E-flections

As part of my PG cert in teaching and learning in art and design at CLTAD, I am carrying out an action research project, so here is the proposal….

Live online research seminar

For some time I have been aware that in most of  my teaching practice I am emphasising collaboration and student centred learning, but that in most of my lecture presentations I am still delivering a relatively traditional lecture using slides etc with me as the ‘expert’ interlocutor, in both online and f2f contexts.

I have been thinking about how to adapt this format so that the necessary ground can still be covered on the course, but that the students can be empowered to learn themselves during the class, with me acting more as a lead researcher, or mentor, to them in real time.

On my online course, during lectures the participants use the text messaging box within the web conferencing software we use to provide a constant stream of feedback, questions, weblinks, analysis etc about the presentation, allowing me to answer their questions and elaborate on points they are unsure of without having to break the flow of the presentation by asking for verbal questions. Of course, due to the virtual nature of the class, this kind of multitasking is a given, as they are all using computers from the onset. However, the idea of students using their laptops or mobile devices during traditional f2f lectures is often met with considerable scepticism and even hostility, with the usual response being ‘they will be just texting their friends or playing games or on facebook’. However, such comments are potentially answered by my experience in the online space.  I therefore would like to experiment with using real time messaging within an f2f class using twitter. Here is an example of Cole Camplese using twitter during a session at Penn State University in the US

My proposal then is to carry out a series of live online research seminars, each lasting for 2 hours, where we will seek to collectively research a particular subject relevant to our practice area, and then build a publically accessible digital artefact using web 2.0 collaborative tools – e.g. wikis, rss feeds, Ning, twitter, Diigo etc.

This will serve as an action research into how to make a typical 2-hour class session more collaborative and meaningful, empowering the students to research a subject that is authentic to them and generating new insights.

The sessions will be evaluated on how effectively they enhance collaboration, research skills, understanding of the Internet and sources, understanding of how to reference Internet sources and plagiarism, etc etc

We will carry out an initial survey of the classes’ web research skills and then a further evaluation after the sessions to see to what extent these have been enhanced.
A record will be kept of the interactions during the sessions by using the digital artefact itself and video recording the project is inspired particularly by the teaching methods of Michael Wesch, Ass Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas University,  in particular the video ‘A portal to media literacy’ and the paper ‘From knowledgeable to knowledge-able’.