'reflection'
In the constructivist philosophy, meaning is derived from the experiences gained while undertaking activities/tasks which are scaffolded by course content. The process of reflecting on these experiences and contextualising them with existing experiences helps to develop knowledge.
Feedback is a vital part of the reflection process as it introduces external ideas and extends the range of experiences and information that the learner is exposed to. It stands to reason then that the broader the range of feedback that a learner receives, the richer their reflection will be. Social web tools offer the possibility of feedback from a global audience.
Oliver (2004) points out that “Students involved in self evaluation are more interested in the criteria and substantive feedback than the grades achieved. The interest is piqued by the need for honesty in the application of the criteria for others (peer assessment) and to their own work as well as being able to defend opinions through evidence over subjective judgements.”
Brown & Voltz (2005) go on to say that “Experience becomes knowledge through reflection, which is enhanced by timely and appropriate criticism”.
On a practical level, “the range of available feedback strategies is vast, including reflective responses to prescribed questions, semi-automated responses by the system to student actions and work, shared comments in online forums and blogs and personal responses via email, telephone and post.”(Brown & Voltz, 2005).
It can be used in such a way that learners complete an initial draft of assessment work, post it publicly as an RFC (request for comment) and then incorporate feedback from the community into an updated final version.
Networked based learning offers opportunities for feedback from beyond the usual teacher and fellow students spectrum. The growth of the social web adds the notion of audience to the pool of sources of feedback – learners can now publish the work that they produce in class to the world and receive unvarnished feedback instantly which expands the range of knowledge being drawn on exponentially.
This notion of audience has been used in the Schools News Project. “The feedback from the community will inform the student teams of the quality of the product, its story telling qualities and its social responsibility in terms of ethical treatment of those whose stories have been included in the news items.” (Lockyer, Brown & Blackall, 2003).
The addition of information from the real world is one of the most exciting things about using the social web in education as it brings greater authenticity to the learning experience which heightens motivation.
It also has a useful side effect of developing greater levels of information, technological, critical and media literacy.
Practitioners (particularly those in the K-12 schools sector) considering making use of the social web will need to be mindful of the fact that it is a relatively uncontrolled environment and conscientious moderation of communication may be required. School and government policies may also determine the level of access learners are given to social web sites.
Lockyer, L., Brown, I. & Blackall, D. (2003). A learning design to support multi-literacy development in K-12 contexts. In A. Rossett (Ed.). Proceedings of E-Learn 2003 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education. (pp.1703-06) Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Brown A.R., & Voltz B.D. (2005) Elements of Effective e-Learning Design, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/217/300
Oliver, R. (2004). Moving beyond instructional comfort zones with online courses.. In R.Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 713-723). Perth, 5-8 December. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/oliver-r.html
August 19th, 2007
Step 1: Take notice and describe the experience
The feedback I received on my first learning object was very encouraging. The broader understanding that I have already developed of strategies to add meaning to learning (e.g. visual analogies – Anglin et al. (2004)) and to enhance the learners ability to process information (e.g. text conventions – Hartley, J (2004)) have been particularly useful. It’s satisfying to feel that I’m on the right track.
After submitting the Learning Object, I did some further testing on it and found that I should have been more mindful of screen size. I tend to work at a relatively high resolution which means that everything fitted on my screen easily but on monitors at lower resolution this wasn’t the case and some scrolling was necessary. I decided that the pages were good enough as they are but will be more mindful of these issues in future design.
I also found that Microsoft has now released an update for the Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox which resolves some of the display issues that had been a problem previously. I was less worried about this as issues of cross-browser compatibility are important for learners to be aware of but will look for some way to incorporate this information into the object. (Probably by adding a resources page).
In looking at the first learning object (and considering the second), I thought for a while that it would be great to have a learning object that consisted of a video with a set of sliders beneath which can alter various qualities of the video (bitrate, codec and file type) in real time to offer a live model of how changes affect video directly but this seems far too difficult.
I’m still working on producing resources for training sessions on using video at this stage. I’d like something a little more active this time around – most likely something that provides more feedback to learners in terms of formative assessment. This would probably take the form of a quiz or game revolving around multiple choice questions as tasks that the learner needs to answer to move on to the next stage.
We currently offer several simple, wizard based tools for creating simple games at CIT. Most of these are essentially dressed up self marking multiple choice quizzes put into a more interesting context such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? I’d like to offer something that goes beyond this.
I’m interested in maximising the interactivity and exploring some principles of games in education theory (Prensky 2006) however time constraints may mean it’s a smaller project than I’d like.
Another area that I’m interested in focussing on is that of foundation I.T literacy skills. Apparently we have a small division of responsibility issue on this at CIT however (this area is regarded more as a task for the H.R department) so I need to tread carefully.
Step 2: Analyse the experience
My decision to leave the first learning object as it is was mainly on practical grounds – the time and effort required to make a change which is mainly aesthetic. My personal feeling is that scrolling should be avoided if possible but that most users are ok with it.
Adding a resources page to the first learning object seems like a useful approach to take in terms of providing support to learners. The majority of learners that I teach have low level technological skills and the complexity of video creation is challenging enough for them without being expected to figure out what else they need to know (and use) and where to find it.
I’m looking at the quiz/game idea as a resource to provide learners with reinforcement of their learning as this meshes well with my interest in the use of games in learning as motivational tools. The more I read about the development of higher level skills – particularly in regard to problem solving and the ability to transfer knowledge from one situation to another – the more a game based approach seems useful.
Step 3: Take action
I’ve learnt to be more thorough in my testing process and to try to empathise more with the likely needs of learners for easy access to resources.
I’ve also learnt that some technical issues can simply be beyond your control – the Firefox/WMP plugin compatibility issue namely – but it’s worth following I.T news as these are often the first sources for resolutions.
I need to focus some more attention specifically on game design principles and see what links I can make to educational strategies.
April 23rd, 2007
http://uow.ico5.janison.com/ed/subjects/edgi911w/resources/heuristics.htm
In spite of the fact that the guide to writing heuristics itself says that collecting them isn’t “academically respectable”, they are evidently worth investigating as convenient summaries of “the truth” of a theory or body of knowledge.
This is what the guide has to say about writing them:
Structuring your heuristics
Use the following structure to set out each heuristic:
Heuristic statement
- State the issue in a single, active sentence.
Explanation
- Provide an explanation in support of your statement of up to 500 words for each heuristics covering the following:
- Expand on your statement above to explain what it means in more detail
- Explain the background to the topic by including references to the relevant concepts from the literature using the correct referencing style
- Explain what the heuristic means in practice and give examples if appropriate
- Explain why this is a useful heuristic in your context as a learner, teacher or designer
- Explain why the issue is important to you, in other words why did you choose to write about it
- Offer any practical suggestions you might have for other practitioners trying to implement the heuristic
References
- List all the references cited in your explanation as per the convention.
I have four of these bastards to do, God help us all 
March 21st, 2007
Writing reflectively seems like it should be easier than digesting and regurgitating a swag of other people’s writings into a new and coherent form, but if you take it seriously it’s surprisingly in depth.
We’re working from a new template for the critical reflection process which is being tested as part of one of the PhD students studies. (Click on image for fullsized view)
In essence, assuming I have it right, it breaks down like this.
- Discuss what you are doing, how you feel about it and what you know
- Discuss why you made the decisions here that you did and how you felt about them
- Discuss what you have learnt from that.
So far this seems like a pretty strong system to use for reflection.
That said, the first one has been something of a challenge – this structure seems to work pretty well when you have actually begun work on something but for the first reflection we have been asked to consider our overall knowledge and skills in the area of designing multimedia and to look at what kind of projects we might undertake and what kind of skills we are going to try to build.
Fortunately I have a number of work projects coming up (particularly relating to training teachers in using audio and video in online learning) that this subject seems ideal for, so with a bit of luck, the two will cross over nicely.
March 18th, 2007
