Personal Blogs

This week, we have been asked to look at the use of learning technologies in our own contexts; therefore, in my case, what is used at work.

Probably the most visible use of technology for learning at work is the webinar i.e. the use of audio/vidio conferencing tools like MS LiveMeeting, Adobe Connect etc which essentially work in a similar manner to the Elluminate tool used by the OU.  While the tools used are primarily used for online meetings, there are a number of training and education sessions run on a regular basis that usually involve some form of presentation by an expert and then a question and answer session from the participants.

Perceptions of these sorts of events vary; there are those who seize them as an opportunity they would not otherwise have (travelling to offices for face-to-face sessions is less likely to happen on a regular basis for cost and time reasons), some are grateful they can learn from their desk and then there are those who see them as the company being 'too cheap to train people properly.'  The fact is however that face-to-face training still takes place and that most of the webinars were sessions that would have run anyway for a handful of people but that are now being opened up to hundreds or even thousands of people simultaneously and for this reason alone I think the webinar is making learning more easily and widely available within the organisation than would otherwise be the case.  With so many distributed staff and home-workers, this is the only practicable way of providing training and education on a range of topics.

Teacher perceptions are likely to vary considerably depending on their levels of comfort with using web techologies and also with training people.  The technology could be seen as a barrier or a risk to those who are comfortable with face to face trainng; conversely it could be seen as a buffer or enabler to those uncomfortable with addressing large numbers directly or those for whom travelling and the demands of setting up a physical training session are undesirable.

The biggest potential benefit of these technologies that I can see however are not being fully exploited to my mind and that is the ability to embed learning in work and vice versa.  In my experience, not many people are using these online conferencing tools to manage their day-to-day or project work but are instead reserving it for mass communication.  However, with a large and widely distributed workforce, these tools-if used to more widely to actually do collaborative project work-would allow more people to participate, more experts to be involved (as travelling would not be an issue) and thereby better facilitate sharing of information and understanding.  I firmly believe that corporate learning should not replicate the paradigms of education but rather embed learning within work and use it to underpin actual performance.  We're getting there slowly but too many are wedded to the course and the certificate which are of dubious value in most working contexts.

In week 12 we have been looking at approaches taken by teachers and students to teaching and learning respectively in higher education.

Richardson (2005), based on surveys and analysis of other research on the subject, concluded that students' approaches to studying depended on their understanding of what learning is and their preceptions of the quality of the course.  He also concluded that teacher's approaches to teaching reflected their concepts of what teaching was mitigated by contextual factors such as the curriculum demands and the students' demands.

This was apparently the distillation of 25 years of developments in the understanding of teaching and learning in Higher Education... Really?  Of course I am simplifying the arguments and conclusions here and glossing over some of the issues around the user of surveys and the correlation and causation implied but as far as I can see, the output is hardly a revelation.

The concepts of what teaching and learning are were key to this and we have looked at this earlier on the course. There are models or metaphors for what learning is (as discussed earlier in the course) ranging from a simple acquisition of facts or information through to a sythesis of understanding though abstraction of concepts and also an evolving of the concept of self.  Similarly, there are a range of perceptions of what teaching is that mirror/lead(?) those of learning from a didactic provider of facts through a facilitator to a coach or mentor.

There was an assumption in the paper that deeper student engagement in the learning based on higher level understandings of what learning is are more valid than simpler acquisition ones.  However, surely these are all valid but in different contexts; not every metaphor or teaching/learning style flowing from that metaphor is valid in every teaching and learning situation.   That said, as the study was concerned with Higher Education, I would assume that it would indeed be desirable to have students engage with the learning at a deeper level as that is surely the point of Higher Education (at least in part) but some subjects and Foundation courses perhaps could quite validly be taught and studied in a didactic/surface acquistion way.

The key message for me was actually addressed very early in the paper and then not really returned to; 'desirable approachies to studying [could be brought about] by appropriate course design', teaching methods and assessment.  Basically, if it is important for students to engage critically with the material rather than just remember facts or what is needed to pass an assessment then design the course so that this comes about.  There are a great many tools (including 'web 2.0' technologies) and techniques available to teachers now that drive students to actively constuct their understanding rather than passively absorb it if that is considered desirable in that context.

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References

Richardson, J.T. (2005) 'Students' approaches to learning and teachers' aproaches to teaching' Open University

Over weeks 8 and 9 we were looking at learning design (and Learning Design!) and we looked at some tools such as CompendiumLD amd molels like the 8 Learning Events Model that were focussed on looking at an existing learning intervention and analysing it.  This is useful and could be used as a checklist to see what options and approaches were utilised.

My thoughts: so what?

None of the approaches we looked at really considered the subject, the learner or the context so i fail to see what value (with regard to learning design) analysing an existing intervention is no matter how good or effective it is.  If the aim, as stated, was to allow the structure/approach to be replicated in another intervention, unless you undestand the subject, learners or context then replicating the structure or the interaction types will be of little value.

Learning styles are bunkum so I don't want a checklist to see if my activity ticks all the boxes of auditory and kinaestheic or whatever.  What I want to know is whether my learning activities are going to enable learners to enage with the subject and acheive the objectives of the activity and these seemed to be conspicuous by their absence/irrelevance in these tools/models.

If you want to design learning, surely you should consider the expected outcome first, then the learner and their starting point and then finally other constraints. What has another (abstract) learning activity got to do with the price of fish?

Week 5 of the course has started and the first assignment (which I haven't started) is due in soon and my blog has only got up to week 2 so far... This is not good!

During this week, we mainly focussed on metaphors of learning i.e. ways in which we can understand and describe what learning is.  During week 4, we then went on to look at definitions of learning.

Hypothesis

Learning is complex and as a result humans use metaphors to help understand what it is but no one metaphor is a complete description so it is important to maintain an understanding of when you are using a metahpor, why and ensuring that no one metahpor clouds your thinking or teaching/work disproportionately.

Discussion

Sfard (1998) argues that the language of teaching and learning commonsly revolves around the metaphor of learning as acquistionse e.g. gaining or accumulating knowledge, attaining understanding etc.  This acquisition metaphor (AM) is prevalent in teacher-centred education and is essentially orthodoxy.

Other metaphors used include a participation metaphor (PM) that replace static concepts of knowlege with active ones like knowing and use socail verbs like "reflective discourse" and "development through participation"

Even some social theories of learning rely more on AM than PM i.e. the idea that collective understanding is transferred to the individual through interaction and then internalised.  This is predominantly AM rather than PM as the participation is only really a means of transferring knowledge, not constructing it (Sfard, 1998).

Bayne (2205) ilustrated another metaphor, that of identity change (IC) whereby identity is key e.g. the identity of the learner and that these identities can shift as learning takes place.  As students learn enough to begin to teach their peers, their view of their own identity shifts and this is a way of representing learning.  A classic example is the journey from apprentice to journeyman and ultimately master; as the apprentice learns so their identity changes.

There was then significant debate about these metaphors and how useful they were.  There was a general feeling that PM was more applicable to an understanding of how learning can be developed rather than what it is.

Conclusion

Metahors are useful in that, when you reflect upon them for what they are and look beneath them, they can reveal cultural or philosophical bias and also that they can help you challenge orthodox understandings of what learning (and teaching) are.

The broad consensus was was  acquisition can be useful for understanding part of the process of learning i.e. the learner taking something from their environment (teacher, peer group, resources etc).  However, that was just one dimention, real learning was when this was reflected upon, and a shift in competence or self-perception (IC) took place.  PM was more useful in understaning potential mechanisms by which learning could take place rather than understanding what learning itself was.

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References

On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing one  Sfard, 1998

http://edr.sagepub.com/content/27/2/4.short

Deceot. desire and control - the identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace. Bayne 2005

http://www.malts.ed.ac.uk/staff/sian/desirepaper.htm

The second instalment of this blog's look at the themes of H800 addresses some of the points looked at in week 2 namely that covered by looking at some cases studies of the implementation of distance learning in Nepal and Bhutan with a view to improving levels of higher education there and also the use of radio in Canada and South Africa to deliver distance learning.

Hypothesis

Effective distance education can be implemented even when the technology itself is limited (by today's western standards).

Learning technology can deliver great benefits but the learning culture is as big if not a greater factor and if that is ignored or not considered the endeavour will fail.

Discussion.

Radio, the example used in two case studies in week 2, has effectively delivered learning since the early 20th century but only when the infrastructure is far reaching (national and even international), learner equipment is affordable and efforts are co-ordinated and funded to provide a broad-ranged multi-channel strategy. Radio alone will not deliver broad education or performance benefits. These lessons are obviously applicaable to more modern learning technologies such as podcasts and virtual learning environments.

Nepal and Bhutan have cultures where the teacher is revered and so learner centred approaches meet with limited success and, as with other cultures with a similar outlook, excellent students can struggle when they are in a more self-determining environment be that a western university or an innovating commercial organisation.

Conclusions

If you are going to use distributed learning, ensure the technology works and is readily available to the learners. Ensure that you do not rely on one method of delivery; just as the primary teacher users talk, play and activity to teach so should the learning organisation use formal instruction, collaboration and reflection mediated through a number of channels.

In most circumstances, implementing new technology is a lot simpler than changing the learning culture but unless the two are at least aligned if not in harmony the net result will not be satisfactory.  Sometimes it pays to forget the technology and focus on the people and their preconceptions and needs.

So far on H800 we have looked at a range of case studies on a whole host of subjects including 'the google generation' the use of radio in distance learning, cultural preferences for teacher-centred learning etc etc.  I will write more on the debates and themes elsewhere in the blog but I want to make one observation at this point: the case studies and the debates have centred almost exclusively around distance learning in education, mainly HE and FE.

Is that bad?

Well, it's certainly not why I signed up here and I scanned the material about the course pretty thoroughly prior to signing on the dotted line.  There is a lot of talk of 'learning' and very little about 'teaching' so I hoped there would be a significant chunk of the course devoted to what happens outside of academic institutions where countless organisations are doing lots of interesting things in the field of distance education.

With the notable exception of the OU, most western academic institutions 'dabble' in distance education, the focus of their activity is on the campus.  i guess this is why so many of the case studies focus on the developing world where the demands and constraints are somewhat differnt.

There are lots of interesting things to discern by looking at these studies I have no doubt but it is just one side of the coin.  I work for a multinational organisation that has 40,000 people in 20 or so countries all working together and as is the case with me, many of them are home-based workers.  We are knowledge workers, we need to obtain information, we need to interact and collaborate and we need to learn continually.  This is not uncommon in the commercial sector and surely this is worth studying just as much as english teaching in South Africa or universities in Nepal and Bhutan.

The first week is over and the second under way!  Last week worked ok, I happened to be home and with nothing particular planned at the weekend so fitting in study time was pretty easy.

This weekend I am away at the in-laws from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening so finding time to study more challenging.

I brought my netbook with me and opted out of the sunday morning family activities to listen to the webcast, make notes and do my research.  It seems to have gone OK but eveyone will be back soon so my time is nearly gone.

Only one evening free this week as well and I only seem to have done a fraction of the activities.

It has been a long time since I actually wrote a blog.  As a self-confessed early adopter I started a personal blog back in 1999 which I updated pretty much daily for a few years but I started running out of things to say and it petered out; eventually I and wound it down in 2008. For a while it had mainly been about the social side of blogging and that had largely migrated to facebook anyway.

This is different however, this is a blog with a clear purpose, a blog to document and share my journey through H800.

The technology aspects of this course hold no fear for me as I am a home-based worker and a bit of a geek so webinars and podcasts are everyday fare for me.  What is un-nerving though is the everyday aspect of participation in education i.e. assessment.  It is 16 years since I last sat an exam or wrote an essay that would be marked and scored. I write reports and white papers as part of my job and people form opinions based on those and I'm fine with that but a grade...?

Of course work has just started to get really busy now that the module is due to start so I will be juggling a lot of conflicting activities over the coming months. For that reason I thought I'd use a little Sunday morning down-time to do some background reading and organise my notes and activities in OneNote, my personal knowledge management tool without which I fear I would know or remember very little.  Oh how dependent on technology I have become!