Second Reflection on Online Pedagogy

Belinda Allan

This was my last subject (along with one other) in my Masters degree, so things were beginning to make sense. I was much better at writing to an academic standard as well as reading faster and more efficiently all the papers required.

Being the end of my Masters, and given the amount of effort and grades awarded already, I was determined not to slip down in the grading scale. I had signed up for two subjects (as opposed to one previously) so I knew the workload was going to be high. I approached my workplace (Jiaxing University) at the end of their first semester (November) and asked for a lighter workload in teaching (and the lesson planning that goes along with it). They agreed to 16 hours of teaching with roughly (and only) 4 lesson plans required. With my lesson plans designed between USQ semesters I was down to 14-18 working hours per week due to timetabling. The rest of my time including weekends was dedicated to study and I have to admit most of that was spent in Online Pedagogy as this is where my interests lie.

Coming from a computer science background, I enjoy practically living “online”. This is fortunate for me as I live overseas in a small town in China (roughly 300 000 which is quite small for China). Being a small town in a developing country, there’s not many distractions (i.e. not much to do). So my spare time is basically my own and was spent online studying to complete my masters. My partner and I have rearranged our lives for 2.5 years in order for me to dedicate as much time and effort as I could afford to complete this masters (meaning most household chores were his).

So on reflection, I dedicated a great deal of time and effort into Online Pedagogy from reduction in workload both teaching and household, and from dedicating most of my spare time for my own interests in this subject. From the first reflection question of “what do you want to get out of this subject?” I fully realised how much I wanted to learn and was motivated to ‘get stuck in’ and begin the journey. I have not regretted any of the sacrifices I’ve made along the way and have enjoyed every minute of my learning journey, especially in Online Pedagogy.

Factors Influencing Interaction and Collaboration in Online Environments

by Belinda Allan, Michael Corbett, Toni-Maree Pettigrew and William Murphy.

Note: To listen to this paper click here.

Abstract

Interaction in online education has been linked to lowering attrition rates and greater student satisfaction. Educators are now trying to maximise the level of interaction in their courses so as to maximise the educational benefits. However interaction doesn’t happen by chance and needs to be purposefully designed into every aspect of the course content with relevant and interesting interactive activities. The educators themselves need to change their role in order to best facilitate and guide for maximum interaction. And finally the course needs to consider the learners in order to cater for their learning style preferences and increase the level of social presence. With all three major factors working in harmony within the online environment interaction can be maximised for greater student and learning benefit.

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that attrition rates in distance education are generally greater than those in traditional higher education and can be as high as 50% (Moore & Kearsley, 1996; Ross, Morrison, Smith, & Cleveland, 1990, cited in Wheeler, 2006). Rovai (2002), Anderson (2004), Pelz (2004) and many other authors, agree that the reason for this is that many students of distance education, and especially online education, experience physical isolation, lack of personal attention, lack of visual and verbal cues, and lack of intimacy and immediacy such as lack of eye contact and lack of personal proximity. In other words, there is a sense of dissociation in learning and lack of a sense of community.

Building a community of learners that feel involved leads to learners developing interrelationships and therefore reducing the dropout rate by increasing student satisfaction levels (Tinto, 1993, cited in Rovai, 2002). Interaction between learners with similar interests and common goals creates a sense of community (Westheimer & Kahne, 1993, cited in Rovai, 2002). Therefore, interactivity is one of the essential elements of a community (Rovai, 2002).

There are three kinds of interactivity that help to build a learning community in online courses, interaction with: content, instructors, and other learners (Moore, 1989, cited in Swan, 2001). These interaction types do not function in isolation in reality, for example, student to student interaction requires the instructor to design that interaction into the course content (teacher/content interaction) and facilitate and support the interaction (student/teacher interaction). However the following figure serves as a useful guide for thinking about interaction types that need to be designed into an online course.

Figure 1: Three Interaction Types (Anderson and Garrison, 1998, cited in Anderson, 2002).

Swan (2001) found that clarity of design, interaction with instructors and active discussion among learners significantly influenced students’ perception of learning and satisfaction levels. This paper focuses on these major factors, starting with designing the learning environment for maximum interaction. Then it discusses the extremely important role the instructor has to play as a facilitator of learning. And finally a look at interaction from the students’ point of view with their varied learning preferences and examining the barriers to learning in an online environment.

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Have a look at this video from Mark Pesce “Friends I’ve Never Met”, at the 2008 Next Wave Festival, Mercat Hotel, Melbourne, on 25 May 2008.

Three very clear uses of social media that has evolved through humans connecting with each other

1. Through “friends I’ve never met” you find out about world events well before the media
2. Through “friends I’ve never met” that are mistreated by someone, there are “enemies that I could hurt” from using my connections bringing justice and ethics into the hands of everyone.
3. Through “me and my army” sweeping under the carpet becomes an impossibility and major action can be taken with minimal effort of each individual

It feels like a new era of consciousness!

Been watching a lot of TED talks lately (so inspiring!) and this one is amazing. No educator need spend thousands again just to have something as simple as an interactive whiteboard. OK, it may not have all the bells and whistles as others do, but as Johnny said “.. at a fraction of the price” so who’s complaining?! Check out the video below:

TED | Talks | Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote (video)

Pownce: described as a mash between Twitter, chat, file sharing and an improved version of social networking (i.e. tagging friends in certain groups rather than one big room). It’s gaining attention due to the founder, Kevin Rose, also having founded Digg.

Pownce: Against All Odds, Pownce Blew Us Away

on Pownce, you can send a message, or a file, or a song, or an event, to one person; or three of your friends; or only your family; or everyone. That’s right, you can engage in private conversations, you can speak to the world, you can have a group of close friends, and a group of associates, and a group of unknown people you just added to your profile, and you can choose when you want to send stuff to any of these groups. With this simple feature Pownce trounces all over Twitter, and comes close to being more useful than most IM clients.

As far as other options go, Pownce has themes, which are nice for simple pimping of your profile; it also has solid filtering options for your messages, which makes your life much easier (try to find that link someone sent you 6 days ago on Twitter).

Maybe, I’ll see you Pownce soon?

Graphic from Assembly of the Museums Australia education group (there’s also a paper to go with the map)

Loved this picture when I first saw it and it sums not only social software in the middle, but all of Web 2.0’s offerings. I also like the concept of radical trust as the net and these technologies do assume a certain amount of ethics behind the contributions. But also for a service like del.icio.us it also doesn’t make sense to destroy your own account. That, I think, is what’s great about the truly connecting Web 2.0 applications – you own your account, and yet you are contributing to the whole collective, thereby creating its own ethics through ownership. Brilliant!

A great example of Web 2.0 systems for educational use is from E-club » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 tools in an education context

For example, what about if we ask them to set up a del.ic.ious account (or find one relevant to their topic?), encourage some serendipitious searching and get them to tag their finds with relevant categories of their choosing. They could then develop content to be published in a form of their choosing, maybe even a collaborative task such as a wiki on the topic. We would still have the necessary ‘objects’ that could be assessed- both in content and use of technology, they would be using tools that they both like and need, and we would all learn a lot together through the experience. As teachers we would not be in the drivers seat but would rather work alongside them and guide them on the appropriate use of these tools.

• When members can’t take constructive criticisms of their work and see it as criticisms of themselves.
• When members aren’t as enthused as each other (including myself) about the piece.
• When members make judgments about other members based on age, gender, race or any other factor, and frame their interactions according to those judgments. Of course, especially when it’s not in a good or helpful way such as putting someone down or rejecting ideas, effort or work based on these judgments.
• Personality clashes – especially when participation is mandatory or otherwise forced due to assessment requirements.
• When the process of contributing or assessing is not structured well-enough to allow for input and criticism without hard feelings. This is an extremely difficult thing to “structure”!

Through this reflection and other good and bad experiences in groups – I don’t think I’ll be assessing in groups ever again. Sure collaboration and sharing in groups, but no piece of assessment of mine will assess group work unless somehow there is an individual mark able to be given – that is clear delineation of work contributed freeing members to contribute as they see fit.

Something all education boards should watch before planning sessions.

Favourite quote

“It’s the death of education, but it’s the dawn of learning”
- Steven Happell

Something that I’m beginning to realise as I progress in the “pedagogy in practice” course is that this subject is the icing on the cake. It’s tying together all my previous learning in instruction design, teaching strategies and tactics, teaching approaches and lifelong learning and even the more specific communities of practice and my other field of study in second language learning and linguistics. As I come across concepts in this course I’ve thought “yes, but that’s nothing new, that ties in here and is because of this and that and for my students they need blah”.

This is fantastic!! And this “in practice” course is really trying to stretch me to find ways to put all that theory into practice! It’s also a big ask for one semester-long course as 2 years of study is a lot to “put into practice”!

I couldn’t have dreamed of a better way to end my master’s study!