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Where do I stand academically? Where and what next? And the madness of being.
Master of Arts in Open and Distance Education (MA ODE) with the Open University, UK (OU)
H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates
H807: Innovations in eLearning – Learning outcomes
H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students
B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change
H808: The e-learning professional
This completes the Masters Degree. I graduate on Saturday 27th April 2013
Currently (March 2013) I am taking H809 as a bridge towards doctoral research or professional consultancy. Complete in June 2013.
H809 Practice-based research in educational technology
I joined the #H817open MOOC for one part of this module. I will register for 2014
H817: Openness and innovation in e-learning.
Where do I stand academically? Where and what next? And the madness of being.
Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) with the Open University, UK (OU)
H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates
H807: Innovations in eLearning – Learning outcomes
H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students
B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change
H808: The e-learning professional
This completes the Masters Degree. I graduate on Saturday 27th April 2013
Currently (March 2013) I am taking H809 as a bridge towards doctoral research or professional consultancy. Complete in June 2013.
H809 Practice-based research in educational technology
I joined the #H817open MOOC for one component of this module. I will register for 2014
H817: Openness and innovation in e-learning.
Related articles
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- Martin Weller and the MOOCers (mymindbursts.com)
- Openness in Education WK1 MOOC (mymindbursts.com)
- Making swim coaching a tad easier with SwimTag (mymindbursts.com)
- How to visualise learning – think Lava Lamps! (mymindbursts.com)
- How more deeply embedded is a visual memory if you crafted the drawing or painting that is the catalyst for its recall. (mymindbursts.com)
- No. 5 aha moment: the Web as a universal standard (downes.ca)
Here in Lewes we shut the town centre down for a march as often as we can.
It all stems from 5th November. We had only been here a couple of months and we were enrolled in a Bonfire Society. That was 13 years ago.
The town also has a Moving on parade for all primary schools in the district, not just the town, but from outlying villages. The town centre is closed to traffic and kids, dressed up, carrying banners and whatnot on a theme, march through town and end it with a party in the Paddock – a large field, formerly part of the earthworks around the 11th century Lewes Castle.
It helps to make an occasion of something when we move on. We’re rather good at it:
- Christenings
- Marriage
- Death
- Birthdays
- Anniversaries
- Graduation
I’m down for Brighton or will try to enroll in Versailles for my graduation. I skipped my first nearly three decades ago. I just didn’t feel like moving on. I hadn’t felt I’d had an education to justify the fuss. My fault, not theirs. I put in the hours and came out with an OK degree but that isn’t why I’ll remember my undergraduate years.
I should mark moving on, and away from this blog. It logs, day by day, and in the background countless pages of hidden notes. It has carried me through the Masters in Open & Distance Education.
H809, my bonus track, will mark the end.
For this reason I am migrating most of the content and the journey it records to an external blog.
From time to time I’ll post a note at the bottom of the page to say this is where it’ll be from June.
My moving on.
By May, I’ll also know if the next few years have been set up. We’ll see. I may even be back at the OU in some capacity. I rather
Related articles
Things I wished I’d known when I started the MAODE three years ago (I’ve finished, I’m doing H809 as CPD – already!)
A thorough introduction to the platform and tools as a common 16 hours to all modules.
An afternoon, face-to-face tutorial? Through OU Students regionally if not with your tutor. Perhaps through Alumni support groups in Google Hang outs or some such?
This may sound like anathema to the online, distance learning purists, but I wonder if the OU will have to ‘turn itself inside out’ and have undergrads on campus – not just postgrad doctoral students. As ‘traditional’ universities offer everything the OU and a handful of other distance learning specialists around the world used to have as ‘unique selling points’ they will be able to offer it all: e-learning support for resident students, e-learning for distance learners and blended learning for everyone in between.
Turn the Michael Young building into the OU’s first Hall of residence.
If I go into academia I will want to teach even if my ‘job’ is research. I can think of no better way, intellectually, to master (literally) my art and subject than by supporting others. Knowing some star ‘educators’ in other institutions I wonder if tutors would gain also from greater contact. The weekly tutorial (at a price) is feasible through Google Hangouts.
I digress:
H809, understandably is a module to take once you have several modules under your belt, however, H809 light, say these first couple of weeks, might be an invaluable, even open and free ‘stand alone’. I would have scrutinised more closely, fewer papers had I known what I know now.
These first few weeks has been applied learning – using the OU Library not simply as an exercise. Invaluable.
(p.s. cats were fighting in the street. I got up to survey the aftermath and couldn’t get back to sleep. Why not catch up on H809 as a few postings from fellow students suggests I am getting a tad behind this week).
Don’t get behind. The ‘tick boxes’ on the VLE ‘ladder’ are a blunt instrument. Every exercise deserves a ‘tick box’ too, though I understand why the OU wouldn’t do this – it starts to smack of primary school. It really is the case (like exercise), that a a couple of hours every day is better than trying to do it all at the weekend, or worse, abandoning it for a week/10 days because catching up is a monster. If this happens seriously think about abandoning that week – keep up with everyone else first as learning with them is better than learning alone.
Isolation is a state of mind, or a behavioral issue. The sooner you learn to tip the contents of your mind out on your lap the better. Learning together is a joy.
Make time to get your head into gear in the first few weeks. If you have to give it more time than the course notes suggest put in the extra hours so that you ‘get it’ otherwise you will struggle all the way through. You can’t do much about is as an EMA approaches if you’re still asking ‘but ?’ about weeks 1-3.
There is no need to print anything off! Get an iPad and a Kindle. Get your digital literacy skills up to speed ASAP.
Write it all down. The default button in this OU Blog is private. Use it as a learning journal, portfolio, digital notebook, aide memoire.
Take the initiative. Meet online in week one. Buddy up, agree a time. Nothing beats meeting your fellow travellers. Google Hangouts work. The nuttiest one I remember was a ‘Pyjamma party’ – all above board and ‘propper’ but given the time differences some were in bed and woke up for it. I guess it requires the ‘hyper gregarious’ character in the group to do this.
Don’t get distracted:
Most don’t blog at all … it should fit in to the regular programme.
Contribute to student forums always, even use RSS feeds but get used to putting the next activity first otherwise you can expend too much of the week’s allocated hours discussing the first couple of activities. Enough is enough. Get the other activities out of the way then come back.
How to visualise learning – think Lava Lamps!
Fig. 1. Lava Lamps – and how we learn – on a rising thermal and in coloured, slimy blobs …
There is a physiological response to the first moments of a new module – I am nervous. This is like meeting the cast for a student play for the first read through. Intrepidation and expectation. As ever, I know no one, not the tutor or fellow students, though many of us have surely crossed paths on previous MAODE modules. We certainly have all of that in common so will have a set of themes and authors, favourite moments and gripes to share.
Visually I see this as my ‘Lava Lamp’ year!
The blob is starting to stretch and will at some stage take me away from the Master’s Degree – now complete – and onwards either returning to learning and development in the multinational / government department arena of my past, or into research.
Fig. 2. Lava lamp inspired quilt – illustrates this idea of the thermal. Is this how we learn? It’s how I visualise it.
If you want the wordy, academic response then read Kolb.
Fig. 3. How I see learning occuring – as expressed during H808 – The e-learning professional
The Open University’s Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE).
Fig. 1. The Open University’s Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE).
Expressed as a Wordle. A personal collection of key influencers based on those tagged in this blog. Includes my own reading and indulgences.
On Friday, at midday, My OU student blog reached a significant milestone.
I’ve been at it for 33 months. I’ve blogged the best part of FIVE modules now – most of which required or invited some use of the blog platform (or another). I required little encouragement – I used to keep a diary and have found since 1999 that in their digital form they are an extraordinarily versatile way to gather, consider, share and develop ideas.
The investment in time, on average, an hour a day in addition to – though sometimes instead of coursework over 1000+ days.
(This excludes 8 months I spent on the Masters in Open and Distance Learning in 2001)
To mark this event, and as I need to go through this online diary, this e-journal, this ‘web-log’ (as they were also once momentarily called) ahead of some exciting meetings coming up next week I thought a simple task might be to click through the tags to identify who have been the key influencers in my reading and thinking over the last two and a half years.
Fig.2. Another way of looking at it.
Beetham, Conole and Weller are key MAODE authors from the Open University. John Seely Brown is a vital undercurrent, Engestrom one of several enthusiasms like Vygostky. While Gagne, second hand hardback, needs to be on your desk for frequent reference.
What I thought would take an hour has taken nearly 40 hours.
Clicking on a tag opens a corner of my head, the notes take me back to that day, that week, that assignment or task. It also takes me back to the discussions, resources and papers. And when I find an error the proof-reader in me has to fix. Aptly, as we approach November 5th, and living in Lewes where there are marches and fireworks from late October for a couple of weeks peaking of course all evening on the 5th, my head feels as if someone has accidentally set light to a box of assorted fireworks.
Just as well. Meetings these days are like a viva voce with eager ears and probing questions – they want the content of my mind and whatever else I bring to the subject after thirty years in corporate training and communications.
Fig. 3. Wordle allows you to say how many words you want to include in the mix.
To create weight I had to repeat the names I consider most important twice, three or four times in the list. I also removed first names as Wordle would have scattered these into the mix independently like peppercorns in a pan of vegetable stock.
The Task
- List all authors who have been part of my learning and thinking over the last couple of years.
- Include authors that my antennae have picked up that are relevant to my interest in learning, design, the moving image and the english language.
- Visualise this and draw some conclusions
Fig.4. This even makes three of the key protagonists look like an advertising agency Gagne, Beetham and Conole.
The Outcome
I can never finish. Take this morning. I stumble upon my notes on three case studies on the use of e-portfolios from H807 which I covered from February 2010-September 2010. To begin with I feel compelled to correct the referencing in order to understand the value, pertinence and good manners (let alone the legal duty) to cite things correctly. (Even though this post was locked – a ‘private’ dump of grabs and my thoughts).
Then I add an image or two.
These days I feel a post requires a visual experssion of its contents to open and benefits from whatever other diagrams, charts or images you can conjure from your mind or a Google Search – ‘the word’ + images creative commons – is how I play it.
Fig. 5. From David Oglivy’s book ‘Ogilvy on advertising‘ – a simple suggestion – a striking image, a pertinent headline and always caption the picture. Then write your body copy.
A background in advertising has something to do with this and the influence of David Ogilvy.
I spend over two hours on the first of three case studies in just one single post. At the time I rubbished e-portfolios. The notes and references are there. Tapped back in I can now make something of it. A second time round the terms, the ideas – even some of the authors are familiar. It makes for an easier and relevant read. What is more, it is current and pertinent. A blog can be a portfolio – indeed this is what I’d recommend.
From time to time I will have to emerge from this tramp through the jungle of my MAODE mind.
Not least to work, to sleep, to cook and play.
Fig. 6. In a word
USEFUL LINKS
REFERENCE
Gagne, R.N. (1965) Conditions of Learning Holt, Rinehart and Winston
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Some online tutor sessions work, some do not. Some social platforms work, others do not. Why?
Fig. 1. Robert Gagne – a must have for anyone interested in learning
Gagne (1970 pp29-30) suggests that instruction in an organized group discussion develops the use and generalization of knowledge – or knowledge transfer. Oxbridge tutors contend that the ‘Oxbridge Tutorial’ – a weekly, structured micro-meeting of two or three people, achieves this. One student reads out a short essay that the tutor and students discuss.
‘When properly led’, Gagne continues, ‘such discussions, where the knowledge itself has been initially mastered’, not only stimulates the production of new extensions of knowledge by students but also provides a convenient means of critical evaluation and discrimination of these ideas. Gagne (ibid).
Forty years on from when Gagne wrote this there are what are meant to be or hoped to be learning contexts where this kind of knowledge transfer through group discussion can still work – or may fail to work – either because the degree of subject mastery between students is too broad or there are too many students, or the wrong mix of students.
For example, in the Open University’s Masters of Open and Distance Education (MAODE) between 12 and 16 postgraduate students meet online in a series of structured online tutor forums – some of these work, some do not. As these meetings are largely not compulsory and as they are asynchronous and online, it is rare to have people in them together – the discussions are threaded. What is more, in any tutor group there will typically be a mixture of students who are on their first, their second, third, fourth or even fifth module of the Master’s – some of whom, given the parameters offered by flexible and distance learning, may have spread these modules over five years. Then there is the task and how it is set, whether the participants are meant to work alone or collaboratively – the simplest and most frequent model online is an expectation to read resources and share notes and thoughts. However, personal experience over five such modules suggests that the committed engagement of say six people, working collaboratively on a clear set of tasks and activities with a time limit and climactic conclusion of delivering a joint project, works best.
Too many of these online tutorials drift, or fizzle out: too few posts, posts that are two long, fragmented posts linking to pages elsewhere, the indifference of participants, the lack of, or nature of the tutor involvement, excessive and misplaced social chat, or discussing subjects that are off topic … It depends very much on the mix, inclinations, availability and level of ‘knowledge mastery’ as to how such online tutorials work out. As well as the eclectic combination of students the role, availability, online and other teaching skills, even the personality of the tutor and of course THEIR knowledge experience and mastery matters.
Just reflect on how such workshops or seminars may work or fail face–to–face – the hunger for knowledge on the topic under discussion, the mix of personalities and the degree to which their experience or level of understanding is the same, at slight or considerable variance, let alone any differences of culture, background, gender or in a business setting – position and the department they have come from.
Ideally the workshop convener, or what the French call an ‘animateur’ should, assemble or construct such groups with great care, like a director casting actors to perform a piece of improvisation. Different contexts offer different opportunities. As a graduate trainee in an advertising agency six of us were repeatedly assembled, the various departmental specialists and directors playing roles at specific times – bit players in these scenarios. On reflection, stage management by a team in the HR department had been vital. It is therefore ‘stage management’ that I consider of significant importance when trying to construct such collective learning experiences online in a corporate setting.
CONCLUSION
Know your players, cast with care, give direction, record what goes on and step in to nudge, re–kindle, stop or start conversations or activities.
REFERENCE
Gagne, R (1970) The Conditions of Learning
ADDITIONAL LINKS
The Nine Events – from Kevin the Librarian
Various Models of learning – Illustrated
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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.
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!
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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
Mind Bursts 