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’.

So many good lines it’s almost impossible to list them all, but I’ll note a few highlights for me. Firstly, his title, the need to shift from knowing facts and figures to knowing how to find facts and figures, how to analyse them, and how to collaboratively create new knowledge: knowledgeable to knowledge-able.

He started with a great analogy that there was something different to the classroom of today from that he studied in as an undergrad, that there is ‘literally something in the air’ between the students, that being the ‘digital artefacts of 1.5 billion people’, part of the staggering figure of 70 Exabyte’s of information that will be produced this year, less than 0.1% on paper. The pace of change is now so fast that concepts like digital natives become irrelevant; there is no native to something that is less than 5 years old and nobody will ever be native again. His survey of futurist writers gave him his ’20 second vision of the future

‘ubiquitous networks ubiquitous  computing ubiquitous  information at unlimited speed about everything from everywhere  and anywhere on al kinds of  devices,’

One thing that really resonated with me from this presentation was the idea that the way media is generated by the smart people, and appears to be targeted at you, the individual, it’s very flattering to one, it makes you feel special. The real world, however, say mountains and deserts has the opposite effect, it is humbling, because it’s not made just for you.

He weaved into the presentation a wonderful analysis of the changing meaning of a phrase in his
“A brief history of ‘whatever’”, following its shifting emphasis from:

1960s: that’s what I meant
Late 60’s: I don’t care, whatever
1990s: MTV gen the indifferent ‘meh’ of the Simpsons
1992: The of nirvana, there are so many huge issues out there in the world that the response becomes ‘whatever’; I can’t do anything about it.

This culminated in his ending takeaway, an invitation to rescue the word, and to transform it into the clarion call of

‘A new future of whatever – I care! Lets do whatever it takes to change the world by whatever means necessary’

‘If we were going to modify assessment as if making a contribution to their ability to learn after their course rather than during it was the primary need, how would it be different?’

His focus was then on how to reshape assessment policies so that their main intention was to help the learner build their capacity for self and peer judgment to further their lifelong learning.

David went on  to define current approaches to assessment in HE, which he saw as broadly to certify achievement (summative) and aid learning (formative). This often leads to too much emphasis  on current learning to meet requirements of a specific module at a specific time. He argued that we should be fostering the learning needed beyond end of a course –what he defined as sustainable assessment- which should serve to build their capacity to do something over and above an immediate task.

He suggested that we need to change  from:
Norm referenced to standards based
Testing what has been taught to assessing learning outcomes From exams to diverse approaches
Unilateral to active involvement of students
Separate domain to aligned with learning

His argument developed by describing what he called the Practice turn which has followed the reflective turn of recent years, which has these key features;
Practice is necessarily contextualised, embodied and  involves whole people with motives feelings and intentions; and it cannot be discussed independently of practitioners. It is co-constructed in relationships to others and their views of practice construct it –client and professional co-construct their practice together, and therefore only has meaning in light of its social location/construct.

He described the changing context of work, with a shift from the individual to the collective, and that it is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary, which involves the  co-production of practice and co-construction of knowledge.
This has created a serious clash of cultures between the complex collaborative culture of work vs. the individual character of educational assessment.

What this means is that we have to build capacity for learning in the future, essentially enhancing  a Judgement developing capacity. This then generates this question for any assessment exercise, ‘What are the consequences of this assessment for learning – does it build capacity for judgements about learning beyond this  course?’
The focus should then be on fostering reflexivity and self-regulation throughout the course, exposing and revealing the processes of judgement, not just thru assessment tasks. This demands that we recognise the variety of contexts in which learning occurs – and that judgement is not independent of context.

One major failing of many attempts to introduce new assessment models is that they fail to stage opportunities for developing informed judgement throughout programmes – there is almost always a failing  to be consistent across modules and programmes

What does all this mean? Well for Boud, students need to be involved in all aspects of assessment processes especially in practising judgements – they must be active agents in assessment rather than passive recipients of it.

Essentially then assessment becomes the  calibration of judgement – learners act on basis of belief in their own judgements need to know that they don’t know – identifying  knowledge gaps is more important than identifying knowledge.

He made a fantastic point about why students often resist new assessment models because students are behaving rationally in resenting changes in assessment because they have learnt how to behave in traditional assessment environments, and then we capriciously change the rules on them. So we need to be able to persuade them why it will be beneficial to them, and how this will aid them in meeting the formal requirements of the course, that we are doing it because its for real, the single most important and valuable thing we could imagine doing with you now in this module.

All assessment activities need to equip students for future leaning – we must ask in what ways is this particular task building their capacity for future learning, how does this help them make judgements.

His advice to achieve this is to:
Actively engage students
Let students give and receive feedback
Develop authentic activities that reflect real world practice
Raise awareness of learning and judgement
Integrative activities across modules and programs
Let students design assessment activities
Realise that the potential for developing capacity for informed judgment is central to all practice
Plan programs and course units to scaffold students to become increasingly sophisticated judges of their own learning
Make the design and selection of assessment tasks a key part of T&L

And consistency is important, we must think about all of the tasks and run the argument for them all – not just one innovative bit and everything else reinforcing old ways.

The E learning 2.0 report was authored by some big names in the industry, including Tony Karrer, Michele Martin, Jane Hart, Steve Wexler and Brent Schlenker; and is based on almost 3,000 replies from e learning professionals who are members of the guild. Overall, the whole membership is completely sold on the idea that e learning 2.0 works, with almost unanimous feeling that it had delivered substantial benefits to their organisation. Europe, Middle East and Africa are significantly further down the web 2.0 line than the rest of the world, with 57% reporting some use of e learning 2.0 compared with 39% in the US and 40% overall. (I have to say it would ahve been much more useful if europe had been separated from the middle east and africa to get a more nuanced view of adoption)
One key set of conclusions that seems to be buried at the back of the report if the ranking of web 2.0 tools in use by sector, which is topped by business e learning training providers followed by universities. However, if you look at this data a bit more carefully, you see that in the key areas of growth in web 2.0, blogs, wikis and, universities are way ahead and leading the pack by a substantial margin, with Europe and Asia/rest of world leading  the way by a significant margin over the USA.  Corporate e learning providers make massive use of electronic performance systems, learning games  and simulations, which greatly increases their overall score.

So this got me thinking, who is driving the adoption of e learning 2.0? To me it seems that universities and higher education, especially in outside of the USA, are playing a key role as the transitional zone between the workforce and companies, and are effectively giving the students who are coming from schools with a good grasp of the social networking tools that are out there but as the BECTA report noted, no real critical awareness of what these tools can do to enhance understanding and knowledge, and without the ability to evaluate and assess them effectively. Businesses, according to the guilds report, see the pressure from new younger staff to adopt web 2.0 as a major driver of the need for e learning 2.0, with 66% of respondents citing this as a major factor for them. 57% felt that Using web would allow their organisation to attract more and better talent. However, half felt that their staff didn’t have either the skills or the infrastructure to enable web 2.0 activities, and half felt that there want any real demand from staff to adopt them anyway. so there is a misfit between schools an industry, a misfit that higher education perhaps needs to bridge.

In terms of what guild members saw as the engines of adoption, 52% felt that their own personal use of tools was the most important factor, with only a third claiming that Learners or staff are requesting it, and just 25% that it was management driven.

Where it gets very interesting is in examining what members felt were the most effective strategies to drive forward the implementation of successful projects, with half citing engaging content as being the most important, and just less than half seeing management backing and tutoring as vital. Things like reward systems, helpdesk and internal advertising showed a poorer response, with less than 20% seeing them as significant. However, when the figures are broken down by length of e learning experience, a different picture emerges, with 44% of older, more senior specialists maintaining that effective change management was the most important thing.
One very interesting and slightly counter intuitive point is that the more experience a member has the more likely he or she is to embrace new approaches to education, with older members of the guild showing a higher propensity to use things like blogs, wikis, social networking and communities of practice.
So trying to make sense of this it seems to me that the real driving force behind e learning 2.0 is the e leaning community, especially its’ older, more established members, people like the team that put together the guild’s report, people with the significant important blogs, people like my fellow participants in the work literacy workshop, people who are in high enough positions within their organisations to effect change but not so high that they don’t have the time to experiment with web 2.0, to try it themselves and as Jane Hart maintains, lead by example. Within this, higher education is playing a key role in helping workers navigate the transition from using facebook and myspace as predominantly for entertainment, to using them for learning, understanding, knowledge production and analysis.

This certainly fits with my experiences of trying to move my institution forward, most of the growth has been grassroots, driven by individuals at course director level who are in their late 30’s to 50’s, and who have always used technology in their lives. They are now in positions where they can influence eat least the courses around them and drive forward the adoption of new ways of thinking, teaching and learning; management tend to be the generation above who haven’t the time nor the incentive to grapple with the tools, but are more than happy and supportive for us to do so. Slowly we are shifting though out of the e learning pocket into an e culture, where the tools that seem so new today will merge into our lives as seamlessly and ubiquitously as the internal combustion engine, the book, cell phones and the internet itself.

Web 2.0 is widely used by children, with over 74% having at least one social networking site account and the use of email and instant messaging is almost ubiquitous. However, most of this activity takes place OUTSIDE the school – 49% blogged outside of school with only 9% blogging inside school, whilst 69% had a social networking profile, but only 8% used it  within the  school. The only real area where school use was widespread was in the use of wikipedia, where over 73% used it in school. Only 8% of learners do not use Web 2.0 tools at all, and only 24% do not use social networking sites. But the really interesting part are the analysis of what these activities mean. The report finds that despite this high level of activity, there is “little evidence of groundbreaking activities and only a few embryonic signs of criticality, self-management and metacognitive reflection”
However, the report does acknowledge that web 2.0 can be useful in several key areas in shifting the pedagogy and methodology towards a new learning paradigm. Specifically, it finds that web 2.0 stimulates new modes of enquiry, in particular engaging in collaborative learning activities and engaging with new literacies. The report makes some fascinating comparisons between traditional school based learning and the new paradigm, making the following paired comparisons:

Private learning versus collaborative learning
Creative editing versus cutting and pasting (highlighting the danger sof the quick fix of cut and paste from the internet)
Serial processing versus parallel processing (and the growth of tagging and ‘folksonomy’)
Successive attention versus simultaneous attention (multitasking)
Authorised knowledge versus distributed knowledge (the need for some form of directed guidance to the web)

It also sounds a warning note as to why the adoption of web 2.0 may have to be a slow and steady progression, rather than an overnight sensation.  The report found that

‘Most teachers interviewed saw social networking as ‘play’, and as a medium to be discouraged in school. Most young people surveyed, however, saw social networking as usefully transient and private, occupying a space safely distant from the gaze of their teachers and parents.’

emphasising the division between school life and personal life.  But it also cites the new demands web 2.0 makes on learners to adopt new modes of learning, and the products of this learning then need to be accommodated into the school curriculum – how do we assess group collaborative work for example.

The report found that Web 2.0 approaches worked best when there were flexible models of learning, with Web 2.0 approaches embedded in the curriculum, both within and across subjects, coupled with support for student learning at home. This needed to be backed up with sufficient computer infrastructure, bandwidth, and technical support, and needed support and encouragement from senior management, with sufficient resources dedicated to training and development, especially for innovators. All this had to be backed up by a clear and reasonable e-safety policy that allowed maximum access possible whilst still providing adequate levels of protection for students.

The reports conclusion notes that
‘Perhaps one key implication for practice, therefore, is for evangelists, innovators and visionaries (and policy-makers) to take careful account of just how much is being asked of teachers in encouraging the wider implementation of Web 2.0, and to recognise that relatively slow and cautious progress is inevitable. That progress may require inspiration sustained with resources that meet both the infrastructure and pedagogic challenges. But it may also require deeper consideration of the wider fabric of curricula, assessment, and established practices for designing sites of teaching and learning.’
So the  need is  to take things slowly, build out from outposts of innovation and prove the need for web 2.0, and then see the transformations emerge organically from experience. What does this mean for higher education and businesses? Well at present it seems that children are going to emerge from school with a lot of experience of web 2.0 in their personal lives, but not much concept of how to apply that to other spheres. So the responsibility of educators at that level is going to be, at least for a generation or so, to provide the guidance and mentoring to allow learners to combine their familiarity with web 2.0 with a critical sensibility of how to use it to enhance their understanding of the world. We need to help them analyse and critique their world, and do that in a collaborative way through dialogue.

A recent presentation by Chris Lehmann sums it up really well, (thanks to kevin’s blog engaged learning for this, the slideshare is at ignite philly)  he calls for us  to ‘make technology like oxygen, ubiquitous, necessary and invisible’, and then use it to help students

Research:Collaborate:Create:Present:Network

A great clarion call for all levels of education!

Is this the future of interactive, collaborative online courses?

Tina Brown’s new online vessel, the Daily Beast, has just launched, with the philosophy that means it is not an aggregator, but rather in Tina’s words, a site that  ”sifts, sorts, and curates.” What this means is that it provides a variety of ways to intersect with a story, and entry points to interact with it too. A range of invited experts on the  ‘buzz board’ give their recommendations on a range of topics including foreign affairs, entertainment and politics; highlights from other news sources provide the ‘cheat sheet’.

There is one ‘big fat story’ of the day which provides roll overlinks organised a bit like a mental map of the story. All of this is dynamic and updating constantly. The home  page is too cluttered and confusing  for my taste,but the other pages are much cleaner with lots of white space and clean design, with big images and a pleasing grey font that is easy on the eye.

For me Tina’s philosophy chimes exactly with where I think education, especially higher education and lifelong  learning, is going. We are shifting from the top down model of teacher/student to the bottom up model of collaboration and equality, and of guide, mentor, curator and collector. This resonates with Michele Martin who in a post on Instructional Designers and Trainers as Digital Curators? argues that  the

‘role of the “trainer” or the “instructional designer” really is fundamentally changing into someone who may no longer be designing learning “events” but is in fact facilitating the development and ongoing use of personal learning and work environments’

and Steve Rubel, who in  ‘The digital curator in your future’ maintains that

‘The call of the curator requires people who are selfless and willing to act as sherpas and guides. They’re identifiable subject matter experts who dive through mountains of digital information and distill it down to its most relevant, essential parts. Digital Curators are the future of online content.’

So something like the Daily Beast, with a core team of ‘curators’ mixed in with invited experts to give fresh and deep insights into the subject area, and then combined with interaction from the participants adding their links, uploads and insights provides a powerful model for what an online course site might look like in the future…..

“One thing we misunderstand frequently when talking about how great and amazing social media is comes from the fact that we’re thinking from the perspective of what we want the tool to do while the people who are receiving the message might be thinking about the tools in the abstract. When we talk about how Twitter forges real time conversations and delivers business value, others show up and see us bitching about a late flight and live tweeting the baseball game. When we talk about how blogging changes the world, other people are slogging through all the crap blogs indexed by Google when they’re looking for actual useful information.”

He makes a very interesting point that when a new technological tool emerges, we spend the first part of its life trying to figure out what it is useful for. At a certain point, that process becomes transparent, when the tool just becomes embedded in our daily lives – think of the cell phone or even email, how they didn’t exist a generation ago, then they were a minority interest mainly for professionals and now are ubiquitous and we couldn’t imagine life without them.

his key point is that social media tools are just that, tools for communication that allow for more “nuance”, the revolution as he sees it is in how we use them.
In his case it is to market products to consumers, but in our sphere i think the key is in personalising learning, so each learner feels more like they are getting a bespoke educational experience that is tailored just to them, a unique learning journey where others have laid out some signposts, but by forming alliances and communities of practice with like-minded voyagers, their journey is a far richer experience than it could have been previously.

That’s certainly been my experience with using blogs in my post grad course, they have greatly enhanced the ‘personality’ of the students for me, and opened up their thought processes in amazing ways.

For me, these tools are about communication, collaboration, collective knowledge and connected knowledge.

The accepted wisdom is that webinars need to be short and sharp, but my experience so far on delivering our online masters in photojournalism and documentary photography at the LCC suggests otherwise.

Clive notes 2 presentations at an elearning network seminar Thinking Synch, where several of the presentations discussed how they were working with much longer sessions live, up to 4 hours in one case. both presentations seemed to focus on how concentrated webinars with engaging content can be delivered in a way that maximises benefits in the most concentrated way.

I teach both a f2f and online mode of the same course, with essentially the same content and assignments etc, just delivered in college over one year or entirely online part time over 2. On the online mode,  most of the teaching is done live in real time using synchronous web conferencing – we use the Wimba live classroom. Our sessions are typically 2 hours long for lecturers, seminars and tutorials. In my opinion, if the experience is engaging enough, and uses good visuals and materials, then a live web conference can be sustained over a long period of time – in fact our group usually want to go on longer!!

I think that one reason is the intensity of the experience, and another is that it is easier for them to schedule one long session once a week than several shorter ones – they are mostly working professional freelancers – and it is easier to block out one longer slot a week than several shorter ones. Also I feel that the energy generated in a 2 hour session is just right – we typically have 2 ‘lecturers’ on different topics, with group discussions etc, and then a general informational session where we cover course admin, assignments etc.

I even think that webinars offer several advantages over a traditional classroom environment. Once you are over that strange feeling of talking to the ether that soon passes, I feel like the intimacy and intensity generated by having the headphones on and the work right in front of me on screen, filling most of my field of vision, creates a performative space where i get energised and excited just as much as in a f2f lecture. in fact the fact that i cant see my audience in a way enhances this, because I don’t get upset if someone looks like they are dropping off! From the feedback we are getting from the participants (there are 16 on the course each year), they feel a similar sense of engagement. One proof of this is that although the sessions are all archived, our attendance levels for the live sessions are typically around 75-805 which isn’t bad for a traditional lecture, never mind one that crosses transatlantic time zones and freelance work patterns.

Another major advantage  I think is that they are all archived and stored with an easy to navigate timecoded system that makes going straight to a particular part of a talk or session very easy.

But the real killer app is the range of feedback options that the participants have. They can put in chat/text messages, either to the whole room or privately, and in a good session this amounts to a running commentary on the presentation, with approvals (and disagreements!); questions that can then be rolled into the talk; and even a whole team of ‘researchers’ who can quickly google a reference when its mentioned in a presenation and post the url to the group.

Wimba has various emoticons and yes/no tick boxes, an they too add to the sense of involvement, its easy to ask ‘is everyone following this’ and thne get a series of green ticks if they are, or red crosses if they are not.

And there’s nothing quite like a round of virtual applause emoticons at the end of a great session!!

Wimba themselves have a long running series of online lectures that typically run for an hour each with up to 200 participants at a time, they have done over 500 of these and again the problem is running out of time not going on too long.

And the ability to annotate and draw onto images as in the example above is invaluable in dissecting how and why a particular photography works – or doesn’t. 

Certainly I don’t feel that synchronous has to be short…nor does it have to be technical

BTW here’s a great list of myth busters about live online teaching from Jennifer Hofmann, president of InSync Training (www.insynctraining.com),

And Clive has just added another post that confirms my experiences even more, especially this

Further evidence came from Matthew James and Dr Kathy Seddon from NCSL who presented on ‘multi-layered synchronous learning’. They made the point that web conferencing encourages multiple dialogues among participants. Online you can be viewing a slide and listening to a speaker while simultaneously interacting with peers through text chat. In other words, online learners have excess capacity for interaction that the formal aspect of the event will not always utilise; online that capacity can be used to the full. And, this additional channel is not superficial or frivolous – the speakers reported that many participants asked if the session could continue after the facilitator had left, so they could continue their discussions. This dynamic of what the speakers called ‘co-construction’ is not typically evident in a face-to-face environment.’

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You can see it directly from the player on the right hand side of the page.

I have to admit though that the look of the deck is heavily influenced by Garr Reynolds and his ‘Presentation Zen’ philosophy to make powerpoints etc more visual and direct. I ruthlessly pared down the text to one word per slide in most cases, and made the font as big as possible – went thru the whole thing dozens of times each time making the point size bigger!

The images are almost all mine, except for a couple from ex students of mine and a couple from flikr creative commons, so it helps that I have a lifetimes’ worth of stock images to call on. 

But the real fun comes with trying to match the message with the image, thats the creative part!

I wholeheartedly recommend Garr’s approach and his book, it really did change my approach to the extent that my university now want me to do some staff development in making presentations more visual

The other thing was to invite the MAPJD online students I work with to the ning site i set up ages ago, but wasn’t sure whether or not to make it live. The choice of ning by such an experienced group as the facilitators of this workshop gave me the confidence to go with it. So I’m interested if anyone else is using it for running a course in higher education, we are hoping to use it as a ‘virtual commons’ to mirror the physical social spaces of a f2f environment, as well as to keep the group informed of key dates, classes etc etc.I am part of a team at my university who are trying to ‘demonstrate the need’ for a more web 2.0/social networking approach to HE, and we are trying to find something that can sit within our existing VLE (blackboard) and offer more interactivity and feedback, so we can then get the investment that building something like elgg would need.
One problem with this is that ning doesn’t seem to be able to sit ‘inside’ a window in another browser so that it ‘looks’ like it is embedded within BB, which netvibes can – has anyone used netvibes as a portal for information etc? -  its what michael wesch uses on his anthropology course at kansas.

We as an institution are stuck with BB for at least the next 3 years or so, so there is a team of us trying to work from within it – it does do some things like student enrollment etc etc reasonably well – so we populate our courses from bb and then add the content using whatever plug in software we want. So far we are trying things out, and i suspect that something like elgg or drupal wil be the final solution, but until we can justify the investment in something like that ning et al provide a realistic short term way to experiment and  ‘demonstrate the need’

The Q is how much work needs to be done in order to create an environment where the average user can easily get in and set up a site like this one- we talk a lot about targeting the ‘hump’ – the middle area of staff who will use new tools if they are easy and quick to master, we will never impact on the bottom of the hump – those who are so old school that they will never change – nor do we need to affect those at the top – the early adopters who are already doing stuff. We need to create the conditions for change amongst the middle to see real benefits.