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.

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.

Favourite quote

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

Now in others’ defense, some have family commitments, others have time-consuming jobs… but that’s my point. Why should my grades be affected by other people’s commitments and lives. These aren’t my problems and shouldn’t be.

I could be sitting here with the opposite effect – full-time mum with 3-4 kids and full-time work. I would still try my best, but there’s just not enough time. Why should another group member with more time do all the work and I get a good grade from their effort.

Now groupwork is fantastic and I love it (like I said before), but it should be restricted to formative assessment (not for grades) and not venture into summative assessment land.

“There are four major attributes to the concept of interactivity:

• Interactivity is a message loop;
• Instructional interactivity occurs from the learner’s point of view and does not occur until a message loop from and back to the student has been completed;
• Instructional interactivity has two distinct classes of outputs: content learning and affective benefits (social presence and satisfaction);
• Messages in an interaction must be mutually coherent.” (Yacci, 2000, emphasis added)

Figure: A completed message loop between two entities (Yacci, 2000).

“[I]nteractivity in instruction must occur from the student’s point of view” (Yacci, 2000, emphasis added).

Figure: Two steps in a completed loop as (a) the teacher asks a question and (b) the student responds. The loop is complete from the teacher’s perspective, but not complete from the students perspective (no feedback) (Yacci, 2000).

Figure: The same interaction from the student perspective. The loop is not complete (Yacci, 2000).

Student’s Perception of Interaction (or not)

“An interesting issue regarding the perception of interactivity occurs with branching computer based training in which the instructional program selects different paths based upon student responses. Such an interactive system may not appear to be interactive to the student; because a student does not see the alternative branches, the program may appear to be linear to the student. Even though the program is responding, the student may not sense that the system’s displays are predicated on his or her message. Unless the student sees that he or she is skipping material, or being led to remedial material, the student may not actually perceive the computer’s differential responses as interactive.” (Yacci, 2000, p. 5)

Response Lag

“Student entity A sends a message to teacher entity B. Teacher entity B may not read a message for several days. After reading the message, the teacher responds within minutes. To the teacher, the apparent response lag is nil; lag time has been effectively mediated by the storage medium. However, from the student point of view, there was a significant response lag; the student had to wait several days to get a response. The student’s ability to re-read a copy of his or her original message can no doubt help to lessen the perceived response lag. However, it is likely to be disconcerting to the student to receive a response to a message sent weeks earlier. Often, original message intent is forgotten. Response lag from the student point of view would therefore appear to be an important variable.” (Yacci, 2000, p. 11)

(as cited in Swan, 2004).

References
Swan, K. (2004). Relationships between interactions and learning in online environments. Retrieved March 9, 2008, from http://www.sloanc.org/publications/books/pdf/interactions.pdf

Yacci, M. (2000) Interactivity Demystified: A Structural Definition For Distance Education And Intelligent Computer-Based Instruction. Educational Technology 40(4): (pp. 5–16), Retrieved 9 April, 2008, from http://www.it.rit.edu/~may/interactiv8.pdf

Sufficient levels of deep and meaningful learning can be developed, as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student-teacher; student-student; student-content) is at very high levels. The other two may be offered at minimal levels or even eliminated without degrading the educational experience. (Anderson, 2002)¹

I’m not sure I agree with this. I understand the “very high level” required would be significantly higher than I’ve experienced before… however, I have experienced a course with high student-content and student-student interaction, and although learning did occur, we (as students) felt abandoned and were looking for a little guidance from our guide-on-the-side. How were we progressing? Is this assumption correct? Could we have done something better? Is there further research in … ?

I could imagine without any one of these elements learning and student satisfaction would drop.

What do you think?

References

1. Anderson, T. (2004). Toward a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson, & F. Elloumi, (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning (Chapter 2). Athabasca, Canada: Athabasca University. Retrieved December 30, 2007, from http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/ch2.html

This I noticed often and I would try to push myself past this barrier without much success getting crankier with myself all the while. That is until my partner suggested a screen reader designed for the blind to be able to use the computer. Willing to give anything a go, I researched installed and began testing my screen reader. I must say – Wow! What an incredible difference a simple mode of input could make! Now I was sitting in 6 or 7 lectures a day with the experts reading their papers to me (in a polite British accent). While it reads I can spend the energy in creating a mind map, typing up notes or purely listening to get the main ideas in the paper.

This has made me thoroughly aware of learning styles and accessibility for the handicapped in all things online, especially if it’s a learning course. I continue my study in learning styles and read a website the other day where a learning style study advisor and assister discovered that students high in VAR and K (that is high in all 4) actually require to learn the material in ALL 4 styles before they will understand! We all assumed that only one of these is needed, when in reality it’s the complete opposite making these people usually very unlucky in study. How to cater for all these styles in one online course, is beyond anything in previous history of online pedagogy, I think.

“The new trainees are waiting downstairs, and I’m not sure what to do with them. I know Helen was going to do some kind of assessment so she could start developing the students’ training profiles this week, but she’s away today – any suggestions??”
“Well, there are some communication assessments in that storeroom cupboard, I think we used them a couple of years ago – and a marking scheme somewhere too – why not just use one of them? That should give Helen some starting points to work from.”
“OK – that will do for the first 2 hours”.

Problems
Where to begin?!

• Firstly, they weren’t trained for this. Why bother training for something only to have the trainers pull something out of a cupboard? Do we have all that knowledge they are testing?
• Was assessment planned into the instructional design? Sounds like it wasn’t – big black mark!
• Outside of assessment (maybe) if it was planned for today, where is all the preparation sitting on your desk for the replacement teacher? (see above point)
• Even if assessment wasn’t planned – some lesson plans for a possible replacement is essential. Perhaps something to go on with and do the assessment later.
• The unfair nature of the assessment seems obvious. Some students will ace the assessment due to prior knowledge, others are disadvantaged.
• The statement of ‘needing to kill 2 hours with assessment’ doesn’t inspire one’s confidence in this person as a trainer.
• What does Helen need to complete ‘training profiles’? Does the 2 hour test even gather the right information?
• Was this test designed for this course or another?
• How was it designed? Is the marking sheet even valid or correct?

…. the list continues, but my time is up!

High School (Years 8-12)

After doing the essential subjects we were now free to choose some subjects to fill the load. Assessment was always a written exam inside an exam block. As we got older, we studied more to get the facts and procedures into our heads. These exams were quiet at all times and certainly no movement allowed. Those without strong reading/writing skills were hugely disadvantaged. I didn’t see value in these exams except to pass – anything above a simple pass was a bonus, but not from striving as assessment and learning of facts was extremely unappealing.

One exception was the Year 12 exams (mostly the Core Skills Test in QLD) to get into university. Since it was testing core skills (similar to IQ testing), only the style of exam needed to be studied.

There was usually no feedback on exams, and limited feedback on assignments (such as good work, needed more here, etc).

University (Bachelor – Computer Science)
The assignments would flow from week 3 onwards, usually some form of project/practical work. I saw the benefit in these and usually looked for feedback. Quite often very little was given. I remember one instance in particular… I was completely new to the language C and through a work experience program, missed the compulsory C subject inserted into the second year. So really struggled with writing a C assignment. Running out of time, I got the program running with my basic knowledge – but it wasn’t the best way. I remember going back often looking for the assignment to be marked wanting to know how to do it properly only to see a big red circle (expected) then “not efficient” written there. Tell me something I don’t know!! It was not until the workforce that I eventually found the answer! To say feedback was lacking might be an understatement.

Of course there was the exam block. 2-3 hour exams – written (despite the computer science major!). The biggest thing I remember is the severe pain in my right hand and not being able to move my fingers without wincing for a long time afterward. I’m sure I’ve damaged it! Again I didn’t see much value in these, but they needed to be done to pass the subject. Again passing was my main goal – as assessment didn’t inspire anything fantastic.

University (Masters – Education)
Exams are gone (mostly) – hooray! Assignments being the main form of assessment, meaning they seem more practical (again mostly). Linguistics assignments were essay after essay with no real imagination to them, but I gave it my best anyway as I had discovered mind mapping and could suddenly write way better than I’d imagined. Feedback was only average from memory, more or less a “good work”.

I soon hit an education subject (Online Strategies) and fell in love. Assessment was in often fun, some initial groupwork to inspire the beginnings of individual work. Later in other education subjects we were submitting conference papers, holding unconferences inside the subject, writing journal-worthy papers (hopefully) and most of all, learning in a community. We got to see everyone’s papers and essays and gain even greater knowledge through the work of others. Feedback was relevant – pointing out misconceptions, pointing to further resources and readings, or agreeing/disagreeing with certain points as if I could “actually talk” to the professor! I’ve never experienced a teacher/professor that is approachable, let alone invites conversation, before joining the education stream.

Needless to say, I have many inspiring teachers to add to my “good teacher” model in my head. Hopefully, one day, I can emulate them fully.

What an interesting concept that learner centred teaching that has been the mantra of academia and institutions alike is worthless jargon for 2 reasons:-

1. If you get 20 people in a room, you have 20 different definitions of “learner centred”.
2. It tends to ignore learners that don’t fit the Western model of learning, or perhaps don’t fit the teacher’s notion of learning and learning style.

Current notions of learner-centered teaching may also exclude many of our own memorable teachers, those whose passion for a subject ignited our interest and redirected our lives. In short, “learner centered” has become the mantra of faculty development across our institutions in the absence of acknowledgment of variations on its meaning and corresponding views of effective teaching.

Brilliant! This is exactly my sentiments when it comes to waffle/’meant to sound impressive’ jargon words and the people that demand them.