E-learning - it's life, Jim, but not as we know it!

I've recently sent in my final assignment of a long and grueling Masters Course in Open &  Distance Education - what a relief! I embarked on it way back in 2003, when all that most of us had was a dial-up connection; but even then the internet was beginning to change the way we all live and work. I had an inkling that a powerful bombshell was about to hit the world of training and development, and sure enough it has, although it has not been the magic bullet that some thought it would be. Nevertheless, a recent study I saw said that 50% of learning will be delivered online by 2015!! Quite a turnaround in the world of education, eh?

I signed up with the UK's Open University, a remarkable organisation that has been a pioneer in delivering Distance learning for over 40 years. In the early days of the OU, students used to receive big boxes with course materials at the start of their courses, and were left largely to their own devices. But over the years, as technology has moved on so has the OU. Where better to learn about Distance Learning, I argued? As well as learning about the disciplines of Distance Learning, I got to be a Distance Learner myself.

I plan to try and capture some of the main learning points relevant to me and my practice whilst they are fresh in my mind. These reflections may well run to several blogs - maybe you'll find them interesting too?

I'm kicking off by looking at the place where learning takes place - the virtual classroom, often called the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

As someone who has spent almost all of my 'teaching' career in the classroom, the face-to-face arena is where I have learned my trade. The social contact in the classroom plays a really important part in the way I do my job; being able to see the audience, judge their reactions to presentations/activities/group discussions, and then being able to adjust my teaching style to fit has become an instinctive matter for me. And the social contact also works well for students too - group discussions are very good for deepening learning, and the relationships that are developed between students often have carry-over benefits into the workplace.

Is there any way that this can be replicated online?

My short answer to that question is no, or at least not in the same way! The energy that can be generated in a lively classroom is well nigh impossible to create when you are separated in space and time from your audience. My three years as a Distance Learner have seen a few moments of high emotion, most notably when a 'group' online activity has been taking place and I have felt some sense of ownership of what was going on. But group activities are just as likely to lead to frustration, either because you can't get others to join in, or because the group dynamics are hard to orchestrate when you can't see what's going on with others. On my most recent module, two of the group activities were abandoned due to lack of participation, and a third took place, but had very few participants.

The most important adjustment I  am struggling to come to terms with in the virtual classroom  is that the balance of power well and truly shifts from teacher to student. The student decides when, how, and how much they are going to contribute. If the material and activities are not of interest, there is not much the facilitator can do about it! Some might argue that the same is true in the real classroom - just because someone is present does not mean they are interested or are learning anything. But it does feel different!

My sense is that the way we deliver content and engage with our learners online has not yet come to terms with this new learning arena. Although there are many more organisations offering e-learning these days, its questionable just how qualified they are in the use of the new media for education. Few have got the pure track record of the Open University in delivering Distance Learning, and I'm sure the OU would be the first to acknowledge the challenges. The generation that is teaching today has learned its trade in a non-digital world, and is inevitably influenced by that. And the majority of (adult) learners have similarly developed learning skills in an era when the teacher was the fount of all knowledge. Both parties will have to learn new skills in this digital era - teachers seeing their role as guiding students to make good learning choices, and learners being more independent and choosing their own learning path.

Disappointing results of a study into student participation in e-learning (Garavan et al, 2010) are evidence of how hard it can be to get engagement. In a large sample of students from 275 organisations they found that less than 50% of participants successfully completed their courses. Garavan and his colleagues observe that e-leaning is an isolating experience, and that this isolation is a major cause of attrition.

If teachers and students can't make the shift to different ways of teaching and learning, its hard to see how the use of e-learning will deliver the results that our education systems need to deliver.

What's your experience of participating in e-learning? Which methods of teaching have you found work well for you, and which have been disappointing?

More later....

Reference:

Garavan, T.N., Carbery, R., O’Malley, G., and O’Donnell, D., (2010) Understanding participation in e-learning in organizations: a large-scale empirical study of employees, International Journal of Training and Development 14:3, pp 155 – 168 ISSN 1360-3736

Student Generated Content; F2F

I have read several of the recommended H807 articles on the subject of Student Generated Content; what I have been wondering is - what is the link between Student Generated Content and Social Constructivism? Here I will reflect on my recent use of Social Constructivism in a Face to Face setting, in which one of the outputs has been Student Generated Content. In particular I want to think about the kind of scaffolding and pedagogy that means that the learning objectives of the client and the student are met. I am hoping this will help me create some guidelines that can be applied in the online setting.

In a current face to face programme of mine we are making extensive use Social Constructivist pedagogies. The client has engaged us at a critical point in her company's growth to reinforce amongst all staff (new and experienced) the essential difference they are seeking to bring to the troubled banking sector. When it came to the session in which we were engaging with the subject of the principles that will guide the way employees act, the client was very anxious that we had failed to give her a slot in which she could explain these concepts to the audience. What we had done was to:

• encourage existing employees to bring their own examples of these principles in action today 
• encourage new employees to bring examples of treatment they had experienced from companies that they have appreciated/admired
• provide high level descriptions of the five principles
• organise employees into groups that have varying amounts of company experience

There is another structural benefit at play here, too, which is that the company is part of the Virgin group, which has a strong brand presence amongst consumers.

With all of these pieces in place, we set the mixed groups on a task of 'storytelling' and working out together how they would explain the company's principles to their mum or their pals in the pub! All I can say is that the results have been most impressive, and are being collected into a repository of stories that can be accessed by any employee. They have taken concepts that are more typically converted into 'corporate gobbledegook', and turned them into authentic and personal explanations. Having been initially concerned at the 'lack of structure' the client has agreed that the outcome was exactly what she was looking for, and is now happy with this pedagogy going forwards!

I have to say that the quality and credibility of the outputs does vary - but these sessions and the conversations they are generating back at work are a perfect way to inform and develop newcomers, and to iron out misunderstandings without declaring anyone right or wrong;-) When all is said and done, getting principles into action can only be done if people agree with them and are motivated to work out how to use them for themselves.

In the next blog I will attempt to draw out some principles of Student Generated Content that can be applied in the online setting.

H807 Week 15: My approach to teaching and learning

My most recent learning programme contains several elements that are typical of my approach.

From what I have read so far, I think I incorporate a bit of all three associationist, cognitive and situative elements in my work.

Maybe it's because my business clients have a clear objective in what they want their people to learn, but I always need clear objectives/outcomes for an event. Having set these out, I then plot out a very clear route through the material that people need to learn. I think these are both associationist characteristics.

A firm bias of mine is to ask delegates to carry out pre work, which gets them thinking about the subject before they attend the event proper. This pre-work begins the process of how the learning is going to apply to the real world. This connects with another bias, which is to bring real examples/situations from the workplace into the classroom; customer feedback, well known work issues, well known objections are all examples of this.

When it comes to how I get the message across, I like to create a variety of activities; some will be informative, for example a video case study, a model or organising framework, an input with stories and examples, a worksheet with relevant information; others will be activities/mini projects/problem solving etc. I like to be able to vary the learning styles that are called on for these activities - eg. music, drawing, discussions, fun, physical activities.

Where possible, I like to get delegates to teach each other, and draw on each others' experience. In my most recent programme, mixed groups put together a description of the highlights of the company's growth and development to date drawing on each others' experience, and some background information provided by us.

I also favour groups discussing topics and coming up with their own version of the truth. This lets organisers assess the extent to which the message is being picked up.

Finally, I have a belief that for people truly to take on board a new message, they have to put themselves (physically, if possible) into the subject, and get a feel for its real meaning. I usually set this up with a collaborative activity in small groups, which most often has a light hearted dimension to it - performance is usually an important element.

The balance between the three theories of learning in my approach varies from project to project, and client to client, but I definitely don't prefer the lecturing/input approach. Some of my colleagues (especially the American ones!) are much more comfortable with being the subject matter expert, but I am less so.

Ref:
Mayes, T. and de Freitas, S. (2004) ‘Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models’ [online], Bristol, The Joint Information Systems Committee, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/Stage%202%20Learning%20Models%20%28Version%201%29.pdf (Accessed 24^th May 2011).

Affordances and Communication Technologies: H807 Week 5.1

Using the affordances cited in Conole et al, I have considered the extent to which email and blogs are technologies which afford the characteristics listed.

I have added a couple of characteristics, which I have found to be important in my practice; Stimulate Action and Reward Action

I have made a spreadsheet on Google docs to record my conclusions.

Although several of the characteristics listed are afforded through email and blog, there are a few that seem particularly well served.

Email, because of its instantaneous capability and its ubiquitousness is good at Accessibility, Speed of Change, Communication, Immediacy, Stimulate Response/Action and Incentivise Action.

Blogging on the other hand is good for Reflection and Collaboration. The technology also enables users to be rewarded for participation when commenters post replies. The use of RSS feeds on blogs also means they can enable speed of change and immediacy.

The OU's learning about elearning?

Having been a participant in 2003 in what felt like a very pioneering OU MA module H802: Application of Information Technology, followed closely by H804 in 2004, I can see changes that the OU has introduced to H808 (2009) and H807 (2011) which I am sure are not an accident. When it comes to elearning design, there are undoubtedly lessons for me here. I'll think of more as H807 progresses, but here are a few to get started.

One very important difference between my latest 2 modules and my first 2 is that the integration of VLE activity is now much more important. In H802 and H804, points were awarded for levels of participation, but the percentage that was awarded was relatively insignificant - from memory on H804 the amound was around 7% (in other words, not enough to change behaviour!). In both H808 and H807, at least one TMA asks you to document an online project/activity, and both programmes require you to give account of your personal contribution to the project, or other discussions. This seems to me a very significant shift in design, to encourage active participation in at least some of the online activity.

Another noticeable, although understandable, difference is that there is less 'hand-holding' around the online organisation and interactions. I'm sure this is due to the level of sophistication around electronic communications that now exists now in comparison with 8 years ago.

Thirdly, I noticed when our H807 module was launched that we had a much larger group - 21 - than was true on either H802 or H804. These earlier courses had 12-15 students at the start. However, I notice that by the end of week three, there are 10 active participants, other than myself. I know one (Claire) dropped out very early on, but the others, so far, have not been particularly active. Learner engagement has been a difficult issue in the experiments that I have undertaken around using elearning. Maybe the OU has just concluded there will always be a level of fallout, so they take account of that from the start?!

Finally, the use of references from other participants on the module was always valued, but on H807 there are explicit demands to use comments from other students in TMAs.

All very interesting - as the module develops, I am hoping to spot other elearning design lessons. We are, after all, being trained by one of the world's most experienced Distance Learning Organisations;-)

Innovation Case Studies Block 1, Week 2.2

In this task, we are asked to study a number of case studies - too many to read them all;-) I have decided to choose cases that have some relevance to my work life.

1. Bradford University Physiotherapy  Course - a module that brings the user (customer in my parlance) to life, and helps with the transfer of learning. The case based scenario module incorporated media rich elements, to make them more emotionally engaging. The scenarios were used in a blended learning format, which encouraged problem solving debate on the cases. Student feedback shows they are engaging with the material.
2. Derby University BA in Business Studies. This course has been transformed by being available fully online. This has attracted a more mature student, that is motivated to complete the course. As well as being available online, there is flexibility about when modules are taken, which means that a three year course can be completed in two years. Student enrollments and satisfaction levels have been on the increase. No particular evidence of any pedagogical innovations.
3. Swansea University BA and MA in Archaeology. The use of a combination of images from archaeological site, with an accompanying podcast commentary by an academic who is working on/visitng the site has been very well received. The larger number of requests to attend field study summer schools is an example of this greater level of engagement. The evidence is that students find the input much more engaging. It is also an excellent option for students with mobility issues, who would otherwise miss out on the experience of 'visiting' a site. The staff have extended their use of podcasting technology to respond to specific student enquiries. These can then become a shared resource for the future.
4. Warwick University Team Based approach to creating e-resources. This project focuses on the method used by the UReCA department which has over 1000 part time students and more than 80  modules. Previously course materials were provided in paper based form - e-resources were provided only by enthusiasts. By taking a collaborative, whole department approach to developing e-resources, the project raised the confidence and competence of staff to engage with elearning. As a result, not only has the student experience been enhanced, but staff development and collaboratiion continues on the VLE that was used for the collaborative project. Free lunches were used to reward, entice participation of reluctant members of staff!!