Week 17 A1a – Students today.

H800-09B: Week 17: Technology – imagined negative futures: A1a: What kind of vision of students?

• Mike Wesch’s video ‘A vision of students today’ (Activity 1a).
• What images are brought together in the portrayal of the empty lecture theatre?
  • Empty seats, graffiti, blackboard. A closed door.
• What message do they convey to you?
  • An empty lecture theatre = empty minds – learning is not happening here. Empty lecture theatre – students don’t want to be here.
• What message do you take from this sequence?
  • Students want to be heard, they want us to hear their message and change the way we teach.
• What message does this conclusion lead you towards?
  • a chalkboard is missing so many other media that can be used to enhance learning.

Weeks 13 and 14 A 3c – more on the learner experience with Wikis

Read the extract from ‘Analysis of interviews with students studying Software Requirements for Business Systems’.

- The wiki not interactive enough to discuss the content at the same time

To solve problems they

- spread exercise over a longer time to allow everyone to contribute

- assigned moderation roles

- used alternative tools

Appreciated as a publication tool but not for collaboration.

If one person is editing, how do you carry on the conversation to determine what edits to make. as only the current editor can write.

1. Does the interview data offer a different perspective from Minocha and Thomas?

The interview data is neutral, there is no risk that the student’s would cover up truths because this content is not being assessed as the M&T research was from TMA  commentaries about the wiki experience.  But the interview data was volunteers only, whereas M&T used everyone’s feedback.

There is more emphasis on the lack of suitability of the wiki for discussion than in M&T, although M&T did recognise this. These studies were more about the students’ perceptions rather than the teachers’ perceptions. In M&T the teacher’s arguments were being put forward such as the ability to moderate claims about ones contributions.

2. Does it affect your perception of how the wiki functioned in any way?

No as M&T already told us about the discussion problems and editing problems. Perhaps the student’s perceptions weren’t as good as M&T would have us believe.

3. Does it provide more documentation of the student experience?

Yes M&T used the reflective commentaries about the process on using the wiki from the TMAs. Students may want to ensure they put a positive slant on the content of any review of the wiki process in a TMA as they may fear that being too critical would lose marks. This survey enabled honesty from students.

4. If you had access to accounts of learner experience for a course you were responsible for, would you be able to make direct use of those accounts in revising your course?

Yes and we do.

5. What other data might you benefit from?

Usage stats for eresources…how many times a resource was used eg a wiki could be read many times before an edit is made, so how much is it being used passively.

There is further evidence from these interviews when technology is designed into a course and its assessment, students use it – or at least try to do so although this does not invalidate the LXP and LEX projects finding that students vote with their feet.

If tools integrated within a course are found to be defective, the effort of finding alternatives to substitute for them will impact heavily on students and those supporting them. – we had this in H808, when the e-portfolio system simply wasn’t fast enough or reliable enough or intuitive enough to use. Towards the final submission many people reverted to word documents, and we were given extensions due to the technical problems.

Weeks 13 and 14 – Activity 1a – A vision of students today – WESCH video

His use of new technologies is an excellent example of how technologies can be used to support learning and teaching.

1. Is the message being presented in this visual way any different from the primarily text-based presentation of findings used so far this week?
2. How important is the medium and the technologies themselves in terms of conveying messages about this research area?
3. What are the implications for your own practice?

There is something about the music and the use of students writing messages to the viewer that makes you think/watch it really seriously. It’s a very clever way of telling us the results of a survey into student behaviours. I think the use of straight faced students in a lecture theatre, which at the start is dubbed to be a very outdated medium of “instruction”. I liked the lines, “It students learn what they do, what are they learning sitting here?”

The message is the same, but presented differently and without all the researcher’s descriptions of context, methodology, results analysis and discussion of what this means. It simply tells us the stats of student behaviour and they’re prioritise in life, not being spending time on just their study, and how if they were to fit in everything they wanted to do, they need more hours than there are in the day (don’t we all!).

The medium (ie video) is good at showing us the statistical results but not the implications of these stats or why they matter.

Implications to my own practice – The statement I quoted abovge, about students learning what they do struck a poignant chord for me and I think it’s important that the MBA is designed to really enable students to relate what we teach them to their work, to enhance their learning, and really our assessment methods (mostly exam) are really outdated for measuring success.

Weeks 13 and 14 Pre-reading ‘students’ use of technologies’

Weeks 13 and 14: Listening to the student voice

P1. Students’ use and experience of technologies

This part of the course … how students are using technologies to support their learning.

Think about…how it relates to your experience as a learner (formal and informal) and how does the research outlined here relate to your work.

How is the way in which a teacher plans a teaching session or designs a set of learning materials actually experienced by students? What critical moments (both positive and negative) occur as students are learning, which drastically affect the experiences they have? What influence do these critical moments have on the students’ learning?

For example, if a student is unable to access a technology that is core to the course: How do they feel? How do they react? What do they do? How does the teacher respond and deal with the situation? What about the unofficial communities on the web that the teacher isn’t aware of.

A1: The learner experience An overview of learner experience research

AS according to Sharpe, 2005, until then not much research into how students actually use and experience technology. Since 2005 a wealth of research into how students are using technologies in their formal studies, as well as students’ perceptions of technologies. Here is a sample:

Week 3b Students’ Conceptions of Lear…

Week 3b Students’ Conceptions of Learning

My thoughts on this activity

I have found these articles and theories very hard to understand. They are written in a very academic language which I do not understand. We are expected have an understanding of these theories in time for an online discussion on Wednesday night. I am hoping that the elluminate session will illuminate me.

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Research shown that students’ conceptions of learning as they develop as students changes , and at the end of their studies they were different people to what they were at the start. Being more or being different.

Learning involves identity.

The activity theory framework is helpful for TEL, it embeds tools within the activity relationships rather than as an add on.

Pedagogy and technogy are intertwined, even the flip chart – what came first the flip chart or the pedagogy of brainstorming, Powerpoint or the pedagogy of bullet points (revealing point by point). (Cousin 2005)

A3 Identity in Cyberspace – Bayne

Sian Bayne writes about identity in cyberspace and differences in power between students and teachers in the online environment. The possibility of presenting oneselve to others differently to the f2f you.

The students interviewed in this research felt that cyber identities left them dangerous, personality split and deceitful.

Danger – to a student it feels like self betrayal. Danger that you create a picture of tyourself and then find it hard to maintain the gap between the virtual and real persona. Loss of control – the constructed persona gains control over the real self.

Personality Split – People say things they wouldn’t normally say f2f.

Deceit and perversion – virtual identities – lying about oneself, and depends on perceptions of others over which you have no control.

Students felt that there is a tensio between their real self that goes to f2f tutorials and their less authentic selves which emerge online.

The teachers found the online environment as a chance to have more time and space to be a better teacher, to prepare responses, be more authoritarian and remain in control (in direct opposite to the student’s fears). However some teachers expressed concerns that the real them doesn’t come across online, for example their fun side, they felt them came across stuffy in the online environment.

1. Are your views similar? Yes I would agree from both viewpoints. As a student (web user) i want to be honest, I do not want to pretend to be something I am not however saying that I do find that the online working environment allows me to be me even more than my real self. I am someone who is happy to talk up in class but I do find that I am more willing to put myself out of my comfort zone and say contentious things or things that might make me look stupid online. As someone who supports students I also concur with the teachers’ views, the online environment and email messages give me more time to create a better response for students and as they never meet me or see me my actions aren’t effected by my perception of what other peoples’ perceptions of me are.

2. Do you feel uneasy around the uncertainties in relation to how you project your own identity online, or interpret that of others? Having read this I may now be more aware of possible deceit. I am honest so I expect others to be honest too, I can’t relate to the need to be different (perversly different at all).

3. By contrast, have you found it liberating to experience with your own identity online? I have been dabbling in twitter recently, and now have a public blog and it is odd knowing that anyone can read and access your thoughts. It is liberating as one of the students said, you might say things you wouldn’t normally say face to face and as a result you may learn stuff you wouldn’t say face to face.

4. Have your own reactions to the mutable subject online changed with experience in using online interaction? (mutable means prone to change). I don’t think I’ve had any experience I can draw upon for this.

5. Do you now feel differently about your own identity relationships? No

6. Why do you think Bayne found differences between students and teachers? Mainly because teachers are used to performing and taking on different roles as teachers; the students have only been students and children and are mabybe more concerned about what others think. At WBS lecturers are nervous about lecturing using the virtual classroom or through recorded videos – this is akin to what the teachers said in this article about their online identity motivating them to be a better teacher – are our lecturers fearful that delivering teaching through video or video conferencing makes them susceptible to critique more than in a lecture theatre. The teachers seem to care about being good at their jobs when devliering online, whereas the students are more concerned about being themselves.

7. Can you draw upon the activity theory model to help interpret these differences? Taking the explanation of Engrestrom’s activity theory below, we can interpret these differences because the students and teachers have diffrent motives (objects) they are different subjects, using different tools to reach the outcomes. The effects of rules and community and division of labour effects how they practice. As Rajkumar says beloe, as all the parts in the theory are constantly changing, the outcomes and beliefs will also be changing.

Notes:

“An activity is undertaken by a human agent (subject) who is motivated toward the solution of a problem or purpose (object), and mediated by tools (artifacts) in collaboration with others (community). The structure of the activity is shaped and constrained by cultural factors including conventions (rules) and social divisions (division of labor) within the context. Engeström emphasizes the mediational role of the community and that of social structures including the division of labor and established procedures.

All the elements of this system are continuously changing. The human beings not only use instruments, they also continuously adapt them, consciously or otherwise. They obey rules, but also transform them. They follow rules of division of labor but in doing so constantly help evolve them as well. Transformation is then crucial to this model – and the interplay between the various elements constantly leads to the various new outcomes being created. ” Rajkumar, S (no date) Activity Theory http://mcs.open.ac.uk/yr258/act_theory/ accessed 24th February 2009

8. Would the different subject positions of teachers in the learning activity system help to explain their reactions and feelings of control? The teacher is part of the community or even one of the instruments in helping the subject get to their outcome so they can influence the other subjects.

9. Does a teacher’s position in authority within the community mean that they feel more confidently able to exert a particular teacherly persona using online contributions?> Yes