Mindmapping is helping

I had various articles I want to refer to in my essay, I had extracted loads of quotes to turn into my discussion and put them into word. but it was a mess, I had duplications of points with authors/evidence scattered all around.

So I’ve put it all into a mindmap, so as I read through my brainstorm of articles I’ve read, I can group them altogether in similarities.

I’ve also found a really useful Blog post that I can use for my discussion on using blogs here: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2009/01/blogging-as-occupational-therapy.html
Here, Martin Weller talks about how blogging had kept him in the professional loop while he had to take a step back from work for other reasons.  He talks about how people with busy working lives punctuated with busy personal lives, blogging can keep them in touch if they are distanced from what is happened at work. I’d like to turn this around and relate it to Distance Learners, who already have busy work and personal lives, and need to fit in learning but want to learn socially.

some clarity

Image by Keith1999 via Flickr

Photo shows where I went last weekend – Cardingmill Valley in the LongMynd (south shropshire hills), nothng to do with blog post, just pretty!

I emailed some queries to tutor last night and had a useful Elluminate chat with Frauke. Having another online get together tomorrow morning (Sunday) at 9am.

Reflections on  Elluminate first – frustration is listening to someone speak and sat him umming, and nodding, laughing etc but not being able to convey this to the person talking unless I sit and type in my body language/visual clues. PLenty of literature points this out too. But really what does this take away from the experience. When it’s my turn to speak, I just have to make sure I convey those feelings back to the other person verbally. I think this helps you develop communication skills and awareness of your own responses to what others say.

Other than that, it is really useful to talk to someone in realtime, but why don’t we just use the phone? WEll Elluminate allows more people to come, and if we wanted we can use the whiteboard and if someone hasn’t got a microphone, they can type in their communications (ok skype does that too). But I think I’m right in saying Skype doesn’t allow many users at one time. Correct me if I’m wrong.

On to the ECA

Frauke explained her approach to part A being that she has found evidence of use of her two chosen technologies (incidently the same 2 I’m doing, e-conferencing and Blogs) in the context she knows (Language teaching) and then is using this to help her make her recommendations for language teaching.

My research to date had been very broad, I hadn’t thought of just looking in my context (Business education) and had just lots of elearning generalist evidence. However, woke up this morning and did some searches of blogging in business studies and found 2 x 2009 articles that I can use.

I asked my tutor and she recommended that I make sure I identify any similarities with any evidence uses and map these to my own context. More similiarities = higher confidence about achiving the outcomes. Make sure I also acknowledge the differences.

Regarding how to write it, she said the First person was perfectly acceptable- that’s great, but could be challenge as it’s a long time since I’ve written a formal piece of work in the first person (other than in exams).

I also told her about my new idea for the learning activitiy I’m going to do, and she liked it saying that is was particularly good as it was work relevant and would have real benefits.

Now just got to put pen to paper and get writing….unfortunately I lost the afternoon as I went to bed at 1pm with a bad headache and neither I or Livvy woke up til 5!

Flu, The ECA and the next module…

Well I’m stuck at home with what could be called Flu. It’s not full blown flu, I know, I had that in 1999 but this is pretty nasty and given the swine flu scares I’ve been asked to stay at home. They really had to twist my arm. So I’m off sick, so when I’m not sleeping or feeling miserable with my rather sore throat and achey bones, I’m trying to make a start on my ECA.

There is a temptation to start the whole planning and research stage again. We did the skeleton plan and research for TMA 3. The feedback I got from that is good and constructgive and to be honest, confirms I was on the right track. Therefore why am I inclined to start looking around again.

What I think I should do now is spend some time writing the essay based on that plan and that reserach THEN if I feel it’s not good enough or something is missing, bring in some more research ideas into it.

I’d like to get part A first draft started today. Getting fingers to keyboard (rather than pen to paper) is always the first step. I would love to have a first draft of the whole thing written before I go to ALT C (7th Sept) .

Still waiting to hear if I’ve got funding for the next module on my MAODE course, this starts in early September before my current module finishes so that’s another reason to get this ECA done early (official due date 28 September).  If I don’t get the funding, cos money is tight at work and I have had a lot already in the last year, then I can take a nice break over the winter/Christmas and maybe even “do some exercise” (in the words of Blur).

However I would like to continue and will appeal any decision as 30 more points will at least give me a Diploma, stopping now will give me 90 credits points of nothing. At least once achieving the Diploma taking a break wouldn’t be too annoying. Then the final 60 points can run from Oct-July next year.

I think the next module won’t be as demanding as H800 has been so I would like to get on with it.

TMA4 Completed and onward to the ECA

Got TMA done and quite happy with it. I’m pretty sure it’s well proof read this time but to be honest I simply couldn’t read it again. This is the problem with proof reading.

I think I’ve learnt more about writing conclusions thanks to feedback on previous TMAs and feedback from Lesley in the tutor group forum so I hope I’ve done that better this time. Also from reading the many papers we’ve had to read in H800 I’ve learnt the benefits of reading conclusions is that you can get a good summary of the paper without having to read it all. Reading the intro and conclusion should give you enough about the main message and if you want to read the evidence behind it, then you read the middle bit. I hope my TMA has done that.

I focused on Learner Ownership with reference to Anderson’s interaction framework and Milner-Bolotin’s venn diagram showing 3 things that contribute to learner ownership. Learning activities should have personal value, give the learning a feeling of being in control and the ability to take responsibility.

We were asked whether or not we agreed with the statment ‘Learners have ownership of technology-enhanced learning.’. I did agree with this.

It was a mammoth TMA but now I feel ready to tackle the ECA.  We’ve got 5 weeks (or about that) to get it done and I feel on a roll, we have no other activities to do that are worth noting. I really want to get as much of it done this week as I can. I don’t want to be panicing this time in 4 weeks no knowing what I’m going to be writing.

TMA 3 was a planning exercise for the ECA so will revisit that and maybe even review the whole thing. TMA3 came at a time, for me, which was not good. I was quite stressed out about the whole course, work and life balance issues and did not have enough hours in the day and I was full of self doubt. I feel better now having made some changes to my routine which has helped and taking the pressure off myself a bit. I’m wondering whether the ECA will actually end up looking quite different to the first version of the plan.

Week 25 Activity 2 Interaction- student, teacher, content

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Read Anderson (2003) ‘Getting the mix right again: an updated and theoretical rationale for interaction’.

1              On page 2 of this article, Anderson (drawing on Sims, 1999) lists the functions of interaction… In what ways have you found that H800 incorporates each of these functions of interaction and through what means?

Learner control

Student-student and Student to peer: H800 lets the student decide if they want to interact with peers/tutors through forums, blogs, wikis, web-based conferencing and so on. There are some Marks available for forum contributions but only a small amount.  Student – content H800 is assessed by written assignments, which lets students decide which activities to focus more or less on; the lack of weekly “lectures” means students can interact with the content at their own pace. Material being withheld for each block, however, restricted learning control.

Facilitating programme adaptation based on learner input

Student – tutor: interaction with the tutor meant that the programme could be adapted during the module and for future iterations; interaction with the content gives students the opportunity to give this feedback. Interaction with others lets the feedback be supported or not. Learners could share additional resources outside the core programme via social bookmarking and forums and blogs.

Varied forms of participation and communication
H800 enabled you to participate more or less and in different ways using different technologies, and at different times of the course. Communication methods were varied. Participation with content was varied but mostly supported by the printed word. Activity tasks enabled communication with tutor and peers.

Aiding the development of meaningful learning
Interaction with at least the peers and the content made the learning more meaningful, you could not interact with peers if you had not interacted with the content.

Interaction is also ‘fundamental to the creation of learning communities’ (Anderson, 2003, p.2).

Without interaction with other people and knowledge about the subject, you could not have a community. Communities need a shared interest and things to say to each other and do together.

The value of another person’s perspective is key to learning in constructivist theories.
Learners needed to know that other people had useful things to contribute to their learning (peers and tutors). The tutor role comes with an automatic respect, but peers need to show the value they can add.  Putting your learning in the context of others through peer-peer interaction, and student-content interaction is important for your career as you won’t always be working in the same context.

2.            Based on your experience of H800, would you agree with the first claim in Anderson’s equivalency theorem?

‘Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student–student; student–content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.’ (Anderson, 2003, p.4)

Why? Why not?

In terms of H800 the student-content interaction has always been high, the student-student has varied both by the activity, the timing and the choices made by individuals, and the student-tutor interaction has also been minimal and increased to high levels around the times of assessment. I believe I have still had a deep and meaningful and satisfying learning experience being able to dip into the peer and tutor interaction opportunities when required.

Could the student-tutor interaction have been eliminated- I feel connected to the institution by this role, I feel I have some interaction with the “lecturers” via this “teaching agent” someone on your side, there to keep you going but if you look at what the tutor role – it’s added to satisfaction levels, but has it added to learning?

Could you drop the student-student contact – for me no, but for others this is fine as they have studied the course with very little in fact no interaction with other students – well no explicit interaction that is. What about just lurking, is this interaction?

3.            Drawing on the points from Anderson outlined in question 2 above, and the other examples later in Anderson’s paper, make notes on the circumstances in which you would economise on student–teacher interaction and seek to increase the use of student–content interaction. For what purposes, using which tools? Is there a danger that this could, eventually, lead to an online “correspondence” course where the “teacher” is redundant?

You could be persuaded to drop student-teacher interaction in favour of student-content interaction where the numbers of students are large and where effective student-teacher interaction is unfeasible due to cost or availability of labour.  Using quizzes that give you feedback, for example, enable students to test themselves and get feedback with the tutor only having to create the quiz and feedback once rather than for each student. Short videos help teachers to deal with the problems they face with dealing with questions after lectures if, like at Warwick there are over 400 UG’s to deal with.  An Operations Management lecturer at WBS has created videos using screen-grabbing software and audio narration to help students answer these common questions which has solved the problems of their confusion and his lack of time to support them.

Our less elearning enthusiastic lecturers do feel that elearning will make the teacher redundant; but in our current distance learning model, there is only 1 day of teaching anyway and contracted tutors have the student support/feedback role and the “teaching” is all done by printed and online resources and some interactive content. I think there is a fear of the danger of making teachers redundant but in my own experiences on H800, I feel a sense of connectedness with the institution by having a tutor and involvement in the discussion forums by the course chair that I would not have if there the teacher-student interaction was eliminated.

4.            Anderson does not limit his account to distance education, and briefly discusses classroom delivery, audio and video conferencing and web-based courses. He also sets out an interaction-based model of online learning in figure 2 on page 9, based on the three major elements of student/learner, teacher and content.

• • To what extent does this model apply to your own practitioner context?

This relates to my experience supporting learning and as a learner, where learners choose which route to take – independent study or paced, collaborative learning. I have used a combination of these approaches on H800 alone. I like the pacing of the course calendar to keep me to schedule and also means that I get to collaborate with my peers at the same time in the forums. I also like the independence and flexibility afforded to me when I can choose to engage with the different forms of interaction and differing levels myself and be more independent. In the independent route I have taken advantage of all of the learning objects, but also my supporting actors (co-workers, peers and family support) when required.  As a practitioner, I see our learners doing the same thing, we have many students we do not “know” much about, they do not call for support, they do not interact with the support staff and do not use the tutor support or do any of the formative assessments – they still pass the course, but I would question how meaningful the experience has been for them. We have others who adopt every interaction opportunity possible with Tutors, each other and with content.

• Which of the four different forms of interactive learning is most appropriate for your context? Why?
• Paced, collaborative learning – this is useful for students who particularly like to learn with others and need the motivation of a study schedule to complete their work.
• Independent study – this is useful on the DLMBA programme , students can choose to pace their work how they fit and to dip in and out of as much of the interactivity with others/tutors as much or as little as they like.
• Structured learning resources – We have a variety of structured learning resources but probably not enough, and as Anderson points out, when we use web based conferencing tools the teachers are tending to use them in the lecture format and not exploiting their interactive elements enough but it is early days.
• Community of inquiry – students can set up their own online support groups and therefore, to an extent, create a community of inquiry that interacts both synchronously and asynchronously.

5.            Anderson implies that interaction often involves a trade off, in terms of cost, available technology and preferences of learners.

• How satisfactory would you judge the mixture of interaction in your own practice setting? And in H800?

The difficulty we face at WBS is a drive to cut costs and increase student numbers on the DL programme. It is unlikely that we’ll get extra staff for delivering synchronous s-t interaction in the near future so we need to find ways to substitute this with S-C interaction. S-S interaction is difficult due to the students being based all over the world (a minimum of 100 countries covered in any one cohort) all with different time zones and time commitments and study routines and schedules. The flexibility of our programme is one of its key selling points so to add more structure into the programme would be detrimental. However, we do believe that there may be a market for a DL programme delivered by a highly ranked and highly reputed business school like WBS that is structured and does have a high degree of S-S and S-T interaction. It may be true that there are enough students who want to commit the time to do this such as the Global MBA programme offered by IE University in Spain.

The mixture of interaction on the DLMBA programme is High S-C, low T-S, low to medium S-S depending on the student and choice of modules. The mixture on the IBM MBA programme is High S-C, Medium T-S and high S-S.

I fear that the teaching style of many of our lecturers means that lectures and online classes are in the lecture style described by Anderson and although they have CONTACT with the students, there is little interaction. I think we could substitute the S-T interaction which will be difficult to achieve high levels of with more S-S and S-C interaction, but not more print based C!

• What are the reasons for its strengths and weaknesses? And in H800?

Taking the functions of interactivity outlined on p2, the strengths of the current structure are that it gives students control over their learning experience and it allows choices participation/communication levels. However I question how the programme is adapted by learner feedback. We make administrative changes all the time, but content changes are rare. I also think that student choice in interaction levels is a problem as what happens when some students want lots of interaction, but hardly anyone is interacting with them and therefore their satisfaction levels decline.

More notes on the Anderson article follow:

A reflection on blogging

In the tutor group discussion forum I’ve came round to thinking that the blogs enable us to know we are on track. If we are writing up our notes from readings we’ve done, we can read other people’s blogs to make sure we have interpreted it correctly and if they describe it in a different way we can pick up a different meaning or alternative view.

The tutor’s role isn’t to tell us if we’re wrong or right; we have each other for that…

Collaborative learning through blogs….hmmmmm

Make a note for this for the ECA!

TMA 3 – I think it’s finished

Finally finished TMA 3, luckily had the foresight to ask for an extension. When this cours started I wondered why and how I would be motivated to put the effort into a 1000 word TMA that wasn’t going to count towards my final marks.

The TMA is an essay plan for the final Assignment which is worth 1/2 of the course marks and is 6000 words. It’s very clever because it gets us thinking about the final assessment before the last minute, it gets some research out of the way, and we get some feedback at this stage formally to stop us heading down the wrong track.

Although it is unassessed I was keen to do well even in this TMA, and was equally concerned about presentation and word count that I would in a normal assessment.

I think it’s ready now, but will sleep on it and submit it tomorrow. The sooner I get it in the sooner it’ll be marked.

I finally decided on looking at blogs and e-conferencing. The first dilemma being what to call e-conferencing, virtual classrooms, web conferencing etc. In this TMA I haven’t defined the technology but will do in the ECA so will talk about the different terminology there.

I’m approaching it from the perspctive of how technologies can enhance social learning, reducing the isolation of distance learning students and peer to peer support.

The hardest bit was finding 4 resources published in 2009! A mad requirement but a requirement all the same, something to do with the learning outcomes of awareness of current issues in elearning.