Tag Archives: Virtual Learning

Education, Life, Technology

MOOCs: How good are they from a learning perspective?

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I’m currently working through my 3rd course no a MOOC – a Massively Open Online Course. This one is hosted on the Venture Lab platform and is called “Designing a New Learning Environment“. Prior to this one, I’ve completed two on the Coursera platform – one on Cryptography and the other on Gamification. Based on these experiences so far, I thought it was time to reflect on the effectiveness of these environments as learning tools.

I should start by saying that as far as motivation for learning is concerned, I’m pretty driven. I don’t need a structured course to get me interested in learning about something – just an interest or desire to want to know more about it. The problem is that its easy to want to know a lot about lots of things, and you tend to get distracted by others as you’re trawling through the wealth (?) of information available to us now via the the Internet. So I jumped into these as a way of providing some focus for my learning – in that regard, they’ve been pretty successful.

I’ve managed to make the time in my already full schedule to spend a few hours a week working through the materials. I’ve identified topics of interest to me, and devoted the time necessary to get my head around the concepts. Some have been pretty challenging (it had been a while since I’d done any real mathematics, and while the Crypto stuff wasn’t overly complicated, it required getting my head back into the notation peculiarities of the discipline), others pretty cruisy (I never really felt “challenged” by the Gamification course, even though it was interesting). It’s my feeling that there’s something available through these MOOCs that will be of interest to everyone.

The big plus of these platforms is the access it gives you to world class academics. They allow leaders in their fields to present materials to anyone from anywhere, and that’s great for everyone who gets involved. It’s also great marketing for the Universities involved. Actual interaction with the professors is virtually non existent, but given these courses can upwards of tens of thousands of participants, what more can you really expect.

And while there are capabilities in the platforms for people to engage with others (the usual forums, peer assessment tools and the capacity to comment on other people’s work) I have to admit that I haven’t felt the urge to engage beyond what I’m required to do. Perhaps I’m just too busy to do so, but I can’t help but feel that ultimately it comes down to the way the content is being delivered.

You see, it is still based on the lecture-task-evaluation paradigm – sure, evaluation may be by peers, but once something is submitted and assessed, there’s no real reason to go back to it. And given the assessment tasks are primarily individual (there are group tasks coming in DNLE, but we’re not there yet), there’s no motivation to collaborate on them in the lead up to submission either. It is essentially about watching/listening to the lecture, applying that to a problem, then moving on to the next one. All pretty low on the Bloom’s taxonomy classification scale.

The DNLE course is attempting to go beyond that with an emphasis on teams creating a design for a new type of learning. The goal is admirable, but so far I’m not feeling it. I don’t want to be too critical given there’s still a while to go yet, but so far I haven’t really felt the mechanisms for true collaboration have existed in the platform or the method of delivery.

I’ve formed a team with colleagues I know through other means (the OzTeachers mailing list), and we set up a Google+ hangout to throw around some ideas for a team-based project initially. Apart from that though, there has been little collaboration. There is a video-chat capability in the Venture Lab platform, but because of the way we’ve built our team up, I just haven’t had the desire to use it.

For someone like me who is happy to work alone on things and doesn’t require a stack of extrinsic motivation, the existing MOOC structure is fine – it provides a scaffold for me to keep my learning on track, and that’s what I need to keep from getting distracted. However, for people who want to engage with others in meaningful ways (and I enjoy doing this too), these platforms seem to be a bit too disconnected from the networks we already engage in heavily.

MOOCs in general, and platforms like Venture Lab in particular, are still very much in their infancy. But My attitude towards them so far is that if they don’t evolve quickly to offer more than online courses have since early LMSs launched in Universities and Schools in the early 2000s, their appeal for may people won’t last. As a cost cutting measure for universities they’re a great tool, but as they currently exist they use the same methods of teaching that have always existed, and that’s not advancing learning like it needs to.

We know that models of learning and teaching have to change. Moving what we do now into the online space is hardly sufficient to advance things further. We need to see some truly transformative education platforms and tools – MOOCs (at least for now) do not fit that profile.

 

Education, Technology

cLc in the DET

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As I mentioned in a previous post, the ACT DET has recently announced the adoption of the cLc by Uniservity as its new Virtual Learning Environment. Over the last couple of days I’ve had the opportunity to really begin exploring how it operates, and here are my intial thoughts.

1. It has a lot of useful features

Now it’s probably true of every modern learning environment that many things Web 2.0 have been included – things like Wiki and Blog services, podcasting and RSS etc. The cLc has a quite extensive set of services built-in, and the editors allow a reasonable amount of flexibility to insert other stuff that isn’t built into the system. You can embed videos from YouTube and do all the usual stuff, but it doesn’t have every feature I would have liked. One of the obvious ones missing for me is an RSS aggregator/feed reader that can be attached to users and classes – given how much easier it is to have relevant content fed to you now, it’s a big hole that I would like to see filled in future versions.

2. The Interface needs work

I’ve spoken with the vendor and he’s acknowledged that the interface does have an “old school” feel about it – given it’s evolved from around 8 years ago that’s no real surprise. The good news though is that in September, Uniservity are releasing cLc Life – an update to the environment that will have a dramatic impact on how the user interface works. I’m going to reserve my criticisms of this aspect of the system until after Life is released and I’ve had a chance to use it, but until that happens, I feel that the complexities involved in using some elements will be a bit of a deterrent to teachers.

3. It will integrate nicely with our student management system

Setting up any online learning environment involves the tedious process of populating it with users and grouping them into classes (or whatever unit you want to use). Thankfully, this will be alleviated when the cLc launches in the production phase – the system will integrate nicely with Maze (our admin system) so that class lists are automatically populated with data, and the ability to do things like send one-click emails to groups of parents based on the school email records will make communicating much easier than it is now (gone will be the days we have to manage our own mailing lists). There are a few more minor challenges we need to address here, but they are related more so to the processes involved in keeping info up to date rather than the cLc itself.

4. It’s going to require a cultural shift

There are a number of ways that the cLc could be leveraged to deliver online learning experiences for our students, but its going to be important that our school works out a strategy that is going to work for our community. The ability to share resources across multiple classes should help alleviate workload concerns if staff work smarter, and ultimately allow more time spent planning as a collective which will be much more efficient than everyone planning things on their own. But this is going to require staff to embrace the change, and that’s an issue that we’d face regardless of the environment being adopted.

Am I as excited as I’d hoped I’d be when I first heard about it? No. Am I of the opinion it is going to have benefits to our students? It definitely has that potential, but ultimately that rests not with the cLc itself, but with the ability for our teachers to rise to the challenge and rethink the way they approach the use of an online learning environment to support their teaching.

Another example where it’s not about the technology, but it is about the pedagogy.

Education, Technology

A New Virtual Learning Environment

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Today I received the news that my school has been selected as one of 8 in the ACT to pilot the new Virtual Learning Environment being adopted by the ACT DET. It’s called connected Learning communities (cLc) and is published by Uniservity. I know very little about it but from all accounts it’s going to be a big improvement on the existing product we use now.

It’s got me thinking – are these internally managed VLEs a solution that we should be investing time and money into? Part of the pilot program will require me to help staff at the school learn the environment and then integrate it into their practice – this is going to be time consuming and add to an already heavy workload. Would there be more benefit in selecting environments / tools teachers area already familiar with (like facebook, twitter, wordpress, edmodo, flickr etc) and simply deliver our students their educational experiences this way? It would save a heap on PD, and the fact that teachers already know many of the technologies should mean they’ll be able to come up with interesting ways to use them without prompting and hand-holding from other staff.

Of course, the big issues with such an approach are those relating to privacy and security of information. We can’t have our students publishing information about themselves willy-nilly online (even if that information is only used by the provider of the tool for account registration purposes) for legal and social/safety reasons – I understand this. We’re in a situation now where mistakes aren’t allowed – the legal and personal ramifications for such an event are too destructive. If we continue to see technology evolve at the rate it has been, I don’t think the legal system will ever be able to keep up with the changes.

So, instead we provide safe “sandpits” for the kids to work in. I really am looking forward to a bigger sandpit with more toys (and toys that are actually going to work well) – I just hope that we all keep in mind that the world outside of that sandpit is a very different place, and we need to make sure that when the kids leave it they know that their sandcastles aren’t going to be anywhere near as safe on the beach as they were in the sandpit. There was no water, animals or nasty outsiders to knock them down.

Education, Life

One Space To Rule Them All…

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Ahh… a part of me has been wanting to write a title like that for so long… If only I had the Ring of Power…

I’ve been thinking more and more about the direction being taken in some jurisdictions at the moment in regards to solving the problems we all have with technology integration in schools, in particular on the moves toward a Virtual Learning Environment. I understand that what they’re looking for is a single framework that will allow staff, students and parents of schools to access classwork, deliver and participate in lessons, collaborate, share and generally connect with one another in an easy to use space. This is a desirable goal, but I wonder about the approach companies that are going to tender for this might take to such a problem. Schools are very different beasts to the corporate sector, and unlike businesses that generally work in well defined industries, sectors or divisions, the way teachers work can be so vastly different that trying to come up with an all-in-one solution that works for everyone is going to be pretty much impossible, IMHO.

So many of our schools have IT departments or sections that end up being managed by a non-educational authority or personnel, and unless these people are willing to actually delve into the deep, dark, unfathomable depths of IT use in schools, most of the time the solutions and ideas they throw about are sound in the corporate world, but come up against a heap of difficulties in the education sector. Universities tend to get away with it a bit more – their clientele area a little older, expected to be “responsible adults” and their teaching methods somewhat more traditional as a general rule – but schools don’t.

So can a VLE-type solution cope with all this? Well, in my mind there’s only one way such a solution would work – make sure what you’re providing is not restricted to specific technologies (make sure it uses open standards, for example), and ensure that accessibility and ease of use are of utmost importance. Allow teachers to change the way things operate – if they have the skills, why not add functionality to it that can then be made available to others? If they don’t have the technical know-how but they do have the ideas, hook them up with someone that could make it a realist. With technology moving so quickly all the time, it doesn’t make sense to lock yourself into a specific arrangement now that leaves you at the mercy of the developers. Social networking is a big deal (though some would argue it’s almost saturated already), but who knows how that is going to evolve in the next 3 years?

What the VLE should be is a system that exists solely to link other things together. It doesn’t have its own blogging system, or its own social networking tools. Nor does it have its own specific implementation of video-conferencing, or online classroom delivery. All of these tools are already out there – all it needs to do is draw all of these things together so that teachers and students who don’t know what is out there have easy access to the tools they need to come to grips with the connected world around them.

I mean, the biggest and best VLE in the world already exists – it’s called the Internet. It does, however, suffer from one very significant problem (that is only going to get worse), and that is that its size and lack of order can make it a scary place. This is the problem that VLEs need to overcome – they need to be the sieve that helps us filter out the useful from the useless, the factual from the fictional. That in itself would be a lesson worth its weight in gold. And that’s a lot of gold.