Using authentic activities that reflect the situations and cultures in which learners will use new knowledge and skills makes course content more enjoyable, more relevant to them and easier to recall. In scenario based learning, learners are placed into a fictional setting where they take on roles that relate to the material being covered.
According to Brown and Voltz, “an interesting scenario will make extensive use of humour, imagination, reward, anticipation, or drama to enhance the activity. It will have topics and themes likely to be relevant and interesting to the target audience. It will make the learning activity seem like an obvious or necessary thing to undertake, given the situation presented by the scenario. “ (2005)
Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) strongly emphasise the idea that concepts exist in a particular context which helps to shape the concept into useful knowledge. Presenting this information in a form related to its use in the real world, ideally in a form which requires the learner to act as though they are also in that context (i.e. As a historian or an educational designer), adds important layers of additional cultural meaning to the information being shared.
This is a useful strategy for me as an instructional designer as I recently worked on a project with a teacher which focused on a competency called Practice within legal and ethical parameters. This teaches nurses about legal and ethical issues within nursing practice, the law and their responsibilities. In the past, it had been taught essentially as a list of laws and policies that nurses needed to be aware of.
We created a detailed case study simulation in which nurses make decisions based on developments in a particular patient’s case, consultation with colleagues and other available information.
As the nurse progresses through the story, ethical and legal complications arise with the patient which highlight key areas of content.
This added hospital and nursing culture issues to the learning and allowed nurses to connect more personally with the course content, which to that point was considered fairly dry and boring. My approach was to use online multimedia resources to better visually represent the scenario context – something that Agostinho, Meek and Herrington (2005) didn’t emphasise, believing that “cognitive realism to the real-life task was of more significance”. (p. 231)
I have an interest in the use of games in learning, which is why this area interests me specifically and I’m currently in the process of creating an immersive 3D environment which is based around our umbrella dept at work, the Education Development Centre. A scenario based approach to this “game” seems like an effective way of structuring user interaction with it.
One factor to consider from the Agostinho et al (2005) research is that “use of scenario should be more flexible, to allow students with appropriate real-life contexts to substitute their own evaluation needs while still fulfilling the requirements of the course. (p. 241)
Brown, J., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, Jan/Feb, 32-42.
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
The discussion board is a highly useful tool in network based learning, offering learners (and teachers) a space to collaborate and share information and opinions about course content and class work. As an asynchronous form of computer mediated communication, it provides flexibility, accessibility and a level playing field for learners who might not normally feel comfortable speaking up in a face-to-face class.
It’s important to recognise however, that an effective discussion board – one with regular, meaningful posts from a majority of the class – doesn’t run itself and it is the responsibility of a moderator (generally the teacher) to “initiate and sustain the interaction in a networked learning community”(Levin, 1999).
This is done initially through orientation and socialisation (Salmon, 2004) and by providing clear objectives and guidelines (Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner & Duffy, 2001) for the use of the board.
Graham et al (2001) offer a number of practical suggestions for this:
“Discussions should be focused on a task”
“Learners should receive feedback on their discussions”
“Instructors should post expectations for discussions”
“Instructors can still give prompt feedback on discussion assignments by responding to the class as a whole instead of to each student”
This might involve contacting the learners individually at the start of the course to ensure they are able to access the discussion board, running a face-to-face orientation session to the technology, encouraging them to make a brief post about themselves (and comment on others) and offering clear information about the role discussion plays in subject assessment.
It could also involve driving discussion by posting relevant topics or “sparks” (Salmon, 2004) and responding to queries in a timely manner.
In my role as an educational multimedia designer, I regularly work with teachers at CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology) who don’t understand why their students aren’t making use of the discussion boards in their WebCT courses. Frequently it’s because the learners have been told that the board is there and have then been left to their own devices with it. Other times teachers regularly post discussion questions but don’t always follow up with feedback.
I must admit that the first time I had my multimedia students use individual blogs for their work/process journal with the aim of stimulating critical reflection, half of them thought they had to set up a new blog account each week and I’d offered no real guidelines on post length, specific content or frequency – so I am aware that it’s an area that requires a certain amount of thought as a designer.
Gilly Salmon’s 2004 book “e moderating – the guide to teaching and learning online” is a great resource for teachers looking for practical guidelines. She offers a 5 stage scaffolded model which moves from Access and Motivation to Online Socialisation to Information Exchange to Knowledge Construction and finally to Development, where learners largely drive discussion on their own.
Levin, J. (1999). Understanding the Lifecycles of Network-based Learning Communities. Paper presented at Symposium 6.29 “Indicators of Change in Computer-Based Community Building” Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association,Montreal, April 1999 . Retrieved 10 July 2006 from http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/j-levin/Levin-Cervantes.final.html
Salmon, G (2004) emoderating – the key to teaching and learning online (2nd ed.) London, UK. Taylor and Francis books ltd.
Graham, C., Cagiltay, K., Lim, B-R., Craner, J., & Duffy, T. M. (2001). Seven principles of effective teaching: A practical lens for evaluating online courses. The Technology Source Archives at the University of North Carolina
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
This is another one of those papers that I liked and got a fair bit from because it looks at teaching & learning from a practical perspective – examining some of the weaknesses of designing online courses based on traditional (read – directed/behaviourist) lecture/content-presentation approaches and offering concrete alternatives.
It breaks the design process up into three key areas:
Appropriate description of course objectives
Using course content more as a resource to support the development of capabilities
Designing assessment that measures capabilities
Oliver advocates the “development of learning objectives which focus on performance and capabilities as intended learning outcomes” because these can “provide opportunities for problem and task based learning designs… that support higher order learning outcomes”
It begins with a quick look at instructional design:
“Instructional design is the process of planning and creating learning environments for students that will cause them to engage with the course content and resources in ways which facilitate learning”
It makes the point that:
“Whereas in conventional courses, much of the course planning centred around the activities of the teacher, contemporary views argue that what is more important in a learning setting is what learners are doing rather than what the teacher is doing (eg. Schuell, 1992) ”
In looking at the design of online courses, Oliver advocates:
“Group based activities and tasks providing contexts for learners to learn through the application of their knowledge”
and
“Assessments based on products and artefacts developed (by the learners) from the course materials and content”
In essence, this is about using the content as a resource while you are developing skills rather than learning the content in it’s own right. (Which raises the question, what if the content is in the form of how-to guides?).
It seems to me then that Education is about the design of good activities.
Oliver also makes the point that you have to get the learning outcomes right in the first place if you are to have any chance of building an online course that will succeed.
“Biggs (1999) argues the need for learning aims and learning objectives to be the starting point for effective learning design. The objectives typically indicate what the students will learn, to what extent it will be learned and by what means learning can be assessed”
“Mager argues the need for three elements in any meaningful learning objective: a statement of the terminal behaviour or performance sought; conditions under which this performance must be exhibited and the standard to which the performance should be performed“
(Oliver repeats this point another 3 times in different ways so it’s clearly something he feels strongly about :0) )
He reiterates:
“It is insufficient in the statement of course objectives to stop merely at descriptions of the scope and extent of knowledge gained. The specification needs to include some form of capability or performance and these elements are the critical components of the course objectives. Where knowledge is to be gained, the objectives need to indicate how that knowledge is to be used, under what conditions and by what means achievement can be assessed“
From here he moves on to assessment strategies.
“The assessment strategies that are associated with courses and units in higher education play prominent roles in influencing what students learn and the scope and extent of their learning”
(Presumably because students focus on the assessments to get a real sense of what is valued by the teacher and the institution in their course)
Multichoice tests/quizzes/examinations (and I would add, some games) are useful for measuring knowledge acquisition.
To measure “the student’s ability to apply the knowledge in more meaningful ways” however, you might consider “case studies and problem solutions, collaborative projects and portfolios“.
He moves on to a big chunk about useful assessment strategies which is worth quoting in full:
“Tasks used in performance and outcomes based assessment include essays, oral presentations, open ended problems, hands-on problems, real world simulations and other authentic tasks.
Such tasks are concerned more with problem solving and understanding than in measures of knowledge acquired and retained.
The essence of authentic and performance based assessment is that students produce evidence of accomplishment of curriculum goals. These assessments are characterised by meaningful and authentic problems and often involve students assuming responsibility for self evaluation.
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 options through evidence over subjective judgements. Self assessment holds students to higher standards because the criteria are clear and reasonable (Wiggins, 1992) ”
Oliver moves on to a general look at re-structuring courses for online delivery, emphasising the need to reshape course objectives and consider the desired outcomes.
“The strategy for re-engineering (eg. Collis, 1997) such courses is to take the course objectives and to re-express them in ways which give context, purpose and meaning to the knowledge”
“Outcomes based approaches require developers to determine what students will be able to do with the acquired skills and knowledge at the end of the course”
This is emphasised with a question that designers should ask themselves in this process -
“What are some examples of real life cases and instances that students should be able to deal with this information?”
Oliver acknowledges that some teachers might question the application of this problem based learning approach in their subject area if they feel it deals too much with “higher levels of formal reasoning” but finds a quote from Jonassen which puts this approach in the context of a continuum, allowing for different levels of use:
“Jonassen describes problems ranging from those where learners simply apply rules to effect a solution, through problems where learners model solutions on existing cases to higher level problems requiring strategic and logical thinking”
He then offers a set of guidelines for a structure to such an environment
The learners can be cast with roles in a virtual workplace and where they are required to undertake some tasks and responsibilities;
The learning setting can provide them with access to a variety of resources of an authentic nature which they can access to gather the information needed to carry out the tasks;
The students can be supported by a variety of means including workplace mentors, collaborative teams comprised of peers and others;
Assessment of learning can be based on the successful completion of the tasks and problems;
Assessment can comprise elements of self assessment and peer assessment;
The learning setting can be scaffolded in a number of ways to support learners as they develop the necessary skills and knowledge to complete the tasks being set and the support can be faded as the learners develop these skills;
The setting can develop a raft of associated generic skills including capabilities to work in teams, to monitor their own progress etc; and
The setting can assist learners in learning how to learn as they take responsibility for their own learning.
Social software tools enable people to connect and collaborate via computer-mediated communication (Wikipedia 2007). They include synchronous tools such as instant messaging and web whiteboards and asynchronous ones such as web fora, blogs, wikis and more recent services such as Flickr and YouTube.
The use of these various tools in a learning environment can offer students new and engaging means to share information and to offer each other feedback which allows them to reflect on concepts in a more meaningful manner.
Driscoll (2002) makes the point that students benefit from hearing ideas other than their own in group work and that they can use software to collaborate by “creating notes to express their ideas or integrate outside information about a topic. They then read and respond to the notes of others, all of which builds a communal database producing shared knowledge abut the topic or problem”.
Dede (2005) goes on to support this by identifying among emerging learning styles an shift towards “communal learning involving diverse, tacit, situated experience with knowledge distributed across a community and a context as well as within an individual”.
My personal experience of using blogs with learners dates back to a class I ran in 2003 teaching platforms and formats for media production. I had the learners keep a blog where they journaled their experiences in working on a number of multimedia projects. They were to reflect on creative decisions that they made as well as technical issues that arose and the ways they were able to overcome them.
A page with links to the blogs was made available in the online space for the subject so they could visit each others blogs and leave feedback or offer suggestions.
I found this a very useful tool as it was an effective way to get greater insight into learner’s understanding of the process and it was a great resource for learners to use for trouble-shooting.
Some suggestions for use:
Use an RSS feed reader to track blog posts
Provide clear direction as to expected frequency and length of posts
When trying to communicate new concepts to learners, it can often be helpful to represent these concepts as visual models or explain them through activities which give the concept a more tangible form.
Many elements of current Constructivist education theory centre around “procedures and operations for representing and reasoning about information” (Greeno, Collins & Resnick 1996). The use of non-verbal and non-textual representations of complex problems and concepts, often facilitated by visualisation tools made possible by advanced computer graphics (Driscoll 2002), is regarded by many as an effective way of presenting information as well as providing alternatives to learners with literacy problems. (Robyler 1997)
My team at the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT), Flexible Learning Solutions (FLS), has been using modeling techniques to explain the practice of blogging and commenting to less tech-savvy CIT teachers.
In the course of a hands on, non-computer based workshop, participants are given a standard sheet of paper, a pen and a number of post-it notes. They write a “blog” post on the sheet of paper and stick it to a wall and then view “blog” posts from the other participants by roaming around the room. Using their post-it notes, they are able to attach comments to each others posts and also to each others comments.
This simple activity illustrates very effectively the reflective and collaborative nature of blogging and the value of feedback provided through the comments, all in an environment which removes the daunting aspects of the technology from the experience.
This is a useful heuristic as it highlights the fact that it is possibly to present new information to learners that is shaped in a way that allows you to emphasise that which is important and isolate it from less familiar factors that learners can find alienating.
Implementing this heuristic is really just a matter of examining the course content and looking for non-verbal means of expressing it. As mentioned, the ongoing evolution of software (particularly free and open-source software) and the boom in social-web tools offer any number of options but an effective model can just as easily take the form of a paper based simulation.
Damn it, just had a thought that I should really use this blog to do something with all of those educational websites and stories that I tag and add to delicious and do nothing more with.
The purpose of this blog (an addition to my growing stable of blogs – some neglected, some flourishing) is to take the time to reflect on the subjects I’m doing in the pursuit of my Masters of Education – ICT in Learning – from the University of Wollongong.
In addition to overviewing the readings and general course content, I hope to stimulate my thoughts on this particular area as well as taking a look at how the principles match up to the practice in actually delivering it. I’m taking this subject completely flexibly, all content is being delivered through the University of Wollongong Faculty of Education website using the Janison Learning Management System.
(There has been one face to face session in the Designing Multimedia subject – thoughtfully scheduled on a Saturday and there are also fortnightly sessions in the IT in Education and Training – less conveniently scheduled at 4.30pm on a Wednesday).
Given the subject content of the course, you might expect the delivery to be relatively cutting edge, incorporating everything that is useful and helpful (not to mention new and groovy). I would take this to include structured, well moderated discussion boards as a baseline with RSS feeds, blogging, wikis and other Web 2.0 goodies as supplementary material.
In reality I find that (so far) the flexible/distance students in one of the subjects appear to be something of an afterthought – content from face-to-face sessions is rarely posted in any degree of completeness and questions have been met with the suggestion to try searching for an answer in Wikipedia. (Which I had already done as a matter of course)
Fortunately the other teacher seems somewhat more serious about flexible/distance delivery and has made a more conscientious effort to provide support and materials in a timely manner. (Responsiveness to emails is sometimes another matter though.)
So far I’ve submitted one piece of work – a timeline of significant events in ICT in Education over the last century and a bit – based on a few readings provided and my own readings. (It’s attached, if you’re interested.)
Looking back on it, I’ve realised that I’m not a big fan of the detailed referencing that is required in academic writing – a bibliography is one thing but constantly inserting sources for quotes really seems to break up the flow of the writing. This is something I’m just going to have to deal with though as it seems to be part and parcel of tertiary study.
Of course, it would probably be far easier to add these references as hypertext links (again, something that would seem logical in a course focussing on this area) however the instructions for the assignment specify a word-processed document, so this appears to be out of the question. (I’ll probably still ask the question anyway but am torn between wanting to do things in a more technological way and not wanting to irritate the teachers.)
All of that said, taking the time to get stuck into investigating the use of ICT in Education in the last 100 years has been quite interesting – a far more progressive field stretching back much further than I would have expected.
Ok, well time to press on anyway – I’ll make an effort to overview some of the readings for this subject soonish and will also discuss future plans.
One thing I do feel a little compelled to mention (and I guess it does make me reflect on how we do things at CIT when students need help with their online courses) is the extent to which the subjects are de-humanised through the dominance of codes (EDGI911, EDGI931 etc) rather than descriptive names.
I can fully appreciate the organisational needs being met by this but it just feels wrong.
