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Henry James Robinson

Emerging technologies and innovating pedagogies

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Edited by Henry James Robinson, Wednesday, 25 Mar 2020, 12:42

Emerging technologies and innovating pedagogies

This past week, a lot of my time has been taken up with looking for jobs.  I like to work an EAP pre-sessional during the summer when I have a long summer break for the chance to develop my skills and experience. More on that later.   This week on the H17 course (Road to Open: Experiencing Open Education Practice), we were asked to connect e-learning theory from the past with more recent developments in thinking about learning.  We'd looked at Nichols' (2013) ‘A theory for e-learning’ in which he names his 10 hypotheses (summarised below) and we were asked to consider the extent to which they are relevant to the predictions made by Ferguson et al. (2019), Innovating Pedagogy 2019.  

Hypothesis 1: eLearning fits within face to face or distance education and behaviourism and constructivism.
Hypothesis 2: eLearning fits within the existing paradigms of face to face and distance education.
Hypothesis 3: The choice of eLearning tools should reflect rather than determine the pedagogy of a course.
Hypothesis 4: eLearning advances through the successful implementation of pedagogical innovation.
Hypothesis 5: eLearning can be used to present educational content and facilitate education processes.
Hypothesis 6: eLearning tools work best in a carefully selected, optimally integrated course design model.
Hypothesis 7: Use of eLearning tools and techniques should consider online vs offline trade-offs.
Hypothesis 8: Use of eLearning should consider how end-users will engage with the learning opportunities
Hypothesis 9: The overall aim of education does not change when eLearning is applied.
Hypothesis 10: Only pedagogical advantages are a sustainable rationale for eLearning approaches.

The predictions made by Ferguson et al. (2019), Innovating Pedagogy 2019 focus on innovative pedagogies that can be applied to e-learning.  This is the first thing to note. Nichols' article is also about pedagogy and how an overall theory of e-learning can help drive pedagogy and e-learning pedagogy in particular.  Nichols outlines 10 hypotheses to test that will help be a basis for a theory of e-learning.  Ferguson et al. (2019), in 'Innovating Pedagogy 2019' outline 10 innovations in pedagogy that have the potential to make a significant difference in the near future of education.   These are what are called Playful learning, Drone-based learning, Virtual studios, Place-based learning, Digitial Play, Decolonising learning, Learning with robots, Learning through wonder, Action learning, Roots of Empathy.  Elearning is often defined as learning conducted via electronic media, typically via the Internet.  These new emerging pedagogies may not all fit the typical idea of elearning. However, as Nichols states, elearning comfortably fits in the realm of face to face and online.  All of these pedagogies could be utilized in both contexts.  The focus of the two other articles we read is a little more on emerging technologies that could be utilised, adopting the above pedagogical approaches.  The first, New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project: 2017 Higher Education Edition highlights  Adaptive Learning Technologies, Mobile Learning, The Internet of Things, 'Next-Generation' LMSs, Artificial Intelligence and Natural User Interfaces.  The authors suggest they may have a significant impact on learning in the future.  The second, Alexander et al. (2019), in their Educause Horizon Report: 2019 Higher Education Edition, shows the evolution to some extent of the tech featured earlier. Mobile Learning is still cited as an emerging technology. AI and adaptive learning technologies are featured in the form of virtual assistants.  New emerging tech comes in the form of Analytics Technologies, Mixed Reality, and Blockchain, currently being developed for use in administrative and educational functions in universities in courses where the technology is relevant to the field.  

Reading about these new areas has inspired me to learn more, especially Next-Generation LMSs, Analytics Technologies, Mixed Reality.  I noticed that after clearing our classrooms of the old Promethean boards at our school, recently, they were all quickly replaced with new, really expensive ones. Something none of the international staff were made aware of and it became even more obvious to me than previously how we are kept in the dark about even basic information about that is going on at the school except when we are needed. I find it difficult in that context to imagine being a member of a  board involved in decision making. However, three pedagogies I think my organization would be most likely to invest in would be.  Drone-based learning, Place-based learning, Learning through Wonder and Learning with Robots.  In practice, placed-based learning or learning through wonder would be cheap and easy to implement, would fit well with the biology-chemistry curriculum, (we are a STEM focussed school) and the locations would be easy to access as we sit very close to a tree park, known for its biodiversity and which also features a mini lake.   The school already builds, adapts and experiments with drones and they are used also to record school events.  Again, components are getting cheaper and it fits the STEM focus of the school curriculum.  Robotics is a major area of interest and activity both in schools and the country's main tech universities. If this can be extended to the use of robotics in learning other than in the sciences, this would be something I'd encourage strongly, as the school does need to break out of its narrow focus on STEM, to some extent. 

CC LICENCE


References

Alexander, B. et al. (2019) EDUCAUSE Horizon Report 2019 Higher Education Edition. Louisville, CO, USA: Educause. Available at: https://www.educause.edu/ horizonreport. (Accessed: 8 November 2019).

Ferguson, R. et al. (no date) . Innovating Pedagogy 2019; Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Available at: www.dw-images.com (Accessed: 8 November 2019).

Nichols, M. (2003) ‘A theory for elearning’, Educational Technology & Society, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 1–10 [Online]. Available at http://elibrary.lt/ resursai/ Uzsienio%20leidiniai/ IEEE/ English/ 2006/ Volume%206/ Issue%202/ Jets_v6i2_01.pdf (Last accessed 7 November 2019).


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Henry James Robinson

B. F. Skinner a la 21st Century Language Classroom

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Edited by Henry James Robinson, Wednesday, 25 Mar 2020, 12:45

blooms_taxonomy_for_teachers

PicturesSource: https://www.edgalaxy.com/journal/2019/11/4/a-teachers-guide-to-blooms-taxonomy

This week we were asked to review the work of B.F. Skinner.  I did so from the point of view of the language teacher:

Strengths

From the point of view of the language teacher, the overall strength of Skinner's (Skinner, 1953) work is as a foundation for making the understanding of both normal and aberrant human behaviour less of a field for the charlatan and the superstitious and giving it a more scientific basis and thus professionalizing the field of Psychology.   We can say that his theories were strong since they still form many of the bases for current practice in language acquisition,  and teaching still used today.  With the work of researchers like Skinner, these areas are seen as more credible if they are based on scientific research and help eliminate 'intuition' and 'experience' accepted knowledge about effective pedagogy.  In other words, Skinner’s concepts of operant conditioning (learning can be aided by the use of rewards and punishments) and classical conditioning (we learn by associating events) were the blueprints for evidence-based applications in behaviorism.  This was a departure from the idea that we learned language chiefly via a language learning node in our brains and encouraged us to think of language acquisition and development as something that can be influenced by teachers and learners. Hence, teachers' application of behaviourist methods involves teacher-centered presenting information, asking questions, providing positive reinforcement for correct answers and repetition. Teachers adopting a behaviorist mindset see curricula as a teaching guideline, where text-based exercises of increasing difficulty are regularly repeated and reviewed.  This is reflected in the work of behaviourists such as Bloom (1956) and Gagné (1965), whose work is also still dominant in education.  

Limitations

As already mentioned above, from the language teacher's perspective, Skinner's theories when applied to pedagogy focuses too much on the 'nurture' side of the nature/nurture debate. It could lead to the conclusion that all behaviour is learned but cognitive and biological elements have been proven to also affect learning.  Hence 'readiness' is also a big factor in learning and reminds us that learning cannot always be 'forced'.  Nature accounts for why adults are not able to acquire language as easily and deeply as children, for example.   Some other limitations are that behaviouism can only be taken so far.  Not all behaviours are observable.  Behaviourism It can never account for all learning or all behaviours in a learning context.  . If we believed that as teachers and acted accordingly, did, it could be deemed immoral -  condoning extreme punishments and treating people like robots. Behaviorism doesn’t clearly Explain how we Learn through Social Interaction and critical thinking is recognised or encouraged.

Predictions / Implications

As hinted above, humans are not robots and Skinner's theories could be interpreted to be going that way if applied in the wrong way. However, could it be that in the future we will be able to hack into the human mind and 'improve' learning a la Skinner - programming humans behave in set ways to certain stimuli?   One thing some would argue can be predicted is that many of the pedagogical practices inspired by Skinner will still be present in 10-20 years' time.   We can predict this based on some of the research we are aware of now. Research by (Murtonena, Gruber, and Lehtinen, 2017), for example, found that behaviourist tradition is still evident in 21st-century learning outcomes studies; 40% of articles studied referred uncritically to the behaviouristic epistemology and only 8% of the articles were critical towards the behaviourist tradition.  




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Henry James Robinson

Week 3: A theory for eLearning

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Edited by Henry James Robinson, Wednesday, 25 Mar 2020, 12:48

Graphic representation of students using technology connected via a network of lines.

Strange week, what with the school inspectors coming from Nursultan and international staff still speculating on their futures in the face of your typical post-Soviet need limit even the most basic information to those at the base of the hierarchy, even if it shoots you in your own foot.  This was the week when suddenly local teachers (just to appear to be following policy) wanted in on my classes, even though I had been shouting and screaming for team teaching all year to no avail.   

This week we were asked to read Nichols' (2003), A theory for eLearning, and review his 10 eLearning hypotheses.

It was really interesting reading because it puts the reader in the position of looking back at how much eLearning has developed since those times, whilst at the same time, in many instances, showing us how far we can potentially go, as in some ways, not much has changed.   At the same time, Nichols provides a retrospective on the two decades prior to its writing, with references as far back as the early eighties, when distance learning and more dislocated and email contact with your tutor were such an innovative break from learning only in the four walls of colleges and universities.  We can see how focussed theorists were in those days by how staunchly most of the hypotheses have weathered time since then. For example, the major terms and concepts (pg 2-3) of Online learning; eLearning; Mixed-mode/blended/resource-based learning; Web-based, Web-distributed or Webcapable and Learning Management System (LMS).  


Hypothesis 1: eLearning is a means of implementing education that can be applied within varying education models (for example, face to face or distance education) and educational philosophies (for example behaviourism and constructivism).
Hypothesis 2: eLearning enables unique forms of education that fits within the existing paradigms of face to face and distance education.
Hypothesis 3: The choice of eLearning tools should reflect rather than determine the pedagogy of a course; how technology is used is more important than which technology is used.
Hypothesis 4: eLearning advances primarily through the successful implementation of pedagogical innovation.
Hypothesis 5: eLearning can be used in two major ways; the presentation of educational content, and the facilitation of education processes.
Hypothesis 6: eLearning tools are best made to operate within a carefully selected and optimally integrated course design model.
Hypothesis 7: eLearning tools and techniques should be used only after consideration has been given to online vs offline trade-offs.
Hypothesis 8: Effective eLearning practice considers the ways in which end-users will engage with the learning opportunities provided to them.
Hypothesis 9: The overall aim of education, that is, the development of the learner in the context of a predetermined curriculum or set of learning objectives, does not change when eLearning is applied.
Hypothesis 10: Only pedagogical advantages will provide a lasting rationale for implementing eLearning approaches.


I fully agree with most of the hypotheses, mainly because I have used eLearning to achieve teaching/learning goals quite extensively and so I have experience of the basic hypotheses - that is is a method rather than an approach in itself and can fit with different approaches - online and face-to-face or 'situated'.  In course H880, we learned in theory and in practice how pedagogy should determine its use, not technology determining the pedagogy.  So, hypothesis 4, that ‘eLearning advances primarily through the successful implementation of pedagogical innovation’ resonates with me because pedagogical innovation is far more interesting to me that technology as, for one,  in my teaching context, technological innovation is limited by institutional (e.g. restrictions on the use of phones in the classroom - unlike in some university contexts in which I've worked) and there are fewer opportunities and resources to use technology (again, unlike in some university contexts in which I've worked).  Therefore, I get more out of developing my approaches to teaching and I find it more interesting anyway as for me, it is the essence of the teaching role - not promoting the latest app or hardware, which might be eye-catching and engaging at first, but whose novelty soon wears off. 

I may take some issue with the 'absolutist' terms in which eLearning is referred to in hypotheses 6 and 9, where a course comprises a pre-selected format and content (I guess that could be argued to be a top-down approach, using a traditional course design method).  Though I am not sure whether the model has ever been ever successfully applied and adopted longterm by any institution, connectivism (e.g. Siemens, 2005 and Downs, 2005) is a more bottom-up approach, with learning more tailored to the individual's personal learning network (PLN).  It constitutes a completely different proposition in terms of course 'design' and of course, it did not emerge until 2 years after the writing of the Nichols (2003) article.  As well as reading the articles below, the reader can learn more about connectivism by studying the section on this learning theory from the FutureLearn course, Learning in the Network Age



References
Downes, S. (2006). Learning networks and connective knowledge. Collective intelligence and elearning, 20, 1-26. Chicago
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: Learning as network-creation. ASTD Learning News, 10(1). Chicago
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. Chicago


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