Personal Blogs

Well, does it? Elliott’s work (2007) explores the possibilities within assessment practice given our access to Web 2.0 technologies. Elliott characterises traditional assessment (Assessment 1.0) as mostly paper-based, classroom-based, formalised, highly synchronised (in terms of time and place, and highly controlled (in terms of contents and marking). Furthermore, he argues that most attempts to introduce technology to enhance this has resulted changes in the following areas:

· Less synchronous – we can now sit at our desks and do e-assessments in our own time

· Electronic based – fairly obvious

· Greater range of content – particularly in terms of artefacts considered, such as digital artefacts like videos, photos and other content, often assembled in e-portfolios.

An example of this type of assessment I’m personally aware of is GCSE PE students submitting video evidence of their performance in certain sports which don’t lend themselves to most school settings (horseriding for example).

Elliott’s ideas are around the use of digital evidence produced in everyday, real-life situations, with tools we are familiar using. Web 2.0 technologies make this possible – possible to escape highly prescriptive and ‘unrealistic’ assessment tasks that largely test our ability to do tests, as opposed to our ability to operate in the everyday world. All this is particularly suited to the digital native (Prensky, 2003), the stereotypical ultra-confident and competent users of the web. There is no doubt that the way we initiate a search for new information has changed with these technologies. People do use Wikipedia and search engines, they use their online social networks as they still make use of their offline networks. Poor old digital immigrants (Prensky, 2003), like myself, are acknowledged by Elliott as being somewhat disadvantaged in their potential to embrace Assessment 2.0 in terms of a lack of Web 2.0 skills and infrastructure.

Elliot offers the following characteristics to help us visualise how Assessment 2.0, taking advantage of Web 2.0 tech, might look:

Of these, I find ‘Tool Supported’ problematic. Firstly, Whitelock’s reproduction does not seem to accurately reflect the source material (Elliott, 2007), and it feels like an add-on to this list. Elliott appears to be focused on the use of digital evidence, such which are naturally occurring (already exist and not created solely for assessment purposes, and which could manifest themselves through different multimedia and are distributed across different sources (blogs, inbox, ipod etc).

While it is worth stressing these digital sources, the ‘use of ICT’ bit still jars, and sounds artificial. A case in point would be my experience on the NPQICL programme, a largely experiential course, which has attempted, by and large unsuccessfully, to move some of the teacher-student and student-student dialogue to online forums. Cohort after cohort of students failed to engage in these forums, and the overwhelming reason cited was that students could (and were) engaging with each other via email. Migrating their attention to a specific forum did not offer any appreciable increase in value to their learning, while at the same time meant they had to engage with a new and unfamiliar environment. By contrast, email was a tool they were all comfortable with, were ‘logged on’ to by default through work, and therefore felt natural.

Overall though, I like the idea of using more digital evidence in assessment.

Thinking back to the course I’m going to facilitate in the future, I’m already thinking about capturing audio or video evidence on the day of the conversational skills that we will be developing. These could easily be shared or stored for any of the group (or the wider organisation) to access and re-use.

References

Elliott, B. (2008) Assessment 2.0: Modernising Assessment in the Age of Web 2.0 [online], Scottish Qualifications Authority,http://www.scribd.com/ doc/ 461041/ Assessment-20 (accessed 2 December 2010).

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon. NCB University Press Vol 9 No.5, October 2001

Whitelock, D. (2011) ‘Activating assessment for learning: are we on the way with Web 2.0?’ in Lee, M.J.W. and McLoughlin, C. (eds) Web 2.0-based eLearning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching, Hershey, PA, IGI Global, pp. 319–42.

Reflections on engaging with online content in the Open Design Studio in H817

No, I wasn’t thanking Bill. I don’t know a Bill anyway.

That was what I typed, in a frenzied moment when, during our ODS team’s latest Google Hangout, I at last understood what tasks I had to do by the next one. I had meant to type “OK Brill”.

Our online team meetings, whether via Elluminate or Google Hangouts (broadband connection allowing) keep me sane and connected to both the activity and the task team.

I’m disheartened by the fact that I’ve not enjoyed the majority of this learning block, not least because it’s the part of the module that attracted me most to it in the first place. Some practical experience at playing around with design tools was what I really wanted; something that gave me some practical confidence as opposed to isolated academic knowledge. As yet, it has not come to pass.

It’s only now that I feel even slightly motivated to try and reflect on the actual activities, in the attempt to extract some learning from this process.

There’s been insufficient scaffolding for me to engage purposefully in this learning block. From the beginning, elements of it were fragmented across different online environments, several of which were new to me and took much time (weeks really) to get comfortable with. Herein lies one similarity with the MOOC experience.

From my point of view, an improvement here would have been a clearer overview of the whole task, with some imagery of what it would look like over the course of the weeks to completion. From here, there could have been step-off points into the other areas. No doubt some learners on the course will feel the detail on the H817 weekly pages and forums were sufficient for this. They categorically were not sufficient for me.

Bizarrely, that which looked to be the most practical learning block, that which sought to integrated theory and practice, has not done so for me. I would even go so far as to say that I have picked up little of either. I just haven’t had the opportunity to ‘play around’ with the tools, which is what I wanted to do. I’ve lost that motivation to do so as well. It’s no longer enjoyable. The moment I click into the ODS site, I’m put off. It’s not easy to shrug these feelings off.

The online team meetings at least enable me to learn from my peers. Although I am doing this from their blogs, I seem strangely unable to do this from the ODS site activity materials. By that I mean, when something is packaged up in the templates we’ve been offered, I lose the ability to interact with the material. It’s featureless, untextured, and uninteresting as a result. When we talk about it during our meetings the life comes back into it. It is almost as if I am unable to learn from them if I can’t experience activity alongside my fellow team members. Is the nature of legitimate peripheral participation inhibited by our lack of ‘real’ contact? Although I was able to engage and learn from virtual communities of practice (the online forums, my fellow learners blogs, the Twitter H817 MOOC community), there was more thinking and less ‘doing’. Perhaps something here is more task based?

What is it that I find so difficult about engaging with these materials in the ODS site and on the Google+ community? I want to understand this, because it is going to have implications for how I engage in projects in an online collaborative community. My ability to learn from others seems diminished by both the volume of activity, the rush, and grappling with the medium, but basically, I ain’t learning coz it ain’t fun!

Post in response to the H817 Open Design Studio work block

Three weeks into this block now. Only just becoming familiar with the technologies our project team has chosen use to communicate (we're primarily using Google+). The faff of having log in to multiple areas is off-putting. This is reminscent of students on the NPQICL programme (this is going back a few years mind) not engaging with online forums. They were very happy to communicate via email, as this is what they were already logged into at work, but reluctant to faff about logging into a separate system.

I'm also experiencing Google+ communities in a similar way to Twitter - as 'a stream'. Now Twitter is a kind of stream - I have some measure of control, through who I follow, on how fast flowing that stream is. In this way, I mitigate my own weakness at handling information.

Another point to note is that Twitter is a recreational stream; I can dip my toe in or take a plunge depending how appealing it seems to be at the time. Our team Google+ community is different in this important respect. It is not recreational. It is an arena where we are meeting and discussing the work of our project. Unlike a project meeting (in the real world, or say via some synchronous technology such as Skype or Google Hangouts) it is essentially asynchronous. Obviously this has its advantages, but a disadvantage is that it's difficult, to exert any sort of control over the speed of the stream.

The speed is the product of the size of the project team and the frequency of their posting. Now, I'm lucky enought to be part of a small but very enthusiastic project team for the Open Design Studio activity. However, their very enthusiasm and resultant rate of posting leaves me feeling overwhelmed and constantly behind in the conversation.

Thankfully, we have a Hangout session planned for this evening, where I shall hopefully get a grip on enough of this task to feel I am swimming along at a pace where I can still feel useful to my colleagues.

Post in response to H817 Learning Design Studio Activity 2: Virtual teamwork

Participating in the Learning Design Studio activity gives us (as groups of students) the chance to work much more collaboratively on a single venture - the development of an online course. This represents a considerable 'ramping up' of the nature of our online interactions, beyond what has up until now been a mix of debate and supportive behaviours - 'geeing' each other along if you will.

To help us reflect on the nature of the teamwork that we will need to enact, we can consider the 'Big Five' (Kay et. al. 2006) and coordinating mechanisms for teamwork.

Figure from Salas et. al. (2005)

Firstly, all of these would appear to be very closely linked (if not the same as) critical digital literacies that we have come across in considering participation in MOOCs; McAuley et. al. (2010)

Thinking about our upcoming Learning Design Studio activity, the ones that immediately stand out to me are:
Shared Mental Models - I see this as being a mix of Vision and Strategy - the 'what' and 'how' of the project. It will be interesting to see how we create this in our small project team on the Learning Design course, since we've only had limited contact with each other, and never met face-to-face. I've witnessed a lack of vision and strategy in teams many times, but I've never undertaken a project in this virtual environment: I imagine it will be even more critical to our success.

Back up behaviour - I've been known on occasion to cut myself off a bit, which would potentially pose a risk here: we need to all be in-the-loop to spot when potential back-up behaviour might be needed.

Looking at the diagram is perhaps a more interesting activity than reflecting on each of the Big 5 and the coordinating mechanisms. While they are all important, I can see that we won't have them all in equal measure. But if we look at the diagram, we can perhaps assess which components we have in place at the moment, and see how critical they are (to do this, I'm making a judgement that they increase in criticality for the success of the project with an increasing number of connections to other components).

By this (very one-dimensional) measure, Shared Mental Models, Back up Behaviour, Leadership and Team Orientation appear to have more critical interdependencies than the rest. Superficially then we could consider these the most important to get right from the word go.

References:

Kay, J., Maisonneuve, N., Yacef, K. and Reimann, P. (2006) ‘The big five and visualisations of team work activity’ in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Berlin/Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 197–206.

Salas, E., Sims, D. and Burke, C. (2005) ‘Is there a “Big Five” in teamwork?’, Small Group Research, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 555–99.

Post in response to H817 MOOC activity 20: Rhizomatic Learning

Dave Cormier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJIWyiLyBpQ

Key features of Rhizomatic Learning

1.    The best learning teaches you to deal with uncertainty

2.    The community is the curriculum

3.    Rhizomes offer a model for learning an uncertainty

4.    Complex decision-making (probe, sense, respond)

5.    Need to make students responsible for their own learning (and that of others)

Was I convinced by the approach?

The messiness and organic nature of the process was appealing – something I recognize from participating it the MOOC, and operating across a number of arenas in my Personal Learning Network (PLN).

What I like about the slidedeck (Cormier) is that is explicitly links types of learning to decision-making, which I feel is underplayed elsewhere in the field of learning. I see rhizomatic learning as useful, if not an ideal way of supporting learning that addresses ‘complex’ problems and decision-making (as shown in the matrix below).

This most accurately represents the working-learning environment for children’s centre leaders, that I came across in my MA research project, and rhizomatic learning is a good representation of the way in which those individuals responded to the environment – by making use of and extending their PLNs; exploring them with a specific, contextualized, learning agenda. Interesting, those most comfortable in their roles, articulated the existence of their own PLN (though not by that name) in their research responses, and their active pursuit of learning through it, whereas those less experienced individuals the learning through their PLNs seemed more incidental and unconscious.

Can this approach be implemented?

Accepting the above point, I can see the potential for supporting rhizomatic learning as a productive model where the context is supporting ‘complex’ decision-making, and not in environments which call for ‘complicated’ or ‘simple’ decision-making. I can, however, see that it might be potentially useful in environments of ‘chaotic’ decision-making, though there may need to be some re-working, perhaps a slimming down of linkages or arenas in the PLN to those most responsive (and trusted), so that they can be drawn upon within the time constraints that characterize chaotic decision-making. 

Within the field I work in, complex family work (particularly when working with holistic, family-focused models, such as Family Intervention Projects), requires complex decision-making of the kind conceived in this model. Where in the past, there has been an emphasis on ‘complicated’ decision-making, where individual professionals with specific specialisms, such as mental health, substance misuse, domestic violence, not to mention the specialisms in either adult or children as individuals, the current trend is toward a more holistic and family-focused model with the need for trade-offs to be made between the value of certain interventions targeting different family members. Whereas the previous model required ‘experts’ to see through ‘good practice’ interventions, the new model requires unique and personalized support pathways to be constructed among groups of professionals from different specialisms, working collaboratively.

There has been some effort to introduce supporting infrastructure for this work (such as the Common Assessment Framework and Team around the Family meetings, to work across the children’s workforce for instance), but workforce development, notably, has not adopted a collaborative approach to knowledge and strategy construction. My instinct is that although examples of good practice exist, it has evolved organically.

How might a Rhizomatic approach differ?

Compared to a lot of commercial training on offer for the workforce I’ve described, the learning would need to utilize the existing relationships and networks that exist. Therefore, I think supporting Communities of Practice as groups, both directly and indirectly, is the way forward. Direct support would involve wrapping around a learning infrastructure to the existing work-based infrastructure of clusters and professional supervision. In addition, I think for many groups, a wayfinding and facilitating role would probably be needed to support the development of critical digital literacy skills and the socialization process. Indirect support would involve enabling access to or signposting relevant Open Educational Resources.

What issues would arise from implementing it?

Expectations. This is the biggest issue for me. When people purchase commercial training, there is often the expectation that they will get something defined for their money, and support is something they are used to having quantified (7 hours of directed study for instance). Equally, they are used to

having defined learning outcomes and success criteria, often supported by accreditation of some sort, and associated collateral such as a certificate. While it might be wise to produce some physical product to accompany the experience of participation, so as to meet an existing expectation, it remains the case that the absence of clearly measurable learning outcomes (related to the acquisition of subject knowledge) is a conceptual leap for some participants and some purchasers of training.

Post in response to #H817open MOOC Activity 16: Do PLNs offer anything new?

A response to reading:

informal learning  

personal learning environment

PLN: (Wikipedia, 2012 )

The ideas:

The concept of Personal Learning Networks (or PLNs) seems to have evolved from a synthesis and extension of the concepts of Informal Learning and Personal Learning Environments.

Informal learning broadly encompasses a plethora of experiences a learner goes through, intentionally or not, that result in the acquisition of new knowledge or skills. They are also seen as being outside formal educational settings (or at least recognised educational activities within those settings).

Some commonly recognised features include:

• Outside educational settings
• Doesn’t follow a curriculum
• Often uplanned – originates organically, in response to events
• Not necessarily pedagogically conscious
• Natural
• Spontaneous

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are described as ‘systems that help learners control and manage their own learning’ (Wikipedia…).

Setting goals, managing content and learning processes, and facilitating communication with others during the learning process.

Wikipedia conceives Personal Learning Networks as the people the learner interacts with and derives learning from. I endorse this view. I equally conceive an environment in which I connect with others at nodes (whether these are online or in the physical world) in which I take an agenda or expectation, whereupon I interact with others. The learning that occurs is sometimes intentional and sometimes not, but I have a background awareness that learning is a possibility in all participation at the nodes. I’m also comfortable with the view that we take on different roles at different time in different nodes, and I feel this is a negotiated process, depending on who arrives at each node – much like in team building.

My view:

I’m comfortable with this, because it is intuitively how I have perceived the sum of my relationships since I was about 18 years old, and moved to a different part of the country, the point when I was suddenly connected to two very different worlds. I remember drawing it on a pad – that act and resultant product giving me satisfaction, but also then leading me to reflect on what this might look like for others, and how I might be able to use this network, with its unique collection of nodes (I’m pretty sure I didn’t use that term), and their relative distribution to my advantage. I remember thinking, ‘how do I maintain this network?’ The act of creating it, and then interacting with it, led me to begin to start managing it and setting goals.

 I think also my lifelong love of geography, maps and similar graphical visualisations, has made this a concept that is particularly attractive to me.

Not, it’s not innovative, in the sense that it’s a new way of learning, as I’m aware I’ve done it for nearly 20 years. I don’t even think it’s an innovative term; I can’t believe I haven’t used it myself in the last 20 years, without ever being connected to this knowledge I’ve just cited. At the same time, I find it absolutely appropriate and in alignment of how I make sense of the world. Wonderful

References:

Bennett, Elisabeth E. (2012, June). A Four-Part Model of Informal Learning: Extending Schugurensky’s Conceptual Model. In the proceedings of the Adult Education Research Conference. Saratoga Springs, NY : AERC.

Characteristics of a MOOC:

After reading McAuley, et. al. (2010) I produced this quick map to help me characterise a MOOC.

In addition:

• Publicity is generally via social networks
• Enrolment and registration takes place at a central web-address, acting as a “nexus for support and communication” (McAuley, et. al., 2010, p4). This nexus acts as an anchor, connecting the learners own Personal Learning Network (PLN) with the MOOC course. However, other ties, of varying strength develop between the learner’s PLN and other individual learners, groups of learners or learning objects (OERs), within or beyond the MOOC (such as on Twitter, as I have done with the #h817 community), at the behest of individual learners.

Mapping my MOOC experience:

Key:

I’ve attempted to show the relative level of my engagement with these arenas, by showing their distance from my online learning identity is most present (in my OU blog).

My level of contributory activity is shown by the relative size of the blocks.

McAuley, et. al. suggest that the network itself is at least, if not more important than the topic of a MOOC. However, negotiating the network if more problematic than most structured courses, and is often experienced as frustrating, with which, as a novice I absolutely concur.

The current map is a snapshot of my PLN on the 5^th week of the MOOC. Since the first week, the h817 blog aggregator has shrunk, and is racing away from the centre like some star being flung from the big bang. The MOOC Forums are in danger of going the same way. Meanwhile, the H817 Forums have swollen in the last couple of weeks as I have diverted energy from the MOOC environment back to the group of learners I connect with on H817. Twitter popped into existence, pretty much where it is on the first week, but is growing steadily in size. The OU blog is consolidating as the central venue for my thinking and thought sharing.

McAuley, et. al., describe the MOOC as 'open and invitational', and that an individual's level of participation is negotiated (McAuley et. al., makes the connection to Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation [1991]). My current level and pattern of engagement in the arenas above is a result of becoming more selective about the times I want to access the views of the wider MOOC learner mass. I'm using my own reading and reflection to set my agenda, then dipping into the MOOC forums when I feel I want to sense-check what I'm saying with others. The H817 forum is the safe-place cum critical friend group that I feel more confident in sharing my deeper thoughts with. A little like coming home to the wife, and sharing the ups and downs of the day's experiences, in order for your loved-one to offer some perspective. Twitter is my latest distraction, but in a constructive way. It's not the new mistress that threatens the H817 forum wife!

Post in response to #H817open MOOC activity 9: Choosing a license for Open Content

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Context

Which is the most appropriate type of Creative Commons license for a commercial training organisation to use? Let’s consider the intended outcome of the organisation adopting an OER strategy in the first place. In this case, it is primarily about:

• Raising the profile of the organisation
• Increasing the perception of quality and usefulness the organisation can provide

Type of Open Content

There is a quantity of material that has been developed for use in training and consultancy with client organisations. A lot of this material, particularly slide-shows, could easily be repurposed for use by individuals within those organisations. Indeed, a lot of individual slides could be repurposed without using the entire slide show.

This material is already being created in a ‘frictionless’ way, though the future rate of supply is currently unknown.

We would want the users to be able to take what they need from the slideshows (individual slides) without having to use the whole thing. Therefore, they need to be able to modify the content.

We need the user to credit the organisation, as this is the chief way in which to raise its profile.

We would not want others to commercial exploit the organisation’s asset. Or would we care? If our organisation raises its profile is that enough. Probably the key commercial questions to ask are: 1) will it strengthen potential competitor organisations against our organisation’s position, and 2) will it divert potential spend with us, elsewhere?

Erring on the side of caution, the most productive and ‘safe’ option for the training organisation would be to go for the: Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC 3.0)

Just a little post to get back into the swing of things after a near two-week absence due to a lovely holiday in Scotland. Sadly, haven't downloaded my photos yet, so nothing visual to post.

I drove home via Jedburgh on the A68, which I'd not been to since a coach trip to Edinburgh when I was 11, some 26 years ago. As I drove down into the town, I was greeted with a sight unchanged from how I remembered: The Edinburgh Woollen Mill, complete with ample coach parking out front! I think it's due a paint job about now.

Post in response to views of learning objects - week 2 of the MOOC - after reading Downes (2001), viewing Lamb (2009), and Friesen. See first comment below for links

What is a learning object? - Anything and everything, it seems. An activity, a resource, a component of a course or educational session or lesson. Learning episodes are created from these learning objects.

As a non-technical person, just reading the Downes article promoting the case for learning objects swiftly became painful for me. The objections to the concept and use of learning objects in learning design, particularly from the video highlight how 'artificial' and 'unnatural' any classification system and repository becomes when you try and make it universal. I must say, I never really got fully to grips with the Dewey Decimal system. As a student, I'd always prefer to talk to my friends to try and locate relevant and useable material. The fact that it came from my friends acted as a sort of 'quality pre-judging exercise' of the resource - if they understood it, then chances are, I would. (This is already reminding me of those skills that Connectivism (Seimens, 2004) said are so important.

Certainly, a people / relationship basis for sharing materials is more appealing to me. I can see easily how blogging would do this (acting as both a respository and 'shop window', and how other connecting technologies such as Twitter would operate around this).

BUT - what of my own material would I choose to share? I don't I believe I would share everything. Though, thinking now, it's more about when I would share rather than if. There's a confidence in sharing - in that what you've got is of value to others. This tends to grow as relationships do, and I see no reason why that won't happen within online communities of practice or in wider, looser, weakly-tied online networks. The MOOC environment has made me realise the relative strength of the bonds in my H817 tutor group. Sharing and encouragement through these relationships does seem to breed further acts of sharing.

Post in response to #H817open task 4: Priorities for Research in Open Education

"Imagine you are advising a funding organisation that wishes to promote activity and research in the area of open education.

• Set out the three main priorities they should address, explaining each one and providing a justification for your list. Share this in the Week 1 forum⁸ and compare with priorities of others.

Just completed the hour-long (guide) module on Death and Medicine: Postponement and Promise.

I feel it met the learning objectives, and was good at providing a framework for considering the subject in more depth moving forward. My selection of this module (motivated by desire to explore open learn), was due to the short completion time. I thought that I got a useful amount of thinking done for an hours commitment.

However, I was disappointed that the material wasn't more engaging. The material was only presented as text with a couple of photos. Personally I would have liked some more interactivity with the content. A video would have livened things up for me. It came across very dry as a result - and I felt very passive, much like some of those patients described within the subject matter!

Hi everyone

I'm on the H817 module, and am posting to get established here.

I do some work for two training providers, mainly in the Early Years, Children's Services and Education world. I enrolled on H817 to face my technological demons, and so far (6 weeks in and one assignment under the belt) it's not been anywhere near as painful as I'd feared.

I am hoping for a warts and all experience on this part of the course, as I've been excited by the potential of using OER with the organisations I work with, but really want to understand the implications for going down this path.

Looking forward to working with you all.