The learning materials we produce are, for the learner, just the beginning. Online delivery changes the way learners perceive and value our content. For the learner, the materials are not the fixed, end product they are for us, but a starting point.
So relax – what might seem like a big deal for us may not affect the learner’s experience.
As well as learning materials for students, the learning design process should produce records for teachers and designers to learn from, now and in the future.
Learning design is a complex, multi-party process that takes place in many different contexts, synchronously and asynchronously, over a long period.
It may be impossible to document the process fully, but it’s important that some records are made and kept, not just for project management now, but for the benefit of others in the future.
Managers and developers need to consider this when scoping and planning projects.
Good documentation and initial scoping may help to set and retain a guiding vision, and so prevent development projects losing touch with their original aims or intents.
Q: How can the same technologies be used to help us keep records?
A: Audio/video recordings of face-to-face meetings, Elluminate recordings/transcriptions, personal reflective blogs, team wikis…
Given all the challenges involved in preparing them, the learning materials come to us invested with hours of many people’s hard work, deep consideration, and much love. This must be respected.
The authors have taken on a great challenge. They have wrestled with questions (and doubts) about their roles as teachers, they have come to grips with perhaps unfamiliar tools, and they’ve agonised long and hard.
They have invested much of themselves in the learning materials, and developed deep attachments to their work – deeper, perhaps, than with past work.
How would you feel letting go and handing over something you’d worked on night and day for months on end?
This brings a great responsibility on the media team.
The online delivery of learning material raises questions about how we work and how learners study. Everyone’s learning.
We used to know our roles, what we were supposed to be doing. Now it’s like we’re learning with the student, like we have become the student …
Most students will be new to learning online and may need skills support.
The same skills may not be available in the faculty team or even among the members of the media team. So the question must be:
Can we all do what we are asking the student to do?
This may mean that media staff are required to teach the teachers so they can teach the learners. This can be at all levels and in all contexts, from helping CTAs to tag documents in Structured Content to showing course chairs how to use a wiki, or explaining online activities to tutors to enable them to assess collaborative work.
If the student needs to learn new skills, chances are the same goes for faculty team members and others such as tutors. Chances are perhaps you do, too!
When existing tools (VLE and other) don’t provide a perfect fit, avoid reinventing them.
Look for alternatives, look for free, reusable resources. And consider changing the activities to fit – or make a virtue of the lack of fit, i.e. what can be learned from it?
There is a world of OERs (open educational resources) out there, many of them OU-produced materials, all waiting to be reused for free or very cheaply. OpenLearn is just the beginning.
Many OERs can be versioned to suit your needs. Remember them and point your faculty teams towards them.
The learning is the thing, not the technology; the technology helps you get there.
Ideally, the technology will be woven into the curriculum without jar or snag, such that the learner doesn’t notice where the one ends and the other begins.
Avoid proposing or promising to deliver technology-enhanced solutions unless you are certain they can be achieved.
Sadly, it is not always possible to do in the VLE all the things we are used to doing in the Web 2.0 world. You may be thinking ‘It must be possible to do this or that’, but beware – it may not be as cheap or straightforward as it seems.
Be honest and realistic about the possibilities. If in doubt, try it out. If still in doubt, forget the technology and keep it simple – pencil and paper are seldom the wrong technological choice.
Good learning design adds value in ways independent of technology. It should result in smooth handovers, improve the structure and presentation of the content, and enhance the skills and confidence of the faculty, while enriching the learner’s experience.
Good management of expectations is important to building confidence in media-faculty relations and overcoming nervousness about new ways of working.
Courses may be changing, but they are still health and social care courses, not IT courses with a HSC flavour.
Therefore:
How long will it take the learner to learn to do this? Is this is a worthwhile investment of time – or is it a one-off exercise? Will the learner really do it – what’s the incentive?
This is what happens when learning activities or tasks are forced to fit with existing tools, with little thought for the student experience, the learning process, or the outcomes.
There is more to learning design than this.
You don’t have to use all the tools simply because they are available – learning design isn’t about throwing technology at the curriculum.
Instead, make regular use of a select group of tools, the ones that best meet your and the
Ever since the first OU lecture was filmed and long before, there have been tensions between academics and the producers of open and distance learning materials. The tensions are brought to the surface by changing delivery patterns in the following ways:
Course teams are changing roles, too. This may be a difficult and trying experience. Sensitivity is required in handling the emotional aspect of the change.
One of the dangers of the Net Gen rhetoric is that it narrows the terms of debate about technology and social change by focusing on generations in western countries. Successive generations have always eyed each other with a mixture of suspicion, fear, admiration and envy, and digital technology may be now one factor in this negotiation of identity. But we are all affected by technology, not because technology dictates it, but because we choose to be (and/or because external factors decide for us). We identify ourselves with (and without) it, by and through our relationship with it. We negotiate its place in our practices and in our moral lives – it's okay to text in meetings but not to check share prices at dinner, got it? The social changes implied by technology are far greater than the narrow focus of the Net Gen debate – they run within and across classes, (sub)cultures, firewalls, regimes, borders, etc.
Educators need not to underestimate the social life of technology, the subjective, personal(ised) nature of our relationship with it, our different levels of ability (and support needs), and our different feelings and choices about technology – our experience in the round, not just in terms of how our experience measures up against institutional learning outcomes or prevailing theoretical discourses.
And the basis for educators' decisions about technology, to my mind, must be the learning, the curriculum, not rhetoric about 'where students/technology leads...'. Compare other approaches to technology-enhanced delivery of products or services. When a company decides to do business via a website, for example, the decision is made on the basis of the need for that service (the need of the company to sell to a market where there is demand). The online service enables the company to deliver the product/service in ways that add value for the customers, by allowing them to shop at home/work/24-7, or by allowing them to access a service that otherwise would be out of their reach. And the company gets the returns. None of these decisions are made because the website demands it, or 'just because'. The technology enables only, and perhaps its design adds further value by being easy to use, say, and so encouraging return visits and recommendations to friends. By contrast, the trouble with institutions' educational use of technology is that the initial decision is made out of hand – we have to use the technology because everyone else is, or it's the way of the world, or because the strategy demands it. How often is the decision made because (and purely because) value will be added to the product/service by the technology – value, that is, beyond that of using the technology merely as the equivalent of the fabled grocery truck, with the aim of 'delivering' the learning?
The first-principle of technology, the Net Gen discourse, both are technologically determinist theories (i.e. ideas). Where technology leads, people must follow. Thus, the diffusion of digital technology and Web 2.0 tools has created, all by itself and unconditionally, a homogenous race of superbeings. However, the brave new world anticpated by Prensky et al. has not come to pass, as Bennett et al. describe. Prensky didn't hold back to check out the long-term outcomes. There is no hideous production line of technologically enhanced superyouth; rather, 'young people's [technology] use and skills are not uniform' (Bennet et al., 2008, p. 783).
So there is little empirical basis for the Net Gen discourse. In fact, you could say that Prensky et al. have misunderstood the social-constructionist nature of the Web 2.0 world. For the world their folk devils are said to inhabit is, in fact, a highly socialised world, a user-mediated environment in which resources are co-produced and freely shared, where standards and values are negotiated (but not enforced) by communities, and where networks are nothing if not social. Prensky et al., it seems, are not so much 'last season' as 'last century', with their post-war interpretation of the machine age, à la Aldous Huxley. No, in the digital devils' world, where technology leads, the people must and will decide!
1) Moral panics
The objects of moral panics are 'folk devils', be they drug-takers, Mods and Rockers, muggers, or more recently homosexuals, asylum-seekers, paedophiles, welfare scroungers, etc. France and Belgium are having a moral panic right now over Muslim women and the hijab/burka. As Stan Cohen wrote in Folk Devils and Moran Panics in 1972 (p. 9), the genesis of moral panics goes like this:
A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or resorted to ...What's interesting about the Net Gen discourse is that it involves another rhetorical topos we came across in Block 1 - namely, the first-principle of technology, whereby we unfailing overestimate the consequences of emerging technologies (e.g. printing) while paying relatively little heed to the real, lasting, long-term effects. Graft this hysteria on to the postmodern concern over the condition of childhood and youth in westernised societies, and it's a wonder the Net Gen discourse has not been even more lasting and widespread than it has been.
It's fair to describe the Net Gen debate as an academic moral panic. Moral panics typically involve a frantic search for a response, for measures to protect the fabric of decent society. This is described by Goode and Ben-Yehuda in their 1994 book Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance:
the behaviour of some ... is thought to be so problematic to others, the evil they do, or are thought to do, is felt to be so wounding to the body social, that serious steps must be taken to control the behaviour, punish the perpetrators, and repair the damage ... typically [this response] entails strengthening the social control apparatus of society – tougher or renewed rules, more intense public hostility and condemnation, more laws, longer sentences, more police, more arrests and more prison cells ... a crackdown on offenders.
The scramble to rewrite institutional strategies and disciplinary curricula, in response to the appearance of Net Gen at the gates, is an example of such a response.
What are the implications for how students should be taught etc?
The overwhelming question I've taken from the these readings is this – why should institutions adopt technology in delivering learning at all? Are they doing it because the curriculum is best served by technology, or simply because students are using technology? If it's the latter, caution is needed as these reports suggest that students may not always value it or even want it. Or are institutions taking it upon themselves to train students in using technology? If so, it needs to be asked if academic institutions are obliged to do this, and then if they are best placed to do it. (It might be better to get the students to do the teaching here!)
Interestingly, Salaway et al. suggest that the students with most facility with technology, students identified as early adopters, are students in engineering and related disciplines who regularly use discipline-related tools and software. Presumably, these tools are integrated with the students' professional training in authentic, vocational, real-world ways. Unless the discipline requires technology skills, it needs to be asked if such training is needed at all in most western countries, as the digital divide slowly closes.
I recently attended a meeting with a course team, and we discussed a proposed activity in which the student is asked to make an electronic image (of a collage) to upload to the web. Simple enough, you might have thought. But such was the teachers' (lack of) facility with the technology, the proposed activity has now spawned a subsidiary 'skills' activity for students who might require help in making and uploading an image. Now, I'm not saying that such support should not be available. Not for a moment. I mention it since it occurred to me then that the 'skills' activity was primarily for the teachers' benefit, and that it represents a record of the teachers' own learning achievement. It was a vivid glimpse into the academic digital divide, and how it, too, may be slowly closing.
How does your own experience compare?
OK. So I skirted around what I found surprising in the results of the surveys. Mainly because there's little that's very surprising, except perhaps those things that are unchanging, namely a preference for 'moderate' use of technology in learning (despite widespread use of technology in other areas of life), a preference expressed by campus students perhaps anxious not to lose face-to-face contact with tutors.
Does this finding indicate that perhaps (campus) institutions should relax about technology? It certainly suggests the need for careful, critical, evidence-based assessments of technology use in education in these institutions. And perhaps it indicates that open and distance institutions need not be overly concerned about trying to stay ahead of the technology curve, about finding more and more sophisticated ways of delivering learning materials. Perhaps familiar, effective forms used 'moderately' will be enough.
What surprises me?
The first thing that surprised me in Salaway et al. was the statement that '[w]here students lead, institutions must follow' (p.5). Why? Students choose to come to campus, so you could argue that institutions do not have to use technology at all. Given this circumstance, if institutions choose to use technology, is the decision being determined by the curriculum first and foremost, or is it motivated by a perceived need to 'engage' students, or to seem contemporary and/or relevant? By following the students in the way Salaway et al. describe, institutions are not adopting technology for learning's sake or because learning requires or is enhanced by technology.
What also surprises me is the extent to which the Net Gen discourse perpetuates the digital academic divide between natives (students) and immigrants (teachers), a gap Prensky identified already in 2001. This gap is perhaps at its most apparent when students are identified with the technology, and characterised by their relationship and facility with the technology. As when Kennedy et al. describe 'the technology-based tools of a new generation of students' – tools institutions can use also, if they can figure out how to do so by first getting over their technology-induced inferiority complex.
It's as if, post-Prensky, academic commentators see technology as the proper domain of young learners, as their sole possession. It's interesting that students seem not to see technology in this way, but rather as 'part of life' (Salaway et al., 2008, p.9), something that is just 'out there'. It's interesting (and significant) that corporations and businesses do not see things this way, either. Does Vodafone or Tesco or Amazon or Ryanair regard technology as a domain or possession of young customers? I don't think so.
When will academic institutions get over this them-and-us, ethnographic approach to their view of technology? Perhaps only when their academic staff is made up in largest part by Net Genners?
a) Main findings
The reports frame the findings differently: Salaway et al. regard their key findings empirically from an institutional perspective (as 'interesting or relevant to helping college and university administrators' when making decisions (p.10)), while Kennedy et al. adopt a reflective, critical stance in regard to the 'fundamental assumptions' of the Net Gen discourse and the action of these assumptions on professional practice.
Salaway et al. group their findings under eight headings, according to ongoing research questions of prior ECAR studies. The report by Kennedy et al. is a research design and strategy statement outlining the objectives and methods of a programme of empirical research, and as such it lists no findings.
b) How do the these reports suggest students' use of technology is changing?
Salaway et al.
Boom in ownership of laptops and mobile devices; anticipated 'tidal wave' of demand for mobile device web browsing support (p.6).
'[T]echnology is first about communication' (p.10), email and social networking outstripping email. Around 50% using SNS for course-related communication.
Mounting evidence of students using/creating audio/video media, building on a core of 'basic technologies' (p.12) with ever-more sophisticated media and discipline-specific tools, both those provided by institutions and others interchangeably and alongside each other.
Emergence of preferred ways of using technology for study: web searching, communication, blogs and wikis, and user-mediated tools.
Kennedy et al.
Social networking and SMS.
'[P]ersonal digital publishing' (own websites, blogs).
Use of RSS feeds and syndication to access audio/video for use on mobile devices (downloads and podcasts).
c) How do the these reports suggest students' use of and attitudes towards technology is staying the same?
In addition, I found it interesting to look at what the reports identify as unchanging, particularly Salaway et al. Most notably, 'most say they prefer only a “moderate” amount of IT in their courses (59.3%)' (Salaway et al., 2008, p.11). What is still more striking is that this pattern is unchanged over five years when 'the overall digital environment has become increasingly dense', and it covers 'all age groups' (p.11). It has to be remembered that the study covers 'traditional' students in campus colleges and universities, and that respondents emphasised that technology should not replace face-to-face teaching and instruction.
Lastly, there is a persistent view that convenience and flexibility (for learners) are the key advantages of technology in learning (Salaway et al., 2008, p.13-14).
iTunesU
1) Impact on students' perceptions of quality?
Depends on the quality of the iTunesU material and the way it is integrated to the course. Poorly produced, badly integrated – bad. Well-made, skillfully incorporated – good.
iTunesU materials may boost perceptions of quality by seeming to be relevant and contemporary, and therefore as the work of a relevant and contemporary organisation. To some people, though, they may seem trivial and gimmicky, so endangering perceptions of quality and reputation. Perception is in the eye of the beholder.
iTunesU resources may affect approaches to study in positive and negative ways. Positive: accessibility, flexibility, engaging, capacity to illustrate ideas and information in different ways to, say, print materials. Negative: may present learning as a trivial, 'lifestyle' thing, as a commodity, may encourage a fragmented, incoherent, pick-and-mix approach to learning, may diminish the importance of other materials, may establish expectations of future learning, may be a barrier to students without means of access.
2) Impact on teachers' perceptions of context and approaches?
iTunesU may represent a challenge, even a threat, to traditional roles. How do I do this? What do I have to do differently?
May be seen as a threat to integrity of teaching, corrupting its essential coherency by fragmenting and commoditising it into convenient chunks (convenient, that is, for the medium first and foremost, the user second), and translating it into convenient media (convenient for the corporations first and foremost, users second).
iTunesU equally may be seen as an opportunity to learn new teaching and technical skills, to update one's teaching (materials and methods), and to use the medium to best advantage, for example by creating new material to address contemporary developments in the discipline – that is, to exploit the technology to the advantage of the curriculum (rather than enslaving the curriculum to the technology).
3) Assumptions about teaching and learning?
You betcha! Yes, the technology assumes that:
4) Assumptions good for learning and learners?
Yes and no, mainly no (probably). The assumptions are those of the technology (and the corporation behind it), so the bias is towards the technology (and the corporation). The challenge is for educators and institutions to tilt the balance in their favour and use the technology to their own advantage, rather than simply placing their resources in the iTunesU selection box and waiting for learners to find and choose and use them. The challenge is for educators and institutions not to abandon their resources (and their learners) to the mercy of the technology's (and the corporation's) assumptions and interests.
Writing this after our group's really engaging Elluminate discussion on Thursday evening.
An eye-opening activity and discussion for me, as tutorials and tutoring are entirely separate from materials production in my current role. Given his results, I think Richardson's optimistic tone in his conclusions is not misplaced. As Lynn points out so incisively and amusingly in her blog, Richardson's carelessness with assumptions and language sometimes undermines his arguments (as in his seemingly stereotypical view of arts students and their 'typical' ICT skills), but on the whole his results are reason to be confident.
Certainly he enjoins academic staff to be confident in embracing online tutorials. What is missing is an indication of how academic staff can assure themselves of a successful outcome. Okay, we're inspired by your optimism, John. Perhaps you'd be good enough to show us how to do it for ourselves?
This criticism may be unfair of a work of analysis, but it is a criticism Richardson invites with his rhetoric:
[D]epartments responsible for humanities programmes in distance education can feel confident about exploring the future use of online forms of tutorial support, with the proviso that students and tutors need to be given appropriate guidance and training in the new forms of communication that this entails' (Richardson, 2009, p.82).
On reading this I thought instantly of a course team I'm working with, thought I'd send them the article, thought I'd better check the article again for useful pointers, and I drew a blank. So, John, you going to tell us then, or what? Or maybe tell us where we can find someone else who can show us how it's done? Please.
Unfortunately, Richardson gives us no guidance or even a reference. Like his carelessness with language elsewhere, this omission somewhat dulls the shine on his otherwise justifiable optimism. Unfortunately, that is, for my course team. But then Dave reminded me of other reasons to be cheerful during our Elluminate session. What's missing from Richardson is what the learning designer must (learn to) provide, working, as Dave put it, as a middle-(wo)man between the academic specialists on one side, and the tutor/trainer/learner/client on the other.
This linkage is missing in my current role, and so the discussion on Thursday between Dave, Giulia and Alessia was fascinating, particularly the scope for tutors to be involved in developing learning materials, rather than have to make the best of a set of inflexible, generic pre-packaged stuff. This potential was revealed already in Block 1, in the responsiveness of Canadian educational radio broadcasters to listerners' (teachers' and students') submissions.
The final (three) furlongs!
1) Experience of teaching/training
The fact there are five conceptions of teaching is so neat and tidy and convenient as to test credulity. The alarm bells are beginning to sound. Learning and teaching are above all highly social practices, even in their open and distance forms, and social life is seldom so orderly, so reducible to categories or types (or flow diagrams or models).
From my limited experience of teaching, I can remember being all five categories of teacher and not just at different times and in different contexts. Teachers may be all categories in the same hour in the same classroom, so long as that classroom is full of learners who have different approaches, different conceptions, and different interests. I can't see how one can be a Category 4 or 5 teacher without appreciating and making account of learners' individual interests (very broadly defined) and learners' backgrounds. The paper makes little mention of learners' perceptions of their own academic context, their past achievements and future plans, and how this 'learning record' bears on learners' approaches to and conceptions of learning.
2 and 3) The argument and the models
Perhaps the debating habit is a hard one to kick, but as with the Economist debate I find much here that is convincing (or at least seemingly plausible) and much that is not. There are a few lacunae in the argument as well. I've mentioned student expectations, interests and desired outcomes. Similarly, the paper makes little account of learners' perceptions of their own academic context, their relationship with institutions and relationships with teachers, the influence of parents and family (and peers) on approaches to and conceptions of learning, and learners' past achievements and future goals.
Turning to teachers, I'm not convinced by the proposition made here that unlike learners, teachers do not become more mature, more sophisticated in their approaches to and conceptions of teaching as time passes. If it is possible (indeed, necessary) to be all five categories of teacher at once, as I believe, surely the move up the ladder of conceptions of teaching is not going to be blocked by a few difficult or lazy students or disillusioned colleagues.
Regarding models, all very neat and tidy. Too much so. Do the arrows point one way only? Figure 1 implies that approaches to learning are outcomes of the learner's experience of the (institutional) learning experience. I think they must precede such experience and be affected (and possibly changed) by it. Surely our approaches to learning are functions above all of our society and culture, our background, our family and personal influences, experience, preferences, and particular needs and requirements. Learners have a 'before life' and an 'after life', and throughout they have a social life, and these subjectivities are hard to categorise or delineate.
Do the concepts, theories and evidence match your own experience as a learner?
The mixing and matching of approaches according to the content, context and demands of tasks seems plausible, and I recognised part of my own behaviour when reading this. And I think there's some truth in the observation that different students have different perceptions of requirements, and accordingly adopt different approaches to the task in hand.
This is interesting in terms of the potential of learning design. If we accept that learners can self-select approaches to learning, and that this choice is influenced by perceptions of the learning task (and any related materials), it follows that the way the task is presented can influence the learner's approach. Today I can be a superficial learner (in Saljö's Categories 1 to 3), depending on the task and how it appears to me, while tomorrow I might be a deep or strategic learner (in Saljö's Categories 4 and 5, or the sixth, 'changing-as-a-person' category) depending on the same perceptions. Therefore, if the learning designer can influence these perceptions, learning design has the potential to change approaches to learning. And if we accept that learners become ever more sophisticated in their conceptions of learning, perhaps continued exposure to good-quality learning design may engender a change in conceptions of learning as well.
As a learner, I found the paper to be based heavily (excessively) on formal learning and its outcomes. Learning outcomes (where they are referred to at all) are assessment-related – at worst, learning is conceived in terms of passing exams or obtaining good grades, and at best as a quasi-philosophical search for meaning. Does this cover it? What about what learners want to learn? What are our interests? Why are we, as learners, engaged in learning in the first place? What brought us here? And what have we brought with us? (More on this last question later.)
So, which of Saljö's big five am I? All of them at different times, and none of them all the time.
To judge from Richardson's description (2005, p. 675) of Marton's contribution, students who regard learning as something that happens to them are those who take a 'surface' approach to learning (that is, one based upon memorising information and material for the sake of assessment). They take a 'passive' role, in contrast to 'deep' learners who 'take an active role and see learning as something they themselves do' (Richardson, 2005, p. 675).
In Sfard's conception of learning, there is no room for such passivity, even when this learning is characterised as a form of acquisition. Even the acquisitive learner is an active subject, not a passive object, who accumulates, refines and combines knowledge and learning objects 'to form ever richer cognitive structures (Sfard, 1998, p. 1). The defining actions are having, possessing, not just passive reception, which reflects the predominance of constructionist, interactionist and socio-cultural theories.
With learning perceived as a form of participation, for Sfard 'the permanence of having gives way to the flux of doing' in an ongoing 'process of becoming' (1998, p. 2). This is akin to the sixth perception of learning as 'change as a person'. The defining actions are belonging, participating, communicating.
For Sfard, even the most passive consumer of learning (the worst, more regressive form of acquisition) is in some way disposed towards learning, while the passive, acted-upon learner described by Richardson seems to have little or no inclination towards learning.
Would the innovations in 'learning design' described in Weeks 8 and 9 'induce more desirable approaches to studying on the part of the students'?
First of all, what are these 'more desirable approaches'? And to whom are they desirable? Second, it would be interesting to turn the question on its head, and ask if learning design innovations would induce more desirable approaches to teaching – could they induce such approaches – on the part of teachers. However, staying with the plot, let's assume 'more desirable approaches' are to be understood as more engaged, open, receptive, 'deep' or otherwise serious-minded approaches to learning, resulting in more effective, enriching learning and development.
Richardson paints a mixed picture on this score. He points to some published research to suggest that 'interventions aimed at inducing desirable approaches to studying have proved to be largely ineffective' (2005, p. 674). By contrast, in his discussion of the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), Richardson claims that there is 'an intimate relationship' between the way students approach their study and their perceptions of the quality of learning materials, i.e. the better the materials, the more likely it is that students will adopt 'deep' or 'more desirable' approaches to study. If learning design results in the production of high-quality learning materials as one would hope, it follows that good learning design may induce 'desirable' or effective learning. In theory, learning design can change and develop people.
Coming to the question of whether learning design innovations might induce teachers to adopt more desirable approaches to teaching (for which read student-focussed approaches aimed at fostering conceptual development, or 'change as a person'), Richardson's discussion (2005, p. 677) of the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) offers room for hope. The research he discusses shows that when teachers adopt a student-focussed approach, their students are more likely to be 'deep' learners who shun shallow, superficial, assessment-motivated learning. And vice versa, teachers whose conception of teaching is to impart information, and who adopt accordingly teacher-focussed approaches – these teachers will produce students whose approach to learning is to cram and Google. As good learning design is most likely to result in engaging, student-focussed activities and learning materials, it follows that teachers who engage with innovations in learning design are likely to adopt 'more desirable' approaches to teaching.
But can adoption of learning design innovations really change and develop teachers? Maybe, maybe not, to judge from the literature reviewed by Richardson. As he says (2005, p. 677), there is 'little evidence that teachers' conceptions of teaching really do develop'. Here is speaking of age and experience, and there seem to be other impeding factors, like conservative colleagues and other sticks-in-the-occupational-mud, and students who would rather have an easy life in the classroom (Richardson, 2005, p. 678).
Similar ideas have been presented in earlier weeks in H800. In Week 1, Activities 8a and 8b we reflected on our personal experiences of formal and informal learning.
The introduction to Week 2 refers to the authors of H800, their 'differing ideas about learning and teaching, and their awareness of how their chosen approaches to teaching (and technology) 'will be more [or less] effective for their learners'.
Week 3, in the section entitled 'Talking about learning', we read: 'How the media are used will depend on a range of factors – the situation of the learners ... and the proposed learning outcomes ... the designer[s and their conceptions of learning] and how they visualise [learning]', in terms of models (that word again – Richardson points to his own use of models) and metaphors (that word again).
In Week 3b we encountered Saljö's (1979) five conceptions of learning (as reinterated by Richardson (2005, p. 675) and the sixth, 'change as a person' conception which, in Week 3b, is attrobuted to Morton, Dall'Alba and Beaty (1993)). (Richardson (2005, p. 675) attributes it to Van Rossum and Taylor (1987). This led us in to the discussion on identity (Bayne, 2005) and activity systems (Engeström, 1987).
Thereafter, the first activity in Week 4 had us defining our own conceptions of learning before searching online for other, more-or-less authoritative definitions of learning.
In Week 5, we turned to questions about how Web 2.0 technologies and forms of representation affect our conceptions of learning – do different types of media (and the conceptions of teaching underlying their selection) affect learning differently, or rather, do they affect different approaches to and conceptions of learning differently? And we touched here on the problems associated with research studies, in this case comparative studies.
Finally, in Week 7, Activity 3 ('What is means to learn', that phrase again), we looked back on one of the key readings from Block 1, Sfard (that name again).
How do the two extracts compare?
Compared with the CIBER/UCL extract, Williams and Rowlands take a broad and highly critical view of the research literature, citing numerous and varied sources, and drawing clear and emphatic conclusions. By contrast, the CIBER/UCL extract makes guarded and sometimes ambiguous statements based on selective results.
The dangers of reading less than the full report
It goes without saying that reading only an extract means missing out on the important conditions on which summary conclusions may be based. In other words, the reader may not be aware of the nature (and limitations) of the research design and methodology, and may fail to take account of the authors' acknowledged biases and caveats, which may qualify and take the shine off the headline 'results' forefronted in the executive summary, for example.
Williams and Rowlands – evidence or anecdote?
Their conclusions inevitably draw heavily on anecdote and their own subjective feelings and opinions. After all, it would be quite impossible to draw together a coherent summary from such a large number of resources. What is interesting (and revealing) is the authors' fondness for media resources, especially the BBC and Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg, suggesting a dependence on anecdotal, news-oriented forms of research as opposed to more rigorous, dispassionate enquiries.
Other benefits of ICT
Is open/distance learning the main beneficiary?
My instinct is that this is so, but I don't know enough about contemporary conditions in formal, classroom-based teaching and learning. Perhaps open and distance learning is less thoroughly regulated than school-based learning; perhaps it is able to adopt new technologies more quickly and less controversially; perhaps it necessarily seeks to fit with people's preferred 'living technologies' (as opposed to restrictive, specialised learning technologies).
The disbenefits
As well as the possible health risks, I'm aware of a lack of support for learners new to using ICTs for study, especially in terms of using Web 2.0 tools effectively. For some time I've been wondering if we need a handbook, The Good Web 2.0 Study Guide, for students new to this world of study.
Moreover, ICTs for learning may be a barrier to learning for some people (be it an economic, cultural or a psychological/preferential barrier). And they may be perceived as faddish or gimicky, thereby adding to the perception that technology-enhanced learning is less serious than 'proper' study in a physical institution.
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