and the software is on an rescued hard drive though I doubt it will work with a new operating system)
- Final Draft (An excellent script writing tool though created for linear output)
- Adobe Photoshop (Haven’t upgraded, making do with Picasa)
- Dreamweaver (haven’t been near it, I never was a programmer type anyway, though cut my teeth in this in 2000)
- Excell (A very reluctant user – just cannot see how this is used by some to create posters, or run a database that required large quantities of content in a cell. Filemaker Pro is better)
Blogs
- Diaryland (Quite the thing in 1999). Locked forever. Up forever. Sometimes cut and paste. Always amusing to read posts on developments in web-based learning c. 1999
- LiveJournal (Preferred by 2002). A stepping stone out of Diaryland.
- WordPress (Expert) Over a dozen blogs, most notably Mymindbursts, though no longer a diary or journal, but a niche journal largely about e-learning, with subject interests including creative writing, philosophy, tertiary education, history (First War), online and distance education, theories of education. Also blogs on swim coaching and teaching, on the Machine Gun Corps, on the trials and tribulations of a househusband (from old diaries and blogs), on various fiction themes – but also a number of Books of Condolences, in 2011 for colleagues, but very sadly in 2012 for my mother too.
- EduBlogs (No more)
- Blogger (No longer)
- OuBlog (Extensively for all Masters in Open and Distance Education modules, now on my fifth and final module. Daily reflection, updates, aggregating resources, screen clips, diagrams, images, snips from forums, links to other blogs, tagging to assemble content for assignment, re-blog with re-writes to external blogs. Use it like an e-portfolio with CVs and job descriptions here too.)
- Blipfoto (A picture a day for four or five months – until I have my iPhone to my son. I make do with an iPad and prefer a cheap phone to have kicking around in my pocket or bag … and to avoid being online when out on the South Downs walking the dog!)
Social Networking
- Facebook (Love hate. Great to be in touch with immediate family and trusted friends only. Got some groups going with boys I knew age 8-13 at boarding prep school. Got out of hand when a relation fell very ill and died as to the appropriateness of sharing our concerns and grief online. Inclined to disengage – do so only to find I am still there?)
- MySpace (Never, though I am there)
- Friends Reunited (Never since they started to charge, or since they came back)
- Linkedin (extensive, professional use with several hundred contacts and activity in many groups. Feed blog content into Linkedin automatically, tailor some content for specific groups, particularly relating to e-learning for corporates and tertiary education)
- Twitter (extensive, professional use. Did use TweetReach and various other tools. URLs shortened from WordPress, will use Bitl.y)
Other
- Flickr (Used to use extensively – migrated all content to Picasa as Flickr tried to socialize the space and I found my pictures being offered for sale!)
- Kodak Easyshare (Rescued 500 of 700 uploaded photos and migrated to Picasa before Kodak closed)
- YouTube (Should be making extensive use of YouTube. Starting to digitise 40 hours of Oxford Undergraduate life 1982-1984. With permissions will migrate clips to the web in due course.)
- Picasa (my favourite now, the teenagers are on Instagram and Tumnblr)
- Ancestry.com (Covered every conceivable ancestor as far back as is possible online. Could make use of the 2011 census to track down a great aunt but not inclined to fork out anymore or to deal with spurious requests from people so off the map in terms of the family tree it is verging on trainspotting.)
- Genes Reunited (as above. Not been near it) Of minor interest at a family funeral to figure out who were the common ancestors – both gentleman born in the 1870s it turned out!
Browsers
- Firefox (very rarely, probably in erro)
- AOL (winding up here for the last 18 months, should have got out long ago.)
- GoogleChrome (Almost exclusively)
- Internet Explorer (avoided at all costs)
What’s new?
For the last 18 months extensive use of an iPad and associated Apps, so much so that it is the replacement laptop and even covers as a mobile phone as people know to email me.
Trying to do my final MAODE module on the iPad.
Proving remarkably easy to do so.
Very versatile, especially where resources can be downloaded as PDFs, even to read in Kindle version. Read from the Kindle, note take on the iPad and post online.
Books. We no longer buy them. Is a garage full of wonderful hardbacks worth anything? Glad I never bothered to put up shelves.
Magazines and newspapers. All redundant. Only kept the Guardian on Saturday to have something to line the guinea-pig hutch, when they went so did the newspaper!
TV. Rarely ever watched live. Prefer BBC iPlayer. Exception being the Olympics and Paralympics.
Pen and paper. I do. An A5 notebook and pen. Though prefer to type up notes as I go along.
Twitter Share. Reading an eBook and sharing a line or two with a note directly into Twitter. This aggregates content in an editable format and alerts ‘followers’ to a good read – usually on learning, education, e-learning, also on social media, story writing and the First World War. Sometimes some great out of copyright literature.
Why e-learning is blended and at least two decades old
My interest is over three decades in the making.
How many teenagers are brought up on the premises of a PLC’s training centre?
My late father, in his wisdom, created a business HQ and training centre for the PLC he ran (and created) … and lived over the shop, literally. It was an odd set up for us kids, rather like being the headmaster’s kids. We we roped in to show guests around and as we got older to entertain them at dinner too. I took an interest in the videos created by the likes of Video Arts and Melrose, in the video kit used to develop interviewing techniques and in the wise words of the Training Manager – who put me in touch with a company who were making health & safety films for the Nuclear Power Industry – which in turn, is how I found myself carrying video kit around the changing rooms at Windscale (now Sellafield).
Corporate training is in my blood
The desired learning outcomes are no different to those we worked to several decades ago – people better at the job, content, with career development, knowing what they are doing and where to turn. E-learning has evolved from linear to interactive to online learning, however, at its most fundamental level it is still just a person with a goal, or need – a resource that answers this need or leads towards the goal – and the interplay or interaction, that through engagement and assessment leads to knowledge acquisition – possibly with a qualification, more likely some CPD points or simply an ability to do their job better, with greater confidence, collaborating with colleagues.
Published in 2007, researched and written over the previous 3-5 years, this book intimates the way things are going – or should I say, the way things have gone already?
The world of e-learning is one that moves fast, so fast that the creation of e-learning has become an integrated global industry – companies, often UK based (even with a Brighton bias) span the globe like international management consultancies, law firms or firms of accountants – indeed, the clients are often international law firms, management consultants, accounts and their clients. Does advertising and PR come into this too? Probably. Internal communications? Certainly.
In ‘Preparing for blended e-learning’ (2007) the authors Alison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler say that the ‘integration of our physical world with the digital domain is becoming ubquitous’.
At least two decades ago integration was already occurring, initially internally, through intranets. Leading businesses knew that educating the ‘workforce’ was vital so they had learning centres, while the likes of Unipart (UGC) had their own ‘university’ with faculties and a culture of continual learning. Industry was ahead of tertiary education then and feels light years ahead now with learning created collaboratively on wiki platforms, often using Open Source software with colleagues in different time zones. There is a shift to globalisation in tertiary education, with Business Schools such as Insead, but also with integrated, international universities such as Phoenix buying up or buying into universities around the planet – create an undergraduate course in Geography, a blended e-learning package, and put into onto a campus in North America and South, in Europe and the Middle East, the Far East and Australasia …
‘Learners and teachers increasingly are integrating physical and electronic resources, tools and environments within mainstream educational settings. Yet, these new environments are not yet having a major impact on learning. This is partly because the ‘blending’ of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ domains – or ‘blended learning’ – is challenging for most teachers, yet it is becoming an essential skill for effective teaching’. (Littlejohn and Pegler, 2006 L287, Kindle Version)
I’d like to see a corporate e-learning agency create blended e-learning for a university – and to blend this in several additional directions courtesy of social learning back into secondary education, forwards into the workplace and sideways into the community and home. Perhaps I should call it ‘smudged learning’ – it happens anyway, at least in our household. It’s surprising how helpful teenagers can be to their parents who work online – and it is us, the parents, who appear to click them in the right direction of for resources and tools for homework. I wanted Adsense on my blog(s) my son was happy to oblige – for a cut, which more than takes care of his pocket money.
‘Blending … centres on the integration of different types of resources and activities within a range of learning environments where learners can interact and build ideas’. (Littlejohn and Pegler, 2006: L341)
We’re in it together like a small community in a medieval market town (actually, I live in one of these, Lewes) where the hubbub of the market spills out into the home and schools. All blended e-learning is doing is returning us to a more social, holistic and humanistic way of learning.
Welcome to the blended world.
What new – the drivers for change:
Costs (spreading them, making it count)
Sustainable (shared, flexible resources. In effect, one book can be shared by all)
Methodologies (still about learning outcomes, but treating each student as much as possible as a unique and vulnerable vessel of possibilities – not a cohort, or label)
Complexity (shared through collaboration in a wiki. Academics find this hardest of all, the idea that their mind , or at least parts of it, are open source, to be shared, not held back by barriers of time, tradition and intellectual arrogance. They too are a vessel and in its purest sense their emptying the contents of their heads into the heads of others is what it is all about)
Ethical issues (when is exposure a good thing? How much should we or do we reveal about ourselves? Knowing who your students are should only be seen as an extraordinarily developmental opportunity, not an invasion of privacy).
MAODE Students – All the Hs: H810, H807, H800, H808 …
Enlightened and loving the MAODE, but always keen to have a book on the side that I can read, take notes on, think about and share. This, I have come to understand, is largely because I was taught (or indoctrinated) to learn this way – books, notes, essay, exam.
Though never sharing – learning used to be such a secretive affair I thought.
How The OU has turned me inside out – the content of my mind is yours if you want it, and where we find difference or similarity let’s bounce around some ideas to reinvent our own knowledge.
As I read this in eBook form on an iPad I add notes electronically on the page, or reading it on a Kindle I take notes on the iPad – I even take notes on paper to write up later. I highlight. I also share choice quotes on Twitter @JJ27VV. Which in turn, aggregates the key ideas that I can then cut and paste here, with comments that others may add.
Simply sharing ideas in a web 2.0 21st Century Way!
Related articles
- Content Marketing Design: 3 Guidelines for Creating eBooks for Tablets (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
- Weekly Writing Challenge: Printed Books or eBooks? Does It Really Matter? (amidstbooks.wordpress.com)
- Australian Bookseller Mary Ryan’s Opens New eBook Kiosk (the-digital-reader.com)
- How to visualise learning – think Lava Lamps! (mymindbursts.com)
- Pause (mymindbursts.com)
Gagné’s model of instructional design
I would have found this invaluable commencing any of the Masters in Open and Distance Education Modules
Gagné’s model of instructional design
· Conditions of learning:
· Internal conditions deal with what the learner knows to prior to the instruction.
· External conditions deal with the stimuli that are presented to the learner
FIRST STEP
Kind of outcomes to be achieved
Five types:
1. Verbal Information
2. Intellectual Skills
3. Cognitive Strategies
4. Attitudes
5. Motor Skills
SECOND STEP
Organise appropriate instructional events.
Gagne’s events of instruction:
1. Gaining attention
2. Informing the learner of the objective
3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
4. Presenting the stimulus material
5. Providing learning guidance
6. Eliciting the performance
7. Providing feedback
8. Assessing the performance
9. Enhancing retention and transfer
Khadjoo. et al (2011:117)
In relation to teaching psychomotor skills:
1. Gaining attention
· Capture attention and arouse interest
· An abrupt stimulus
· A thought-provoking question
· Visual or sound stimulus (or multimedia)
2. Informing the learner of the objective
· Set learning objective
· Expectancy and motivation
· Identify, prepare, understand, perform and understand.
Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
Associating new information with prior knowledge and personal experience and getting the learners to think about what they already know to facilitate the learning process. Khadjoo. et al (2011:117)
· Interactive discussion
· Ask questions, consider findings and confirm evidence.
Presenting the stimulus material
· New content presented
· Meaningful organisation
· Explanation and demonstration
· How to, position, monitor, test …
Khadjoo. et al (2011:118)
Providing learning guidance
· Correct performance
· Additional suggestions
· Use of examples (case studies)
· Graphical representations, mnemonics, add meaning …
Eliciting the performance
· The learner practices the new skill or behaviour.
· Confirmation of understanding
· Repetition to increase retention
Providing feedback
· Individual and immediate feedback and guidance
· Questioned answer
· Feedback from other learners
Assessing the performance
· Demonstration of what they have learned (no additional coaching or hints)
· Additional practice required
Enhancing retention and transfer
· Practice (Before, during and after)
· Spaced reviews
· Transfer of knowledge to new problems
· Practice, rest and repeat
· Consider:
o Objectives
o Setting
o Time
o Available resources
o Institutional constraints
o Content
o Number of learners (their characteristics and preferences)
REFERENCE
Gagne, R, Briggs L, Wager W, eds. (1998) Principles of instructional design. 3rd edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Khaji, K, Rostami.K. How to use Gagne’s model of instructional design in teaching psychomotor skills. Gatroenterology and Hepatology. 4(3) 116-119
More on ‘Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age’.
Why does the OU put the novice and expert together in the MAODE?
Although I praise this approach and after two years have been a beneficiary I wonder if the research points to the need for greater flexibility and mixing, more akin to several cohorts of students being able to move around, between their own tutor group, contributing to discussions with the newcomers while also being able to hobnob with the experts?
The learning theory that I am coming to understand does not favour a fixed approach. It isn’t simply a case of playing to the individual, though this is certainly very important as some people will favour being the teacher or the taught, or simply relish periods when they sit at the feet of the expert or stand up in front of newcomers. Rather it is apparent that people learn well within a peer group of like-minds, with people at a similar stage to themselves while having planned opportunities to hear and participate with ‘great minds’ while also from time to time contributing to the efforts and feeding off the enthusiasms of the ‘new minds’. Nothing is fixed, neither learning vicariously (Cox), or learning from the periphery to the centre (Seely Brown).
Stage one of my approach to reading these days is to highlight, even share quotes and notes on Twitter as I go through a book.
I then type up my notes and add further thoughts either by cutting and pasting from the aggregates notes in my Twitter feed (eBooks don’t allow you to cut and paste) or from handwritten notes I take on cards.
Then I share my notes here, tagged so that I can revisit and others can draw on my notes too or take the hint and read the chapter or book for themselves.
This too is but a stage – next step is to wrap up my developing thoughts, comments and other conversations and put a version of this entry into my external blog my mind bursts.
Sometimes an exchange here or elsewhere develops my thinking further – today I will be sitting down with a senior learning designer, one of five or six in the office of an international e-learning agency to talk learning theory and educational principles.
Chapter 2
Regarding Quality Assurance – there should be no inconsistencies between:
- Curriculum
- Teaching methods
- Learning environment
- Assessment procedures
So align assumptions:
- Learning outcomes
- Suitable assessment
N.B. Each outcome requires a different kind of theoretical perspective and a different pedagogical approach. L757
(Easy to say in theory, not so easy to deliver in practice?)
Three clusters of broad perspectives:
- Associationism
- Behaviourism
- Connectionism
Associationist: gradual building of patterns of associations and skill components. Therefore activity followed by feedback.
Simple tasks prerequisites to more complex.
Gagne (1985 and 1992)
- Instructional task analysis of discrimination, classifications and response sequences.
- Simpler tasks built step by step followed by coordination to the whole structure.
Instructional Systems Design
- Analyse the domain into a hierarchy of small units.
- Sequence the units so that a combination of units is not taught until its component units are grasped individually.
- Design an instructional approach for each unit in the sequence.
Then add:
- Immediate feedback
- Individualization of instruction
Behaviourism: active learning by design. Immediate feedback on success, careful analysis of learning outcomes, alignment of learning objectives.
The Cognitive Perspective
- Attention
- Memory
- Concept Formation
Knowledge acquisition as the outcome of an interaction between new experiences and the structures for understanding that have already been created. Therefore building a framework for learning vs. learning as the strengthening of associations.
Piaget (1970) Constructivist Theory of Knowledge.
‘Conceptual development occurs through intellectual activity rather than by the absorption of information’. L819
Vygotsky (1928:1931) Importance of social interaction.
Interactions – that e-learning teams call ‘interactivities’.
The Situative Perspective
- Learning must be personally meaningful
- Authentic to the social context
(problem-based learning and cognitive apprenticeship). L862
The concept of community practice
Wenger (1998) identify as a learner derived from the community. (Aspires, defines, accredited).
Mayes et al (2001) learning through relating to others. E.g. Master Class
Social-anthropological belonging to the community. L882.
Beliefs, attitudes, common endeavour, also ‘activity systems’ Engestrom 1993
Learning relationships
Identify, participate, individual relations. Dependent on: context, characteristics and strength of relationships in the group (Fowler and Mayes, 1999) L902
What was exotic in 2007 in common place today?
See Appendix 1 L912
Learning as a cycle through stages.
J F Vernon (2011) H809 assignments and end of module assessment. The concept of riding a thermal of gently rising circles.
Various references L923.
Fitts and Posner (1968)
Remelhart and Norman (1978)
Kolb (1984)
Mayes and Fowler (1999)
Welford (1968)
If ‘as it proceeds from service to expert, the nature of learning changes profoundly and the pedagogy based on one stage will be inappropriate for another’. L923
Fowler and Mayes (1999)
Primary: preventing information
Secondary: active learning and feedback
Tertiary: dialogue and new learning.
REFERENCE
Beetham, H and Sharpe, R. (2007) Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and delivering e-learning.
Cole, M and Engestrom, Y (1993) A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G.Salmon (ed.) Distributed cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, New York, CVP.
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Gagne, R (1985) The conditions of learning. New York. Holt, Rhinehart and Wilson.
Jonassen, D.H. and Rohrer-Murphy, L (1999) ‘Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments’. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47 (1) 61-80
Thoughts on ‘Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age’
Why does the OU put the novice and expert together in the MAODE?
Although I praise this approach and after two years have been a beneficiary I wonder if the research points to the need for greater flexibility and mixing, more akin to several cohorts of students being able to move around, between their own tutor group, contributing to discussions with the newcomers while also being able to hobnob with the experts?
The learning theory that I am coming to understand does not favour a fixed approach.
It isn’t simply a case of playing to the individual, though this is certainly very important as some people will favour being the teacher or the taught, or simply relish periods when they sit at the feet of the expert or stand up in front of newcomers. Rather it is apparent that people learn well within a peer group of like-minds, with people at a similar stage to themselves while having planned opportunities to hear and participate with ‘great minds’ while also from time to time contributing to the efforts and feeding off the enthusiasms of the ‘new minds’.
Nothing is fixed, neither learning vicariously (Cox, 2006), or learning from the periphery to the centre (Seely Brown and Duguid, 1999).
Stage one of my approach to reading these days is to highlight, even share quotes and notes on Twitter as I go through a book.
I then type up my notes and add further thoughts either by cutting and pasting from the aggregates notes in my Twitter feed (eBooks don’t allow you to cut and paste) or from handwritten notes I take on cards.
Then I share my notes here, tagged so that I can revisit and others can draw on my notes too or take the hint and read the chapter or book for themselves.
This too is but a stage – next step is to wrap up my developing thoughts, comments and other conversations and put a version of this entry into my external blog my mind bursts.
Sometimes an exchange here or elsewhere develops my thinking further – today I will be sitting down with a senior learning designer, one of five or six in the office of an international e-learning agency to talk learning theory and educational principles.
Chapter 2
Regarding Quality Assurance – there should be no inconsistencies between:
- Curriculum
- Teaching methods
- Learning environment
- Assessment procedures
So align assumptions:
- Learning outcomes
- Suitable assessment
N.B. Each outcome requires a different kind of theoretical perspective and a different pedagogical approach. L757
(Easy to say in theory, not so easy to deliver in practice?)
Three clusters of broad perspectives:
- Associationism
- Behaviourism
- Connectionism
Associationist: gradual building of patterns of associations and skill components. Therefore activity followed by feedback.
Simple tasks prerequisites to more complex.
Gagné (1985 and 1992)
- Instructional task analysis of discrimination, classifications and response sequences.
- Simpler tasks built step by step followed by coordination to the whole structure.
Instructional Systems Design
- Analyse the domain into a hierarchy of small units.
- Sequence the units so that a combination of units is not taught until its component units are grasped individually.
- Design an instructional approach for each unit in the sequence.
Then add:
- Immediate feedback
- Individualization of instruction
Behaviourism: active learning by design. Immediate feedback on success, careful analysis of learning outcomes, alignment of learning objectives.
The Cognitive Perspective
- Attention
- Memory
- Concept Formation
Knowledge acquisition as the outcome of an interaction between new experiences and the structures for understanding that have already been created. Therefore building a framework for learning vs. learning as the strengthening of associations.
Piaget (1970) Constructivist Theory of Knowledge.
‘Conceptual development occurs through intellectual activity rather than by the absorption of information’. L819
Vygotsky (1928:1931) Importance of social interaction.
Interactions – that e-learning teams call ‘interactivities’.
The Situative Perspective
- Learning must be personally meaningful
- Authentic to the social context
(problem-based learning and cognitive apprenticeship). L862
The concept of community practice
Wenger (1998) identify as a learner derived from the community. (Aspires, defines, accredited).
Mayes et al (2001) learning through relating to others. E.g. Master Class
Social-anthropological belonging to the community. L882.
Beliefs, attitudes, common endeavour, also ‘activity systems’ Engestrom 1993
Learning relationships
Identify, participate, individual relations. Dependent on: context, characteristics and strength of relationships in the group (Fowler and Mayes, 1999) L902
What was exotic in 2007 in common place today?
See Appendix 1 L912
Learning as a cycle through stages.
- J F Vernon (2011) H809 assignments and end of module assessment. The concept of riding a thermal of gently rising circles.
- Various references L923.
- Fitts and Posner (1968)
- Remelhart and Norman (1978)
- Kolb (1984)
- Mayes and Fowler (1999)
- Welford (1968)
If ‘as it proceeds from service to expert, the nature of learning changes profoundly and the pedagogy based on one stage will be inappropriate for another’. L923
Fowler and Mayes (1999)
Primary: preventing information
Secondary: active learning and feedback
Tertiary: dialogue and new learning.
REFERENCE
Beetham, H and Sharpe, R. (2007) Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and delivering e-learning.
Cole, M and Engestrom, Y (1993) A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G.Salmon (ed.) Distributed cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, New York, CVP.
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Gagné, R (1985) The conditions of learning. New York. Holt, Rhinehart and Wilson.
Jonassen, D.H. and Rohrer-Murphy, L (1999) ‘Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments’. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47 (1) 61-80
Seely-Brown, J.S and Duguid, P. (1991) ‘Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation’, Organizational Science, 2 (1): 40-57
An introduction to rethinking pedagogy for a digital age
Beetham and Sharp
This is my third, possibly my fourth read of the book Rethinking Pedagogy for a digital age. Now that I am in the thick of it working on quality assurance and testing for corporate online learning it has enormous relevance and resonance.
Reading this I wonder why the OU changed the MAODL to MAODE? Around 2000-2003? From the Masters in Open and Distance Learning to the Masters in Open and Distance Education.
Beetham and Sharpe have much to say about the relevance or otherwise of pedagogy and its teaching bias.
Pedagogy = the science of teaching not the activity of learning. (L460: Kindle Reference)
The term ‘teaching; denies the active nature of learning an individuals’ unique capacities to learn (Alexander, 2002) L477
How does e-learning cater for the fact the learners differ from one another in the way that they learn? L477
Guiding others to learn is a unique, skilful, creative and demanding human activity that deserves scholarship in its own right. L477
This quote is relevant to H807 Innovations in e-learning and other MAODE modules:
‘Papyrus and paper chalk and print, overhead projectors, educational toys and television, even the basics technologies of writing were innovations once‘. L518
I like this too:
The networked digital computer and its more recent mobile and wireless counterparts are just the latent outcomes of human ingenuity that we have at our disposal. L518
- Learning resources and materials
- Learning environment
- Tools and equipment
- Learning activities
- Learning programme or curriculum
Designed for:
- Practice
- Feedback
- Consolidation
- Learning Design – preparational and planning
- Investigation
- Application
- Representation or modelling
- Iteration
- Teachers tailor to learner needs
- Tutors can find out who needs what
- Validation
- Process
- QA
- Review
Are there universal patterns of learning or not?
Pedagogical Thought
Constructivism – Jonassen et al 1999
Social Constructions – Vygotsky 1986
Activity Theory – Engestrom et al 1999
Experiational Learning – Kolb 1984
Instructional Design – Gagne et al 2004
Networked and collaborative work – McConnell 2000
Learning Design Jochems et al 2004
I was wondering whether, just as in a story, film or novel requires a theme, so learning and especially e-learning, according to Mayes and de Frietas ‘needs to be based on clear theoretical principles.
E-enhancements of existing models of learning.
Technology enables underlying processes common to all learning.
Cf Biggs 1999 Constructivist L737
Teaching for Quality Learning at University Buckingham SRHE OUP
Laurillard’s Conversational Model of learning – and my thoughts on ‘modes’ of learning from ‘indulgent’ to ‘applied’.
Indulgent Learning
There are all kinds of words for this and I’d like to find one that is non-commital. The OU calls it ‘recreational learning’. There are many shades of ‘indulgence’ which has to include at one end of the spectrum ‘inspired’ – the person who learns with such passion and obsession that it may appear to some as indulgent but because the person is motivated serendipty may take this indulgence into a career (or at least a life-style). In any case, what’s wrong with learning?
Surely watching TV passively is more indulgent, or learning to become an expert at a game?
Aspirational Learning
Here the person aspires to be (dangerous), or to do (better) something and requires (professions) or understands it would be useful to have and to demonstrate a skill or knowledge. The motivation may be extrinsic, but he desire to get on, to secure work you feel informed about or even enjoy is a healthy aspiration.
Applied Learning
Perhaps this follows on from these first two – if you turn professional or get them job then further learning on the subject that is your work has the benefit of being applied, it develops your confidence, raises your skills, allows you to take on new challenges.
Compulsory Learning
Not necessarily the worst form, I have to look at elements of military training in time of war or conflict and whether compulsory or not they serve a practical purpose – kill or be killed (or in current parlance, ‘keep the peace’). For a student at school to feel the subject they are studying is compulsory the motivation is slight, no love for it, that intrinsic fire has been put out. The extrinsic motivation – the cane or class prize may work for some.
I only came up with a set of descriptors of my own as I read ‘Preparing for blended learning’ Pegler (2009) for the third time in a wholy different setting than when I read it first as a returning student of e-learning two years ago unsure if I’d find my way into an e-learning role, a year ago when I found myself at the hub of distance and e-learning – The Open University and now two and half years on, where I started this journey over a decade ago – in Brighton.
I feel like a child who has spent years learning a foreign language and this week went to a country where the language is the mother tongue. I know the language of e-learning. I can, understandably, ‘talk the talk.
Now I get to see how to do it effectively, winning the trust of clients, collaborating with an array of skilled colleagues to take an idea, or problem or objective, and create something that works and can be scrutinised in a way that is rarely done at academic levels for effectiveness – a pass isn’t good enough, for some ‘modules’ 100% compliance is required. Do you want people running nuclear power stations, our trains … or banks (ahem) to get it wrong?
Turning back to the books then I am going to spend the rest of the week looking out for some of the following. I imagine the practised learning designers have the outcomes in the back of their mind rather than the descriptors given here. Across the projects I am working on I want to see how many of the following I can spot. And like learning a language (I eventually cracked French and recall this phenonmenon) the fog will slowly clear and it will come fluently.
Laurillard’s Conversational Model (2001).
1. Assimilative: mapping, Brainstorming, Buzzwords, Crosswords, Defining, Mind maps, Web search Adaptive. Process narrative information (reading books, e–books, attending talks, lectures and classroom teaching, watching a video or TV, including YouTube listening to the radio or a podcast). Then manage this information by taking notes (which may be blogged or managed in an e–portfolio or any old-fashioned exercise book or arch–level file).
2. Adaptive: Modelling. Where the learning environment changes based in the learner’s actions, such as simulations or computer games.
3. Communicative: reasoning, Arguing, Coaching, Debate, Discussion, Fishbowl, lce-breaker, Interview, Negotiation, On-the-spot questioning, Pair dialogues, Panel discussion, Peer exchange, Performance, Question and answer, Rounds, Scaffolding, Socratic instruction, Short answer, Snowball, Structured debate, discussion, ice–breaker, debate face–to–face or online (and therefore synchronous and asynchronous)
4. Productive: Assignment, Book report, Dissertation/thesis, Drill and practice, Essay, Exercise, Journaling, Presentation, Literature review, Multi-choice questions, Puzzles, Portfolio, Product, Report/paper, Test, Voting, creating something, from an essay to a blog, a written paper in an exam and sundry diagrams, drawings, video, sculptures. Whatever is produced as an outcome from the learning activity? (Increasingly created online to share on a platform: blog, audio podcast, animation, photo gallery, video and any combination or ‘mash–up’ of these).
5. Experiential: study, Experiment, Field trip, Game, Role play, Scavenger hunt, Simulation, interactive problem solving from a field trip to a role–play. Creative Problem Solving techniques might include Heroes, Human Sculpture, and Time Line).
REFERENCE
Pegler, C (2009). Preparing for Blended e-Learning (Connecting with E-learning) (Kindle Locations 2442-2444). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
Conole, G (2007) ‘Describing learning activities and tools and resources to guide practice’, in H. Beetham and R. Sharpe (eds) Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and Delivering e-Learning, London: Routledge, (reformatted)
What is the library, when the totality of experience approaches that which can be remembered?’
5th May 2012
‘What is the library, when the totality of experience approaches that which can be remembered?’ (Rausing, 2011:52)
Speaking at the Nobel Symposium ‘Going Digital‘ in June 2009 (that ironically took another 2 years before it was published0.
Things are gong to have to speed up in the new age of digital academia and the digital scholar.
We have more than a university in our pockets (an OU course), we have a library of million of books.
(I have an iPhone and iPad. I ‘borrow’ time on laptops on desktops around the house, libraries at work).
I’ve often pondered from a story telling point of view what it would be like to digitize not the libraries of the world, but something far more complex, the entire contents of someone’s mind. (The Contents of My Mind: a screenplay) It is fast becoming feasible to pull together a substantial part of all that a person may have read and written in their lifetime. (TCMB.COM a website I launched in 2001)
‘Throughout history, libraries have depended on destruction’. (Rausing, 2011:50)
But like taking a calculator into a maths exam, or having books with you as a resource, it isn’t that all this ‘stuff’ is online, it is that the precise piece of information, memory support or elaboration, is now not on the tip of your tongue, but at your fingertips.
Rausing (2011) wonders about the creation of a New library of Alexandria. I wonder if we ought not to be looking for better metaphors.
‘How do we understand the web, when this also means grasping its quasi-biological whole?’ (Rausing, 2011:53)
Tim Berners-Lee thinks of Web 2.0 as a biological form; others have likeminds. But what kind of growth, like an invasive weed circling the globe?
There are many questions. In this respect Rausing is right, and it is appropriate for the web too. We should be asking each other questons.
‘Do we have the imagination and generosity to collaborate? Can we build legal, organisational and financial structures that will preserve, and order, and also share and disseminate, the learning and cultures of the world? Scholars have traditionally gated and protected knowledge, but also shared and distributed it, in libraries, schools and universities. Time and again they have stood for a republic of learning that is wider than the ivory tower. Now is the time to do so again’. (Rausing, 2011:49)
If everything is readily available then the economy of scarcity, as hit the music industry and is fast impacting on movies, applies to books and journals too.
It seems archaic to read the copyright restrictions on this Nobel Symposium set of papers and remarkable to read that one of its authors won’t see their own PhD thesis published until 2020.
‘The academic databases have at least entered the digital realm. Public access – the right to roam – is a press-of-the-button away. But academic monographs, although produced by digitised means, are then, in what is arguably an act of collective academic madness, turned into non-searchable paper products. Moreover, both academic articles and monographs are kept from the public domain for the author’s lifetime plus seventy years. My own PhD dissertation,19 published in 1999, will come into the public domain in about 110 years, around 2120’. (Rausing, 2011:55)
The e-hoarder, the obsessive scanning of stuff. My diaries in my teens got out of hand, I have a month of sweet wrappers and bus tickets, of theatre flyers and shopping lists. All from 1978. Of interest perhaps only because 10,000 teeneragers in the 1970s weren’t doing the same in England at the time.
‘We want ephemera: pamphlet literature, theatre bills, immigrant broad sheets and poetry workshops’. (Rausing, 2011:51)
What then when we can store and collate everything we read? When our thoughts, not just or writings are tagged and shared? Will we become lost in the crowd?
‘What if our next “peasant poet,” as John Clare was known, twitters? What if he writes a blog or a shojo manga? What if he publishes via a desktop, or a vanity publisher? Will his output count as part of legal deposit material?’ (Rausing, 2011:52)
The extraordinary complex human nature will not be diminished; we are what we were 5000 years ago. It will enable some, disable others; be matter of fact or of no significance, a worry or not, in equal measure.
A recent Financial Times article agrees with Robert Darnton, warning that by means of the Books Rights Registry, Google and the publishing industry have created “an effective cartel,” with “significant barriers to entry.” (Rausing, 2011:57)
Much to ponder.
‘If scholars continue to hide away and lock up their knowledge, do they not risk their own irrelevance?’ (Rausing, 2011:61)
GLOSSARY
Allemansratt : Freedom to roam
The Cloud : A Simple Storage Service that has some 52 billion virtual objects.
Folkbildningsidealet: A “profoundly democratic vision of universal learning and education”?
Incunabula: “Incunabula” is a generic term coined by English book collectors in the seventeenth century to describe the first printed books of the fifteenth century. It is a more elegant replacement for what had previously been called “fifteeners”, and is formed of two Latin words meaning literally “in the cradle” or “in swaddling clothes”
Maimonedes : His philosophic masterpiece, the Guide of the Perplexed, is a sustained treatment of Jewish thought and practice that seeks to resolve the conflict between religious knowledge and secular.
Meisterstuecke : German for masterpiece.
Samizdat : An underground publishing system used to print and circulate banned literature clandestinely.
Schatzkammer : ‘Treasure Room’, and in English, for the collection of treasures, kept in a secure room, often in the basement of a palace or castle.
REFERENCE
Ruasing, L(2011) (Last accessed 23rd May 2012) http://www.center.kva.se/svenska/forskning/NS147Abstracts/KVA_Going_Digital_webb.pdf )
Mind Bursts 