Major points:

The web has been highly social since it began (listservs, Usenet groups, discussion software, groupware etc)

Web 2.0 breaks “away from the notion of the Web as book, they are predicated on microcontent. Blogs are about posts, not pages. Wikis are streams of conversation, revision, amendment and truncation.”

“Like social software, microcontent has been around for a while. Banner ads, for example, are often imported by one site from another directory. Collaboratively designed web pages sometimes aggregate content created by different teams over a staggered timeline”

“Openness remains a hallmark of this emergent movement, both ideologically and technologically”

“Openness and microcontent combine into a larger conceptual strand of Web 2.0, one that sees users as playing more of a foundational role in information architecture” (tagging)

“How can social bookmarking play a role in higher education?… First, they act as an “outboard memory”, a location to store links that might be lost to time, scattered across different browser bookmark settings or distributed in e-mails, printouts and Web links.

Second, finding people with related interests can magnify one’s work by learning from others or by leading to new collaborations. Third, the practice of user-created tagging can offer new perspectives on one’s research, as clusters of tags reveal patterns (or absences) not immediately visible by examining one of several URLs.

Fourth, the ability to create multi-authored bookmark pages can be useful for team projects, as each member can upload resources discovered, no matter their location or timing. Tagging can then surface individual perspectives within the collective. Fifth, following a bookmark site gives insights into the owner’s (or owners’) research, which could play well in a classroom setting as an instructor tracks students’ progress. Students, in turn, can learn from their professor’s discoveries. ”

Wikis, blogging and RSS are good. (He says more but you surely know this stuff by now

The reverse chronological nature of Web 2.0 is particularly good for queries on current events.

Potential issues – copyright, network security when hosted on local networks, stability/longevity of service providers, preservation of useful pieces of microcontent, corporate buy-ups

Some interesting ideas in this one, much more based in what is happening rather than the hype of what might come.  

In which the usually slightly curmudgeonly Stephen Downes jumps on the 2.0 bandwagon and rides it for all it’s worth. 

“Where we are now

In general, where we are now in the online world is where we were before the beginning of e-learning [1]. Traditional theories of distance learning, of (for example) transactional distance, as described by Michael G. Moore, have been adapted for the online world. Content is organized according to this traditional model and delivered either completely online or in conjunction with more traditional seminars, to cohorts of students, led by an instructor, following a specified curriculum to be completed at a predetermined pace.”

If it’s online, can’t the learners access any and all of the material when and where they want?
“One trend that has captured the attention of numerous pundits is the changing nature of Internet users themselves. Sometimes called “digital natives” and sometimes called “n-gen,” these new users approach work, learning and play in new ways [2].

They absorb information quickly, in images and video as well as text, from multiple sources simultaneously. They operate at “twitch speed,” expecting instant responses and feedback. They prefer random “on-demand” access to media, expect to be in constant communication with their friends (who may be next door or around the world), and they are as likely to create their own media (or download someone else’s) as to purchase a book or a CD [3].”

I.T and media literacy has seen a boom in the creation of media content but statistically, only about 1% of people visiting web 2.0 sites are actually contributing to them.  

“The changing demographics of the student population and the more consumer/client-centered culture in today’s society have provided a climate where the use of student-centered learning is thriving” [6]. Learning is characterized not only by greater autonomy for the learner, but also a greater emphasis on active learning, with creation, communication and participation playing key roles, and on changing roles for the teacher, indeed, even a collapse of the distinction between teacher and student altogether [7].

The breaking down of barriers has led to many of the movements and issues we see on today’s Internet. File-sharing, for example, evolves not of a sudden criminality among today’s youth but rather in their pervasive belief that information is something meant to be shared. This belief is manifest in such things as free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses for content, and open access to scholarly and other works. Sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial [9]. And open content is viewed not merely as nice to have but essential for the creation of the sort of learning network described by Siemens [10].”

The technology might have made it easier but I don’t think it’s given birth to the attitude, I remember friends making tapes of albums for me as a youth.  

“In short, the structures and organization that characterized life prior to the Internet are breaking down. Where intermediaries, such as public relations staff, journalists or professors, are not needed, they are disregarded. Consumers are talking directly to producers, and more often than not, demanding and getting new standards of accountability and transparency. Often, they inform the productive process itself, and in many cases, replace it altogether. Passive has become active. Disinterested has become engaged. The new Internet user may not vote, but that is only because the vote is irrelevant when you govern yourself. ”

If producers spend all their time among other producers, are they able to see that most people are still consumers?

“What was happening was that major parts of the World Wide Web were acquiring the properties of communications networks, the sorts of networks found to exist (albeit on a much smaller scale) in the physical world. And that the Web itself was being transformed from what was called “the Read Web” to the “Read-Write Web,” in accordance with Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision. Proponents of this new, evolving Web began calling it Web 2.0 and in short order the trend became a movement.”

 In broad terms, yes.

“In a nutshell, what was happening was that the Web was shifting from being a medium, in which information was transmitted and consumed, into being a platform, in which content was created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along. And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the world of blogging. In a few short years the blog went from a few idiosyncratic Web sites to something used by millions of people empowered by content creation tools such as Blogger and Wordpress. Even more importantly, these blogs were connected to each other through the mechanism of RSS, a simple XML format that allows bloggers to send their content to a network of readers (called ’subscribers’).

But it wasn’t just blogging. Creating an online community became a snap with tools such as Plone and Drupal. Moreover, using a collaborative writing tool called the wiki Jimmy Wales and a few thousand of his friends created a site called Wikipedia, rendering Encyclopedia Britannica obsolete in the process. Others, using the free audio-recording tool Audacity, began recording their own talk and music; this, when combined with RSS, became podcasting, a rapidly rising phenomena that is transforming what we think about radio.

E-Learning 2.0

In the world of e-learning, the closest thing to a social network is a community of practice, articulated and promoted by people such as Etienne Wenger in the 1990s. According to Wenger, a community of practice is characterized by “a shared domain of interest” where “members interact and learn together” and “develop a shared repertoire of resources.”

For the most part, though, what constituted “community” in online learning were artificial and often contrived “discussions” supported by learning management systems [15]. These communities were typically limited to a given group of learners, such as a university class, had a fixed start and end-point, and while substantially better than nothing, rarely approached Wenger’s theory.”

Other points of interest

•  blogs and wikis give a larger audience
• blogging gives more personal insights
• podcasting enhances convenience
• structure comes to resemble more of a conversation
• personal learning environments offer a space to showcase work
• learning comes not from the design of the content but how it is used
• games allow students to take charge of their learning

Overall, some interesting ideas – my feeling is that the technology might allow many things to happen but it is the organisational philosophies and culture that will have to evolve for these things to actually happen.

Lockyer, L. & Bennett, S. (2003) Digital video cases: Investigating the effectiveness of technology-supported continuing professional education for general practitioners. In N. Smythe (Ed.), Proceedings of the Apple University Consortium Conference (pp. 13.1-13.7). (Proceedings published on CD-ROM.)

These are two papers published about the process of developing some multimedia learning resources. They are written by some of my uni lecturers, which makes this a little weird but I’ll press on anyway.

The first revolves around a package called Dual Diagnosis, which is designed to assist GPs with evaluating patients with both mental illness and substance dependencies. It includes video clip case study examples of patients attending a number of sessions with a doctor. It also has pre and post tests and a range of printed information and weblinks.  There is also the ability to take notes within the tool.

Overall this is a pretty well put together package (well, at least given my knowledge of medicine) – however one thing I would have found useful was more in depth feedback in the pre and post tests. It gives you a breakdown of the questions that  you got right and wrong but doesn’t reiterate what they were and what the correct answers should have been. This might have broken the elegance of the single page presentation but would have been more helpful.

“Case-based methods are considered to support learners in making links between theory and practice – specifically such methods support active, independent learning with authentic situations and interactions. (Bromley, 1986). Learners are required to analyse these ‘real-world’ problems, reflect on their understandings, interact with other learners and thus explore multiple perspectives and reflect upon or suggest a course of action. (Bennett, Harper and Hedberg, 2002). Specifically these strategies are seen to support deep understanding, critical analysis, decision-making and communication skill development”

This package was tested on two groups of GPs – one that had attended a face-to-face orientation session and another that hadn’t. This paper was written before the evaluation was complete but some of the responses to and concerns about the package were interesting – “Participants expressed concern about using it in an office setting – particularly with a patient in the office. They also identified that they already felt pressed for time and were unsure that they would find opportunity to work through the package. Some identified lack of access to a computer or were concerned that they might lack the necessary technology literacy to use the package”

This suggests to me that some people will instinctly react against the use of multimedia technology and that the design of the interface should be as simple as possible (which I think it is in this case) and probably should reflect something that the learner is already familiar and comfortable with.  

The second package is a fairly specific training package for alumina producers at an aluminium refinery in Queensland. It is very much about training workers in particular processes to ensure maximum efficiency and safety.

Bennett begins by illustrating the proven usefulness of multimedia in education.

“Interactive multimedia can offer a range of benefits over traditional training approaches by providing improved flexibility, cost and time effectiveness, consistency and availability… Forman (1995) identifies benefits and values in four major areas – organisational benefits, instructional benefits, learning effectiveness and business efficiency.l Multimedia can also provide improved and more consistent testing and administration… Keppell and Richards (1996) also suggest that self paced multimedia materials offer a private environment which enables trainees to review the material as many times as they wish”

The multimedia package was designed as a supplementary resource to the face to face instruction.

“A new training structure was designed which incorporated a multimedia tutorial which could be used before, during and after practical training sessions with an experienced operator”

There was a comprehensive development cycle used:

1. Needs assessment
2. Costing and scheduling
3. Content collection
4. Planning grid development
5. Editorial
6. Client review
7. Revision and sign-off
8. Image collection
9. Digitising
10. Authoring
11. Audio
12. Beta testing
13. Client review
14. Revision and sign-off
15. Delivery
16. Trial and evaluation

“These multimedia packages were developed to train operators of heavy mining equipment and were designed to address limited literacy and computer skills through the following strategies:

• the use of simple direct language
• limiting screen information to a single concept
• logical explanations for procedures
• use of graphics to support and explain text
• use of large buttons
• avoidance of icons
• limited navigation options (next, back, help, quit, menu and settings”

“Further development of this model has seen the inclusion of optional, full narration which matches the on-screen text and text/audio help which provides an explanation of the features on each screen. Kenworthy (1993) recommends that information be both visualised and verbalised for poor readers and that supporting audio match on-screen text exactly to allow the identification of unfamiliar words.”

Those are some particularly handy hints – the use of audio in a lot of educational multimedia resources is very underdone and I think it should be used in most places that you have text. I was surprised by the avoidance of icons – maybe this means icons by themselves without accompanying text – I might have to follow that up.  

All in all a couple of interesting projects with some good detailed information about the multimedia design and development process.

This is a fairly wordy section on a quite specific aspect of the process of designing interactive multimedia so I’m just going to scan for salient quotes. (I’m a little tired

“Given the capability of multimedia systems to house massive quantities of information and to construct complex delivery systems, it seems reasonable to encourage the development of instructional systems which contain mre than a single cognitive orientation. In this way, the designer can impose consistency between the cognitive orientation and different learning tasks, and also capitalise on the possibility of designing instruction which is compatible with learning styles and preferences”

I won’t quote it but there’s a pretty good summation of the differences between the behaviourist, cognitivist and constructivist philosophies and approaches in this chapter.

They then move on to look at options for specifying content.

“Many projects will result in a glut of information you need to organise. In fact, one can argue that instructional design is largely the process of organising rather than creating, opportunities for learning”

The Content Outline is a suggested approach, consisting of a set of objectives for the course, the content necessary to achieve them and the treatment that the the content might be given. (How it is presented)

From here, Design specifications are quite useful – simple things to ensure consistency across the multimedia product- These might be broken into technical standards, instructional formats and aesthetic considerations.

Technical standards could look at issues like:

• Writing style
• Screen format (eg a single idea to a screen of text)
• Grammar (eg no contractions to be used)
• Numbering
• Layout restrictions
• Abbreviations

Instructional formats could consider:

• Strategy (e.g scenarios with background reading)
• Menu Organisation (advanced organisers)
• Length of segments (time allocated to activities)
• Reading level
• Test-like events
• feedback

Aesthetic considerations:

• Screen text (font + size)
• Color
• Computer vs video
• music
• illustrations
• visual cues

From here, Misanchuk & Schwier see the next step as setting up the framework for the content.

This takes five forms.

Core instruction: introductory segments (what’s to come, objectives) + core instruction (the primary content) + summary segments (reinforcing key points)

Complementary instruction:  help segments (rephrasing or embellishing core instruction) + remedial segments (filling in scaffolding knowledge that should already be there) + additional information (enriching but not essential extra info). (Complementary instruction shouldn’t appear by default but should be easily accessible if it is needed)

Management elements:  quizzes, games, scenarios which offer feedback (or assessment)

Navigation elements: easy access to all sections of content, global escape route, “you are here” type maps

Interactive elements:  immediacy of response, non-sequential access of information, adaptability, feedback, options, bi-directionality and interruptability (pause and escape options and context sensitive help)

“For interaction to be dynamic, it is necessary to build content for the varied directions the instruction may follow.This means developing a great deal of content which any particular learner may never see.”

From here, Schwier and Misanchuk move on to the matter of allowing learners to practice their new knowledge in the multimedia environment. They outline some generalised principles for this:

• practice during instruction should be varied, not constant
• as familiarity with the learning task increases, so should the difficulty of practice increase
• learners should be weaned from prompts as their facility with knowledge or skills increases
• use practice often during the early stages of learning and gradually lengthen the space between practice sessions on a particular topic as instruction progresses
• for some types of learning, practice should progress from accuracy to speed to automaticity
• review segments can be used successfully in place of questions
• feedback should identify the successful and the unsuccessful features of the interaction and describe why incorrect responses or omissions are insufficient
• learners can benefit from memory or organisational strategies to make information more meaningful
• practice events should require learners to use information and discover and derive new relationships in information
• practice should be designed to motivate learners

Learner control:

There are a range of areas that learners might control in a multimedia product:

•  which content they access
• the method it is presented in
• whether they access supplementary material
• the order they access the content
• how much practice they undertake
• level of difficulty of exercises undertaken

They finish up the chapter by looking at some different studies on what happens when learners use multimedia products in groups – some show that retention is the same for singles as pairs but drops off with 3 or more in the group while other studies don’t. (But the 2 vs 3+ thing seems to make a certain amount of sense – hard to cram three people around a screen for one thing)

This article, like many others, starts out with the usual rah-rah interactive multimedia is great, shift to learner-control, enriching the learning experience yada yada spiel. It’s all fairly true but it seems to be at the start of every article I’ve read for a while now.

Once it gets past this preliminary stuff though, it is actually fairly useful and contains a number of interesting approaches to designing navigation in multimedia. It’s a little unfortunate that the article is 15 years old though as you get the sense that there’s probably been a lot more work done since. It therefore requires a little extrapolation to move the concepts to the 3D game based environment that I’m thinking about (I think Wolfenstein 3D had only just been released at the time this was written)

My project is to develop a 3D game space that the learner walks through in first person perspective. It provides new teachers at CIT an orientation to the services and resources available within the Education Development Centre at CIT, which includes Curriculum, Teacher Education, the Library and Flexible Learning Solutions (the online learning unit).

It’s possible to run this as a multiplayer game which allows for real-time text chat interaction between a number of players.

I’ll run through some of the interesting ideas about multimedia navigation in the paper and how I might use them in my game.

(To begin, here is why good navigation design is important)

“… used effectively, the technology can allow users to interact in ways that the designers of the system did not plan… good instructional design of interactive multimedia materials makes it unnecessary to materials to be structured for the learner. Effective student use of unstructured materials however, will depend on the type of access to the information the users can obtain i.e. the navigation options available to the user. ”

“When a learner can branch down multiple paths and rapidly change the direction and focus of the learning sequence, there is possible interference with effective learning through the inappropriate application of information by the learner to their internal schemas”

Navigation options:

“the guide metaphor where a character is created and used by the author to link ideas and visual travel through the hypermedia materials” – this is certainly one approach to the game and could be done in several different ways.

A non-player-character is automated and sets the learner tasks to complete in the environment (although this isn’t a guide so much I guess) – there could be NPCs in hallways that can answer basic queries about where certain areas are. The other option is to have a live guide in the multiplayer version who runs a bit of an orientation – though this isn’t necessarily very practical or realistic.

“other suggested structures include those which are based on ideas such as sequential navigation (using cues to show how far you are along a path; the clues varying from a simple screen number of the total or some conceptual description of the sequence), visual navigation (using a plan of the possible paths) and hybrid navigation (mixtures of both) (Hedberg & Harper, 1991)”

This has given me some thoughts about ways to set up the activities – in recreational gaming I’m fairly partial to sandpit style games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, where you can take on missions or just explore the environment. (But you need to complete certain missions to unlock new missions or new parts of the environment). I could have the entire area explorable, with different kinds of resources accessible (including being able to chat to all the staff) as well as having a room where you can get your missions from. You could collect keys (or something) which allow you to unlock rooms which provide additional missions. You could measure your progress by looking at the rooms you’ve opened.

Techniques to provide navigation cues for users:

“using colour to identify the area or major learning path”

This actually works pretty well as we recently had the rooms in our area repainted and each dept went with a different colour scheme. I’m thinking that it would be useful to have a few “You are here” maps around the place and/or some signs which could be colour coded without too much difficulty.

“simple use of contextual clues, regular use of a standard format of basic word style format to indicate links with other sources of information”

Other than the fact that this seems like a fairly tortured sentence, what I got from it was that in the rooms, on the walls near the desks of the different people we could have text and icons that reflect their areas of expertise. These could also be replicated on the maps. (E.g an artists palette for our graphic designer) 

“written directions which appear in separate areas or windows to the information required to learn the underlying concepts”

I agree with this idea although I’m not sure entirely how to put it into action in the software that I’m thinking of. (FPS Creator). If the player/learner had a key that they could toggle a PDA on and off, you could have this information there. It could be possible to have some computer screens that the player/learner could access this information from but they would need to go to the screen any time they wanted to check a detail. If it was a multiplayer game I guess the instructions could just sit in the chat window. 

“enabling learning path maps to be modified highlighting the paths which have been travelled”

This comes back to my earlier point about knowing what you’ve done by what rooms you’ve unlocked.  I’m a little unsure about this however as it goes against my desire to have an environment that people can wander around completely freely. 

“creating new links by the learner using a series of tools which enable the package to be modified, either by adding new information or by adding new hypertext linkages based on the students’ own conceptual maps”

It would be great if there was some way to embed web access (and presumably a wiki) into a part of the game. As far as I’m aware, this isn’t an option but I’ll keep looking. A setup like the 3D browser called 3B would be good – it could live on the smartboard in the training/conference room part of the game.

Defining Navigation types:

This is another of those instances where the datedness of this article shows – the concepts are still sound, just behind the times.

“Materials can be designed to focus on the appropriate development of schema and hence improve learning efficiency. In effect, any navigational system must employ elements with as much intrinsic meaning as possible… this link can be enhanced through understandable and well chosen metaphors”

He goes on to list a few different options:

• Modal (icon based)
• Relational (stack maps)
  
• Hierarchical (more like an organisational chart or a website map)
  
• Sequential (basic back, forward and index buttons)
• Geographical/Spatial (much closer to Florin’s info landscape model – and my 3d game)
• Conceptual (metaphor + info landscape)  
  

The Geographical/Spatial seems to reflect my approach with the game so I guess I’ll note the quote:

“selecting parts of a whole by an inherent physical/geographic relationship. This approach might be exemplified region by using a map as a link between objects” – or a navigable 3D environment.

 I had a few other thoughts as I was reading this paper:

What about a bookshelf in every person’s area? (Or similar metaphor for stored info – maybe a pda?)

It would be good to be able to access the online pd courses from inside the game – again, in game web access is the key.

While teachers and instructional/educational designers should avoid focusing on specific forms of technology while designing network based learning (Grubbs, 2006), it’s important to have (or have access to) knowledge about alternate options in case hardware or software fails or is inadequate. Grubbs (2006) suggests that to “ensure the greatest success, instructors may benefit by partnering with other faculty or staff with expertise in incorporating technology in the most effective ways possibly.”

Problems with ICT can prevent learners from accessing course content and resources, submitting assessment items or communicating and collaborating with fellow students and teachers. They could come in the form of hardware or software failures (e.g. the learning management system, streaming media server, learning objects), low bandwidth which makes accessing large data files (such as videos) impractical or even the design of the ICT systems being used themselves.

Oliver (2004) makes the point that “the courseware management systems that are currently being implemented (eg. WebCT and Blackboard) have been designed very much to support content oriented approaches” (p. 4) Admittedly this isn’t quite the same as the class email system going down however it still presents its own set of challenges to a teacher trying to develop a course which focuses on “performance and capabilities as intended learning outcomes” (p. 1)

In my work with the Flexible Learning Solutions team at CIT, part of my role is to support teachers and learners using our learning management system (WebCT) as well as the streaming media server and we also try to provide support with external social web tools such as blogs and wikis. The negative impact on learner motivation when ICT learning tools don’t work for them, particularly when they aren’t very technologically confident, can reach the point where the learner is prepared to give up entirely.

Many of these situations are unavoidable however there are more often than not easy work-arounds to problems when they occur as well as alternate strategies that can be put into place in advance to minimise disruption to learning activities.

• “A CD-ROM was prepared especially for students with a limited bandwidth Internet connection” (Grubbs 2006)

• Provide alternate contact details (e.g. Email or IM) for teachers and learners

• Use a Web 2.0 service such as YouTube or TeacherTube for video – being Flash-based it is more likely to be supported by learners individual computer set ups at home

• Many institutions have some kind of unit supporting educational technology.

Grubbs, J. Integrating Methods to Achieve an Effective Online Learning Environment. Illinois ONline Network Research Case Studies. Retrieved 10 July 2006 from http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/casestudies/vol2num1/grubbs/index.asp

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

Click for full sized version

This is one of the best articles I’ve come across so far (and one of the shortest, which might help

Driscoll provides a simple and effective overview of factors that influence learning and examines the ways in which technology can be used in each case. My comments appear in blue italics
Learning occurs in context:

• learners attempt to make sense of something new and unfamiliar by drawing upon their prior understandings and experiences
• offering new knowledge in some kind of context makes it easier for learners to apply appropriate prior knowledge
• real world contexts are generally the most widely shared and add relevance to content
• problem solving in the form of games, puzzles and simulations can be made engaging using multimedia technology
• adding complexity makes them challenging and even more engaging
• building skills through sequential exercises allows learners to transfer new knowledge to newer problems

Learning is active:

• Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand. (Chinese proverb)
• “When students become active participants in the knowledge construction process, the focus of learning shifts from covering the curriculum to working with ideas (Scarmadalia, 2002)”
• Technology tools provide “the means through which individuals engage and manipulate both resources and their own ideas (Hannafin, Land & Oliver 1999)” As opposed to pen and paper? Actually, computer tools would still be easier and more effective here, you’re right
• Other technology tools help to represent knowledge and facilitate communication – e.g. visualisation tools
• Simulations can enable learners to model complex ideas

Learning is social:

• Students benefit from hearing perspectives other than their own in group work. Importance of peer opinion - Just today the Beyond Blue foundation (for depression) was talking about teaching teens the skills to help depressed friends.
• Students may bring different strengths to a complex and lengthy activity
• Learning, then, amounts to increasing participation in and contribution to the practices of a social community
• Concepts such as knowledge building, apprenticeship, and mentoring become paramount, as learners are conceived to be under the tutelage of more experienced peers or instructors.
• A social view of learning focusses attention on making connections among students within a school and between students in the school and the broader community. What about quieter students though – shy ones and less literate ones?
• Students can use software to collaborate “by creating ‘notes’ to express their ideas or integrate outside information about a topic. Then they read and respond to the notes of others, all of which builds a communal database producing shared knowledge about the topic or problem” Like something between a blog and a wiki? More like a blog really
• This can provide opportunities for students to “improve their understanding and become more personally involved in explaining scientific phenomena”

Learning is reflective:

• “Learning is facilitated when students get feedback about their thinking whether that feedback comes from within, a teacher or a peer” Emphasis on source of feedback comes back to the material being taught to an extent
  
• “Then provided the opportunity for revision, students can achieve at higher levels and reach deeper understandings”
• “Many… technology examples… facilitate discussion in the dialogue that they promote among learners. Where dialogue or discussion is not inherent in the tool, teachers bear the responsibility of initiating and guiding it”

My general observations:

Driscoll has succeeded in helping me to get some key concepts of collaborative work – the usefulness of feedback from all sources mainly – that had been eluding me.

My personal feeling is still that group work is rarely shared evenly and can often cover up for learners who don’t understand everything by allowing them to emphasise their strengths in other parts of the project.

What about the use of competition in collaborative work /projects? Could be a motivator for some (possibly a turn off for others though)

Providing a structure for reflection (much like the one listed in my previous post here ) is important – and sadly I think that so is making it an assessable part of the work with clearly stated guidelines and expectations.

Great article though Marcy Driscoll, thanks heaps

This article explores (in a slightly tech-evangelical but nonetheless interesting way) possible uses in education of emerging technologies including MUVEs (MultiUser Virtual Environments – ie Second Life), Wireless/Mobile devices and ongoing developments in online content.

It also looks at the way “neomillenials” – also referred to by some as digital natives – interact with current technology and ways that education may be able to (or indeed need t0) adapt to provide learners with more complete and satisfying learning experiences.

Emerging learning styles:

• Fluency in multiple media and in simulation-based virtual settings
• Communal learning involving diverse, tacit, situated experience, with knowledge distributed across a community and a context as well as within an individual
• A balance between experiential learning, guided mentoring and collective reflection
• Expression through nonlinear, associational webs of representations
• Co-design of learning experiences personalised to individual needs and preferences

Main points:

• Internet is reshaping information gathering/learning styles – more seeking, sieving, synthesising than before.
  
• Digital media encourages multitasking (instant messaging, websurfing, emailing, listening to music while reading)
• Too much multitasking might lead to cognitive overload
• New emphasis on customised, personalised environments – learners wanting to shape their own courses, decide what they learn and need for universities to cater to this
• Millenial students – those born after 1982
• Emerging media types foster deeper psychological immersion – particularly 3D spaces but also “augmented reality” created by the expanding use of mobile devices and networks
• Mobile Wireless devices (MWDs) can be used to access context specific information while out in the real world
• Potential for networked MWDs to create connections between people with common interests
• People have multifaceted identities – real world and online ones
• Enhances access to information across space and time
• Possible to create interactions in virtual space that are impossible in reality – eg dealing with a chemical spill in busy neighbourhood – scenario based learning
• MMOGs growing in popularity (apparently Second Life hasn’t quite hit the stands at the time of writing)
• Use of virtual interactive environments, modelling museums, labs, historical simulations
• Coming phenomena of ubiquitous computing – being networked everywhere
• Encouraging non-linear communication – e.g. authoring a simulation and creating a webpage to express understanding rather than writing a paper)

Suggested implications of these changes:

• need to redesign physical spaces – specialised spaces less necessary (e.g. library reading rooms)
• places and objects will have more information attached to them
• networked collaboration enhances accessibility
• new forms of assessment required – beyond written papers – which incorporate greater peer based assessment
• need for widespread wireless network infrastructure
• move to more personalisable learning experiences
• move towards more emphasis on knowledge sharing between students
• more “real-world”context based case studies in assessment

My thoughts:

Generally there are a lot of interesting ideas here and Dede is well aware that a number of the changes proposed would involve a significant reshaping of current educational practice and systems.

I often get the feeling when reading educational theory – particularly of a constructivist bent – that it is either somewhat divorced from chalkface reality (overly theoretical) or conceived with motivated post-graduate university students in mind, rather than secondary or early tertiary students.

In the VET context, we work with learners with more basic foundation skills in learning (adolescents fresh out of high school or workers reskilling themselves) and some of the principles about student directed learning and customised courses seem quite irrelevant to learners – and highly impractical for teachers.

I question the assumption that until now learners have only taken information from narrow channels such as a textbook or two or their teacher – this fails to give teachers any credit for ingenuity at all. Multimedia in one form or another has been used in classrooms for more than 100 years.

Information processing is definitely an important skill in this age – we have access to more of it than ever before. Neomillenials may well have more effective skills at processing this and this is something to consider in designing their learning – the dangers of cognitive overload should also be taken seriously as well though.

Do neomillenials really take in and comprehend all the information that they process or is it taken more superficially?
Do people (we) have shorter attention spans now and what does this mean to learning?

I appreciate the business imperatives of providing more personalised and customised content as well – this is certainly going to be appealing to learners – however I question the assumption that learners always know what they don’t know and also what they need to know.

Research has indicated that learners don’t always get in right when deciding what they need to know and that more often than not they get it wrong when determining the best way to learn things that they want to know. Sometimes that topics that seem the least interesting to a learner are the most important in terms of actually being able to use a set of skills or knowledge.

When courses and curricula are designed by “experts”, these are people who are able to bring valuable experience to the process and know better the things that learners need to focus on. It might be worth allowing learners to shape the order in which content is presented but the body of the content is probably something that they should be prepared to accept as coming from someone who knows more. If you don’t enter higher education to know more than you currently know, why go there at all?

The matter of administering and assessing such systems (unless we are dealing with chunks of knowledge) also seems to have been brushed aside but is a key consideration in making these changes actually happen. Teachers don’t want to do more work than they are already doing – often times they simply can’t – and will vote with their feet if a system is imposed on them. (Such as one revolving around personalised learning packages)

How can employers make considered assessments of a qualification if it’s significantly different to everyone elses?
Let’s not make learners too important in the process of figuring out what they have actually learnt – just because they feel as though they know enough about something doesn’t necessarily make it so. If a team of medical students successfully completes an operation, are we sure that each student can do it all?

Looking at education another way, if the knowledge of the world (the developed world at least) is at our fingertips, do we need to learn anything more than how to access it and understand it? (Of course, if the access to this info breaks, society could be in trouble)

Human adoption of technology systems that put people in contact with random strangers sharing common interests (in terms of mobile wireless devices) has been hyped for a few years now but really hasn’t taken off. People do make connections online more freely based on common interests – is this because it is a less threatening environment? I think that people are naturally cautious about strangers and prefer the online buffer. This may differ in a learning environment – I’d like to hear some ideas for ways that this might work though.

Notions of access are very powerful and encouraging – current technological developments certainly offer great promise for involving more people in education who have been disadvantaged. We shouldn’t forget those who are technologically disadvantaged as well (The One Laptop Per Child scheme is encouraging here) as this is a key divide.

Simulations that go beyond what is possible or practical in reality are very encouraging – one of the things I regularly discuss with teachers is that if using technology doesn’t add something to a learning experience that wasn’t already there, why use it? The possibility of developing resources and simulations that mean you can do something new – such as a massive chemical spill in a big city – are tremendous.

I suspect that many of Dede’s suggestions for implementations (particularly large scale ones) are designed as ambit claims – things like getting rid of computer labs and reading rooms in libraries work on an assumption that 100% of learners want to go down this path. If we are going to talk about providing personalised learning, what about these people?
This is more about provoking thought and discussion and is fair enough.

I read a comment recently (no idea where) which made the point that computers should simply be seen as another classroom resource and that we don’t talk about taking the students to the pencil lab. (Although isn’t that the Art room?). This is true, although I’d say that if pencils cost $1000 each, it might be a little different.

Personalisable learning – worth considering RSS feeds and related widgets, still not sure what personalised learning environments are or how they work but I guess this comes into the picture.

This article is definitely worth a read, I just wonder if it isn’t a little divorced from chalkface practice – or putting it more nicely, a little idealised.

Robyler, M. D., Edwards, J., & Havriluk, M. A. (1997). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (pp. 54-79). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Ok well this is a slightly more sizable piece of writing, let’s see how I go here.

Again, essentially an overview of differences between behaviourist/cognitivist (here referred to as directed instruction) and constructivist theory and practice.

Chapter begins with a guide to what is to be covered, a nice “advanced organiser” approach which gives the learner a mental framework to hang the new knowledge on.

• Information age means that we are constantly playing catchup and learning to learn is seen by many as a key skill.
• Need to become more effective decision makers.
• Directed Instruction = Behaviourism + Information processing branch of cognitivism
• Constructivism = comes from other branches of cognitivism (mainly a reaction to directed instruction approaches)
• Both theories focus on what Gagne calls “the conditions of learning”

Strengths of Directed Instruction approach

• can allow for individual pacing (students can be busy while teacher supports slower students)
• efficient (skill practice through drills)
• provides foundation skills needed for higher level skills
• instruction is replicable, quality is consistent
• some students like a structured learning environment

Strengths of Constructivist approach

• encourages higher level skills – problem solving, teamwork/collaboration, critical thinking, research
• adds context/relevance as a motivator and to anchor learning to students experiences
• students pushed to figure out what they need to learn to solve problems

Tennyson (1990) claims that about 30% of learning time should be spent on “acquiring knowledge” (e.g. verbal info and procedural knowledge) and 70% spent on the “employment of knowledge” (e.g., contextual skills, cognitive strategies and creative processes)

More about Directed Instruction:

• learning as a sequence of stimulus and response (response is the best indicator that learning has occurred)
• teachers and resources are the stimuli, skills demonstrated are the response
• information processing theory – learning = input variables (info) + processor (attention + short/long term memory) + outputs (responses)
• inputs that receive attention go to short-term memory (stm) for 5-20 secs, then on to long term (ltm) (hopefully)
• teachers shape info to make it more likely to move from stm to ltm, give practice exercises to help it.

Gagne’s events of instruction

1. Gaining attention
2. Informing the learner of the objective
3. Stimulating the recall of prerequisite info
4. Presenting new material
5. Providing learning guidance (cognitivist tools ?)
6. Eliciting performance
7. Providing feedback about correctness
8. Assessing performance
9. Enhancing retention and recall

Gagne’s learning hierarchy – build base skills first needed for more complex ones.

Systematic instructional design / Systems approaches – step by step process for preparing instructional materials

Problems with Directed Instruction approach

• leads to standardised testing => (teaching to the test)
• regimented
• weak support for higher level skills of problem solving etc
• more oriented to individuals, not group work (which is more prevalent in “the real world”)

More about Constructivism

The more I read about Constructivism, the more it annoys me. It’s ill defined, it seems to identify itself largely in terms of what it isn’t (i.e. directed instruction) and while some of it’s ideas are common sense – using real world examples to add motivation to content, using multimedia, developing problem solving and critical reflection skills – they seem fairly easy to apply to other approaches.

I’m also unconvinced about the obsession with collaborative group work (how do you ensure that all members of the group have digested the required knowledge and aren’t just coasting) as it seems oriented to creating happy little worker drones.

Some of the ideas about allowing learners all the time they want to discover things and also letting them learn things in the ways that they think are most suited seem completely divorced from the reality of a classroom. (Particularly in the VET sector).

I can see some use in a collaborative approach that encompasses students from a range of disciplines – for example, putting on a major music festival, with a student from design, p.r, public events, OHS etc I guess.

Anyway, this is what Robyler et al. have to say about it.

• focus on students motivation to learn and relevance to the real world
• activities meaningful to a student’s own experience
• provides scaffolding through supervised collaborative activities

According to Piaget: sometimes they fit new experiences into their existing schemes or patterns of behaviour, a process he called assimilation; sometimes they change their existing schemes to incorporate new experiences, which he called accommodation.

According to Lev Vygotsky: “children begin learning from the world around them, their social world, which is the source of all their concepts, ideas, facts, skills and attitudes”

According to Bruner: Discovery learning is an approach to instruction through which students interact with their environment – by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies or performing experiments

Teachers have found that discovery learning is most successful when students have prerequisite knowledge and undergo some structured experiences

According to Rand Spiro (et al.) :Cognitive Flexibility theory – calls for students to generate not only solutions to new problems but also the prior knowledge needed to solve the problems.

According to CTGV: Inert knowledge is “knowledge that can usually be recalled when people are explicitly asked to do so but is not used spontaneously in problem solving even though it is relevant”

Constructivist approaches:

• Problem oriented activities
• Visual mental models of problems to be solved
• Rich media environments
• Cooperative/collaborative group learning
• Learning through exploration
• Qualitative assessment – student portfolios, teacher narratives of student work habits, performance based assessments in combination with checklists of criteria for judging student performance

Problems with Constructivism:

• “Many teachers are still bound by the constraints of required curricula and they must ensure that their students accomplish existing district objectives as well as newer, more constructivist ones”
• Sometimes instructional activities based on constructivist models are more time-consuming, since they may call for teachers to organise and facilitate group work and to evaluate in authentic ways. By comparison, paper-and-pencil tests are both quicker to develop and easier to administer
• Papert feels that learning activities should be fairly unstructured and open-ended, frequently with no goal in mind other than discovery of “powerful ideas”
• How can one certify skill learning? – Just because a team of med students succeed in an operation, can all of them do it
• Are students able to find their own prior knowledge?
• Can students learn this knowledge in the best way?
• Little evidence that skills learnt this way do actually transfer to real world situations
• Minimal objective evidence to back it up.

Technology Integration Strategies

These are a few of the reasons that the writers offer to make more use of technology in the classroom.

Directed Models

• Self paced drills/tutorials allow lagging students to spend time catching up and make them feel less self-conscious
• Drill and practice help prerequisite skills become more automatic
• Advanced tutorials/resources can be made available to advanced students wishing to skip ahead
• I.T tools such as Word, CAD etc reduce some logistical tools – don’t teach skills in themselves but make production of student work easier
• I.T tools optimise scarce resources – stationery, teachers, simulations of lab experiments

Constructivist Models

• Add motivation
• Support creativity
• Allow for reflection
• Using more visual models of problems and creation of multimedia helps bypass literacy issues in some students
• Enhances cooperative work

Issues to consider in introducing technology to teaching

• Assessment for constructivist activities should be planned to occur over long time-frames
• Assessment should dovetail with the activities
• Flexibility is important – might need to change things as you are going
• Finding a balance between directed and constructivist approaches requires some experimentation.

Parts I’m unsure of

• Constructivists claim use of multimedia etc as relatively unique tool to overcome lack of base skills (eg literacy) but it can be used in any approach
• Simply accepting literacy problems and finding work-arounds feels wrong – literacy is a fundamental skill
• Critical reflection requires the ability to assess data and sources but more importantly the learner needs to care about it in the first place