Alt C 2009 Reflections
Alt C - Photo By James Clay, that's me bottom right hand corner looking very interesting talk to the guys from WIMBA
All the powerpoints, abstracts and papers can be found here: http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/
I found it a very good conference. With both my hats on – my Learning Consultant role and my role as a learner I could select sessions to attend based on work interests and H800 relevance, sessions that would help not only my understanding of concepts we’ve covered in H800 but in helping with my ECA. It has made it a very productive 3 days for me as I’ve been able to relate it to both of those contexts rather than only having one context. It’s great to hear so many different views as well, which complement the course notes and the opinions I am starting to form.
My favourite sessions were Tim Neumann’s stuff on e-conferencing, probably from my student Hat more than work, but work relevant too and Uni of Plymouth’s report on learner experience presented by Jennie Winter.
Some key learning points/points of reflection I’ve got right now are:
Although many (not all) people are becoming adept at multitasking this is not good for learning, as it means concentration on each task is shallow and good engagement is not occurring.
If we introduce too many social technologies to students PG/PT students, they will have greater difficulty in creating the boundaries they need to focus on learning even thought the advantages of using these software are good for opportunities to learn in a socio-constructivist way.
Meeting someone from H800 was interesting, we found it useful to reflect together on things we heard at the conference against what we’d done in our studies, useful to exchange interpretations of course activities and so on. Although the distance learning communication tools of blogs, e-conferencing and forums go someway to give me social learning experiences when I am someone who needs the convenience of distance learning due to my work and life commitments, nothing beats F2f discussion. What is that X factor that this has given me that the social technologies have not – a lot of it is the visual clues, some is the synchronousity, and some is the ease at which you can communicate in person. The barriers to this were the asynchronousity, lack of emotional clues/visual clues and in Audio Conferencing, the turn taking issue.
However, the keynote speeches did not add anything by being f2f. I could not interact with the people around me or the presenter. The people who logged online while watching were talking on Twitter so they were able to engage in simultaneous discussion about the topic. It would have been fine to have saved a lot of money and the environment by having the keynote speakers streamed in from their places of work (or wherever they were).
Being at the conference really focuses the mind on concentrating on absorbing knowledge and reflecting. Being able to talk about sessions and reflect on what I’d learnt immediately afterwards with Carol was useful. I could blog it, which is useful, but any replies/responses/reactions I might get might be delayed or might not even happen. It’s likely that people will read my blog on this but will they comment – a challenge there for my readers.
Notes from sessions that really stood out for me follow below…H800 students wil find some of this useful I hope…
Keynote 1 – Michael Wesch
I was very much looking forward to this keynote as we had watched some Wesch videos on H800 and I had watched some others in my “semi-formal” learning. (more on semi formal later).
His speech didn’t tell me anything he hadn’t said before but here are some key pints I’ve picked up.
Media mediates relationships, as media changes, our relationships change – so how are these technologies shaping us – so this was the main message of his the machine is us/ing us video.
In his student survey about learning and technologies, he asked them how many of you do not like school? Over 50% said yes. When he then asked how of you do not like learning? No one said yes.
Course content needs to be relevant to life
Referred to online networks/group as flocks, flocks are easily made but also easily disbanded.
We know ourselves from our relationships with others. New media is creating new ways of relating to others and knowing ourselves.
Talking to a webcam – you get Context Collapse – when you forget your audience or you have to imagine the environment they are in. (but as Carol Shurgold said, don’t you get that with books as well?).
Our aim is to move T&L from being able making people knowledgeable to making them knowledge-able which means individuals creating, collaborating, critiquing and questioning knowledge.
Review your teaching, are you teaching knowledge ability? Listen to your students what questions are they asking, if they’re just asking about assessment and administrative stuff then they are not seeing the significance of what you are teaching and therefore what they are learning.
- 0068 Adam McMillan from Waikato University in NZ – using the elearning Maturity Model (eMM) for benchmarking and then developing a plan how to develop staff to build up their “scores”. With relevance to my work it made me look forward to LRD developing into a team which acts as people who focus on the CPD of our teaching staff in terms of elearning, technologies and pedagogy. I think our developments in the next year are going to facilitate this – I’d like to look at the eMM model in more detail and explore how we can use this. 19/20 of this polytechnic type college in NZ took part in the benchmarking exercise so it was a national project and transparent.
- 0229 – Andrew Middleton, Sheffield Hallam Uni. Harmonious and challenging voices: findings from a creative audio pervasive module. Andrew was talking about the use of podcasting to and by students but there are some points that I can extrapolate into e-conferencing as well I think. A really interesting quote from Vygotsky and Kozulin 1992 about the process of taking thoughts into speech. “Thought undergoes many changes as it turns into speech. It does not merely find expression in speech; it finds reality and form.”
Vygotsky, L. and Kozulin, A. (1992) Thought and Language. 6th Edition. MIT Press, p.219
Informal learning – learning that happens outside of the formal curriculum
Formal learning – learning that happens as part of the planned curriculum
Semi-formal learning- unplanned and unmeasured learner engagement that happens around the planned curriculum
” it’s kind of tangible, you can hear it. It’s there; …To have something that triggers other senses is far more personal and meaningful.”; “I’ve only done my first year and already I’m fed up of writing essays. Mixing it up with putting some audio files in there… just gives you a different view.” “Tutor podcasts, conversations in seminars, I think they’re all really, really useful. It’s nice to have that recorded so we can go back and listen and reflect on our ideas.”.
- 0268 Tim Neumann, London Knowledge Lab, Inst of Education. MoSAIC – models for synchronous audiographic guides to enhance the portfolio of teaching methods with real-time technologies. – e-conferencing. A rich communication tool with lots of challenges itself. Project on learning design, tutoring methods, staff development. E-conferencing tools increase the portfolio of teaching methods and a richer student experience. His aim was to raise awareness of the benefits of real time conferencing, linking to pedagogical theories where there was actually a lack of knowledge from teaching staff and grounded in observation of practice. The Challenges of multiple-media in real time are Technical skills, cognitive media and pedagogical approaches. Neumann has done a review of pedagogy in 2008 in BJET. Any guides you make need to based on pedagogical examples, learning designs, simple and short. Econferencing brings back lecturing for DL students, too much action for a DL student, why not have some lectures where they can sit back and just absorb knowledge to enhance their self study.
- 0123, Prof Jo Axe, Royal Roads University, Canada. When the shoe doesn’t fit: supporting students who are challenged by online educational technologies (Short paper found here) MBA student , team work, cohort work and blended learning. Course starts with 3 weeks on campus, then 2 periods of online work, then on campus, more DL work and then on campus again. They can use that time on campus to teaching learning skills and online learning skills and set parameters. When using podcasts, we put up an image of the speaker - students said “ seeing the face of the instructor on screen gave me comfort”. “the advantage of technology X (eg video, audio) over straight lecture was that you always had it to go back to”. The disadvantages found of forums and other online communications, was that when the two cohorts converged, people ignored people they didn’t know even though they had useful things to say. Difficulties of merging 2 cohorts and trying to get them to collaborate. Students expected more faculty interaction and disappointed that they didn’t get it BUT wouldn’t have achieved the same learning without their peers. They thought they were paying for “teachers”. 75 students, 2 cohorts. Synchronous online support only used by students, no teaching by synchronous tools. 20% of MBA course is online participation in each module. It was a new university in 1995 so had a clean sheet to start from. But anything done has to be purposeful and the main purpose we want is effective communication.
- 0113 – Martin Weller (OU) and Brian Kelly (UKOLN) – workshop on what is our dream for elearning/the learner and what are the problems. Wiki at alt-c-2009-113.wetpaint.com and slides will be on Cloudworks. Twitter #S113 and #altc2009. Learners need to be able to use tools as they like but within the support of the institution. Learning dreams – easy sharing, different sizes of learning (snippets to courses), different types, range of tools, easy to use. We need a range of content, easy to use reliable tools, new methods of assessment, robust and quick ways to assure quality, authentication and identity measures, ways of recognising informal learning and pedagogies that encompass participation. Martin’s dream is for a varied (granularity and type), just in time, mixed/aggregated, personalised, social and range of learning tools. So what are the issues for educators, students, IT services, Barriers and what would we lose. Practical approaches to take this vision forward include digital information literacy skills, university taking responsibility for this, break down the silos, staff development, addressing what knowledge or bad skills the students come with, job descriptions and reward, university vision, issues include privacy, risk assessment and ethics.
- 0213 University of South Africa and Open University, I didn’t attend this session but there is a short paper HERE. It is about the use of online learning diaries to deal with storm of emotions experienced by students when they enrol on online courses. They did a study to describe the uses of online diaries, found ample evidence that learning diaries provided students with a safe place to reflect on the world around them. Without a quiet reflective place students may be overwhelmed by the forces on them, students postings provided studying online and the function of the learning diary. However, also evidence that posting reflections online in learning diaries can be dislocating and uncomfortable experience for some learners, while others question its usefulness. The word provides practical information for managers of online learning experiences etc.
- 0114 University of Edinburgh, Judy Hardy. Presented findings of surveys to test the Google generation claims. Findings in conflict with net generation characteristics but there were some student quotes I liked “you can visualise things better if you see animations on the web rather than static…”, and “find it helpful to go over material with other students.”, “there are many blogs where you can find many interesting things that you cannot find in books.”
- 0299 OU – Chris Jones. Another survey testing the net generation, research in 5 English universities of varying types. Conclusions – need to think about the minorities not the large groups, if we respond to the majority, the minority needs will be left. The minorities are significant. There are differences within each age group, no clear generational trends. Eg if someone doesn’t use email, then should Uni communicate just in this way.
- 0031 – University of Newcastle Business School, John Dickinson. Stuff about using VLE to enhance T&L for UG campus based students. One thing they added were online formative MCQ tests where each test was available for one month and could be completed as many times as the student liked. Once they achieved 70% in all tests they would receive 10 credits for a reward for good learning practice.
- 0142 – University of Hull, Primary ITE students. Bloom’s taxonomy used. – online materials deliver the low end of this – the knowledge and the comprehension. Freeing up time when students are F2F for the higher end stuff – the more cognitively challenging pedagogies. They started by converted all the existing lecture PowerPoint’s into online lectures using Articulate Studio software which was easy to use for even those academics that can’t put attachments on an email. Learning Design Sequences used to plan new route through topic (online and f2f in different orders). Very positive feedback, more opportunities to talk in groups now that lectures were online, students felt more able to discuss WITH tutors than be TOLD by tutors.
- 0304, Rhona Sharpe report on the JISC Learner experience studies. In particular I should look at the PD LPX study of DL students at the OU in Business Studies and the THEMA project of masters students in the OU. The other studies were all UG students. Key findings: learners want the institution to provide easy to access online content that enables flexibility and convenience. They value access to digital content, consistency in use across the programme and blending with f2f. They want rapid access to online content. The concerns are information literacy, resistance to changing tradition study methods, narrowing and deepening of digital divide, learners are depending on tutors to lead them in technology choices so implications on staff development. Some learners disadvantaged by lack of functional access or technical skills; others have sophisticated technical skills and awareness – why this difference. Sometimes due to tutor leading by example, others due to discipline and relevance to work, others wanted to build on an online network professionally.
- 0154 – Boundary Management in elearning, for PG students, University of Plymouth. By far my favourite paper. PG students, all work as T.A.s, age 25-55. Their learning time is not protected so they need to set boundaries around their learning spaces. Strategies to do this include learning away from the computer, disabling messenger and email, separate accounts, set times, reluctance to appropriate personal technologies for learning. Multitasking isn’t so good as learners want boundaries to help them focus. Challenges – student needs guide to manage their OL environment to create bounded virtual learning spaces to maximise learning potential. I thought that we have the responsibility to help learners control their PLE, if you encourage them to use too many software they will suffer under the strain (PT PG students)
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