Assessment 1 - Learning Design

This blog entry is a little different to the preceding postings, in that it is submitted as Assessment 1 of the ICTs for Learning Design course for the GDLT at CQU Rockhampton.  The assessment requirements prescribe that it be written in academic style, so no smiley faces :o( 

It is a conclusion synthesising our learning, and posting recommendations for our own practice when participating in, and designing eLearning, drawing together our reflections from three previous blog reflections: My Profile Wiki, Learning Theories Wiki and Mobile Phones Wiki.  Due to the limited word allowance, prior reading and understanding of theories, descriptors and tools has been assumed, for example, there is no detailed explanation of my understanding of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, as that is taken as read.  For amplification on these areas, please refer to my earlier blogs. 

Flex learning for graduates is very different to the face-to-face learning environment of a primary school.  Nonetheless, the meta-cognition elements of this learning experience are of value when considering the design of an engaging learning environment.

Today’s learning environments differ considerably from even a few years ago in many respects, including current attitudes of pupils (and parents) towards education, additional distractions of the modern world and ICT themselves.  Whilst Prensky (2001, p. 1) argues that today’s students are not just incrementally different but singularly so, student diversity has always existed.  Perhaps it is the depth of research and analysis of pedagogy that has lead to more awareness of, for example, the differences in learning styles, and perhaps the connectivist development of ICTs that has lead to an increased awareness of such information. 

Whilst “it needs to be recognised that ICT are a further source of the diverse nature of the contemporary classroom” (Thrupp, 2009, p. 1), they also provide tools to help manage that diversity by engaging students with differing learning needs.  The danger is looking at ICTs as an add-on, simply to entertain learners.  They should be seen as integral to learning.  Today TPACK forces thoughts towards T(echnology), but in future the T will be a given, just as paper and pens are now.  The ICT course has used a variety of ICTs with the capacity to engage (and enrage).  Essential for collaboration in a distance learning environment, ICTs also offer considerable opportunity for school learners to enjoy, rather than endure. 

The course learning design is highly structured.  Some learners felt more “straight-jacketed” than “scaffolded”, feeling obliged to answer every question posed, in order.  The design, however, also afforded learners free rein, to sink or swim, or to such higher order thinking as evaluation/critiquing and creation/designing (Bloom, 1956), and to “donate” (the third principle of Engagement Theory (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998)), by way of their blogs (and, to a restricted extent, by way of limited access (Moodle) wikis).  Reviewing cohorts’ posts gave learners the opportunity to collaborate and help others’ learning.  After all, teaching others is the whole premise of the program.  If a learner can teach a cohort, they must have understood the subject.

When it was clear there were gaps in learners’ understanding that could not be filled by peer-to-peer learning, further scaffolding was provided.  This ability to use retrospective scaffolding to provide a safety-net for struggling learners (when peer-support failed) gives confidence to set high expectations, then assist, rather than setting lower expectations for fear that some learners may not achieve them alone.

Whilst not necessarily clear to sequential learners, the first three weeks of the course were designed to get learners straight into higher order thinking.  The design was not to feed content and have learners memorise information, but to get them analysing, critiquing and creating knowledge for themselves, illustrating that Bloom’s taxonomy does not have to be used sequentially.  Sufficient scaffolding and support were provided to enable learners to connect with resources, peers and experts in order to construct their own knowledge on their own cognitive basis, so that that knowledge was owned by them, created by them.  This was a challenging approach which may not be suitable for junior minds in a primary school environment.

Learners need to develop an awareness of the difference between memorising and understanding content.  Comments from some learners made it clear that not all could understand what they were supposed to be doing and, more importantly, why.  “To make ‘meaning’ means to make sense of an experience” (Mezirow, 1990, p. 1).  The aim is to enable learners to gain greater independence in how and where they learn to secure “life-long learning”.  Contrary to what some supporters of “21^st Century Learning” would advocate, there is value in a learner knowing that they are learning (rather than believing they are playing a computer game) as this helps them develop their meta-cognitive capacities.

Wikis and blogs were the main tools used.  They support contributions by all learners, render contributors’ thinking visible, and enable the progress of reasoning and learning to be permanently recorded — of benefit to both teacher (as assessor) and learner (for reflection and future retrospective analysis) — an excellent collaborative constructionist resource and appropriate in even a young learning environment.  The use of the wiki encourages participation by a diversity of learners, including those unhappy contributing in front of their peers, or with difficulties verbalising quickly under pressure, whereas “use of asynchronous discussion may increase the reflection and thoughtfulness in student discussion” (Bunker & Vardi, 2001, p. 114).

The Profile Wiki enabled learners to get to know each other, with a view to working together, and to begin creating collaborative learning support networks.  A simple, highly-scaffolded first task catered for novice learners (presumably designed to give confidence at an early stage).  Such learner profiles could be useful repositories offering teachers an insight into, for example, learners’ personalities and computer literacy.  Whilst the template included a question on subjective learning styles, the profiles were completed prior to the learning style/multiple intelligence (MI) coursework.  Developing this wiki further, by including some profiling questions on MIs (although not explicitly labelled such) — perhaps for use as an introduction to new pupils at the start of a new primary school year — would be of more use to teachers.

Gardner’s (1983) theories on MIs have been criticised for the use of subjective assessment and for lacking basis in scientific research: “the evidence base for learning styles is profoundly unsatisfactory and needs attention” (Learning Working Group, 2004, p. 12).  Nonetheless, the popularity of learning theories suggests they articulate what many teachers intuitively feel about learners’ abilities.  As well as getting learners to reflect on their own methods of learning (again, developing their meta-cognitive capabilities), these theories also offer guidance as to alternative teaching styles available, when a particular learner is not relating to the initial style.  It is not suggested that a learner should always be taught in their preferred way of learning.  Learners need to adapt and develop strengths in their weaker areas too and, in a primary school context, junior learners may have little experience of varied learning styles.  The main value of these theories, however, is to highlight the necessity of diverse and varied teaching strategies.

The Profile Wiki was scaffolded by use of a template.  It could have included more information to enable learners to choose a learning partner.  Whilst promoting a consistency of submission, the template did not allow much room for expression of personality, unlike the learners’ early blog postings, which gave a better flavour of which learners might work well together.  Some learners found themselves attracted to those who chose not to answer the set course questions in a granular fashion, but rather to discuss the issues more holistically: those who analysed and evaluated the materials (i.e.  the higher order thinkers), rather than those who just listed and summarised.  Others may have been attracted to pretty coloured fonts and lots of photographs.

The Learning Theories Wiki was the first truly collaborative wiki, affording learners opportunity to work together to “create” (the second principle of Engagement Theory), by firstly partnering in the PMI exercise and secondly contributing to the wiki itself.  Having learners work together enhances collaborative construction of knowledge (a “learn-learn” situation).  Unlike individual learning “students are forced to clarify and verbalize their problems, thereby facilitating solutions”; the first principle, the “relate” component of Engagement Theory (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998, para. 5).  The task also encouraged the creation of networking strategies, a useful first step in connectivism.  

 “The collective being always larger than the total sum of the individual” (Vygotsky cited by Hua Liu, 2005, p. 392) can be a positive, but there is the danger of ‘group think’ and of the quieter partner being bulldozed by the more bombastic.  There is also the danger of the lazy drifting along (an example of the diversity of engagement amongst students) — the usual dangers of social collaboration (Thirteen Ed Online, 2004), although learners may have been able to identify and avoid these dangers, particularly with them choosing their own partners.  This afforded them “the opportunity to work with others from quite different backgrounds [which] facilitates an understanding of diversity and multiple perspectives.” (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998, para. 5).

Learners were also invited to choose a topic to which they related (thus further addressing Engagement Theory).  There was, however, little diversity in the form of the content to be analysed, the vast majority being written texts, which may not be engaging for younger learners.  The “create” element of Engagement Theory was further addressed by the individual PMIs being part of an “Expert Jigsaw”, i.e.  project-based (although the learners did not get to define the nature of the project).  An Expert Jigsaw is a useful example of collaborative constructivism: a difficult and time-consuming task for one person alone, having many learners’ input enables the sharing of points of view that a sole learner might overlook.

The scaffolding of both the Learning Theories Wiki, using PMI, and the Mobile Phones Wiki, using De Bono’s Hats, dictated specific ways of thinking, helping categorise learners’ contributions, enhance comparability, facilitate the forming of new perceptions and development of ideas, and transform knowledge.  It required readers to analyse the content (higher order thinking), rather than simply cut and paste (lower order thinking of locating and summarising) sections into the wiki.  The majority of learners, however, did not embrace the collaborative nature of the PMI partnership nor the wikis.  Many learners contributed separately-submitted lists to the LT Wiki.  Some posted solo conclusions, not having worked in partnership at all.  Few, if any contributed truly collaborative pieces of work. 

The Mobiles Wiki was the only wiki permitting a degree of anonymity.  Burdett (2003, p. 87) noticed that “[s]tudent reluctance to participate in chat or group discussions stemmed from ideas of being exposed and a lack of anonymity”.  Or as Sir Ken Robinson (2006, 5m:45s) commented, a fear of being wrong leads to a curbing of creativity, as “you’ll never come up with anything original if you’re not prepared to be wrong,”, or be seen to be wrong.  The anonymity of this task may have produced a more inclusive result than the Learning Theories Wiki, but it did not produce an obviously more collaboratively-authored or valuable result.  Was this due to lack of knowledge and understanding of the authorship of wikis, a lack of courage in their own convictions, or discomfort in amending cohorts’ work?  Did learners repeat existing points simply to show they had contributed (rather than because they had not read the previous contributions) due to behaviourism — i.e.  they were told to contribute, so they had to show they had contributed for fear of the consequences of refusing to follow the instructions?  Did learners actually stop and consider the (few) examples of their cohorts’ genuinely collaborative postings, or did they maintain a “strong tendency to reject ideas that fail to fit [their] preconceptions”?  (Mezirow, 1997, p. 5). 

Technology is not infallible.  A back-up option is required.  ICTs are invaluable resources, when they work.  Teachers should consider the investment (not only in having to produce a back-up) but also “the time associated with the development and maintenance of the [learning] site”, (Marshall, 2007, p. 109).  In a course comprising many learners whose educational behaviour was constructed many years ago, closer management of the wikis may have ensured that:  they were used more effectively; all learners understood their design and purpose in order to gain the full benefits of such collaboration and the end result “donated” was of value.  In the event, it appeared that some learners fell behind or skipped ahead.  It is acknowledged that perhaps a) this is inevitable due to a diversity of learner abilities and learning speeds and b) the final content of the wikis (repetitive, verbose, disorganised, unwieldy and unsearchable) was not deemed as important as the meta-cognition of the learning process itself, perhaps due to time constraints.  One would hope a primary school teacher managing such wikis would be well positioned to monitor contents and provide further scaffolding if needed.

References

Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, Handbook I: The cognitive domain. New York, NY: David McKay Co Inc.

Bunker, A., & Vardi, I. (2001).  Why use the online environment with face-to-face students?  Insights from early adopters.  In Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education: Meeting at the crossroads (pp. 111–116).  Melbourne, Vic.

Burdett, J. (2003). A switch to online takes time: Academics’ experiences of ICT innovation. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society of Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education: Interact, integrate, impact (pp. 84–93).  Adelaide, SA.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Hua Liu, C. (2005). Vygotsky’s philosophy: Constructivism and its criticisms examined.  International Education Journal, 6(3), 386–399.

Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. (1998). Engagement theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Educational Technology, 38(5), 20–23

Learning Working Group. (2004). About learning. Report commissioned by the UK Minister for School Standards.  Retrieved from http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=158151

Marshall, S. (2007). Engagement theory, WebCT, and academic writing in Australia. International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 3(2), 109–115.

Mezirow, J. (1996). Transformative learning in action. New directions for Adult and Continuing Education, Summer, 74.

Mezirow, J., & Associates (Eds.). (1990). Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: A guide to transformative and emancipatory learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Robinson, K. (2004). TED Talks [Video file]. Schools kill creativity. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Thirteen Ed Online. (2004). Constructivism as a paradigm for teaching and learning.  Retrieved from http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/index.html

Thrupp, R. (2009). ICT created diversity in the classroom: The contemporary learner. In ACEC 2010: Digital Diversity Conference. Melbourne, Vic.