Q: What do I mean by 'teaching with blogs'?
I use public blogs as online resources used in parallel with in-class interactions and a course area within the University's Blackboard area.
Q: Why bother? Isn't it twice the work to run two separate web sites for your course?
I have felt drawn to establish at least part of my teaching structures outside of Blackboard and the various firewalls or paywalls that surround the University's online environment, for a number of reasons...
- I asked myself, how many 'clicks' did I have to make use of one of the official tools for online collaboration, in my case Blackboard's collaboration features: blogs, wikis, forums, class groups?
- I have found that spontaneous student engagement with online collaboration behind the Blackboard firewall is minimal (I'll use the term firewalled even though technically speaking they are more likely to be just under login control).
- Is the material I teach proprietary, top-secret, controversial? No, nearly everything is in the public domain.
- Is student identity something I need to control? Well the people I teach are adults undergoing professional career development in high tech industries employing networked internet technologies as basic infrastructure. Online professional communities inform their professional and academic formation and development.
- And while I've been agonising about non-engagement with the official collaboration tools, students themselves have already made the shift. The have readily moved outside of my and the University's control, forming their own FaceBook or LinkedIn groups, their own Twitter followings and hashtags, shared areas and shared documents with Google Docs or DropBox, their own persistent group conversations and communications in Skype, Messenger, iMessage etc.
The distinction between a Blogger website and Blackboard is simply:
- Blackboard: Private - login restricted.
- Blogger: Public - open, freely available anywhere.
Both have their uses.
The University's login restricted resources give me a secure login restricted area for files: readings, student reports (submitted using SafeAssign), and my slides (although I'm increasingly using Slideshare if the material conforms with copyright.
Blackboard is also useful for communicating, as a class email device using student's official University email addresses.
The blog confers a sense of transparency; it
is public, it
is freely available to anyone in the world, it
does evolve visibly and publicly over time.
Reflecting on this arrangement I note a shift in emphasis in the wider educational technology scene, from institutional obscure resources held privately, towards open transparent resources presented in public. The shift in emphasis is not wholly in one direction, it is balanced as noted above. Login restricted resources still have their uses, public presentation has its. Furthermore, fixating on the location of online resources as behind or outside of restricted logins neglects another crucial dimension, the classroom. What happens in the classroom? More on that later.
Where do Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) fit into this? MOOCs look at lot like Blackboard. Some are open, public, accessible. Some are University-style with fee elements and business models. Some are fully commercial training, servicing buzz areas like Big Data, SAP training, etc. There is a spectrum of for-fee and free/open offerings. Like any technology infrastructure some MOOC frameworks are easier than others. Indeed even within the same technology/platform/framework they may be configured and deployed in more or less effective manners.
From the student's perspective MOOCs differ wildly. The experience of learning through a MOOC can range from intensive to light. I found that Coursera's "Calculus One" course, delivered by the Ohio State University, demanded considerable time and attention just to process the weekly lectures. "Calculus One" required the same full time commitment that a regular University course in calculus requires. On the other hand, Courseara's "Gamification" course, designed by Kevin Werbach from the University of Pennsylvania seemed tailored for part-time or executive style of engagement by people in work perhaps or motivated by curiosity to study the material. Similarly the Udacity course "Intro to the Design of Everyday Things" facilitates a casual style of learning engagement but importantly, an experience centred by the involvement of the outstanding author of the field, Don Norman, who personally presents the course.
Reflecting on the MOOCs that I have participated in and comparing them with the courses I teach myself I am drawn back to the question of that 'other question'; what happens in the classroom? And why do I feel so comfortable with putting nearly all of my teaching materials and structure on a public blog?
MOOCs, like I suspect any kind of learning process that becomes nearly wholly mediated by disembodying technologies and objects (think Blackboard, blogs, even books), result in mixed outcomes in terms of completion, student engagement, and accomplishment upon completion. They offer very weak social-relational opportunities and they depend on highly motivated, self-organised, well-organised students to succeed and there are some aspects of experiential learning in classes and in groups that simply do not translate well into the virtual setting of these online tools.
A 'provocation' is in the title of this post. Why? Come back to the idea of 'teaching with blogs'. It could be in Wordpress, Blogger, FaceBook or something else. What is the essence of these things and why might it be a provocation to higher education? The following illustrates the provocation:
Open <<>> Public
Closed <<>> Private
What happens in the classroom?
For me the utility of MOOCs or any kind of online learning resources (Articulate, Blackboard, blogs, etc) is in how they either highlight (or neglect) real engagement by the participants and that brings me back to the classroom, the temporal and physical collocation of learners with each other and with expert practitioners. The utility of these tools and resources is in how they afford the opportunity for different kinds of learner engagement. Learner engagement can be refocused, instead of acquiring rote facts, consuming slides or presentations from lecturers the lecturer can choose to turn the classroom around, to spend time instead on discussions, exercises and projects.
Implications?
After decades of hype and speculation about the potential for digital and online technology in higher education, some would say that the future has arrived. However, for me, MOOCs and blogs are more a provocation to return attention to the practice of learning and teaching. The first thing I do is to urge students to break out of their safe zones. Hosting a classes involves a fine balancing act between exploring unknown territory and moving through the content I expected to be covered. Slides are very good at producing the latter result; projects, interactive exercises and discussions are very good at doing the former. Studies of learning suggest that people pass through many stages of skill and competency regardless of whether in technical or intellectual prowess. Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1986) describe five steps from novice to expert:
- Novice
- Advanced beginner _______________|
- Competent performer |
- Proficient performer
- Expert
Novice and advanced beginner learn in protected situations, with the support of rules and procedural style ways of performing. Competence, proficiency and expertise however require experience in order to develop. To get beyond procedural and rule oriented action towards expertise demands learning experiences in actual situations with fewer supports. Attaining expertise and effective intuitive engagement in problematic situations requires experience in increasingly un-protected environments.
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's (1999) analysis of the promises and rhetoric of the information age highlight for me the limits of information technology and the conventional misunderstandings surrounding learning. Understanding the essences of learning, I think, helps us respond in meaningful and measured ways to the pressures on higher education. University degrees are no longer optional, they are seen now almost as a prerequisite for entry to the workforce. Having an undergraduate degree or even a Masters is now 'the new normal'. There is pressure from the student body for learning and degrees that add value to them as citizens in society and the workforce. Universities are thinking like businesses (for better or worse), scale and reputation matter. University fees are increasing but many perceive that there are fewer supports available for learning and teaching. For profit and not-for-profit are encroaching on each other and new technologies provoke us to rethink what and how we do higher education.
(
presentation link)
References:
- Dreyfus, H. L., Dreyfus, S. E. & Anthanasiou, T. (2000) Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer, Free Press.
- Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. (2000) The Social Life of Information, Harvard University Press.
Interviews with users - Comments on MOOC style education
Interview A - University Lecturer
"I kind of stumbled on the course, I've registered in the past to Coursera, EdX and others so I get their emails but usually delete them, particularly Udemy, they're into hard selling"
"Coursera, EdX, Udacity come across as more academic because you can do them for free"
"I signed up on this one because the course subject matter was relevant to what I was currently researching"
"I'd never heard of the lecturer before but he has written a short book"
"The course is based on his book, I bought a copy, read it quickly, it really repeats what the video lectures cover"
"Having the book is good"
"I have also sought out some of the other references that the lecturer uses, they have generally been much more important and useful"
"I started the course a week or two late so I was already getting penalties for the first few quizzes"
"I'm not sure if I'll get a good grade, but that's not why I'm doing the course"
"The quizzes are good for some basic feedback, you can take them up to 5 times and learn where you went wrong"
"For me, if I make a mistake in the quiz it's because I mis-read the question or didn't read the question carefully enough"
"I often read things out of sequence or skip ahead, when I go back I can see what I missed, some detail, or mis read"
"I like the essays, this course has three or four, they're a good opportunity to put the learning in your own words"
"I'm not sure whether this style of learning is for everyone, the forums aren't really my thing, I haven't got the time to 'socialise' or engage in that way"
"I'm kind of squeezing this course around my work /family life, I don't think anyone knows I'm doing it, well I haven't advertised the fact, but I've had to work through to midnight a couple of times to keep on top of the learning videos"
"Each video runs for around 10 minutes which is good, you can take in slices during the day"
"I'd spend as much time making notes and reflections as watching/listening to the videos, possibly more, three of four times as much if I'm trying to make it meaningful and put it in my own words"
"This lecturer has little question breaks or exercises in most of his videos, I like that because it's an opportunity to reinforce a point and test my understanding"
"We were told that over 70,000 students registered and that 42,000 students have watched video lectures by the half-way point"
"The lecturer is quite playful, he introduces random visual elements in the background of his office bookshelf in each lecture"
"I can see myself using similar tools to lecture a class, but I'm not sure I could push it all online"
"If I developed online material like Coursera courses then I'd probably shift class time to being more practically oriented, addressing skills or interactional aspects that need real-time engagement that don't translate well to digital mediation"
"The economics of this kind of delivery seem puzzling, if a lecturer has written a book then the MOOC would drive demand for sales but the University wouldn't get anything"
"If a course certificate is bought I suppose the University and Coursera could share the revenue, that could offset the hosting costs, two or three teaching assistants, equipment, rack space, disks, bandwidth, hosting the service"
"The production qualities have to be very good, the forums need (and get) close moderation, the systems have to be tested and bulletproof, an issue with a reference essay for peer assessment came up with my course, so a whole administrative, review, communications exercise had to start up to respond"
"I expect there is a very well run professional education/media team working with the lecturer in his home University, I also expect the University media/education team also works closely with Coursera's staff with operational involvement, reporting etc"
"I was happy with the way the peer grading has worked so far, also somewhat amazed that I've stayed on top of the essays, probably because the parameters are quite narrow and relatively easy to attain, however I have felt satisfied with the result and definitely taken my own contributions seriously"
"I wouldn't consider doing this kind of MOOC teaching unless I was 100% committed personally and 100% supported by my own University"
Interview C - University Lecturer
"I signed up because the course was delivered by a Nobel Prize winning lecturer"
"The lecturer videos are about 2 years old but the lecturer has updated each lecture with a short preface video"
"The lectures are in video format, about 40 minutes long"
"The MCQs are relatively easy, and this week we have an essay"
"I plan to do the essay, it's peer marked so I'll also have to grade some"
"I missed the start date by a week so had a late completion penalty on my MCQ score, I'm not sure if I can make it up over the course to get over 70%"
"This course has two teaching assistants and you can email questions to the lecturer but with 10,000 students..."
"I have a question, I hope it gets added to the list but it might not, he might not be able to respond"
"I might get in touch with him directly, I'm sure I can just email him and ask my question"
"No, I can't see why a general audience would be interested, not unless I was famous"
"From a lecturer's standpoint, why would you do it? Well I think it works well if you've published a book"
"I would do it if I had published a book, I can see the benefit, I have two or three of this lecturer's books and plan to buy the latest one"
"I like the videos, I've gone back to the lecture and replayed an important section"
"I have even used some of the ideas for my own lectures, in fact the lesson I taught last week had a part based around part of the content that I was covering myself in the MOOC"
"I can see why the University might go for it, this course I'm doing has more than 10,000 students enrolled on it, of that perhaps 1,000 might get over 70% and want to pay for the $50 certificate, so it makes sense"
"I'm not sure if I'd buy the certificate myself, what would I do with it? Stick it on the wall? No one can stop me saying I did the course, I can put it on my C.V. if I want"
"If I had to I would consider developing my own course using MOOC tools, but only if it was a policy we had agreed"
"I'd be worried that we're doing ourselves out of our jobs"
"I think it (MOOCs) will be very disruptive, looking to the US where college fees are so high, many people will choose the MOOC version because they simply cannot afford the University alternative"
"Here in Europe where the fees are much lower, they're affordable really, I can see that things will change more slowly"
"But if I was a PhD starting out today in an academic career I'd be very worried"
"Once you've recorded your course there's nothing to stop it being delivered again and again, perhaps without you"
"On the other hand, it might free up more time for research, if the teaching load is lessened with video lectures, we should be given more time for research, that's the optimistic view"
"As for the MOOC I'm taking at the moment, I'm really happy with my scores so far so I think I'll complete it, I might even purchase the completion certificate"
"If the same course was being offered in a University locally by a local academic, well, I think I'd prefer the MOOC, it is delivered by the leading expert, no debate, that's why I'm taking it, so no I wouldn't be interested in the local alternative"
"How should a peer review another's work?"
-----------Instructions for Peer Review of Work---------
Review criteria
In grading the assignment of your peers, please be kind and considerate.
Please provide constructive and descriptive feedback that will motivate the assessed person to improvement. Always critique fellow students as you would like to be critiqued yourself!
You assignment will be graded on how well you do the following:
(A) Specificity: Did the learner answer the questions directly? Were the recommendations actionable? For example, listing one strong and one weak element of a country’s pandemic preparedness plan.
(B) Clarity of argument: Were the answers clearly formulated, with conclusions rising logically from preceding arguments?
(C) Use of learned material: Did the answers include specific concepts and insights covered in the materials of this module?
Use of evidence: Was evidence provided to support the arguments? Were the sources provided reliable?
-----------Instructions for Peer Review of Work---------
Review criteria
In grading the assignment of your peers, please be kind and considerate.
Please provide constructive and descriptive feedback that will motivate the assessed person to improvement. Always critique fellow students as you would like to be critiqued yourself!
You assignment will be graded on how well you do the following:
(1) Pick a policy area and identifies a specific community whose views you believe should be included in policy response, but whose voices have not yet been heard/included or have not been addressed properly.
(2) Explain why you believe the policy response is not adequate for this group..
(3) Propose a brief participatory approach to incorporate this community’s views into the policy.
