Month: January 2020

I did not really know what I wanted to discuss so I hoped that others would have ideas. Turned out people had really good ideas and there were a few rooms of interest to me: data and privacy, using social media in classrooms, student engagement through blended learning, and building learning communities between remote classrooms using synchronous and asynchronous technology. I attended the last.

We had some sharing of individual experiences of online learning, both synchronous and asynchronous and chatted about our experience with our current program. The two big takeaways for me were that discussing or interacting in some way in a small group is really important to build enough trust to interact, and that a backchannel is valuable to build on this and to incorporate new members into your trusted group. It gave me practical examples of how the C of Communication in learning design that I had been reading about in Conole, Baran and Conole and Brown’s articles could be actually be incorporated into a resource as opposed to a course.

So What?

Reflecting on my own experiences in asynchronous online learning and correspondence courses (where there was absolutely no community), I can recognize how implementing small group work and backchannels affected my learning. In the correspondence course, feedback was extremely slow to arrive (yes, back in the day of snail mail). There was no connection at all to other students and you regularly received feedback on an assignment after you had already submitted one or two more assignments. If there had been some community, there would have been more learning from other people’s comments. Eight years after my Philosophy course (in which I received a paltry 68%) a friend took the same correspondence course and it wound up being the same teacher. For the major paper, he was now handing out an exemplar, WHICH WAS MY PAPER THAT EARNED A 68%!!!! Had I given my consent? No. Was my name still on it YES!! Did I have any recourse to complain about it? At the time, no. But I was sort of proud, although I questioned it being an exemplar when I did not receive a great mark on the essay. If there had been some sort of community, I would have found out about this long before AND realized that this professor thought a 68% to be an exemplary mark in an introductory philosophy course. How did the university not recognize that none of his students performed well and that possibly the problem was his marking was extremely stingy?

For my asynchronous courses, the early ones had only a virtual bulletin board/forum system to connect with others. The posts were meant for clarifying questions for the teacher, not community building. It did not feel much different than the old snail mail correspondence course, though you could get responses more easily if the teacher looked at the board more than once every week or two. More recently, courses I have taken (other than for my masters) include separate forums for personal introductions (required) and sharing of thoughts as well as questions. There are group assignments to encourage community building. These courses also provided an opportunity to reach out to others in a backchannel by directly contacting other participants through the course site. If you want to continue communication after the course, some of the platforms allow access to the real emails (as opposed to communication only through the platform), some allow you back in to email through the platform so it goes to the real email and the person can choose to share their real email with you, and some of the platforms require you to set up real communication before you complete the course. As the asynchronous courses have developed, the design has recognized the value of student to student communication and made it possible to continue connecting during and after the course.

Now What?

So, how will this affect my math resource? That is a good question. Originally, I had planned a static type of resource, but I can see that the motivation and self-regulation components would benefit hugely from communication with a teacher and a community of students. Why I did not recognize this before is a shear lack of connecting the dots – any students I gave summer work to always had the opportunity to connect with me, and the successful ones usually did. Having an anonymous board could be the solution so that current and past users of the resources could connect. I would need to monitor the board so that it does not get abused, but I think I can manage that as part of my volunteer work in my retirement. As the users of the board will (should) be underage students, I am not comfortable setting up something where they can interact without observation when I am the person monitoring the entire resource.

Will my website skills be up to this? Well, hopefully I can get my literature review close to done ahead of time so that I can concentrate on the development of the elements. If I start at only one area/topic of the mathematics curriculum, that will likely be sufficient for my project.

As for hosting, I currently maintain a simple website on HostPapa. Years ago, we chose them as their servers were in Canada (and remain in Canada) and they support green energy. I will be doing research again on various hosts, with the aim to find hosts with servers in British Columbia whose privacy policy takes into consideration our province’s privacy requirements.

Readings

Baran, E., Correia, A.-P., and Thompson, A. (2011). Transforming online teaching practice: Critical analysis of the literature on the roles and competencies of online teachers. Distance Education, 32(3), 421–439. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2011.610293.

Conole, G. (2018). Learning design and open education. International Journal of Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://www.ijoer.org/learning-design-and-open-education_doi-10-18278-ijoer-1-1-6/

Conole, G., and Brown, M. (2018). Reflecting on the Impact of the Open Education Movement. Journal of Learning for Development – JL4D, 5(3). Retrieved from http://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/314.

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. (n.d.). Retrieved November 11, 2019, from http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/96165_03#section30.1.

Video licensed to YouTube by SME (on behalf of Bulletproof); Audiam (Publishing), Warner Chappell, PEDL, LatinAutor, Kobalt Music Publishing, AMRA, and 15 Music Rights Societies.

Something I know about myself – I do not like theorizing and not getting to the actual work. I am all for discussing and research, but once there is ample discussion and research and all you are doing is regurgitating, it is time to move on and try something. If it is not successful, then at least you have something new to add to your discussion/research instead of the same old same old that was not getting the result you were hoping for. This is why two of the articles we read this week were so enjoyable for me – they were suggesting actions as opposed to just summarizing what is known and posing questions.

The portion of Siemens, Gašević, and Dawson’s article assigned supplied new information and as well as programs and people to research that will be helpful in my project. Yes, everything leads to my project, and I do not think that is a bad focus to my Masters. Realizing that George Siemens was one of the originators of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) also sent me down a path of checking to see nationality and the potential for his work to take into consideration Canada and British Columbia’s (BC’s) strict privacy laws. I will be watching Stephen Downes’ gRSShopper and Learning and Performance Support Systems as well checking out the authors’ ProSolo. I followed all four of these researchers on Twitter and subscribed to Stephen Downes OLDaily as they appear to have information I may find useful, if I can understand it. Some of their information requires much more knowledge of programming and use of online systems than I currently have.

The article by Stephen Downes also had some good resources, but as they were all American based, I am not going to research them further at this time. His points on what is needed in both the development of technology as well as the development of online education resonated with me:

1. “We need to change our framing, and in particular, we need to start thinking in terms of data and networks rather the documents, to get away from the idea that we’re publishing course packages, chapters, and modules.The existing system of learning and publishing is designed around static and unchanging resources, however, in this future, resources will need to be created as-needed to address current data and current contexts.” “Instructional designers should be thinking in terms of environments and experiences”
2. “ GitHub, for example, requires a huge learning curve(GitLab, 2017). There is a change of perspective required in order to see works (whether software or content or other media) as dynamic, as branched, as modular, and as interoperating. Instructors and designers will require user-friendly interfaces that assist in this change of perspective.” “Again, it’s a shift in focus from the content to the interactions and operations. It’s about how to merge this data with this application or this capacity or this bit of artificial intelligence to create a learning experience for a person. This is a very different way of thinking about instruction and instructional design than what instructors and designers may be used to, and it will require practice and application on new leading design systems in order to support this transition.”
3. “designers and developers will need to learn to co-create cooperatively.”

I found it interesting that Downes did not push his own developments in the article. Is it because he is doing the Canadian humble thing? I am hoping his developments are all based on Canadian privacy requirements and therefore very usable for our education systems.

References:

Downes, S. (2019). A Look at the Future of Open Educational Resources. International Journal of Open Educational Resources, 1(2). Retrieved from https://www.ijoer.org/a-look-at-the-future-of-open-educational-resources/

Siemens, G., Gašević, D., & Dawson, S. (2015). Preparing for the Digital University: A Review of the History and Current State of Distance, Blended, and Online Learning. Retrieved from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website: http://linkresearchlab.org/PreparingDigitalUniversity.pdf

I am at that “I don’t want to read anything other than for pleasure” and “don’t make me write anything original” point. I was really good over the holidays, reading academic articles daily, but I have hit my saturation point. So now I am setting myself a firm schedule of what I have to do and when to get myself back on track. If I don’t fulfill my obligation, I can’t eat or drink anything. Yup, it’s weird, but it works for me! And I could stand to lose a little weight. 😀

What I did find an enjoyable read  this week were two articles gleaned from other sources. One was written on January 10^th by Kia Lang: https://www.techlearning.com/opinion/is-virtual-reality-vr-a-reality-in-the-classroom. Google is pulling out of VR because their funding has expired. They do not see a future for smartphone-based VR in a box. “The current uptake of VR in schools is gaining good speed, but this is simply NOT comparable to the quantity of business Google expects in the consumer space.” “the strength of education content developers such as MEL Science is based on their starting out as science education companies, not VR developers. It’s not about VR, it’s about using the technology for education to enable students to learn knowledge points better by interacting with otherwise invisible micro-level processes”.

The other was Leanne’s suggestion of reading https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/30/thinking-about-the-social-cost-of-technology/. Basically, people need to keep upgrading and learning or they get behind on tech. It has interesting opportunities for those working with older people. I have friends who are not keeping up on tech and therefore cannot exploit their phone’s usability. It isn’t about open digital online education at this point, because these people are not willing to spend the screen time to learn, but they will spend time talking with someone to figure it out/learn how to do it. An interesting conundrum to ruminate upon.

Our readings this week were on various types of Opens: scholarship, data, online courses, and research. Veletsianos & Shaw’s article focused on information about the imagined audience and research on how those who post edit their posts based on the type of social media used and who they imagine their readers to be. The point of article was that educational institutions could create more effective policies to support networked participation of their constituents and therefore the increase in openness of information sharing. Atenas, Havemann, & Priego’s article focused on how using open data can be great for teaching. Skills developed included critical thinking and research, as well as mathematical skills in statistics and data information management and curation as well as data visualisation skills. Rohs & Ganz’s article discussed how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are not the leveler or answer for inequalities in education. Even in our nation, electricity access, internet access, computer access, contextual information (not all are native English speakers or have the background to understand contexts provided), and capacity of cheaper computers to run programs or apps affect access to MOOCs. On top of these concerns is the level of media competence and self-regulation skills required by any user, which are difficult to overcome in weaker learners, even if the course design attempts to overcome weak media or self-regulation skills. Couture’s article emphasized the need for publishers not to be in control of open access journals.

So What?

As part of our Hypothes.is comments, Ben posted an article about the value for a back channel for learners. This is equivalent to the chatter that takes place in and outside a regular classroom environment, and although instructors may not like being excluded and some students may not be included, this is a valuable part of any educational experience.

In our breakout group, it was noted, not just by me, how everything comes down to money. As knowledge and educational resources move towards open access, the companies that made money from them need to find a different method of making money. A couple of journal publishing companies have started open journals to, in my opinion, experiment with how they can continue to find a money-making solution. As teachers, open scholarship and journals are both a blessing and a curse. Now, our schools can subscribe to particular journals and we know our students are accessing information that has been vetted by knowledgeable people. Once this information is openly available, how can we ensure our students are accessing valid information? Yes, access to the information costs less and we have more information available, but how reliable is that information? How can we find the time to check the authenticity of the information that our students find? The data on most government sites, can be useful in some courses but may be too complicated for the average secondary student to decipher. How will all these resources be made age-appropriate in language and relevancy for elementary students? How will the copyright and work attribution be affected when there is so much available that is similar? I don’t question that openness is a positive movement, but there are many hurdles to overcome before it becomes the norm.

Now what?

For my project, I have identified some areas of significance. As I am planning to embark upon an online open resource for high school math students, there are many considerations that these readings have identified.

1. Veletsianos & Shaw’s article – I must remember that my imagined audience is not knowledgeable but also does not need talking down to. Some of the BCEd videos for online math courses that I saw about five years ago were embarrassing – they made students felt like they were morons as they were watching the instruction. Plus, students do not need artificial cheeriness. Also, I need to be sensitive that the resource is for a varied audience – not just already motivated students but language learners and math Learning Disorders (LDs). I wonder if a more “choose your own adventure” approach is needed rather than listening to a long discourse which students can tune out: ask a question, students have a choice for answer which leads them through the inquiry at a pace appropriate for them. Possibly add a screen capture tool so they can make their own instructional video? Or a summary video that is accessible once the inquiry is done? Or should it be always available? Hmmm. So many questions and too big a project. I will need to narrow it down to a smaller amount at a later point in time.
2. Atenas, Havemann, & Priego’s article – I need to use some open data sources and ensure students understand how to find reliable and valid data, how to interpret the data, and how to display and make use of the data.
3. Rohs & Ganz’s article – I need some tools that address less computer literate students – possibly a set of screenshots downloadable to print, use of clear simple language with possibly diagrams/images for clarity, and self-regulation help. I also need to address auditory LDs and reading LDs. Yikes.
4. Couture’s article – not much relevancy for me at this time.
5. Back Channel for learners – whether this is for learners to contact each other or just for a private line to me is yet to be figured out. How much will I actually be available? How useful will learners contacting each other be if it is not a synchronous course? Is this going to be my retirement volunteer work focus?

Resources

Atenas, J., Havemann, L., & Priego, E. (2015). Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Towards Transversal Skills and Global Citizenship. Open Praxis, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.7.4.233

Couture, M. (2017, July 12). Academic Publishing at a Crossroads. University Affairs. Retrieved from http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/academic-publishing-crossroads/

Koenig, Rebecca. (2019, October 19). ‘Backchannel’ tools let students ask questions anonymously. And that brings more voices. Retrieved from  https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-10-24-backchannel-tools-let-students-ask-questions-anonymously-and-that-brings-more-voices

Rohs, M., & Ganz, M. (2015). MOOCs and the Claim of Education for All: A Disillusion by Empirical Data. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(6). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2033/3527

Veletsianos, G., & Shaw, A. (2018). Scholars in an increasingly open and digital world: Imagined audiences and their impact on scholars’ online participation. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(1), 17–30. http://ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/login?url=https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2017.1305966