H807 – What’s happening

After spending ages trawling through the H807 blogs (both within my tutor group and the other tutor groups) I’m struggling to find anything to quote in my TMA so rather than the pot calling the kettle black, I decided to write something in my blog as I hadn’t for a while.

Tracy Bell has confessed at being reluctant about using all this technology for learning, despite that she is showing excellent practice in the use of her OU blog.

She is writing for an audience and expecting a response from us. She is also using it to keep a repository of links to key course areas such as the course wiki and forums.  It’s becoming a useful place for me to start my searches. In her reviews to the JISC case studies she has not only summarised them but she has offered her personal comments and links to other people’s blogs who have also reviewed the same cases. This makes learning more efficient for the rest of us – but does it make me a lazy learner?  The question surrounding educational blogging is one of plagiarism opportunities and also of laziness- relying on other people to do the work for you.

Being an “obedient” student who does everything asked of her, I would never say my use of other people’s blogs is lazy. In H800 I sometimes read other blog entries if I was struggling to understand some of the heavy going theoretical content before I wrote my own blog entry as reading their entry sometimes gave me the explanation I needed.

How  is the course going then?

Well I’ve been feeling mixed feelings about the workload on H807 – after H800 which took on average 20+ hours a week from week 1 this has been very light on the commitment, in fact so far I’ve kept up with just a few hours a week. Is this

a) because I’ve done H808 and H800 and the concepts are less alien to me

b) because I’ve done H808 and H800 learning is getting easier

c) it really is less work

d) I’m pregnant and busy at work so just doing the bare minimum to get by!

Maybe if Block 2 gets busier I’ll get a better understanding, perhaps block 1 is lighter touch for a reason – the calm before the storm – I hope not. I’m enjoying this lighter loaded module especially given my personal circumstances.

I’m now on my 2nd draft of the TMA1 – I’ve approached it completely differently to the first draft. Something one of the other tutors said made me think I’d approached it incorrectly. My first draft was a report summarising some exemplar case studies to my employer that we might want to deploy or learn from; my second draft spends more time first outlining how JISC classify innovation in elearning and then follows a sample of cases.

Surprisingly the cases I’ve referred to are not all the ones I reviewed here in my blog. This is for two reasons:

a) finding enough useful quotes on others’ blogs to refer to

b) making sure I referred to cases that would be classed as innovative in my context.

The cases I’ve now quotes are:

Swansea, Lampeter and Cardiff’s use of video conferencing to enable students to have more choice of electives by having one of three colleges deliver their modules by video conferencing to the other 2, thus opening up the pool of students available to take that module and widening participation/networking opportunities. It also enables each college to provide a wider choice of electives without having to employ specialists.

Glamorgan’s business simulation game to enable students without any experiential learning opportunities to experience “real life” business problems and all the factors involved.

Glasgow’s use of podcasts of lectures supported by discussion forums to reinforce learning, save academic time when students missed a bit of the lecture, enabled wider access to keep up with learning – in this case however I query whether the provision of podcasts of every lecture impacted on attendance figures and whether this really matters in a push-only lecture?  I’ve heard someone say before at Duke University they found podcasts/videos increased attendance as the students got to see what really went on in the lecture and realised its value.

I hope this helps someone elses’  TMA -  we should get extra marks for being quotable!

H807 Week 3 – review

Having not studied for a week I need a little revision session to remind myself where I go to.

This week is about innovation, defining it and approaching it.

We were introduced to Everett Rogers “Diffusion of Innovations” book where over time, as different people adopt different innovations they are classified as ‘innovators’, ‘early adopters’, ‘early majority’, ‘late majority’ and ‘laggards’. Understanding these classifications helps us to understand how to implement innovations and the reasons behind many of the barriers.

The course author (Pettit) highlighted that Rogers’ typology is related to time/speed of adoption; but that adoption is also about your own creative circumstances.

Innovative when it is new in a context it hasn’t existed in before but that sometimes there is an acceptable lag (when the audience isn’t ready, the technology isn’t ready etc) (Pettit)

Moore argues that there is a chasm between the innovators & early adopters with the rest of the groups and we need to be aware of this when marketing our ideas around these groups. Is he saying that to be truly innovative, it needs to cross that chasm?

Pettit then goes on to outline some criteria Rogers uses for evaluating whether you adopt an innovation:

• Relative advantage
• compatibility
• Complexity
• Trialibility
• Observability

Pettit added Support

I also add cost and access, Imran (in the forums) added longevity, which reminded me of interoperability being critical too.

Thats week 3 for now, more later when I finish it.

References:

Ali, I (2010) H807 Forums Week 3 “Discussing Will a potential innovation “fly”? 25 February 2010, 00:02

Moore, G.A. (1991) Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-tech Products to Mainstream Customers, New York, HarperBusiness.

See http://www.mitsue.co.jp/english/case/concept/02.html

Rogers, E.M. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations (5th edn), New York, Simon and Schuster.

Pettit- references are all to the H807 course notes, Week 3.

Reflection on Innovation in Elearning

While trying to review the cases for Week 2 I reflected on week 1 and whether I had come to an understanding of what innovation was or not. I decided I hadn’t. Further thought and a bit of surfing and now have this understanding. I agree with your first paragraph, where you say “new uses discovered of existing technologies and new related pedagogical approaches.”

My new definition of Innovation in elearning –is when inventions (ie new online technologies) are applied/used successfully in education. It can be incremental, radical or revolutionary, it can solve a complex or simple problem and can transform or just automate a process. (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation and from the JISC cases).

Instead of referring to elearning, I’d rather refer to online learning when discussing elearning innovations. For example, when I did the exercise of putting the concepts into a grid I know I fell into the trap of thinking of “e” rather than “online”. Most learning over the last few decades have had some e in it, just think of the 1970s Open university TV programmes and even my own primary school education in the 1980s included TV, video, tapes and a revolutionary black and red BBC computer. Computer based learning has been around a long time. I’m sure those of you with longer memories than my (34 tomorrow) brain hold can give me examples before the 70s and 80s.  It’s like one webpage said, we don’t talk about e-work when we use a computer at work.

Online learning, in contrast, is the learning that internet technologies have enabled. Online learning can include self-paced materials, communication, and interactivity. So innovations in elearning, I now see as how online technologies have enabled a (positive) change in education.  In my search I found this relatively useful site http://www.innovativelearning.com/index.html.

Going back to the question of how does innovation come about? I believe that successful innnovations come about from solving an existing problem or in response to a change. Change for change’s sake is when innovations fail.

For example, using blogs for reflective activities on the MBA programme have failed. A technology was seen and someone wanted to use it. The way we applied it and assumed our target audience would engage in an ideal world meant that it has failed.

How does this sound as a criteria for evaluating how innovative an application of online technologies in T&L is?

• Has the innovation enabled the institution to keep up with the changing needs of the students?
• Did it help recruitment and retention?
• Did the innovation lead to more satisfied students?
• Did the innovation lead to better marks?
• Did the innovation improve efficiencies?
• Was the innovation transformative or automating?
• Does it contribute to “in trend” learning theories (social learning)?

H807 Week 2, Case 4 – Swansea

Cost saving, Resource efficiency,

Swansea University, Collaborative Teaching and Videoconferencing

A really nice idea of combining three small departments to offer more choice to students by sharing the teaching load using video conferencing, without the need for travel on the part of the teachers or the students.

Students retain their on campus community whilst widening their community of practice.

The schools benefit from a richer broader course provision without having to employ more specialists.

Was this innovative?

It was innovative as it combined three different HEIs in an open way, it saved a huge amount of time which a collaboration like this would have traditional taken a lot of time up of each member of the teaching team. Students were given more choice hence enhancing the student’s learning experience.

H807 Week 2, Case 3

Recruitment, Retention, Skills and Employability, Student Achievement,

University of Hull, Delivery of MA in Legislative Studies Online

Excellent example of widening the market place, making the course more accessible to people, enabling a niche course to take place in the first place by offering it entirely online with no (or few) restrictions for participants.

I was surprised by the size of the cohorts though, a course would never go ahead with only 4-6 participants at WBS, but maybe this is different.  The time and resource investment in making the course online surely could not be cost effective with this number.

The good thing here is the the dept as strategy behind it, enabling the innovation.  The Department can increase it’s student numbres and incomes, without adding pressure to physical resources.

The course was wholly work based related too, which made the learning and work seem more integrated.

Was this case innovative?

The course was innovative as it was one of the view of it’s type, the change of delivery mechanism enabled more people to take part in the course and widening the breadth of experience within it.

H807 Week 2 – Case Review 2

Recruitment, Retention, Achievement, Cost Savings, Efficiency,

Leeds Met: Use of summative computer assisted assessment

This case has a similar rationale and outcome as the Exeter case. Largers numbers of students, greater diversity of needs. However the use of e-assessment for 5 summative assessments throughout the course is progressive and innovative.  Huge time savings for academic staff and more timely feedback for students.

Negative – finding a venue for summative tests to take place big enough, and wouldn’t work for DL students as wouldn’t you need exam conditions? How do other people use summative online tests for off campus students?

Was this innovative?

The JISC guide refers to recruitment, retention, achievement, cost savings and efficiency as ways this case was innovative.

As with the Exeter case, the innovation occured by taking the existing practice into an online environment where tests could be applied more often, with quicker feedback and less academic time.

H807 Week 2- Case review 1

University of Exeter; Online Economics Texts

Recruitment, Retention, Reinforcing learning,  Cost Savings, Efficiency

My views on this are:

• that this is a good example of how the course reacted to increases in student numbers and diversity of needs, speeding up feedback and providing more opportunties for feedback without increasing staff workload.
• This innovation seemed to resolve  a problem with dealing with non-engagement.
• I liked that the teaching team didn’t fret about losing the opportunity for discussion, at this level (Yr 1) discussion isn’t that vital  – it’s later that indepth discussion is more relevant in this type of course

Why was this innovative?

It was a change that pushed boundaries, used technology in a way that hadn’t been before to resolve the problem of increased numbers and students not engaging with the current structure but I would not say that it was innovative from a pedagogical view as continuous testing/feedback has been around a long time, technology has just enabled us to speed the process up and scale it up.

The JISC guide says that it is innovative because it contributed to recruitment and retention issues, it helped reinforce learning and it saved costs/increased efficiencies.

How to categorise innovation in elearning?

We’re having an interesting discussion on ways to categorise innovation in elearning.

The course team asked us to place some terms/concepts that are linked to elearning on a grid of

Formal v Informal; New v Existing. I found this hard to do as many of the concepts are existing in the classroom but just don’t use online technologies.

Christopher Nelson suggested another continuum could be Pedagogy v Andragogy; he defines these as

“Pedagogy being able forcing children to sit in a classroom and learn, whether they want it or not.

Andragogy being where adults (well, 16+) decide they want to know more about a specific subject and provide their own motivation and interest.”

Nelson, C. (2009) “eLearning concepts and themes activity” H807-10B, week 2 tutor group forum (13 February 2010)

Which made me think of Sfard’s Participation v acquisition as another category (see my  blog post 23 February 2009

H807 starts here

My next Masters module started this week, it’s H807 Innovations in Elearning. By July I will have achived 120 CATS in the Masters in Online and Distance Education.

I got a mark in the range of 75 for the last module H800, which although sounds good is disappointing as it’s simply classed as a Pass. You need 85 for a Distinction, so anything from 40-85 is a pass.

I agree distinctions should be discintive, but at least give some credit to those of us who worked hard. My classification of pass is no better than someone who strategically skimmed through the course and just did enough to pass with 40%.

I’ve had a couple of months of studying, and really enjoyed the break. However, all my new habits for self development also stopped. I stopped reading my RSS feeds, stopped engaging with blogs, etc. I have been doing two jobs at work covering someone elses maternity leave and it’s been tiring. I’m also now pregnant so that’s just another ball to add to my juggling trick, perhaps ball is the wrong implement – try flaming torch!

On to H807. I’ve skimmed through the first 7 weeks upto the first TMA. It doesn’t look too bad. Some weeks cross over 2 weeks which is quite nice so you’ve more time to either study steadily or intensively and then take a short break. The TMAs are quite practical based too. The only think that annoys me so far is the that course website isn’t as easy to navigate as H808 or H800. You can’t just click on a section in a week, you have to scroll through each page which can be annoying if you stop half way through and want to leap back to where you where. A bookmarking tool would be handy for an online course.

The course also uses Moodle for discussions, whereby in the past it’s been Firstclass. moodle is a much more inviting environment but it lacking the Instant Messaging tool which I enjoyed using before.

This week we are inducting ourselves into the group, the tutor groups are quite small this time. So far mostly made of people who support learning like me rather than teachers/lecturers.  The aim of this module is to look at innovation in elearning and to be able to distinguish between what makes for good innovation and what is change for changes sake.

Now I just need to find the time and energy to do the studying!