Week 25 – Woolgar’s 5 themes of virtuality

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Wk 25 A3 Learner Support and Effectiveness

Learner support is the interpersonal interaction that needs to be present – learners do not IT communications to completely replace f2f/real interaction with educators and other knowledgeable peers.  It is this form of interaction that is most strongly linked to retaining students so should not be ignored.  Practitioners need ways to see when students are having difficulties. Offering relevant support has been found essential to retaining effective study.

Countering Technological Determinism (TD)

TD – when technology is seen to impact directly on social relations and activities. However, as Thorpe, 2009, said “it is through practices with technology, rather than the direct effect of the tools themselves, that we create learning contexts.”

It is a combination of the tool and the human activity that technology delivers its effects. The tools simply mediate activity. Their effects depend on the activities being designed for its use.

Steve Woolgar – research programme called “Virtual Society?”. The ? being significant as it questions the impact of technology on society that TD’tic viewpoints advocate.

The discource of Technology Impact

Rationales for the impact of technology tend to the TDeterministic, making assumptions of the effects across society.

Woolgar offered “five rules of virtuality” which are THEMES to stimulate thought about the relevance to Technological impact on, in our context, learning and teaching.

Theme 1: The uptake and use of the new technologies depend crucially on local social context: The importance of “third place” settings to engage people with technology, such as museums.

Theme 2: The fears and risks, anticipations and enthusiasms associated with new technologies are unevenly socially distributed …acceptance was undermined by the failures of the technology to meet design specifications. This led to extra work and sometimes the technology had to be scaled back (Mason et al., 2002).  There are differences, for example, between staff and students in universities, in terms of perception and usage of ICT.

Theme 3: Virtual technologies supplement rather than substitute for real activities

At WBS it is a struggle to get academics to integrate TEL into their courses, we want them to find parts of the printed materials that could be learned in other ways using technology, but mostly we find that the elearning resources are add-ons not integral to the learning process and that the course notes cover everything so we are still providing both. The web-conferences we now offer are not replacing content, but revising the content that already exists. We want the web-conferences to take away some of the teaching that is done at the short residential schools so they have more time for face to face group work in their 1 day of interaction a year.  It’s a change process, so it will be slow.

Theme 4: The more virtual the more real The more e-communication/technology use, the more work it created. But at the OU perception of attendance at face-to-face tutorials is that it is lower now than a decade or more ago. CMC is being used, partly because it offers benefits for learning and partly because students seem less able to, or to have less time available for, travel to study centres to attend tutorials.

We hope that with increased interaction between students and tutors, students will complete more of the optional formative assessments.  After a recent web-seminar a student commented that she was not looking forward to completing the formative assessment but after this interaction she was now prepared to attempt it.

Theme 5: The more global the more local

After our web-seminars students always comment on how these events make them feel less isolated, more in touch with Warwick and more in touch with other people on the course; reducing the “distance” they feel from the institution.

Week 23 Activity 3 – Schemas

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Reading: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue56/conole/

Tension between the rhetoric of web 2.0 – ie selling it on it’s speed and immediacy of accessing information and multiple communication channels which contradicts traditional notions of education – reflection, accumulation of knowledge, developing understanding over time.  Some are arguing for a return to slow learning to counter the speed of digital learning.

Another rhetoric of Web 2.0 is participation and the wisdom of the crowds (mash ups, remixing, co-construction) but educational systems still revolve around individual testing against pre determined criteria. Even where group work is acknowledged, there are strategies to recognise individual contribution,.

Conflict in the other direction is towards assessment processes – why is knowledge recall being tested when information is so easily accessible.  Another conflict is the mix-up nature of Web 2.0 and wikis etc which is against the practices of plagiarism policies.

Web 2 challenging the need for academic referencing because ideas are formed in much more fluid ways now. Cross referencing takes place, but difficult to identify sources these days because of the way the blogosphere works.

The wisdom of the crowds notion – user generated content – mass participation in co-constructing ideas – the challenges the traditional educational notion of teacher as expert, despite the theories of social constructivism which call for a learner centred approach. Web 2.0 fragments a modular approach to education, where there are more cross overs and freedom to search for information more fragmentally and the information is always changing.

Web 2.0 rhetoric says that no one individual is expert – this is in conflict with academic rankings etc

Fear – bcause the technologies are so exciting we are seeing a technologically deterministic drive, rather than on sound pedagogies. But there is also a close alignment between current practices of Web 2.0 and pedagogy. To counter technological drivers, Conole puts forward some ideas to match the affordances of the technology with learning.

Firstly, looking at existing learning theories and reflecting on how they align with Web 2.0 practices through use of a pedagogical framework against which to map tools.

Theories	Main focus	Map to technologies
Behaviourism	Trial and error learning Learning through association and reinforcement	Presentation of content, use of multiple media to convey information Feedback through e-assessment tools Peer feedback
Cognitive constructivism	Focus on the processes by which learners build their own mental structures when interacting with an environment Task-orientated, favour hands-on, self-directed activities orientated towards design and discovery	Guided and adaptive instruction through interactive materials Access to resources and expertise offers the potential to develop more engaging and student-centred, active and authentic learning environments
Social constructivism	Emphasis on interpersonal relationships involving imitation and modelling and joint construction of knowledge	Multiple forms of asynchronous and synchronous communication offer the potential for more diverse and richer forms of dialogue and interaction between students and tutors and amongst peers Archive materials and resources provide ample opportunity for vicarious learning Different online communication tools and learning environments and social fora offer the potential for new forms of communities of practice or facilities to support and enhance existing communities
Situated learning	Learning as social participation Shift from a focus on the individual and information-focused learning to an emphasis on social learning and communication/ collaboration	Networking capabilities of the Web enable more diverse access to different forms of expertise and the potential for the development of different types of communities Online communication tools and learning environments offer the potential for new forms of communities of practice or can facilitate and enhance existing communities

There is currently a good alignment between current thinking in terms of good pedagogy (ie social, situated learning) with web 2.0 practices (eg user generated content, user added value, aggregated effort). The impact of Web 2.0 though is less than dramatic due to technological, organisational and pedagogical reasons in education. EG Education is slow to change, practices are embedded deeply Eg assessment, Cultural issues – changing the mindset of teachers in terms of their role. Conole wants them to think in new ways about how to map pedagogies to use of tools.

1. A pedagogical framework for mapping tools in use

3 dimensions – Individual – Social; Active- Passive; learning through Information – or Experience. Any instance of learning lies somewhere along a combination of the 3 dimensions.

1. A pedagogical framework for mapping tools in use

2.  Mapping pedagogical principles

Focuses on how the principles of learning situation maps to characteristics of learning. 4 characteristics – so learning in any situation is a combination of learning through: thinking and reflection; conversation and interaction; experience and activity; evidence and demonstration.

Such matrices (of pedagogies/tasks v. These 4 characteristics) can be used with end-users to get them to reverse-engineer the pedagogical assumptions inherent in the design of a particular learning intervention or alternatively can also be used as the basis for developing new learning applications at the design stage.

The implications of web 2.0 on institutions are on:

• Changing learning and teaching paradigms
• Staff and learner skills set
• Strategy and policy
• Roles and structure.

Weeks 21/22 A3a – The Horizon Report 2009

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I’ve just read the executive summary and skimmed over the rest of the 2009 Horizon Report which aims to report annually on 6 emerging technologies or practices that are likely to enter education over 1-5 years, also outlines challenges and trends. The project centres on applications of emerging technologies to teaching, learning, research and creative expression.

3 horizons of adoption – 1 is 1 year, 2 is 2-3 years, 3 is 5 years.

1. Mobiles and Cloud Computing

• Mobiles
  • Another component of network
  • Multiple uses
  • Internet
• Cloud computing
  • Networked computers – where applications and data are held/stored on the network rather than on a single computer to enable users to use clouds of computers. Changes the way we store, use and access files and software. Increases opportunities for sharing, collaboration and tracking versions.

2. Geo-everying and the personal web

• Geo Everything
  • The ability for devices to log their geo location, and link these to information, data and other stuff.  Eg automatically tagging a photo with a location. Use in sciences – logging observation locations, gathering other information about that place, etc
  • Personal web
  • Ability to reorganise online content, aggregators. Widgets. A collection of technologies that are used to configure and manage the ways in which one views and uses the internet that supports ones social, professional, learning and other activities.

• 3. Semantic aware applications and smart objects

• Semantic aware application
  • The use of meaning by applications rather than just syntax. Apps that interpret what we are searching for rather than just taking keywords.
• Smart objects
  • Objects that can be tracked, that know where they are. People, devices, objects. Eg an artefact in a museum is tagged, scanners give viewer information about that artefact and provide other data about it. People in a conference to put people in touch with each other – eg who am I sitting by

Key Trends affecting the practice of T&L

• Increasing globalisation continues to affect the way we work, collaborate and communication. – increasingly those who use technology to expand their global connections are more likely to advance.
• The notion of collective intelligence is redefining how we think about ambiguity and imprecision. Collective intelligence leads to multiple answers. Redefining scholarship. Today’s learners want to be active participants in the learning process.
• Experience with and affinity for games as learning tools is an increasingly universal characteristic among those entering HE and the workforce. Games offer increased opportunity for interaction and active participation.
• Visualisation tools are making information more meaningful and insights more intuitive. Visual literacy becomes an important skills that needs to be taught.
• As more than 1 billion phones are produced each year, mobile phones are benefiting from unprecedented innovation, driven by global competition – multiple uses, indispensable tools.

Critical Challenges

• Growing need for formal instruction in new skills, information literacy, visual literacy and technology literacy.
• Students are different, but a lot of educational material is not. Adapt to students needs, identify new learning models for engaging younger generations, change assessment practices.
• Significant shifts are taking place in the ways scholarship and research are conducted, and there is a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy. Academic review and rewards out of sync with practice of scholarship.
• We are expected to measure and prove through formal assessment that our students are learning.
• HE is facing a growing expectation to make use of and deliver services, content and media to mobile devices. Not just an expectation to provide content, but an opportunity for HE to reach its constituents in new and compelling ways – in addition to the anytime anywhere argument.

Week 17 A5 – some reflections

What are your personal thoughts on the relationship between technologies and educational reform? (For example is technology itself a cause of reform or an instrument used to encourage reform?)

• Income – higher student numbers in PG education = more income; more numbers is being achieved through increased DL and Blended learning courses due to lack of resources on campus and teachers available to teach. So technology is the way forward. However, why don’t we just give them printed notes and end of module exams – this would work too so it must be more than this.
• How about, needs must – a belief that the Net generation does exist homogeneously – so we MUST do something….
• Government policy
• Efficiency – the VLE was first started to make admin on the course more efficient, elearning is just evolution of that – students see a place we can have elearning within, so they demand it, we respond…does anyone question this.
• I like to think of technology as being the solution to problems in education (like Daniel et al.’sIron Triangle) technology enables us to maintain quality, stop the pressure on resources and increase access to education.

What influence do you think the producers and developers of technologies and services have on university decisions about introducing new technologies?

Quite a lot. The producers employ salesmen who convince us of their value. Buying technologies and services is deemed safer in this age where data protection is critical so buying products/services instead of using Open Source ones is attractive.

But once we’ve got the technology/service it’s down to the committed few to engage and gain adoption – so now that’s the hard bit having now spent the money on the resource!

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 11 Debates on elearning Activity 1: a classic debate

Academic debate- where there is disagreement about a particular topic. So there is a debate in whether technology enhances learning, hence the title of this course (Practices and debates in technology enhanced learning).

In this activity we reviewed an online debate in the Economist where the proposition was “The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most educaion”.

Wk 1 A8,9 &10

These activities combined had me thinking about my experiences of learning from different perspectives – my own experience as a student after leaving school; my experience of informal learning and my experience in supporting learning. We had to think about what resources we had been given/used to support our learning, which we enjoyed using and gained most benefit from, how own experiences have effected how you support others’ learning and how your practices may have changed over time.
1 To what extent have the teaching practices you encountered and your ways of behaving as a learner influenced the ways in which you now support the learning of others?
- My UG degree was my first experience of formal learning after school. The resources/technologies used were – lectures (with powerpoint slides), seminars (with group work, exercises, presentations), set reading (text books), library resources – books, journals, databases, statistical information (Print and CDROM). Seminars may have used video too but I can’t quite remember. They did involve quizes, discussion and comparisons with others. The internet was not a source of information at all during my time at University, computers were used as word processors – that’s all, for essays and powerpoints. I remember the University introduced an internal email system in my final year (1997) but no one knew how to use it – we weren’t the google generation, we couldn’t work it out.
In 1998 I remember using the internet for the first time; but this was after finishing my degree and it was used for social things – I do remember using it for booking train tickets and holidays then. In my UG degree most of the control over what we used came from faculty; when it came to assessments it was down to us to do our own information searches using the library. No other physical sources of information were used then.
I enjoyed most the seminars, where we had group activity to help us to establish our understanding of what had been lecturered and we had read about. I least enjoyed the lectures – they were boring, powerpoint presentations regurgitating the text books and you spent the time trying to write everything down rather than really listening. I remember one lecturer I gave up on quickly as it really was taken directly from the text book, she had little personality and no sense of audience – poor thing she had over 300 UGs to lecture to. It must have been hard. But then I remember a marketing lecturer who was actually an advertising consultant; his lectures were great – but then the nature of the beasts who are advertising executives tend to be good at PR, presenting and engaging their audiences. I can’t remember specifically what it was, but maybe it was a combination of an interesting subject, with case studies that we related to easily and the personality of the lecturer that did it.

2. Informal learning – eg an example of some learning you’ve done for yourself, to keep up to date, develop knowledge or skills – not just acquiring information. I chose the example of the learning I did while I was pregnant. I read books, magazines, websites, took part in forums, watched movie clips and listened to audio tracks on the internet and CD rom that came from Pampers babyclub etc. I determined my own objectives – I wanted to know each week what the baby inside me was doing, it was intriguing and very relevant and current. The books were recommended by friends, the magazines were leant to me by friends and the internet searches were initiated by me using Google. I gained most from the internet, having a wealth of information available to me at my fingertips, and free of charge. The forums were particuarly useful, I could read comments by people experiencing and feeling the same things as me, which helped me through the time and helped me find clarity to a lot of the mysteries of child birth and babies. So learning from othe people seems to be a pattern here.

3. Supporting the learning of others.
I haven’t done much in this, I am not a teacher but support students. I am responsible for making sure students understand the systems and expectations of themselves and their tutors so I provide web-based guidance on this to the distance learning students, I also provide face to face presentations when they are on campus, supprted with video clips, animated demos, printed support and forum support. I am providing a range of learning support options to suit different people.

Pattern – I like learning in groups where I can learn from others and by helping other people to understand things, I learn more too.

My own experiences have taught me that we have to give students variety and choice and that anything we provide must add value to their learning. A lecture which is a carbon copy of the text book is not enhancing learning, it’s just delivering the same information through a different medium. In H808, I really enjoyed the learning design whereby the topic was introduced and you were basically left to search for more information to form an opinion yourself. I really liked this freedom and flexibility which gave me ownership of my learning. If I’m told to read chapter X, I tend to resist that. I want to read what interests me (and of course is relevant to the course) and my job in this professional course.

Here is a comment from Kim on the forum that is a similar view to mine:
A law lecturer from another university says that he doesn’t give traditional lectures but tries to organise his “large group sessions” in a way which does require some student involvement (pair work, quizzes etc).
Is the traditional lecture dying – and would it be a bad thing? I remember some marvellous lectures during my first degree – and one series which consisted of the leading mind in his subject reading word for word from his leading book. When I did my masters’ degree another “reader” popped up, this time not a leading mind nor a leading book. As I was a more assertive 35 year old, I complained and he was replaced in fairly short order! ” (Kim Silver, 13-02-09, 21.46 Week 1 A9-A10)

Paul Kenney said about how relevant technology can be in archaelogy teaching – he said earlier that things like GPS have improved the sector but “
Is anything lost in the learning experience by using e-technology?
Personally I think so, but I also think that it is inevitable, and at the level taught many aspects are really just being introduced so they are very useful, yet I feel that in the case of Archaeology it is best to get out and get grubby. ” (Paul Kenney, 12-02-09 11.42 Week 1 A9-A10)

And this comment by Simon really summed up my feelings:

I agree too, there is a tendency to offer online equivalents of traditional teaching modes. However, the difference for me receiving these resources online is the activities and group learning that is associated with them. I can only cite my experience on this and two other MAODE courses, but I feel that a greater sense of communality when using resources online. My recollection of face-to-face lectures was that, other than a brief opportunity to pose questions at the end of the session, the knowledge passed on to me was left for individual digestion, often only externalized in written form (lecture notes or an essay). By contrast, the podcasts and webcasts offered to me online make the most of the social environment they are delivered in, encouraging me to reflect and talk about them. One of the reasons why I think this works better is the asynchronous nature of distance learning. Everyone has longer to digest, respond and reflect on content. (Simon Allan, 12-02-09 10.15, Week 1 A9-A10)

Jonathon Campbell 2 writes: (14-02-09, 10.56)
When I want to try something new I’ve got to be sure to start somewhere familiar and then take very small steps. They need a lot of support to get away from the only style of education they’ve known.

I recall though my A level teaching (yr 11-12) was more student centred, perhaps to help prepare us for independent study at University. Secondary education Yr 7-10) was certainly very teacher centred. The introduction of more vocational qualifications at secondary school instead of formal GCSEs for those students that it suits better has to be a good thing in moving away from the formal classroom.