Course Description: Will look at the implications of Multiple Intelligence Theory on educational reform and the connection between MI and technology use in the classroom. A learner-based inquiry model (such as the I-Search process webquests and project based learning) will be used as the vehicle for participants to explore the principles of Web page design in a constructivist-based learning framework. Online tools will be used for mastering the techniques of Web page design to deliver and improve instruction.
(in reply to a classmate)
While I agree that there are some classrooms that aren’t worth the time to sit in, I have certainly learned well in most that I’ve had the opportunity to sit through, but my MI scores being high on the visual/audio + kinaesthetic (note-taking) make this of little surprise.
When it comes to the interactivity, however, sometimes it’s not what happens in class that’s important. Sometimes that interactivity comes after class, on the walk to the next session, back to the dorms, over coffee with books, or in an all-night research and paper writing blitz (those were my Saturday nights!) in someone’s living room/kitchen while we tried to synthesize and get insight from others on what we were thinking about.
I wonder, too, if some of the weaknesses of forming community and having these discussions with our online peers is that it’s less convenient – there’s a computer and Internet connection in the way – and so those extra steps are a barrier to engagement. It’s just easier to to go online for the essential posting and reading and be done with it. What doesn’t happen in that moment doesn’t happen; it’s hard to have conversations over coffee or while preparing a meal when I have to engage my hands to have that conversation.
Having a local friend who’s also studying has been helping. We’re meeting in person when possible, but then have appointments to meet via live chat when not for two hours three times a week. Our goal is to complete 4 pomodoros (work sessions of 25 minutes with 5 minute breaks, a la Pomodoro Technique), and in the breaks talk about how they went, making sure to hold each other accountable to the work, but also getting the chance to talk about what we’re learning and thinking about. For people like me who crave that Interpersonal contact, it’s been great. For people like my professors who want to see my engagement and learning, maybe not so much. 😉
Abstract: As more courses in higher education move to an online format, a major concern is the lack of personal interaction between the professor and student. The literature provides evidence that online courses are often configured and delivered in a style more typically associated with independent study or correspondence work, i.e., students working independently to complete posted assignments at their own pace. While this format may work in some instances, it leaves a missing link in the learning curve for students because they lack the opportunity to benefit from the experience of structured dialogue and sense of community that can be created in a traditional on-site classroom environment. Distance education administrators and trainers should be cognizant of this gap and support faculty members in acquiring needed skills to increase the level of interactivity students experience in online courses. Although academic freedom remains with individual faculty members, assuring distance education programs have integrity is a dual responsibility shared by those who deliver and those who administer such programs. This paper supports the idea that students benefit from personal contact and access to the professor and learning is enhanced in courses with high degrees of interactivity among students. The authors suggest effective uses of e-mail, chat, and various Web-based tools to enhance interactivity and a sense of community within the online course. Sample comments are also included from students who have taken courses that employ the strategies described in this paper. (9 references)
Summary and notes:
What is happening to interaction between students and instructors with the move to online learning?
Chat rooms (synchronous communication) and message boards (asynchronous communication) can be effective in maintaining high levels of communication
Email and mailing lists can also help, but they need to be returned quickly and be of high quality.
Authors conclude that personal interaction between instructor-student and student-student is vital to the sense of community and the educational process.
Authors recommend that exposure to content AND interactivity be considered in evaluating courses regardless of whether they are developed in-house or by an outside contractor, and that interactivity be appropriate for the course and its content.
Course developers should be trained for creating community through online instructional tools
Interesting perspective. In situations where the learners are all over the globe (as in this course), it makes it very difficult to have synchronous communication, but if several time blocks were available it might be possible. In some ways it might actually be easier for me to communicate with my classmates on the east coast than my immediate family in the west, just due to time zones. There was a chat available in one of my other courses, but it was unfortunately at a time when I was teaching, so I wasn’t able to attend. I’m sure it would have been helpful for creating a sense of community with my classmates, however.
While the idea of message boards can be helpful, in a lot of my colleagues who are or have taken distance program graduate degrees, many comment on how there seems to be a concern with minimum postings and not much for communication or conversation. I don’t know if that’s just busyness and prioritization, gluts of irrelevant posts, or something else. I think if the posts were not graded/assessed I might contribute more, but then again, maybe not. I had a hard time with the organization of the threads when there were more than one topic on a board, which lead to a visual overload (Also, with all the subject lines identical or very similar, it made it hard to see who thought what, and lead to a sense of sameness across all posters. I wasn’t interested in reading minimum-requirement postings, let alone comment on them. Much as, although it’s late, I won’t expect responses to this post. 🙂
What has been nice in my courses has been the rapid and generally useful responses to email across the board. I wonder, then, if something like a list-serv might not be more appropriate.
Assignment: Read Jamie McKenzie’s work entitled Grazing the Net: Raising a Generation of Free Range Students – Part One and Part Two. It was written in 1994 yet describes what many of us are told should be the student or teacher of the ‘future’.
Is the future here? If yes, how is that the case (site examples)? If not, why not?
What do you think about his ideas?
How far away or close to this idea are we at present?
Part one: McKenzie paints a picture of students with access to seemingly limitless information resources on the web, but warns that large volumes of this information are the mental equivalent of junk food, and gorging or regular consumption may lead to unhealthy addictions. McKenzie implores us to teach students to become infotectives. He describes infotectives thus:
a student thinker capable of asking great questions about data (with analysis) in order to convert the data into information (data organized so as to reveal patterns and relationships) and eventually into insight (information that may suggest action or strategy of some kind) (“Students as infotectives” section, para. 2)
They are puzzle-solvers who synthesize and evaluate the information they encounter. Their skills are thinking, researching and inventing.
McKenzie essentially presents the case and a basic outline of Problem-Based Learning (PBL), with students coming at the Internet and its information with a question, and finding the answer to the ill-formed problem. McKenzie doesn’t use the PBL framework but touches on the same ideas of ill-formed problems, guiding questions and students finding their own solutions. The examples provided aren’t completely PBL, but are perhaps one step removed with their defined lack of knows/need to knows, feedback, and collaboration, but they do contain a presentation element as a capstone. Like PBL, however, the focus is constructive. The section on “Eisenberg’s Big Six” remedies some of these absences.
[Part 2]
Three levels of thought must occur concurrently and recursively:
Envisioning – Top level, 50,000-foot view of things. Dreams, fantasy, imagination, visualization
Inventing – Middle level, where the visions are turned into reality. Questions about what might work, how that happens. Innovation comes from this level.
SCAMPERing/Rearranging – evaluative stage. SCAMPER comes from Osborne and modified by Eberle, refers to the mnemonic: “S=substitute. C=combine. A=adapt. M=modify, magnify, minify. P=Put to other uses. E=eliminate. R=reverse” (Osborn, cited in McKenzie).
[Tangent: Oh, hi Gopher! I had forgotten about you…]
McKenzie goes on to elaborate on the importance of an open mind, how that is manifested in purposefully seeking out opposing positions, through listening and careful consideration of others ideas, their assumptions, and how they reached their conclusions. He also discusses how source-sensitivity (bias and loading of databases with a specific view) needs to be a part of that cautioned open-mindedness about how and where information is sourced.
Answers to the questions:
Is the future here? If yes, how is that the case (site examples)? If not, why not?
I think McKenzie’s comments about info-glut and overload were prescient. Students (and everyone else with Internet access) have lead to a world where we don’t need to engage with opposing positions, and some people are concerned we are becoming less polite about it (See Eli Pariser’s TED talk on “Beware Online Filter Bubbles”). It is important to maintain an open but critical mind.
What do you think about his ideas?
I think his case for working with students to graze and be critical of sources (Internet-based or not!) is logical and correct; few academics are likely to argue with this. Additionally, his three-levels of attention paradigm work well for any treatment of information.
How far away or close to this idea are we at present?
I’m not entirely sure which idea this refers to. If it’s the concept of a glut of information of varying qualities available at any time or place, we are certainly there. I would posit, however, that the closed nature of access to peer-reviewed literature on the Internet (that is, pay walls for journals and even now the New York Times) makes them increasingly inaccessible, leaving writing and media of less authoritative quality easier to access.
A quick review of my TPI indicates that what I believe and what I do are two different things. I don’t feel much conflict or hypocrisy about this, however, as I can very easily identify the reason behind this discrepancy: I teach English in Korea. That’s not meant to be dismissive or antagonistic toward Korea, it’s a statement of the culture I teach in, its expectations of how I should teach, and the content that is not much under my control. Korea still expects – and follows – a direct instruction paradigm, and within that there is a strong reliance on the Grammar Translation method of language instruction; two pedagogies that found their way to the archives of popular opinion in other countries years ago. Strother (2003) argues in East Asia teacher-centered pedagogies are culturally reinforced in China, Japan and Korea, but differ only in matter of degree. My experience here certainly echoes his findings.
I don’t do what I think I should do, but I know that.
These results indicate that I am more concerned with my students’ self-confidence, and that’s true; that’s what I’m instructed to concern myself with. The primary purpose of my existence as a “native speaking instructor” in the classroom has little to do with any (perceived) expertise and more to do with making my students comfortable talking to a non-Korean in English without getting so embarrassed and shy that they collapse into a black hole of themselves. I wish I were exaggerating, but on most accounts this is true. Any opportunity I have to assist them in making gains in their abilities (which really are mostly under-practiced; any Korean students of English probably know more grammar rules than their native-speaking teachers), their social views, or other areas of their lives is pure icing on the teaching cake.
So if my job is merely to being a comforting figure that boosts her students’ confidence and helps them with a few errors along the way, why do I stay? What drives me into a graduate program that demands resources both financial and temporal when it’s not going to make a difference to my job requirements? Looking at my score, my stronger beliefs around Apprenticeship, or what Pratt and Collins (2001) refer to as the teacher-as-highly-skilled-practitioner role, I see my own desires to improve and become a better teacher.
My higher score in Transmission likely also assists in driving me forward. While it is not high on my Beliefs score, it is higher enough in Intentions and Actions to push it to second position in my results. The Transmission perspective also relies on an expert teacher, and that is also an expectation of my students. I have oft been told that in Korea, the teacher knows everything, the students are empty vessels and come to be filled. While I have my own personal disagreements with this philosophy of teaching, I need to find balance between how I view teaching should be, and how my students expect me to act. As such, the Nurturing perspective, which balances care and expectations, is a natural fit.
I also notice that my scores are not strongly opinionated; that is to say, I don’t display a strong set of convictions according to this profile. This may reflect the natural evolution of my teaching philosophy, one that has grown out of trials-by-fire, time in the classroom, and conversations with others navigating their way through the mire of possibly pedagogies without the aid, advantage or influence of formal, professional training. Indeed; I did not go to university planning to be a teacher, but it is what I do, and at the end of the day, I want to be good in my practice. And while I’m certainly after the credentials, it makes sense to me to develop my craft and work toward becoming better, to the best of my ability.
Retake: 2013.5.15
Dominant: Apprenticeship and Nurturing (38).
Backup: Development (32)
Borderline: Social Reform (31)
Recessive: Transmission (27)
Well, a few things have certainly changed, and probably reflects my changes in instruction methods and thoughts about how I’m going to teach vs. what is expected. In short, I’ve thrown a fair number of expectations to the wind and have gone with what feels right in my heart.
From left to right on the scale, my Transmission score has dropped from second to last place (-6 points), Apprenticeship (+8) is now tied with Nurturing (+3) for first place at 38, followed by Developmental (+5) and Social Reform (+7).
Looking again at the descriptions, I can see that the drop in Transmission is likely related to a shift from a teacher-centered model to an increasingly student-centered, constructivist model based (where possible) on problem-based activities. This is all while continuing to work in classes segregated by language skills (speaking, reading, listening, writing); an old set of divisions being replaced by the ACTFL delineations (interpretive, communicative, presentational). This drop in Transmission isn’t to suggest that mastery and careful pacing have become less of a concern. Quite the opposite, in fact.
A large part of what I’m doing (and learning), however, is reflected in the massive jump in Apprenticeship. This is highlighted as “socializing students into new behavioral norms and ways of working” (Summary of Five Perspectives, “Apprenticeship” section). The students, through both student-centered learning activities with a problem-based learning focus is absolutely a shift in behaviour and ways of working. Students and instructor are learning how to make this work. Another new implementation has been standards-based grading. In combination with rubrics now shared with the students, they are learning how to master language in stages, what it looks like, and exactly what they need to be working on to reach the next stage.
This is also reflected in the Nurturing score, where I want my students to understand success is possible, by the students themselves, and that we are all in the learning process together. Standards-based grading allows me to be sensitive to effort, nurturing students in exactly the right ways to bring them closer to achieving the goals for the program. My students know that it’s not about when they learn, but that they learn. We each learn differently and at different speeds, and as long as they show progress over the semester I’m happy.
Finally, for the backup, if Developmental is a measure of student-centeredness, this jump is obvious. I’ve switched from being primarily teacher-focused to intensely, intentionally focusing on how to make my classes more about my students (because I certainly know the material!). An upside of this shift has not only been for my students, but I think also for me as a person. The less I focus on me, what I want and how best to get there, and instead focus on empathy, I’m happier, and so is everyone else.
Re-test 2: 2013.12.3
Here are the results; I’ll have to post an analysis and commentary later.
Reverting to the first results
References:
Pratt, D., and Collins, J., (2001). Teaching Perspectives Inventory. Retrieved from http://www.teachingperspectives.com/html/tpi_frames.htm
Abstract: Is there evidence for the effectiveness of e-Learning in the Higher Education sector? This paper offers an overview of theories of learning in instructional contexts and then lists some of the varied and diverse definitions of e-Learning. The question of the extent to which a learning philosophy is implicit (or even explicit) within each definition of e-Learning is raised. The development of a search strategy and the issues of inclusion and exclusion criteria in assessing the evidence for the effectiveness of eLearning are briefly described. A modified form of a systematic review is offered as a methodology suitable to locate and evaluate the evidence needed.
Key Questions:
Is learning in Higher Education different to the learning that occurs in compulsory education?
Is it useful to revisit theories of learning in instructional contexts?
Discussion Activity Review Tom March’s Ten Stages of Working the Web for Education found at this website. In this piece Tom comments:
“…You may have noticed that the first three stages to Web-Use Nirvana had to do with your personal and professional growth. The middle chunk all relate to curriculum design. What ever happened to teaching, with kids, in a classroom?” And then he asks “…So what is the New Job for Teachers?”.
Given your experiences as a teacher and in using technology to teach, what would you say to these questions?
———————-
Purpose of the article: “The goal of this article is to offer identifiable milestones to help educators effectively use the Web to engage students in advanced thinking. This could serve as a self-assessment or as guidelines when mentoring others.”
The Ten Stages:
Getting to know the web – Browse directories (this is written pre-web 2.0 popularity and pre-Wikipedia) and see what’s actually on the web, and not what you think is on the web.
Find your web– Find a place to call your own. Find places you want to come back and revisit (bookmark them!)
Meet your neighbours – The value of the web is the connection to other people, so connect to them. When you appreciate someone’s work, let them know.
Using the web with students – Students are depending on you to know what to do with the web, so become an expert in the first three steps before you engage them in it.
Design Goal-based Activities – March here lays out some ideas (knowledge hunt, for example) that are simplified versions of what others call for in terms of problem-based learning and previous articles on WebQuests. [Needs a link]
Advanced Goals-based Design – WebQuests and other activities included here.
Pursuing Transformation – First guide students to develop expertise, then put them into a situation that requires them to use it. Role-based deliberation can be one such method. Expertise, while laudable is insufficient.
Welcome to Your New Job – Stages 1-3 are personal/professional growth for the teacher. The middle section is curriculum design. Carrot: Great websites designed by students through ThinkQuest competition. Stick: Plagiarism is easy and convenient; challenging mental engagement is not. We must: maintain the connection with the authentic, maintain motivation and compelling experiences, stay learner-centered, and teach both cognitive and people skills.
Taking off the Training Wheels – Coach rather than teacher. Analyze strengths and areas for improvement. Come up with ways to prompt expert performance. Give practice in authentic scenarios as much as possible. Work on metacognitive practice with the students.
All that’s left is learning – the process is internal, not external. What looks the same on the outside can be very different based on cognitive processing.
At step four in this article, I’m starting to get a bit weary of it’s age. The idea that students don’t know what to do with the web is 2012 is a different assumption than it was in 1999. This is still partially true, however. Students today are quite aware of what to do as far as their own communication needs and personal interests are concerned. However, even in the World’s Most Wired Nation™, many of my students are still very ignorant of what their technology and access to the Internet can do for them in their educational and other goals. The Korean-language web is not devoid of good content, as far as I can tell. Rather, it seems that the delivery methods are still very primitive. While most companies in the west have bought into the idea that no website is a death knell, companies here, when they do have websites, may be using what Western users would consider the equivalent of Geocities or MySpace to disseminate information, what limited information it may be. Koreans still largely connect by phone. Email is only a way to transfer documents and collect spam; few, if any, use it as a primary communication tool.
The application sections were interesting, and the more I learn about PBL I wonder how I can employ this for my own students in a culture that is very teacher-focused and still stuck in the Grammar-translation method of language instruction. I remember how a colleague of mine had developed a series of stages in a game scenario (played out in Second Life or Open Sim) where students had to engage with the target language and use it to solve problems and mysteries and win the game. In a science university with high levels of game use recreationally by students, this was very popular.
While considering how to make this relevant to my own practice, I did some searching and found the following article to be of assistance:
Brief: Problem-Based Learning and Adult English Language Learners This downloadable brief examines some background on PBL and Adult ELL, and provides walk-throughs for teachers and administrators interested in using PBL in their learning environments. Does not provide suggestions for dealing with classes of entirely the same L1, where moving like-L1 students to separate groups does not solve the problem of L1 use.
