Personal Blogs

As part of my applied linguistics learning, a context which I very recently experienced and observed, in which I think ethnography might be appropriate is medical treatment during COVID. Within that context, I would be interested in focusing on intercultural communication / intracultural diversity in healthcare.  Ethnography would be appropriate in the context chosen because of the clear differences in clinical outcomes for particular ethnic groups in the NHS - ethnography as a social science. I will not go into the hundreds of studies on this. I will focus on COVID:

'...the failure to record the race and ethnicity of Covid-19 deaths, and the disproportionate mortality impact...on Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, speaks to a systemic failure to account for the ...the social construction of race, the lived experience of racism, and its biological presentation as 'poor health' amongst the discriminated-against.'

(Fofana, 2020, p.1)

It is also important to note that others have placed other factors above race as a cause of inequalities (see Mundasad, 2020).

The care I received was better than good, I’d say excellent. I’d gone into the hospital partly as a precaution against COVID. I was given a test as a precaution. My test was negative (btw). I went home stable and very thankful to the doctors, nurses, paramedics who showed such sensitive and devoted care. But from the beginning, I felt that need to keep throwing out signals to them that I thought would creae a kind of 'one of us' effect and lessen the effect of society's blind spot in its care of BAME (hate that term) - especially African-Caribbean.

Green and Bloome’s categories (cited in Street, 2010 p.204), an ethnographic perspective would be most relevant - there has already been a lot proven and written on disparities in social services provision along race and ethnic lines.  This would focus on staff-staff and staff-patient interactions that impact one control and one study group of patients - an ethnographic account, using theories, practices and ethnographic tools derived from anthropology and sociology (Green and Bloome, 2004). My paradigmatic perspective would be critical and should have a commitment to action and reform as it addressed long entrenched issues, that could end up providing a telling case study. The shortfall in care for BAME I believe is real, bourne out by consistent observations, no matter how heroic our NHS staff is in general, a problem exists. Green and Bloome provide some ethnographic questions (2004, p.2), they say as a way of ‘making visible what those who engage in ethnography mean by this term’ (2004, p.3) and I think these also provide a basis for criticality and reflection on the situatedness of ethnology when looking into the generalizability of the research ‘findings’.

I think that both black and white participant-observers who are sociolinguists would be great assets in this type of research – they can see first-hand how verbal communication is dealt with in interactions with someone of their ‘demographic’. The importance of NVB is crucial here too.

Did my ethnicity become an unwelcome part of my encounter and a possible sign of the above-mentioned cracks in society?

It did, but perhaps not from a negative care perspective. Race was brought up in a context that only presented a danger of misinterpretation in itself but seemed to point to issues below the surface. It was, once again, about how black men are seen as threatening or frightening and our 'physicality' often comes up. It's astonishing how frequently, once people relax with you it comes up. It's a linguistic ritual that accounts for people's knowledge of how BAME people are presented by society. In this case, it seemed to be a deliberate counter to stereotypes I think the staff member may have encountered herself at work. A lot of questions were left unanswered as I was not conducting research at the time.  

'cultural differences may also contribute to stereotyping behaviour and biased or prejudicial attitudes toward patients and healthcare providers. At the same time, cultural beliefs and approaches to healthcare are deeply ingrained and most often not overtly communicated'. (Kirschbaum, 2017 p.1 ):  

References

Fofana, M.O., 2020. Decolonising global health in the time of COVID-19. Global public health, pp.1-12.

Green, J. and Bloome, D. (2004) ‘Ethnography and ethnographers of and in education: A situated perspective’ Handbook of research on teaching literacy through the communicative and visual arts, pp.181-202.

Kirschbaum, K.A., 2017. Intercultural communication in healthcare. The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, pp.1-13.

Street, B. (2010) ‘Adopting an ethnographic perspective in research and pedagogy’ in Coffin, C., Lillis, T. and O’Halloran, K. (eds) Applied Linguistic Methods: A reader, Abingdon, Routledge, pp. 201–15.

Hi everyone

I haven't posted in some time as I changed jobs, re-located internationally and started my third and final module of my 'MA in Online Education', so exciting times, considering we are still at the height of the pandemic; we seem to have found some real sound vaccine candidates and Trump has been voted out of office. But I think the obsessing over whether Americans truly want to go back to slavery and or segregation days is not going away because they voted for him again.  Over 40% of US voters chose Nazism in 2020.  As I am a person of colour, the fact he once again won white male and female Americans does not seem to me like racism is a thing of the past when so many people vote for someone who openly advocates it. The UK has parallels. 

Which brings me to the topic of my post, which is sociolinguistics.  This final module of my studies is about choosing a content area to match with the tech skills and online teaching concepts and principles I've been learning. I chose applied linguistics as my content area.  This week was sociolinguistics - how more influential social context is than any other influence on language. In fact, language is a product of social interaction, forming everything we communicate using language tools. I can also apply what I learned to life and the language legacy I leave and am a product of. 

Of course, one of the best known sociolinguists was Dell Hymes (1972), who made the point that most linguists are much less concerned with an ideal ‘linguistic competence’ than with ‘communicative performance’ - real world applications of language.  Hymes’ ideas for communicative language teaching were part of an enrichment of approaches in education of the time, beginning in the 70s and 80s. Though his ideas ‘quickly became distorted and misinterpreted’ (Cook, 2003 p.46), they helped create the impetus towards sociolinguistics. There were some excellent examples from students on my course on the topic of code-switching for students of English applying Hymes’ proposed four types of knowledge (Cook, 2003 p. 42) to different life and work experiences. During exchanges with curse members Bolton (2020), our definition of code-switching was clarified, the relative benefits of accommodative speech strategies were debated.

It was good to receive a link from Fallows (2020 ) to a podcast (BBC, 2020)  about code-switching among African-Caribbean people - a very common feature among my community in the UK.  On the train yesterday, from Leicester to Nottingham, code-switching from standard English to an Anglo-Jamaican style rhythm and intonation was noticeable. The question of why many Black people feel uncomfortable speaking Creole or in Creole style is central in the podcast discussion and is related to the concept of agency, empowerment and identity that has come into  applied linguistics research (see Carter and Sealy, 2007 below).  As Carter and Sealy put it:

“people exercise (ing) agency with regard to … which language variety to use… are often interpreted as demonstrating national, ethnic or cultural affiliation”

Back to Trump, in America people speaking their mother tongue or a second language - not English - were routinely vilified for (in the mind of their abusers) 'showing affiliation to another culture, country or people'.  When all they are doing is exactly that, which speaks to the racist aspect of it.  Most Americans have a duel identity because most Americans are children of immigrants in a land built on genocide and slavery.  YouTube videos do not appear of white people being attacked for speaking a foreign language.  

Carter and Sealy lay out much of the new field of study of applied linguistics based and what is meant by social context:

“questions of linguistic identity, of linguistic exclusion or inclusion, of languages in contact, of languages in conflict, of language purity, of language conservation, of language prestige” (Wright, cited in Carter and Sealy, 2007 p. 24).

Prior to Covid-19, there had been an increase in migration brought about by, among other things, economic forces and conflict. It has added to the effects of globalisation, bringing diverse groups together and thus, language awareness is as crucial, as it has always been because is so closely tied to sensibilities of identity, culture, belief. Therefore, assumptions “about collectivities and about social agency” should be closely studied and challenged."

Growing awareness of this has opened up and inspired new and significant fields of study of language. Now, with developments in corpus linguistics, it is also possible to study in more depth how features of a language variety can vary to a greater or lesser extent than others in forming judgments about social significance; corpus linguistics also adds to greater attestedness in linguistics research in a way that will improve research in the future.

References

Bolton, N. (2020) ‘Accommodative speech for language learners Task 1’ in EE817 Tutor Group Forum [Online] Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=3360704 Accessed 12 November 2020.

Carter, R. and Sealey, A. (2007) 'Languages, nations and identities', Methodological Innovations vol. 2, no. 2. [Online] Available at http://www.methodologicalinnovations.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/3.-Cartersealey-formatted-20-31.pdf Accessed 05 November 2020.

Cook, G. (2003) Applied Linguistics, Oxford, Oxford University.

Hymes, D. (1972) On communicative competence. sociolinguistics, 269293, pp.269-293.

Robinson, H.  (2020) ‘Code-switching Task 1’ in EE817 Tutor Group Forum [Online] Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=3360704 accessed 12 November 2020.

We were asked to review this article in order to expand our understanding of social learning analytics.  Rather than examining interactions by students in an online learning environment such as an institutional LMS, however, or another trail of start-up, demographic, disciplinary, course, log in, data, commonly analyzed, we focussed on research network analytics of some of the leaders in the field.  A very different subject to what we had been looking at previously.   Another usual thing was the way we approached the reading. We begin by looking at the abstract of this paper:  Dawson et al. (2014), 'Current state and future trends: a citation network analysis of the learning analytics field' and noted the aims of the paper. That was the end of the conventional approach to reading, as we then were asked to skip to the fourth section of the paper that listed its practical implications (Section 4.3). These were that the analysis ... 

• provides an understanding of how key papers, thematics, and authors influencing a field emerge 

• raises awareness about the structure and attributes of knowledge in a discipline and the development of curriculum in the growing number of academic programs that include learning analytics as a topic  

• promotes under-represented groups and research methods to the learning analytics community 

• fosters the development of empirical work and decreased reliance on founding, overview and conceptual papers  

• improves connections to sister organizations such as the International Educational Data Mining Society 

The interesting thing about the paper was its crossover between an example of learning analytics and a paper about learning analytics.  

Some of its figures and tables thankfully were understandable even for a non-expert.  Table 1 identifies the ten most-cited papers in the field.  Interestingly, the numbers of citations in the learning analytics literature ranged between 10 and 16, whilst the Google Scholar citation counts vastly differed. This can be attributed to the equal currency placed on both old and new publications among specialist members of the field compared with researchers from a much wider range of fields and interests among the Google scholar audience. 

In sum, the article is a reminder of how much more complex the learning analytics landscape is than a means to improve teaching and learning. In this case, it was used to aid in a complex understanding of how research gains prominence. A systemic and integrated response is required for the approach to do justice to its subject. As the authors note: 'while it is helpful to note that (more active) students...perform better than their less active peers, this information is not suitable for developing a focused response to poor-performing students. (p. 231)'  

A  more in-depth reading of the article would certainly have made the basis of that point much clearer to the reader. However, what I did gain from reading a paper in this way was an impression I could take with me to other readings and to my general knowledge of the breadth of the learning analytics field. 

image source: pngkey

LinkedIn's use of data analytics

Generally, I'm quite turned off by the fact that apps and sites can access Big Data and use it in ways I'd probably disagree with. Ironically, I never take the time to look at the policy and learn about what kind of data different sites take or why. When it comes to the superhighway robbery we see every day, I wish governments would simply say no to big companies (once again) unfairly accumulating Big Data for their commercial interests, making a huge profit out of data theft.

One 'exception' to my disapproval of Big Data might be Linkedin. Here's an example of a more or less symbiotic relationship between an ostensibly free provider and its clients. And here is a brief explanation of where and how LinkedIn uses Big Data to achieve its impressive results without necessarily ripping people off.

On the one hand, LinkedIn uses Big Data to very closely analyze what its members do when they are accessing its site so that it is able to provide the identity, learning, and networking services that comprise Linkedin's unique brand and drives its popularity.  The features Linkedin offers would not be possible without the data its users provide.  Of course, the huge amount of data also guides its future business decision-making.   

As mentioned above, there are three wings of the Linkedin service. On the networking side, its algorithms prime the searches through comparatively small items of data to identify “people you may know” and to make suggestions for users to add to their personal networks. Machine-learning techniques enable LinkedIn to refine its algorithms based on user feedback (e.g. user uptake of suggestions) and this in turn is enabling better suggestions to be made.  Customers benefit from this data usage by being able to build better and better personal networks that benefit them, socially, professionally, or educationally.

One of the ways Linkedin manages to keep re-designing itself, balancing its business and user interests is by its constant data collection and transformation of data into end-user displays. The data that keeps LinkedIn users engaged includes contacts' job, profile and connection updates.  This drives the keeping up with the Jones impulse that drives users' need to further engage and connect.  For this to work best, data needs to be live-streamed and analyzed simultaneously, using real-time stream-processing technology.  The direct from source information LinkedIn is interested in includes items that are 'liked' shared, clicked, and contact who are messaged. 

In short, the (open) secret of LinkedIn's success and the success of many other businesses using Big Data to drive success is its use of timely, on the fly, and personalized suggestions and recommendations. 

Image: Baumgartner, P. (2016) ‘Economic Aspects of OER’ 

Open educational resources repositories: Towards a comprehensive quality approaches framework’

The following is a summary based on direct quotes from the title article by Clements et al. (2015). The purpose is to provide a context for the design of our learning object repository (LOR) website that we are designing as a team of students on the Masters in Online and Distance Education (Open University).  Find our under construction website and more of my team's article summaries among the 'preliminary research' pages here: Higher Education Open Education Resources.

'OER are commonly stored... within Learning object repositories (LORs), which have recently started expanding their design to support collaborative teaching and learning. ...many LORs struggle to find sustainable business models and get the users’ attention. Previous studies have shown that Quality assurance ....is a significant factor (in) the success of the repository (Clements et al. p. 1098, 2015). This opening statement could be confusing for anyone who has learned to distinguish between OER and LO - learning objects (there is no need for any fundamental distinction).  For example, the Centre for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (CITL) describe the distinction as being that OER typically undergo the 4Rs of revise, remix, reuse and redistribute, whilst learning objects are often just repurposed and redistributed.  So whether our site will finally be categorised as an OER repository or LO repository, the implications of the article's conclusions are similar.  Please note, the article title is paraphrased above.  Its analysis and conclusions are drawn from a literature review of related sources. 

Origins (history, key figures)
The authors claim to have 'systematically analysed technology enhanced learning literature regarding LORs’ quality approaches and specific collaborative instruments.' The outcome is claimed to represent a comprehensive framework of LOR quality assurance framework (LORQAF) 'that will 'assist LOR developers in designing sustainable quality assurance approaches utilizing full the potential of collaborative quality assurance tools' (Clements et al. p. 1098, 2015).  

Key ideas, concepts, and principles
OER enable forms of collaborative learning (Dillenbourg, 1999) and LORs of today can be considered as computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments as they provide users tools for posting knowledge productions into a shared working space and providing tools for progressive discourse interaction between the users (Scardamalia & Bereiter,1994).  Adding social and collaborative features has been a recenttrend of LORs to facilitate wider user engagement (Monge,Ovelar,  &  Azpeitia,  2008;  Sánchez-Alonso,  Sicilia,  García-Barriocanal, Pagés-Arévalo, & Lezcano, 2011). However, repositories are not used up to their full potential (Dichev & Dicheva, 2012; Mitchell & Lutters, 2006; Ochoa & Duval, 2009) because of deficiencies in quality control, assurance and evaluation (Downes, 2007; Palavitsinis, Manouselis, &Sánchez-Alonso, 2013).  Therefore, it is vital to study LORs quality approaches (Clements, Pawlowski, & Manouselis, 2014). 

The study investigated quality approaches for LORs with a systematic literature review (Kitchenham (2004) in order to understand the holistic phenomenon of quality assurance and to form a quality approaches framework which LOR developers can consider when designing or improving repositories. 

The following classification was used as the starting theoretical framework:

Learning object repositories quality approaches have previously been classified as (Pawlowski & Clements, 2010):
1. The Generic Approach of Quality standards (e.g. ISO 9000 standards) (Stracke,  2009),  European  Foundation  for  Quality Management Excellence (European Foundation for Quality Management, 2014).
2. Specific Quality Approaches (e.g. Content development criteria or competency requirements) (Leacock & Nesbit, 2007).
3. Specific Quality Instruments (e.g. user-generated collaborative quality approaches such as rating (Nesbit, Belfer, & Vargo,2002), peer review (Neven & Duval, 2002) or recommender systems. 


Fig. 1 Learning object repositories quality assurance framework (Clements et al. 2015, p. 1102).

Implications
Repositories are in fact collaborative tools.  Social interaction is considered to be the dominant factor affecting the success of collaboration. Quality control must logically involve knowing what the audience expects and working with them to deliver.

Quality assurance must involve using specific instruments.

Therefore, the design and delivery/publication process must involve (e.g.) ‘peer-reviewing’ and ‘recommendation systems’. 
Developers have to go deeper than rating systems to understand the dynamic behind OER use and repository 'popularity' - what works on E-bay might not work in the field of education.

Therefore, a mixed approach to assuring quality is recommended including expert review to evaluate the substance of the resources in the repository alongside user-generated collaborative quality instruments such as peer reviews, comments, and rankings.   Both are needed to build the community.
 
References

Baumgartner, P. (2016) ‘Economic Aspects of OER’ [Online]. Available at: 

https://slideplayer.com/slide/6599837/ (accessed 02 June 2020).

Centre for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (2020) 'Learning Objects (LO) vs Open Educational Resources (OER)' [Online]. Available at: https://blog.citl.mun.ca/instructionalresources/courses/learning-object-vs-open-educational-resource-oer/ (Accessed 02 June 2020).

Clements, K., Pawlowski, J. and Manouselis, N. (2015) 'Open educational resources repositories literature review–Towards a comprehensive quality approaches framework.' Computers in human behavior, 51, pp.1098-1106 [Online]. Available at https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0747563215002162?token=5B32DA88FFF9C26D5C6E94BDC1F3F034ED748C8061EF68DC0F36C6580CFA93DD51BF77639D64E533F05A2AE4FFF8A286  (Accessed 01 June 2020).

Image Source: Global Hands

Macbeth:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me..."
Macbeth (II, i, 33)

Hi! This is my response to a study assignment on the same topic of open learning. See my original spoken version on YouTube. Also my articles on LinkedIn.

We were asked to imagine the future of learning. I didn't need to go beyond the guidelines my course on online learning had already laid down for me. Still, we all have our own unique take on things. And like McBeth, I am in awe of the awful choices involved in reaching out to it and aware of the part my own hands will play in my own future.

The future is probably in the clouds, so long as current trends continue and that is definitely towards universities posting more and more content online to both attract learners to learning and also provide a subsistence through the paid services the university offers. Once learners get hooked by the free services offered, there is more chance they become more general subscribers.

So based on trends (open learning facilitating by open educational resources - OER - are on the up), I think that in the future, most universities will have created repositories for open educational resources; it will be for the purpose of marketing the institution. It will both hook into the current trend for online engagement, educational apps, and more sophisticated hardware - smartphones, laptops, and whatever other mobile and semi-mobile devices evolve.

I think that all universities will have them, I think that artificial intelligence will be the systems that organize them. They’ll be much more discoverable because the current aggregators will have refined. Repositories will be more interactive internally because the functions will be voice-responsive, and they'll teach the skills the user needs to conduct searches, without having to type in the input. This will be within a future of OER, where most institutions of education have gone online and so I see a decline in brick and mortar institutions. There will be far less need for physical resources like paper, and that will be another cause of the cost of education going down.

So, for economic reasons, I think that education will go global in the sense that we'll teach all over the world remotely. That that will facilitate much more face-to-face contact via video - tutors will have to open up their schedule, so they are not working the standard 9 to 5 hours within their time zone if they want to benefit from being able to work. We'll be compelled to be compatible with wherever our clients are. Then they will be doing more like shift work in the future. 

More to the point, jobs will be harder to find and at the moment we are already moving to the commodification of labour. No surprise that OER is one of those things that helps facilitate it more! Being part of the global marketplace is not all negative, what I am suggesting may be one way that more teachers stay relevant and employed and internationalization is surely a challenge we embrace, even if we have to adapt to a different sleep pattern.

I think that sums up my view of the future of education. It's not all negative because we still have at least the chance to work, despite my students repeatedly envisaging a world free of teachers - I'm sure it's personal! See my previous articles on connectivist and rhizomatic forms of teaching because for OER to kick in, so do new ways of teaching and learning.

I'd never have been so cocksure of myself, of course, were it not for COVID-19. It's worth reflecting on how this one little pandemic can change our whole perspective on life!

Technologies for openness

I believe open educational resource repositories will become more and more important for open education in the future because they are not only a source of materials that are vital for the sustainability of open education, but they are a starting point for those who wish to become providers of OER.  It is also vital that the quality of the materials provided by these sources remains high, and this is another important role that can be played by supporters of the OER movement.  

When we define open learning, it is not always effective to do so in terms of the principles that underlie open education – education for all, empowerment of the disenfranchised, addressing inequality and stimulating educational achievement for individual self-efficacy and self-development  and economic development through education (i.e. a more able and employable workforce), especially among women, the disabled and discriminated-against minorities.  Nor should we just define open education as being education that is free, globally accessible and fulfilling the 5Rs of (able to) Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute.   We should also define OER in terms of its resources and technologies – ‘the 4 Qs’ (Robinson 2020) Where can we create it? How can we create it? Where can we get it and How can we get it?

Today, I want to focus on these in terms of the technology. To quickly summarise some of these….

HTML allowed the enriching of any site with the capacity to link seamlessly content with other content, whilst remaining in simultaneous touch with the source. One of the main components of what we call ‘web 2.0’.  HTML coul be especially useful in edu-blogs for sharing educational content.

Blogs and its community of ‘edubloggers’, attracted to this format as a way of bypassing formal, rigid and it could be argued, antiquated forms of publishing on a global level to establish an academic identity. Blogs became popular as an OER because of its similarity to print sources – through which most educational materials were shared.

Social networks enable users to share personal ideas, thoughts, news and information through virtual networks and communities through messaging. One of their features is combining of multimedia to distribute documents, videos, and photos via computer, tablet or smartphone using downloaded to your devices or via web-based software or web applications.  Beyond blogs, social networking tools exist in many more formats.; for example, Slideshare and YouTube each represent a different visual format extension of educational print dominated sources such as Twitter or Scribd.

MOOCs and VLEs can act as explicitly open education sources because they act as virtual classrooms or academies, while all the others are often used for many different purposes – not just educational, like entertainment. They can combine with any of the above to enrich the educational or training learning environments they represent.

OER repositories are an additional technology that is important for open education, from the role of both learners and providers because they can help establish academic identity like a blog, as they give a voice to the provider to express their philosophical basis for providing the source and the materials in the source itself can be tailored to a specific audience, that the provider wishes to speak to.  This can be enhanced if the provider is a producer him/herself of the materials, not just a conduit for the creators.  A network or academic community of creators and users can be established via the repository.  Some examples of OER repositories include: Citizendium, CommonSpaces, Curriki (K-12), Gooru (K-12), Internet Archive’s OER Library, Knowledge to Work, MERLOT, OER Commons, WikiEducator (Open Education Global 2020). As, in many circles, education becomes more and more commercialised and less accessible, it is important to mark the distinction between education in general an open education.  As an example, Open Education Global (the provider of my edited list of repositories it names on its website) states its mission ‘improving education access, affordability, success and quality for all’ (Open Education Global 2020).

My first thought when coming across the concept of rhizomatic learning was to try to distinguish it from connectivism, whilst recognising the things they had in common.  I came to the conclusion in focussing on the rhizome metaphor, that the former centres even more on the process than the product of learning when compared with connectivism, to the extent that learners themselves are seen as the curriculum - they decide the learning goals and the journey to those goals is a large part of what is studied. 

Describing rhizomatic learning, Cormier (2008) writes:
'A rhizomatic plant has no centre and no defined boundary; rather, it is made up of a number of semi-independent nodes, each of which is capable of growing and spreading on its own, bounded only by the limits of its habitat' (Cormier, 2008). 

Could I imagine implementing rhizomatic learning?
The current educational climate may be a great time to explore the rhizomatic learning (Cormier 2008) strand of connectivist thinking. I do look for opportunities to create and manage courses partly based on connectivist principles. And right now, when ALL teaching is online because of COVID-19, is an ideal opportunity to be more experimental. 

So far in my limited reading on the topic of rhizomatic learning, was I convinced by it either as a learning theory or as an approach?  I was convinced by it as a learning approach because it does capture how people learn - not in a linear manner. But I agree with Verhagen (cited in Kop and Hill, 2008) that connectivism does not offer anything not already present in existing learning theories and I would extend the same critique to Cormier.

How might rhizomatic learning differ from current approaches?
Anyone can experience what this means by reading about it on Cormier's blog site, Rhizomatic 15 where he offers some real-life insights. His video, 'Embracing Uncertainty – Rhizomatic Learning in Formal Education' (2012) is enlightening of his view of the rhizomatic metaphor of his theory learning. d106 facilitated by Jim Groom contains some elements of rhizomatic and connectivist learning.

What issues would arise in implementing rhizomatic learning?

In my K-12 teaching/learning context,  where not all but many students are used to more passive, deferential form of 'learning'. They see the teacher as the font of knowledge - the one who not only directs learning but defines it in terms of 'knowledge', 'facts' or 'information'. As an example, they even ask permission to speak, even when asked to express themselves freely. For many of them, connectivism would be in conflict with the traditional concept of a course, though it is still possible to get them to enjoy task-based, self-directed learning. At their developmental stage, however, they are not quite 'world-wise' enough to know how to use that 'power' responsibly. 

References

Embracing Uncertainty – Rhizomatic Learning in Formal Education (2012) YouTube video, added by Dave Cormier [Online]. Available at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=VJIWyiLyBpQ (Accessed 21 October 2019).

Kop, R., & Hill, A. (2008) ‘Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?’ The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 9(3). https://doi.org/ 10.19173/ irrodl.v9i3.523 (Accessed 21 October 2019)

Hello everyone

In this offering, I summarise my findings on the reading of DeRosa (2016), My open textbook: pedagogy and practice, which explores learning through the creation of open educational resources (e.g when students create a textbook and publish online for everyone and anyone to use and learn about the process) in reflecting on my own experience of OER on several MOOCS I've been a part of. 

Image Source: 
Opensourceway / CC BY-SA

DeRosa's (2016), 'My open textbook: pedagogy and practice' is an almost too good to be true example of open educational practice. The course I currently study on (the Open University H817 course, 'Openness and innovation in e-Learning') and other courses I've studied on have utilized open pedagogy, which is why I say 'too good to be true ' - almost. Open Pedagogy is defined by BC Campus (2020) as:

'the use of open educational resources ...with a goal of improving education...inviting ...students to be part of the teaching process, participating in the co-creation of knowledge.'

and my own experience of open pedagogy for me illustrates some of the potential benefits and drawbacks of open pedagogy for some.  But Rosa's experience doesn't surprise me.  It is simply an open pedagogical example of a perfect storm - a serendipitous coming together of the right ingredients - keen students who love their subject, who quickly form a cohesive team, ably aided by an adventurous, knowledgable teacher with a similar zest for exploration and collaboration.  Here are some of the pros and cons most mere mortals will encounter:

Potential drawbacks
if there is no consistent group to begin with (e.g. there is a rolling enrollment where new, uninitiated students keep popping up)
if 'training' is needed pre-task, such as how to use an app or an approach to learning only a few learners are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with.  Using an online platform, students may not be able to find what they are looking for to take part in a group task
if no one has time or opportunity - online courses involve people from all over the world, different time zones and often with previous commitments - unlike a group of college students whose main commitment is the course

Benefits
As DeRosa points out, the benefits of the approach far outweigh the potential drawbacks. It is worth facing the drawbacks because in many ways, even the embarrassing pitfalls (on many levels) aid learners in their search for rich, worthwhile ( you'll get there in the end) and meaningful (transferable realistic) learning experiences: students become independent doers and teachers what they need to be more often - learners.  As roles switch and educator/learner realise their roles are becoming more flexible, a new relationship between teacher/learners evolves and brings them closer together. At the same time, learners see each other more as companions on a learning journey that they need each other to complete.

In our little micro experience of open pedagogy (creating a group wiki) all of the drawbacks occurred. Nevertheless, groups did get it together to create a wiki page with links that each member had worked on to create the site. Some of us question whether the experience had come too early in the course.  Because of the insight it gave me in one vital area of the course content, I was very glad for what it gave me. We immediately felt a group responsibility to do our part or to let others know what we could contribute at the very least, in most cases.  This motivated a lot of us to go beyond to help the group and not lose group 'face'. 

Though some of us (me) had not built a wiki before, I am sure we will be even more interested and engaged the next time we are asked to do something like it again.  Thi sis an example of how a group task can motivate to learn more when working alone, it's possible to just hide and hope no one notices you, which works in many cases.   I am much more motivated as well to extol the benefits of wikis to my learners, asking them to open a free account and set up wikis of their own and of learning how to create open resources such as open textbooks.  

I end with a paraphrase of some of Rosa's tips about what can help  make open pedagogy a success:

• Rome was not built in a day.  Look at the whole experience as a work-in-progress in one approach to more effective learning. Quote: 'it will continually improve as learners engage with it.'
• If it connects with the course aims and / or more importantly, with students' own learning goals, it is worthwhile.
• Nowadays there are resources for learning how to do anything - get with it.  In Rosa's class's case 'Learn how to openly license your book and learn how to get it online so folks can access and share it' (DeRosa 2016). 

Reference

DeRosa R. (2016) ‘My open textbook: pedagogy and practice’ [Online]. Available at: http://robinderosa.net/ uncategorized/ my-open-textbook-pedagogy-and-practice/ (Accessed 21 October 2019).

image source: Lane, L.M. (2012) ‘Three Kinds of MOOCs

Comparing MOOCs

Even in the last five years, definitions of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have evolved.  I say definitions because I think it is widely agreed that there are different types of MOOCs, serving different purposes for the users and for providers. Originally, since the early part of the 21st century (though some will argue that MOOCs existed before then), most observers could probably agree that a MOOC was a course provided through an online platform, using tools such as videos, and discussion forums, and with the emergence of web 2.0 apps, the ability to integrate with social networks.  Some of the main characteristics of a MOOC were that they were often provided free, open to anyone and were offered by internationally known institutions or their faculty and did not offer a formal accreditation system.

cMOOCs (including task-based and networked-based)

Prior to 2015, we had seen the emergence of two major strands of MOOCs: cMOOCs and xMOOCs. The theoretical basis of cMOOCs was seen as “connectivism, openness, and participatory teaching” (Jacoby, cited in Veletsianos and Shepherdson 2016, p. 199- 200), emphasizing the active part learners play in knowledge creation, through their connections with other learners and their learning environment via networks facilitated by online technology. Canadian researchers George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier based their MOOCs on the connectivist principles that everyone should determine their own learning goals, and structure and manage their own learning via personal learning networks.  The learner is free throughout the whole learning process.   These principles are still followed through in the task-based (Lane, 2012) MOOC, d106 facilitated by Jim Groom and Rhizomatic 15 by Dave Cormier, both supported by leading lights in connectivism theory.  Cormier describes Rhizomatic as ‘a story for how we can think about learning and teaching’ where the learning community is the ‘curriculum’ or ‘challenge’. He asks participants to think of the learning environment as ‘’a research lab’, in which where participants are ‘researching along with me’.  In terms of technology, the emphasis on social networking tools is clear when he talks about his communication with learners: ‘I’ll post it in the newsletter, I’ll tweet it … I’ll post it in the Facebook group and I’ll post it on the course blog.’  Similarly, d106 is described as 'Digital Storytelling’ where ‘you can join in whenever you like and leave whenever you need’ and describes how they ran a course ‘where… there was no teacher’.  Communication is via a blog feed. Due to their open nature (where is no set ‘curriculum’, learners define ‘success’ and learning path, it is difficult to formally assess a learner’s progress and therefore to acquire monetary gain from these types of MOOC.

xMOOCs (including content-based)

In contrast to cMOOCS, xMOOCs follow a cognitivist-behaviourist approach (Hew & Cheung, cited in Veletsianos and Shepherdson 2016, p.199) resembling ‘traditional teacher-directed course[s]’ (Kennedy, cited in Veletsianos and Shepherdson 2016, p.200). The number of xMOOCs delivered has been growing rapidly, whilst any cMOOCS that still have some connectivist aspects to them (use of social media, group tasks) have adopted more and more of the features of xMOOCs (a fixed content is ‘delivered’ – hence the term content-based), to the extent they can be called hybrids. The UK company FutureLearn, for example, offers free, open MOOCS but its platforms are also used to promote fee-paying degrees with The Open University, microcredits and badges and the courses are structured by Futurelearn to quite a large extent. FutureLearn’s free courses also offer ‘extra benefits’ for a price, so students can gain extended access to materials. None of these are offered for a fee on the cMOOCS discussed above, as any course benefits are extended free of charge. The ‘open’ aspect on Futurelearn courses is more about students’ freedom to study at their own pace, than on unfettered access to materials. In terms of technology, however, Futurelearn has a more varied offering.  On its online educator course, students use video, interactive quizzes and polls that are a fixed part of the course offering, as well as various social media that are used on the cMOOC courses, ds106 and Rhizomatic.  

In 2020, there are more than 900 universities around the world offering over 11,400 MOOCs and the emphasis is on monetary gain – accounting for the emphasis on a cognitivist-behaviourist, where institutions can ask for payment based on the learners’ achievement of specific goals.  So, whilst, d106 and Rhizomatic, offering free courses, make very little money each year, by contrast, Coursera's 2018 estimated revenue is around $150 million and FutureLearn made around $10million. This means there is a corresponding focus on formal accreditation of learning. Perhaps partly for the same reason, the concept of free and openness, very apparent in former approaches to MOOCs, has now evolved to mean anyone can apply from anywhere.  More and more courses are asking for formal proof of prior learning, such as a diploma or degree and fees are being charged in return for globally recognised certificates.  However, the term ‘open’ has always been defined differently by different observers. FutureLearn course, I can speak to all aspects of one of its MOOCs. 

Hew, K. F., & Cheung, W. S. (2014). Students’ and instructors' use of massive open online courses (MOOCs): Motivations and challenges. Educational Research Review, 12, 45.

Jacoby, J. (2014). The disruptive potential of the massive open online course: A literature review. Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, 18(1), 73-85.

Kennedy, J. (2014). Characteristics of massive open online courses (MOOCs): A research review, 2009–2012. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 13(1), 1–16.

Lane, L.M. (2012) ‘Three Kinds of MOOCs’ Blog. [Online]. Available at http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/musings/three-kinds-of-moocs/ (Accessed March 29, 2020)

Veletsianos and Shepherdson (2016), A Systematic Analysis and Synthesis of the Empirical MOOC Literature Published in 2013–2015.

HI!

Happy Nauryz everyone. I hope you all found time to spend time with your mothers on Mother's Day!

This week, we were asked to imagine we were constructing a five-week, online course aimed at providing a set of learners with resources for developing their ‘digital skills’, with a different subject each week.  For me, it would be for young learners - pre-undergraduates.   We were asked to visit a set of Open Educational Resource (OER) Websites (sources of materials that can be reused, repurposed, redesigned freely) and evaluate them in terms of how they were able to cater to each of the topics of our imaginary courses. 

I devise a broad outline of the topics to be covered every week (see the grid below).  The OER repositories we were given are the following:

Solvonauts

Merlot

MIT

OpenLearn

OpenStax

Saylor

I used the topics listed below and added the word 'training' or 'skills' for my searches and looked for teaching or readily adaptable for teaching materials in my results.   Overall, I did find a few of them useful and some of them not very useful at all.  I am happy they are there and the ones I liked I will probably use again. 

Have a look at how each of the sites did:

 As you can see, generally I was quite satisfied, but one or two of the sites fell below my expectations.  There is a possibility that is because the sites just were not suitable for my course and/or my lack of knowledge of them meant I was unable to use them properly in the limited time I had to search.  As our course tutor points out:  Different sites have different requirements, follow different 'regulations', and restrictions.  'Some make accessibility a requirement, while others offer guidelines' (Open University, 2020). 

Hi everyone,
This week we were asked to read two resources that provide views on different aspects of what openness means in higher education.  and to create a visual representation that defines openness in education by drawing on some of the concepts listed in our two chosen resources (I tried to include all of what I thought were the key ones). Our tutors suggested PowerPoint, Prezi or any other tool of our choice. I decided I would also share details about my tool of choice to try and help others decide what tool to use.
I didn't want to use PowerPoint because of the bad press it's getting so I went with the suggestion to use an online tool such as Prezi and found out about MS Sway.  My key concepts of openness are taken from Weller et al. (2018) and Tait (2018).  Here is my presentation: Representing open education (MS Sway)

About Microsoft Sway 
PowerPoint is too much associated with shiny-suited people with no speaking skills. Anybody can use Sway if they sign up for a free Microsoft account. People with an Office 365 can also use Sway, the free version provides more than enough for the average user.  If you enter a term Sway will produce the outline of a presentation for you, with definitions, uses, areas to cover, suggested linked topics, images, and more. This is all powered from Wikipedia data and gives full links back to the pages it uses.   So Sway helps you overcome 'writer's block'. 

I think the main advantage of SWAY is compatibility and share-ability.  It is compatible with the Web using Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, Firefox 17 or later, Chrome 23 or later, and Safari 6 or later.  It works with Apple (online) and MS devices. You can embed a wide variety of content — including images, video files, audio clips, and maps — from several web sites in your Sway.  With Sway, you have a few options for who you can share with (specific people, your coworkers, anyone) and what access they will get (view only or edit). You also can control whether or not they have access to share it with others.

References

Weller, M., Jordan, K., DeVries, I. and Rolfe, V., 2018. Mapping the open education landscape: citation network analysis of historical open and distance education research. Open Praxis, 10(2), pp.109-126. [Online].
https://www.learntechlib.org/p/183582/article_183582.pdf (Accessed 21 March 2020).

Tait, A. (2018) ‘Open Universities: the next phase’, Asian Association of Open Universities Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 13–23 [Online]. DOI: 10.1108/ AAOUJ-12-2017-0040 (Accessed 21 October 2019).

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 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. 




References