Bad example
Usually bad experiences with learning are bounded somehow unethical behaviour of teachers. But this does not depend on course design. Usually course design is something students do not notice. Once you have to pay attention how course is build up, it means that there is something wrong with it. Form personal experiences just few notes:
• too much material to go through and not enough time for this or too much material and theoretical terms and no context around them.
• no discussion: there is no space or time for discussion or someone (teacher) just will end this with some inappropriate comment
• no clear goals and no communication with learners about the goals of process
• learning materials are out of date or unsuitable (too simple or too complicated)
• no feedback during the process
Good example
Usually good course is something you just enjoy and don't notice how it was built up. And of course: teacher does always give some extra sense to the learning process.
But still few notes:
• clear goals of the process
• common understanding how the process will look like and rules
• support and feedback to students while learning
• good materials and enough time to discover them
• appropriate discussion channels, constant discussion
• flexible assignments and deadlines
• clear structure of course and materials
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Reflection - week 4
1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
It's hard to say. This week I can not distinction anything. Somehow everything is at the moment blurry.
2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
I struggled again with my motivation and thought a lot about course design. Terjes comments were really interesting and I'm thinking what to answer to them. I read one comment form Terje were she suggested that perhaps student's must not go to deep into all the materials but perhaps should decide what is important and what is not. I tried this approach this week and … did not like it. I can not read diagonally, if I want to take the best out of it, i have to go deep…
3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more
about it?
No :). I have always wondered if students answer that they do get everything - it is usually a lie.
4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
It was really great to read Terjes comments and it gives me motivation to write some answers and continue discussion. And this made me think: what not use this for motivation. What not to make it assignment for one or two weeks? No other homework - students just must read reflections and reading overviews made by others and write comments to them. As we all have read the same papers this might cause deeper reflection even.
5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (eg. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
Skype, MSN, MS Word, blog, Moodle
6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
I did contact with Terje - we had nice chat about course, just some feedback.
It's hard to say. This week I can not distinction anything. Somehow everything is at the moment blurry.
2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
I struggled again with my motivation and thought a lot about course design. Terjes comments were really interesting and I'm thinking what to answer to them. I read one comment form Terje were she suggested that perhaps student's must not go to deep into all the materials but perhaps should decide what is important and what is not. I tried this approach this week and … did not like it. I can not read diagonally, if I want to take the best out of it, i have to go deep…
3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more
about it?
No :). I have always wondered if students answer that they do get everything - it is usually a lie.
4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
It was really great to read Terjes comments and it gives me motivation to write some answers and continue discussion. And this made me think: what not use this for motivation. What not to make it assignment for one or two weeks? No other homework - students just must read reflections and reading overviews made by others and write comments to them. As we all have read the same papers this might cause deeper reflection even.
5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (eg. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
Skype, MSN, MS Word, blog, Moodle
6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
I did contact with Terje - we had nice chat about course, just some feedback.
Monday, March 24, 2008
What are the components of course design? week3
It is a bit difficult for me to understand what is meant by components. Short answer would be: learner, teacher, and environment. After some thoughts I added to the list content and materials. After materials structure, methods and goals came. Then it seemed like an outline. To create some circle development and analysis are missing. I tried to draw these components, but it needs some improvement as learner and teacher /coach / facilitator are missing in the chart. But as I can not show this drawing here, I just type keywords:
* goal and need analysis
* content
* environment
- structure
- methods
- materials
* improvement / evaluation
- feedback
- analysis / reflection
* in the middle of this is construction of knowledge
* motivation
* interaction
Now it seems to me that feedback is very important component in elearning course. In classroom it is possible to see and hear the teacher talking and commenting the content, answering to the questions, opening the context in the same moment. In elearning course this is not happening and therefore continuous interaction and feedback are very important to compensate that.
I hope that I will come back to this and perhaps add some more thoughts about components. There are too many terms/words to have a nice chart...
About materials of this week ...
Somehow I don't like problem-based approach or activity-based approach. I call it "pragmatic view" to learning – shoot, shoot, shoot – think when ever you have time, analyse, discuss, reflect not before but after. First it was teacher-centred, then student-centred and now it is activity/problem-centred approach. When I read materials of problem or activity-based learning it makes me wonder: isn't this actually behaviouristic approach? Yes, it takes into consideration context, but something is missing, something what student-centred approach had. I don't like very much the name: problem-based learning. I believe in learning-by-doing, but I don’t see that this takes place only while solving problems. As in that case the base of learning is some situation from real life then it is perhaps better to call it case-based learning. Not every case is a problem!
I‘ve got it now: I don’t believe in student-content interaction. I believe in student-teacher interaction. But problem-based approach has student-content interaction background. Human part/role of/in learning is missing!
* goal and need analysis
* content
* environment
- structure
- methods
- materials
* improvement / evaluation
- feedback
- analysis / reflection
* in the middle of this is construction of knowledge
* motivation
* interaction
Now it seems to me that feedback is very important component in elearning course. In classroom it is possible to see and hear the teacher talking and commenting the content, answering to the questions, opening the context in the same moment. In elearning course this is not happening and therefore continuous interaction and feedback are very important to compensate that.
I hope that I will come back to this and perhaps add some more thoughts about components. There are too many terms/words to have a nice chart...
About materials of this week ...
Somehow I don't like problem-based approach or activity-based approach. I call it "pragmatic view" to learning – shoot, shoot, shoot – think when ever you have time, analyse, discuss, reflect not before but after. First it was teacher-centred, then student-centred and now it is activity/problem-centred approach. When I read materials of problem or activity-based learning it makes me wonder: isn't this actually behaviouristic approach? Yes, it takes into consideration context, but something is missing, something what student-centred approach had. I don't like very much the name: problem-based learning. I believe in learning-by-doing, but I don’t see that this takes place only while solving problems. As in that case the base of learning is some situation from real life then it is perhaps better to call it case-based learning. Not every case is a problem!
I‘ve got it now: I don’t believe in student-content interaction. I believe in student-teacher interaction. But problem-based approach has student-content interaction background. Human part/role of/in learning is missing!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Reflection week 3
1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
I think that the most important thing I learned was how complicated it is to design and implement a good online course. Having students with very different backgrounds: some argue about socio-cognition (vau!) and some don't know what reflection is.
2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
I struggled all week with my motivation - it was sometimes interesting and sometimes annoying.
3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more
about it?
There are many questions. As theories behind elearning are quite new, they often arise more questions then they have answers.
4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
How to design and implement a good online course?
When I joined this course I had intrinsic motivation. Course sounded so interesting but for some reasons I lost my motivation. So actually I was looking answers why it happened in readings of this week and I tried to reflect my thoughts and expectations just to understand what is going on with me.
I'm not enjoying this course and I'm not having fun. I do understand that I have not been very active during this course yet, but I found so many people among students who are even less active as I am. So the problem is not just me.
Materials of this course are great - very interesting but also difficult. The problem might be that even if students have questions they don’t ask them. I know that I don’t. Usually these questions do not have one right answer and they need some discussion. This is something what is ease to do in classroom: you just ask and you get an answer and then you can ask again and all the time you actually think along. Here, even when I do ask my questions - my thoughts are not all the time with the context. Here time actually disturbs learning process and synergy. Plus I do feel that we have to much information: over 100 pages of different articles, over 100 slides plus blogs of students/facilitators to read. Everything has different approach, different layout …
Second thing is that I don’t know were to start: where should I post my question? Wiki? Forum? E-mail? Blog? I tried blog but I don’t still have no answers. So this is a wrong way. But I don't know what is right! EMIM forum? Until now it is more used to test and it is unclear to me whether it is for deeper discussion or what kind of questions it is for? Here perhaps might be a good idea if facilitators would take a bit more active role and post some questions there. I spent a lot of time to go through other blogs in our course. There are few brilliant students who write brilliant posts. Perhaps it would be good idea that facilitators will choose every week some interesting ideas/questions to post there so everybody will have a visible opportunity to read/discuss with others. So good posts/ideas come visible for them who don't know much about elearning and we could have several brilliant discussions. Perhaps here some encouragement from facilitators side might help. At the moment there very little discussion about theories we read and questions we have. Another thing: I read that many students write that they have no questions … I can not believe this…
Another thing I thought about is that perhaps there are too many tasks for students. In the begging there are to many environments were we have to create an account. Perhaps this is a little scary? For me it was! And it takes time to get to know those environments - more then one week. All students have different background: for some it is technically to demanding (don't be in love with different environments!), for some it is theoretically to demanding (my background is in adult education and sometimes it is hard for me to understand everything or to select what is really important). As we don't have classroom discussions and explanations I do feel left alone with my study and struggles.
Too many challenges create frustration and kill motivation. My suggestion is to take some time off and give students more time to adapt.
5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (eg. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
Skype, MSN, MS Word, blog
6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
I wrote 2 comments for Jasna (actually one was more to Terje), one comment for Terje. Via skype communicated shortly with Oleg and Lesavik
More I read different blogs (facilitators and studens) and their comments. I still need some time to adapt.
I think that the most important thing I learned was how complicated it is to design and implement a good online course. Having students with very different backgrounds: some argue about socio-cognition (vau!) and some don't know what reflection is.
2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
I struggled all week with my motivation - it was sometimes interesting and sometimes annoying.
3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more
about it?
There are many questions. As theories behind elearning are quite new, they often arise more questions then they have answers.
4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
How to design and implement a good online course?
When I joined this course I had intrinsic motivation. Course sounded so interesting but for some reasons I lost my motivation. So actually I was looking answers why it happened in readings of this week and I tried to reflect my thoughts and expectations just to understand what is going on with me.
I'm not enjoying this course and I'm not having fun. I do understand that I have not been very active during this course yet, but I found so many people among students who are even less active as I am. So the problem is not just me.
Materials of this course are great - very interesting but also difficult. The problem might be that even if students have questions they don’t ask them. I know that I don’t. Usually these questions do not have one right answer and they need some discussion. This is something what is ease to do in classroom: you just ask and you get an answer and then you can ask again and all the time you actually think along. Here, even when I do ask my questions - my thoughts are not all the time with the context. Here time actually disturbs learning process and synergy. Plus I do feel that we have to much information: over 100 pages of different articles, over 100 slides plus blogs of students/facilitators to read. Everything has different approach, different layout …
Second thing is that I don’t know were to start: where should I post my question? Wiki? Forum? E-mail? Blog? I tried blog but I don’t still have no answers. So this is a wrong way. But I don't know what is right! EMIM forum? Until now it is more used to test and it is unclear to me whether it is for deeper discussion or what kind of questions it is for? Here perhaps might be a good idea if facilitators would take a bit more active role and post some questions there. I spent a lot of time to go through other blogs in our course. There are few brilliant students who write brilliant posts. Perhaps it would be good idea that facilitators will choose every week some interesting ideas/questions to post there so everybody will have a visible opportunity to read/discuss with others. So good posts/ideas come visible for them who don't know much about elearning and we could have several brilliant discussions. Perhaps here some encouragement from facilitators side might help. At the moment there very little discussion about theories we read and questions we have. Another thing: I read that many students write that they have no questions … I can not believe this…
Another thing I thought about is that perhaps there are too many tasks for students. In the begging there are to many environments were we have to create an account. Perhaps this is a little scary? For me it was! And it takes time to get to know those environments - more then one week. All students have different background: for some it is technically to demanding (don't be in love with different environments!), for some it is theoretically to demanding (my background is in adult education and sometimes it is hard for me to understand everything or to select what is really important). As we don't have classroom discussions and explanations I do feel left alone with my study and struggles.
Too many challenges create frustration and kill motivation. My suggestion is to take some time off and give students more time to adapt.
5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (eg. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
Skype, MSN, MS Word, blog
6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
I wrote 2 comments for Jasna (actually one was more to Terje), one comment for Terje. Via skype communicated shortly with Oleg and Lesavik
More I read different blogs (facilitators and studens) and their comments. I still need some time to adapt.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
just some questions…
... to think about.
Does e-learning enable students to be more self-directed? Or does elearning without good guidance just confuse students?
Is elearning more student-friendly or without good guidance does not attract to learn?
Does elearning support inside motivation?
Is the process of knowledge creation different in elearning?
How is it possible to develop skills (!) in elearning or support it?
How to compensate missing communication between students/teachers? Or is there a need for that?
How can elearning support the creation of new knowledge? Can e-learning develop students academic knowledge/academic reflection or does it support more handcraft skills?
Does e-learning enable students to be more self-directed? Or does elearning without good guidance just confuse students?
Is elearning more student-friendly or without good guidance does not attract to learn?
Does elearning support inside motivation?
Is the process of knowledge creation different in elearning?
How is it possible to develop skills (!) in elearning or support it?
How to compensate missing communication between students/teachers? Or is there a need for that?
How can elearning support the creation of new knowledge? Can e-learning develop students academic knowledge/academic reflection or does it support more handcraft skills?
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Week 2
What was the most important thing you learned this week?
From article: learning process must have fun together. This very important - perhaps even more important then knowledge about behaviourism, constructivism…
What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
We still don’t have discussion, but it is not ease to have discussion with 70 persons and we just formed our group.
Interesting - I'm still trying to figure out how exactly work with this blog.
Was there something you didn’t quite understand and want to know more
about it?
There are some thoughts in my readings blog. I must sure how do authors understand "tacit knowledge" and how knowledge becomes "tacit".
What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?
Experiences … I'm a little more experienced how to handle my blog… but I'm still not an expert.
Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (eg. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
Moodle, Blog. I looked some links Moodle offered.
MSN, Skype - to communicate with my friends
MS Word - to write reflections.
With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
There was no communication from my side with co-students during this week. I read blogs of co-students and facilitators and tried to figure out what kind of persons stand behind them.
From article: learning process must have fun together. This very important - perhaps even more important then knowledge about behaviourism, constructivism…
What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
We still don’t have discussion, but it is not ease to have discussion with 70 persons and we just formed our group.
Interesting - I'm still trying to figure out how exactly work with this blog.
Was there something you didn’t quite understand and want to know more
about it?
There are some thoughts in my readings blog. I must sure how do authors understand "tacit knowledge" and how knowledge becomes "tacit".
What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?
Experiences … I'm a little more experienced how to handle my blog… but I'm still not an expert.
Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (eg. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
Moodle, Blog. I looked some links Moodle offered.
MSN, Skype - to communicate with my friends
MS Word - to write reflections.
With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
There was no communication from my side with co-students during this week. I read blogs of co-students and facilitators and tried to figure out what kind of persons stand behind them.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Which principles of groupwork, communities of practice and collaborative learning should a distributed group consider, when planning the design of an e-learning course? week2
Short answer would be: build trust: towards members of the team, towards technology used and towards learning process. Let learners decide how they want to learn (let them set the rules and roles). Support interaction between learners and give them feedback.
What is important: to give learners time to build trust. It does not happen overnight. Trusting each other means that learners must have time to develop common "language" and common understanding. They must learn to know each others' strengths and weaknesses.
Technical apprehension - this is definitely a problematic question when planning an e-learning course.
How can learners see what they have learned: reflection period and assignments must be thought through? How will they communicate and collaborate.
Networking, knowledge how to communicate, collaborate, how to communicate effectively, how to create opportunities for learning and growth, collect and provide feedback.
And of course: you can not forget the "fun" - this celebration idea in article was great!
But I want to share my thought about the article in the way which does not match perhaps the title of the blog.
First I did not like this article very much (readings last week were much better from my point of view). This one was not very well structured, cases described were not well bounded with literature analysis and differences/similarities of described cases were not deeply analysed. I did get too little new information and they raised more questions than I found answers.
Still there were some moments when I realised that this is something we are trying to do or what is still ahead of us in this class. Like we are trying to "learn about" and "learn how to" at the same time.
As team members know each other before then of course it was easier for them to build trust and to be more successful with online learning/working (this is similar in classroom as well).
What really disturbed me in this article was the approach of authors to the knowledge and more specifically to tacit knowledge. It might be because tacit knowledge is quite obscure term and authors did not explain what they meant with it or how tacit knowledge develops. From my point of view in successful e-learning groups learning process begins with explicit knowledge except for the teams who have worked together before or who previously have had e-learning courses (and have some technological skills), but this is not very common now. Otherwise e-learning is explicit and bounded with "aha"-effect or conflict situation (in both cases learning is explicit). Every team member has his own understanding about the process, has his own learning experience …. So to create a successful e-learning group, the first stage learning must be explicit.
There is one sentence in this article with what it is hard for me to agree: "once team members trust, they are more likely to make their tacit knowledge explicit, transform explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge …" First: if a learner makes (!) tacit knowledge explicit then it must be explicit already. Otherwise tacit knowledge becomes (!) explicit to others. And knowledge becomes more explicit more learners communicate/interact with each other. I'm not sure in the second part of this claim: if trust is the reason why explicit knowledge comes tacit. It has more to do with learners' competence development then team members trust.
Other question for me is: whether learners can learn something "tacitly" or tacit knowledge is something what expands from explicit knowledge?
Now about "Teachable Moments". Of course conflict situations and failures are teachable moments and the best way to learn is from one's own experience. Authors bound teachable moments with failure. It gives an impression like all valuable learning would happen through failure or conflict.
To create secured environment for failures, it means that the feedback to failure (learner does not always recognise this) must take place practically online. As e-learning tends to be more time consuming then it is not easy to do (it is a huge pressure to facilitator).
Other thing is that "teachable moment" can happen through positive success!
About "inciting conflict". I would be very careful to encourage inciting conflict. I have seen (so this is not based on academic knowledge ) some training where facilitator knowing that conflict in the group would take place trying to encourage conflict. The results of that were not great. If one wants to do something like this then one must have perfect knowledge in psychology and perfect sense of individuals so that the group could be put back work together again. Conflict appears in group processes usually anyway - so let it be normal and real conflict what is usable to all group members as well.
It is hard to agree with authors that learning "does not become "real" until conflict occur". Unfortunately authors do not offer definition to "real learning".
What is important: to give learners time to build trust. It does not happen overnight. Trusting each other means that learners must have time to develop common "language" and common understanding. They must learn to know each others' strengths and weaknesses.
Technical apprehension - this is definitely a problematic question when planning an e-learning course.
How can learners see what they have learned: reflection period and assignments must be thought through? How will they communicate and collaborate.
Networking, knowledge how to communicate, collaborate, how to communicate effectively, how to create opportunities for learning and growth, collect and provide feedback.
And of course: you can not forget the "fun" - this celebration idea in article was great!
But I want to share my thought about the article in the way which does not match perhaps the title of the blog.
First I did not like this article very much (readings last week were much better from my point of view). This one was not very well structured, cases described were not well bounded with literature analysis and differences/similarities of described cases were not deeply analysed. I did get too little new information and they raised more questions than I found answers.
Still there were some moments when I realised that this is something we are trying to do or what is still ahead of us in this class. Like we are trying to "learn about" and "learn how to" at the same time.
As team members know each other before then of course it was easier for them to build trust and to be more successful with online learning/working (this is similar in classroom as well).
What really disturbed me in this article was the approach of authors to the knowledge and more specifically to tacit knowledge. It might be because tacit knowledge is quite obscure term and authors did not explain what they meant with it or how tacit knowledge develops. From my point of view in successful e-learning groups learning process begins with explicit knowledge except for the teams who have worked together before or who previously have had e-learning courses (and have some technological skills), but this is not very common now. Otherwise e-learning is explicit and bounded with "aha"-effect or conflict situation (in both cases learning is explicit). Every team member has his own understanding about the process, has his own learning experience …. So to create a successful e-learning group, the first stage learning must be explicit.
There is one sentence in this article with what it is hard for me to agree: "once team members trust, they are more likely to make their tacit knowledge explicit, transform explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge …" First: if a learner makes (!) tacit knowledge explicit then it must be explicit already. Otherwise tacit knowledge becomes (!) explicit to others. And knowledge becomes more explicit more learners communicate/interact with each other. I'm not sure in the second part of this claim: if trust is the reason why explicit knowledge comes tacit. It has more to do with learners' competence development then team members trust.
Other question for me is: whether learners can learn something "tacitly" or tacit knowledge is something what expands from explicit knowledge?
Now about "Teachable Moments". Of course conflict situations and failures are teachable moments and the best way to learn is from one's own experience. Authors bound teachable moments with failure. It gives an impression like all valuable learning would happen through failure or conflict.
To create secured environment for failures, it means that the feedback to failure (learner does not always recognise this) must take place practically online. As e-learning tends to be more time consuming then it is not easy to do (it is a huge pressure to facilitator).
Other thing is that "teachable moment" can happen through positive success!
About "inciting conflict". I would be very careful to encourage inciting conflict. I have seen (so this is not based on academic knowledge ) some training where facilitator knowing that conflict in the group would take place trying to encourage conflict. The results of that were not great. If one wants to do something like this then one must have perfect knowledge in psychology and perfect sense of individuals so that the group could be put back work together again. Conflict appears in group processes usually anyway - so let it be normal and real conflict what is usable to all group members as well.
It is hard to agree with authors that learning "does not become "real" until conflict occur". Unfortunately authors do not offer definition to "real learning".
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