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.

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.

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!

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

• Mark, J.W. & Anthony, C. (2007) Reducing the Effects of Isolation and Promoting Inclusivity for Distance Learners Through Podcasting, Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE January 2007, 8(1), from http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde25/pdf/article_7.pdf
• Willians, J. & Fardon, M. (2006) Perperual connectivity: Lecture recordings and portable media players, Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007, from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/williams-jo.pdf
• Stanley, G. (2006) Podcasting: Audio on the Internet Comes of Age, TESL-EJ 9(4), Viewed here – http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej36/int.html
• Prensky, M. (2007) how to teach with technology: Keeping both teachers and students comfortable in an era of exponential change, Emerging Technologies for Learning, 2, from – http://eit159.googlepages.com/emerging_technologies_prensky.pdf
• King, K. & Gura, M. (2007) Podcasting for Teachers: Using a New Technology to revolutionize teaching and learning, A volume in the series: Emerging Technologies for Evolving Learners. Series Editor(s): Kathleen P. King, Fordham University and Mark Gura, Fordham University, from – http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vjfoYpVItV4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Podcasting+for+Teachers&ots=s2yLCpiPYZ&sig=QM_Ytze8eS5kMkMrdnIRAxatYhk
• Thompson, L. (2007) Podcasting: The ultimate learning experience and authentic assessment, Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007, from – http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/thompson-poster.pdf

Ah, the list goes on, but I stopped

“A lecture is the best way to get information from the professor’s notebook into the student’s notebook without passing through either brain.” ¹⁾

1. One of Pelz’s education professors cited in Pelz, B. (2004). Three principles of effective online pedagogy. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 8(3). Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v8n3/v8n3_pelz.asp

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!