robyn jay

On day 2 of DEHub I enjoyed a workshop by Debra Hoven (now at Athabasca) on e-portfolios. Although plagued by internet problems (will conference venues EVER get it right!) that meant we were unable to build ideas in Debra’s wikispace (some great resources here) it was an engaging conversation across a very diverse group. Debra’s approach was very much one of student choice/ownership and a focus on narrative/ digital storytelling.

Here’s a few notes I took during the session:

• E-portfolios are about the development of personal ‘brand’ not about proving something
• A purposeful and cumulative aggregation of digital items/ artefacts – ideas, reflections, evidence, feedback
• How to select? – choose 5 artefacts and justify selection
• The repurposing of content has implications for use in recognition/RPL
• We must be careful of validity – what is actually being assessed? the ability to reflect? technical skills?
• Attempts to implement an e-portfolio system that is scalable and manageable assume something being DONE TO students
• The benefits of being electronic (discussion) – portability, varied voice, connections, multimodality, updating anywhere/anytime, easier, variable access, sorting/categorisation potential
• Avoid showcasing (as opposed to assessment) which tends to only highlight the best aspects – encourage discussion of things that didn’t work
• How can we scaffold reflection? – this is particularly of interest to me as I continue to experience teachers, let alone students, who lack the ability to engage in critical reflection around their practice

Debra’s students shared the following pointers for supporting the use of e-portfolios:

• Provide top 10 tips and best practices
• Give examples of model e-portfolios
• provide examples of artefacts
• develop tutorials
• provide access to one person who has completed a portfolio
• offer videos of past students discussing how they used their portfolio to gain employment
• set up facilitator/student discussion forums
• record podcasts from staff explaining uses and how assignments are relevant to the portfolio

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In his DEHub summit keynote Terry Anderson spoke on the technical challenges and opportunities of 3 generations of distance (in its loosest sense) education pedagogies. It was a balanced, eclectic approach that aligned to our approach in designing the PiE course at SWSI (moodle based).

He began by explicitly stating his values:

• student control and freedom
• continued educational opportunities as a human right, and that
• we can continuously improve the quality effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience

and his belief that ‘technology sets the beat and timing, and pedagogy defines what you do with it’.

The 3 generations – behaviourist, constructivist and connectivist – in themselves and their definitions were nothing new but he did a good job at positioning them as an integrated approach to meet the needs of life long learners in complex contexts.

A behavourist approach was presented as useful for

• logically coherent self-paced study
• context free skills and concepts
• transmissable knowledge
• presenting multiple representations
• a support for student modelling and adaptation
• reflection amplifiers
• highly scalable teaching
• reducing insecurity

Interestingly he placed most OER content in this bucket.

A constructivist approach is useful for:

• presenting multiple perspectives
• a focus on negotiation
• metacognition
• small group learning
• dialogue
• less structure
• google docs, locked down spaces, discussion forums, voicethread

and a connectivist approach for:

• learner control
• highly scalable
• emergent, soft skills related to real world engagement
• connection forming
• unpredictability
• non-sequential

Terry encouraged a focus on NETWORKS of practice (as opposed to CoPs) and asked the audience ‘what is YOUR footprint online for others to connect with?’ and stressed the need to:

• challenge our assessment models
• use the network to filter/manage connections
• rethink learning as a process of filtering and pruning
• stop trying to MANAGE learning in a connectivist model but trust self-based accountability

My question is how do students learn the underpinnings of a connectivist approach to learning – the ability to filter, prune, connect?

Are some individuals destined to be excluded from the benefits this approach offers? What are the implications of this?

Terry’s slides:

Most of last week was spent at the DEHub/ODLAA Education 2011-2021 Summit: Global challenges and perspectives of blended and distance learning here in Sydney. I’ll try to share some of the highlights here followed by a couple of session specific posts.

To begin I was intrigued by the choice of terminology in the title and the purposeful exclusion of ‘e-learning’ and while we did on the whole get it over and done with on day 1, there WAS a lot of wasting of time and posturing around definitions. We should be flexibly meeting the needs and interests of ALL learners via a blend of methodologies and strategies whether they be distanced from the actual physical institution (physically, socially etc) OR within its walls. It is absurd to think that models of ‘distance education’ that abounded in the 1980s when I first studied independently, and which I was horrified to hear described as “the glory days of distance education”, which comprised solely of large bundles of text based readings and study guides, are indeed models that should be still in place today. (At the time of was finishing my education degree while teaching casually on Melville Island – I had no contact with my peers or lecturer apart from comments on returned assignments). Efforts to maintain a viable position for outdated models of provision came across as little more than geriatric academics attempting to remain relevant. Of course we have taken from those old models what worked; of course they were better than nothing in their day.

During the Day 1 morning panel it was revealed that some employers and in fact some countries are refusing to recognise qualifications completed via virtual labs and online study. Some are calling for the modality of courses to be listed in the academic transcript. Interesting given the apparent growth in Open Universities including the OU of Nepal discussed by Mohamed Ally on Day 3. Mark Brown from Massey Uni raised the current NZ policy stance that ‘real education happens on campus’ and the implications of this for a country where 80% of DE learners are over 25, two thirds are women and it is the preferred mode for 35% of Maori learners. Unfortunately he says ‘Government is not interested in personal narrative’ when it comes to policy decision making. Mark also discussed trends in the US for corporate ownership of universities (Kaplan owned by the Washington Post and the Walmart/Uni partnership as egs) as the commoditisaton of education.

Yoni Ryan raised issues around the reactive (as opposed to interactive) nature of current online design, comparing the common current model of making a few minor LMS content tweaks and a few comments in discussion boards, to both private US institutions like the Uni of Phoenix where new online course development is supported with 10-20 hrs/week over 5 months and also to previous DE team development models.

Throughout the conference there was a call to separate research intensive and teaching intensive roles in Higher Ed.

Terry Anderson prefaced his Day 1 keynote with the values of:

• student control and freedom
• continued education opportunities as a basic human right, and that
• we can continually improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience

He spoke of 3 generations of distance education pedagogies – I’ll return to this in a later post.

On Day 2 I enjoyed a workshop by Debra Hoven from Athabasca on e-portfolios, a panel on ‘Openness’, and a presentation by Gilly Salmon on ‘Creating viable futures for learning’ which I’ll return to in separate posts. Social inclusion finally raised its head!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how teachers can be supported, what scaffolds can be created, to engage in quality learning design so I found Diana Laurillard’s keynote – ‘The critical role of teachers in optimising technologies for open learning’ – very interesting. Diana spoke about a (quite sophisticated) starter kit to allow teachers to share learning designs adaptable across different content areas – a creative design starter kit.

In Day 3s afternoon keynote Mohamed Ally spoke on Mobile Learning and asked are we ready for ‘education in the pocket’?. He related the story of a very rudimentary Sth African school lacking in physical learning materials but where the teacher said “we have cell phones”. He reported research indicating that while (in 2007) 94% of students were  ready for mobile learning only 60% of staff were, and last weeks Australian newspaper research outcomes indicating that Uni dropout in Australia was largely due to poor teaching, course content, life issues and paid work commitments. He is working to support the development of the Open University of Nepal where students will be given mobile devices if required. Mohamed introduced a new digital divide definition: where learners have the technology but not the learning materials and opportunities.

I have to say the panel session ‘Anticipating the future’ following was characterised with a large degree of doom and gloom:

• lean and mean policy
• funding games and manipulation
• innovation ONLY if it fits within Government directions
• staffing issues
• a continuing emphasis on research at the detriment of teaching
• increased casualisation of teaching staff to fill research buy out gaps
• private provider competition (focusing on teaching not research)

Phil Ice provided the Day 4 morning keynote and spoke initially on two technologies that should change our practice: Android 2.2 allowing us to work within different form factors, and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) that will allow interactive experiences and engagement with limited/ variable connectivity. He also spoke of the role of analytics and a tool developed to track student engagement and risk.

And finally Grainne Conole spoke on ‘Social exclusion or inclusion in a WEb2 world’: digital literacy, community, sociality, digital signatures. See also  www.notschool.net and Cloudworks

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I’ve enjoyed revisiting Herbert Kohl’s ‘I won’t learn from you‘ today. If you haven’t read it it’s an oldie but goody. In particular his final chapter ‘Creative maladjustment and the struggle for public education’ is particularly relevant to our current work on the Bruce Declaration.

Here are a few extracts…

When it is impossible to remain in harmony with one’s environment without giving up deeply held moral values, creative maladjustment becomes a sane alternative to giving up altogether. Creative maladjustment consists of breaking social patterns that are morally reprehensible, taking conscious control of one’s place in the environment, and readjusting the world one lives in based on personal integrity and honesty……

Creative maladjustment is reflective. It implies adapting your own particular maladjustment to the nature of the social systems that you find repressive. It also implies learning how other people are affected by those systems, how personal discontent can be appropriately turned into moral and political action, and how to speak out about the violence that thoughtless adjustment can cause or perpetuate.

Unfortunately, the momentum of educational research and the attempt to turn education into a single, predictable and controllable system with national standards and national tests pulls in the opposite direction. Teaching well is a militant activity that requires a belief in children’s strengths and intelligence no matter how poorly they may function under the regimes imposed upon them.

The book was originally published in 1991, about the time I started working in adult literacy/numeracy. At least at that point in time in Australian education we worked within a system that (although not perfect) genuinely valued and funded education for ALL, personally directed learning, and student-centred engagement. It was a good time to be teaching. It’s been pretty much downhill from there. Grandmothers can no longer gain specific assistance to read to their grandchildren, adult learners are pumped through competencies they do not need or want, truly community based programs have been axed or drastically under-funded, and insufficient allowances mean that our learners must spend every spare hour working in low paid jobs rather than engaging in debate and critique with peers that might rock the system. It’s time for a change.

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Finally finding a minute to post some notes and reflections on last weekends RCC in Canberra focusing on wikis.

I’ve got to say that beforehand I couldn’t see how 3 days could possibly be spent talking about wikis, and while for me the conversations around learning and teaching were far more interesting, the breadth of wiki-related topics covered and the diversity of wiki interests represented was great. Two of the education focused conversations were captured by Steph over at TalkingVTE here and here, and there are moves to write up a Declaration (called Bruce) that as Tom Worthington aptly describes  ‘is intended to inform current government inquiries into education and into the NBN. Policies, programs and funding could then be provided to have services directly to students, resources for teachers and for educational institutions’.  See Tom’s post for more on this and if interested let us know.

Mark Dilley from AboutUs.org acted facilitator. I’m still trying to get my head around how useful and/or sustainable the site might be. It’s described as ‘for and about businesses, organizations, blogs, forums -really anyone who has a website’…. aiming to ‘provide visitors with information about websites, a way to share their knowledge about websites, and a place to promote their own sites.’ Given that I have trouble posting to and keeping up to date my existing sites I’m not sure how I’ll go with this but ready to be convinced….

It was interesting to speak to the guys from Lonely Planet about their wiki use and perceived future directions. They freely admitted that the company is still book-oriented and agreed that changes were needed if they were to remain the travel guide/network of choice especially for the younger travelers. They need to be responding to these kinds of demands and fast.

There was a lot of talk about Wikipedia and mediawiki. After my failed attempt to create a page on wikipedia with Alex Hayes and the subsequent lack of any forum for discussion about it, or recourse, I’m not a big believer of its democratic capabilities. There was however some interesting discussion around troublemakers, editors, peacekeepers and facilitators. Although some form of moderation via ‘official moderators’ or the community is clearly needed I kept getting a niggly sense that its pretty autocratic in the end.

We spent a couple of hours talking about the wiki ‘facilitator’ role. Having educators, users, editors etc all side by side enabled some interesting discussion which I attempted to capture here…

[CC FlickR image by robynejay]

Thanks to all the sponsors and participants for an interesting few days!

Over (inside the gates) at Facebook friend and colleague Michael Coghlan is battling with how to approach an organisational group blog.

He says (and I hope he forgives me for bringing it to the outside audience but its worthy of sharing)…

I write here (ie Facebook) with gay abandon. I do correct spelling and try and make sure it reads clearly but as to the tone and the opinions being expressed I really don’t care. I shoot from the hip.
I just tried to compose a blog post for a new blog we’re starting at work and within seconds found myself struggling with questions like what the correct tone should be, what kind of impression will this create, will I be harming the reputation of my work team or the wider organisation? Is it OK if I express my own opinions, do these opinions represent those of the work team…..and a whole host of other concerns. I had been quite keen on this idea of starting an elearning blog for our organisation but I’m now not so sure. Having to worry about these kinds of questions is a real downer. It gets in the way of almost every phrase – it this too informal? Is it creating an impression that is too casual? Etc etc. One could get quite neurotic about it. I guess it’s a separate skill – being able to understand the wider context and write in accordance with that brief. But right at this minute it feels quite limiting and I’d rather just write this instead!

Having blogged for my last two organisations I understand how you are Michael is feeling.

From 2006-2007 I blogged with Alex Hayes and guest blogger, Marie Jasinski, for NSW LearnScope. Don’t try to Google it – its all there in safe keeping but as yet not moved to a another public domain.WE agreed up front what the scope would be and we knew each other and our styles and interests. When we first set the blog up it caused a bit of a stir and initially we were threatened with big brother moderation of each post before publication. Thankfully I negotiated around that. It was a good blog. Writing as a group (Marie was paid to post monthly on innovation) meant that a range of styles and topics were covered. That is the benefit I think of a group blog and you should not be afraid to write differently; each style appeals to different readers. Our only limitations were policy related. We ensured that our program and organisations and the Government were not explicitly criticised. But apart from that it was pretty much what came along and we felt strongly about. During that time I did little blogging of my own.

During 2009 and 2010 I contributed to the UNSW TELT blog. The blog was set up for the Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching project; a partnership between the Learning and Teaching unit and the L&T portfolio in IT where I worked. My aim in setting it up was to provide a forum for the project team to communication about all things TELT related. Being in Higher Ed it was a good place to engage in critical debates, or so I thought. On the whole, the most I could get others to post on was meeting notes & updates. Mike Bogle was working in the L&T unit for year one and to avoid him posting twice we installed a plugin (FeedWordpress?) so that posts to his own blog tagged for TELT automatically appeared in both.

So this was a dilemma for me. I wanted to write critiques and engage in debate but I couldn’t do it alone. So I tempered what I wrote and returned to this blog. If you’re going to run a group blog, while it is OK to have unique voices, there does need to be an agreed upon scope of content that everyone contributes to to a certain degree. Had I been ‘a mouth’ while everyone else was posting minutes and notices it would have looked pretty strange.

So back to Michael’s ponderings and based on my experience with group organisational blogs (OR what I would do next time)….

• Meet and agree upon the purpose of the blog – construct if necessary a list based on this of the types of posts that might appear. It might be good to find out who is interested in what and if you want to write about issues/critiques either make sure there’s more than one person or designate a person for this role.
• Agree upon the style – if people cannot write comfortably they won’t write at all – formal writing in a blog just looks weird
• Agree upon boundaries – align to policy requirements, and discuss things like swearing etc – it’s probably what is acceptable in workplace conversations and meetings assuming senior management can hear
• Discuss the issue of readability – spelling, grammar and length.
• Agree to act as joint moderators around readability – if there’s a spelling error or a sentence is unclear duck in and fix it
• Set some targets on how often people will post if relevant – approx a post a week for example. It doesn’t need to be adhered to but can keep people on track. Will you allow keen posters to write daily? While this keeps the blog active it can also start to appear as though the blog belongs to that one person
• Agree on process if policy/scope boundaries are crossed – my suggestion would be personal contact with the author where concerns are raised – “do you think the last paragraph in X blog should be changed to …” etc
• Agree to support each other and the blog by posting responses and comments to encourage interactivity – its OK to use personal blogs to do this of course or the comments function
• Decide who might ALREADY be posting about relevant issues – don’t ask these people to repost but use a feed to duplicate the posts if the guidelines above are met
• Ensure everyone is cluey about attributions and the use of images etc – varied styles are ok so long as basic requirements are met
• Set a timeframe for reviewing how things are going

Despite the considerations that ARE needed group blogging can be a great experience and a good way to get people started down a blogging track with a bit of support.

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