Jared Stein – Education, Technology, Culture, and the Internet

I’m working on an online university course redesign that prompts students to develop web design skills through a series of weekly projects that build upon the previous week’s work. In the past these projects have been submitted privately to the instructor, though students have been encouraged to post their submissions to their blogs or personal web sites, and simply submit the URL as a means to encourage collegial interaction and openness (more…)

Or, Blogs, “Blogs,” and Discussion Boards*

I subscribe to TechTrends as part of my AECT membership. It has a great subtitle (Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning) and it is peer reviewed, though I don’t know if it’s considered a journal or a magazine (I lean towards “magazine”). Sometimes there are some good articles, sometimes there are bad ones. One particular article in the September/October 2010 issue caught my attention: “Using Blogs to Identify Misconceptions in a Large Undergraduate Nutrition Course”. Not exactly a home run of a title, but I’m interested in examples of student blogging in action, so I read on (more…)

I’ve read Jason’s paper on the topic of technological gravity, and I’ve heard him guest lecture in Stephen Yanchar’s learning theories course at BYU, so I thought I knew what to expect from Jason’s TTIX 2010 session. Jason’s pres was both pleasantly divergent and more expansive, and both his slides and his presentation style–which paced his own personal experiences between anecdotes and examples–complemented the content. Here are some rough notes from his session (more…)

Notes taken at Distance Teaching and Learning Conference 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Presenters: Sarah Bryans Bongey, Diana Johnson

This presentation initially focused on showcasing a faculty professional development course on teaching to Gardner’s multiple intelligences. The course tries to model MI approach for faculty who are in the online course as students.

Example: Using a guest speaker for interpersonal intelligence

Shows detailed lists of course’s activities.

Some interesting options for participants: interview an online faculty, write a syllabus, etc.

What about a rubric? Faculty know how to write a syllabus. Seems like writing a rubric would appeal to logical-mathematical-strong learners.

All-in-all, the lecture approach to this presentation generally let me down. The second half was more engaging, as it showed explicit examples that purported to approach different learning styles. The hard part about teaching to multiple intelligences is (1) thinking of teaching strategies that will efficiently affect learning in the different intelligence strengths, and (2) finding or making materials or activities for each of those intelligence strengths. Another approach would be to teach students to find their own learning materials or activities online using search engines and repositories, but I fear too much time would be spent by students finding (and hopefully evaluating) the learning resources, not learning and applying the information.

Show more activities, like “podcast videos” (i.e. downloadable mp4s without RSS) for visual-spatial learners.

Listening to the presenters flounder at times with activity ideas for some of the intelligences makes me suspect that it’s at least untenable to teach any subject to all of the supposed intelligences. Thus, I have to ask if it might not be as useful in the long run to try to develop a few core intelligences necessary for learning through student learning skills training.

Show more activities, like online articles for linguistic learners.

Exit, Mr. Stein.

On a similar note, I read Clayton Christensen’s Disrupting Class this month, and much of it’s premise is based on Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory. Christensen suggests that online tutoring resources and tools will help education better address these intelligence strengths. His emphasis on disruptive technology makes it seem possible by suggesting MI approaches can only thrive through user-developed, user-networked access to these resources and tools. And, having recently authored a few pages of content for a learning module that bridges Disrupting Class with open educational resources and learning branches, I think I may have found a new presentation topic.

Continuing from yesterday’s post, 31 Out of 95 E-Learning Ideas Ain’t Bad, here’s the second half of my pick of the strongest e-learning ideas found in Patti Shank’s useful book, The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning.

17. Use electronic flash cards (p 184). (Coincidentally, @KenWoodward and I are working on providing an extremely reusable flash cards app for both desktop Web browsers and handheld devices.)
18. Drag-and-drop activities for self-assessment within a lesson (p 194).
19. Use pre- and post-assessments to demonstrate the value of the e-learning (p 205).
20. Provide flowchart(s) to illustrate processes (p 216). (I’ve found these are easy to create in most spreadsheet programs.)
21. As part of prototyping and design, write a learner scenario to describe possible interactions with e-learning (p 221).
22. Tap into learners’ “emotional brain” with personalized learning models (Concrete experience; Reflective observation; Abstract hypothesis; Active testing) (p 226). (This model is similar to Stevick’s Observe – Span – Do, which I’ve found to be effective in language learning.)
23. Use content templates to rapidly turn out lesson pages with a consistent look and feel (p 228; p 232).
24. Use concept maps and causal loops for navigation as an alternative to linear navigation for complex concepts (p 240). (I do recall some early studies of hypertextual learning suggested that non-linear navigation is risky at best.)
25. Embed hyperlinks to glossary entries within the lesson content (p 249).
26. Provide a printable summary of lesson content as a study aid (p 265).
27. Develop a virtual campus to help wholly distance learners orient themselves and feel connected (p 287).
28. Use visuals to show relationships between course concepts (p 291).
29. Slow down or speed up motion to demonstrate complex physical skills (p 301).
30. Create an interactive, multidimensional timeline for subjects such as history that weave events in places and times (p 308).
31. Use still and interactive graphics for complex or obscure physical concepts (e.g. atoms, cells, galaxies, tidal pools) (p 312; 315; 318; 321; 324).

These 31 ideas are the choicest out of Shank’s 95+ picks. Note that I’ve written 95+; Shank explains at the end that there are more than 95 ideas in this book, despite the title. She suggests that the element of surprise can help learning along, yet at the same time she notes that she herself wouldn’t have noticed, and the book doesn’t even number the ideas so that you could know there were more than 95. Really, who’s going to be keeping count in their head?

Length and those minor complaints aside, I recommend this book to instructional designers or technology-minded teachers, if only to see the screen-shots illustrating the most useful and innovative ideas.

Patti Shank has put together The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning, an annotated collection of 95+ examples of e-learning tools, scenarios, or applications. Her book delivers best-practices in e-learning in a format that is both accessible and well-illustrated. And while I am glad she put this book together as it will be especially useful to those just getting into the field of e-learning, my general reaction to the book was that it is too long, being packed with a number of examples that are either redundant or simply common sense.

I might correct myself on that last point to include “common sense” ideas that are of significant value; yet even so, I think I could edit Shank’s book down to simply 31 useful and noteworthy ideas for technology-enhanced teaching. My version would include just the following.

1. Provide a detailed, weekly study schedule (p 16).
2. Embed performance tips to direct study and discipline toward learner success (p 20).
3. Anonymous weekly surveys to collect formative feedback (p 31).
4. Have contingency plans in place for learning in the case of technology failure (p 39).
5. Explain discussion message protocols to keep students focused and comfortable in forums (p 78).
6. Let learners evaluate their own contributions to the course through online quizzes or surveys (p 82).
7. Use tables as graphical organizers to illustrate relationships between information or concepts (p 94).
8. Ask students to enter their answer and compare it to an expert’s response (p 101).
9. You mouse rollovers to show ancillary info, allowing students to learn more about topics or passages (p 105), or use collapsible layers for text or illustrations (p 244).
10. Share bookmarks to web sites online (p 112). (Surprisingly, del.icio.us or other online tools were not mentioned.)
11. Show an expert’s view of a question or issue surrounding a topic (p 118).
12. Use a table, or Word’s track changes for easy peer editing (p 132).
13. Moderate student chat rooms (p 142). (They recommend a “knowledgeable assistant”, but I say that’s the teacher’s job!)
14. Use word games, such as 5 summative words that start with the same vowel to reinforce concepts (p 161). (I like acrostics, such as are found in the Nintendo DS game, Brain Age 2.)
15. In synchronous lectures, let learners determine the order in which topics are presented (Gordon MacKenzie-style) (p 163).
16. Use games and puzzles to review (e.g. crosswords, fill-in-the-blank (p 180). (I recommend our GameGarten, aka The Play Station hosted by John Krutsch.)

I’ll stop at number 16 to give you the information in two manageable chunks. Chunking is one idea that I think is pretty useful in e-learning, though it is overlooked in The Online Learning Book. I’ll post the last 15 strong ideas on this blog tomorrow.

(Originally posted on our Distance Ed unit’s IDS ‘blog.)

I and several folks on our team are currently in what our sister-in-arms Janel would rightly call “crisis mode” for a certain online course we’re producing. We have been for the past 10 weeks. It’s not a comfortable place to be, and much of the additional stress is my responsibility–in part through miscalculating the length of the project’s development cycles, and in part by acquiescing to the instructors’ wishes for an “on-time” delivery. However, now I’m beginning to reflect on the course of this project, and in fielding a number of complaints throughout the process I have returned to an article I read some years ago on rapid prototyping in instructional design:

Tripp, S. D., & Bichelmeyer, B. (1990). Rapid protoyping: An alternative instructional design strategy. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 38(1), 31-44.
(You can read a summary of the Tripp Bichelmeyer article here.)

The number-one complaint I’ve heard from folks on the team (myself included!) is that the scope of the project is not clear, and both the instructor and the instructional designer (me) are asking for changes to the tools and the learning media “mid-stream”–that is, as the students progress. But when I analyze those complaints, they lose a lot of their legitimacy.

Unlike other types of design, instructional design has as its highest priority the effectiveness and usability of the learning media for the outcome of learning. What instructional designers deliver to learners is not a product, but an experience. Unlike other media, effective learning media does not entertain, it engages. Technology-facilitated learning media has the potential of providing maximum return for minimal effort. And yet it is still a fairly a new “art”. Though there are principles and best practices, and though instructional designers likely know more about learning and cognition than ever before, there are no easy formulas for designing instruction, and no instructional design will “fit” all instructors, let alone all learners.

Instructional designers design and produce learning media with the assistance of skilled human resources, such as programmers, graphic designers, videographers, etc. In order to provide the optimum learning experience, instructional designers must evaluate the learning media for usability and effectiveness continually, and as early as possible, with the option of immediately revising, rewriting, recreating, or adding to the learning media in a cyclic pattern. As one cycle proves effective and usable, the next cycle begins, based upon the best-practices of the previous, and so on.

Even as the learning media goes into production, instructors should receive formative feedback from learners in each lesson. Formative feedback provides instructors with information as to whether or the not the students are learning, how efficient that learning is, and whether or not the tools that facilitate the learning are frustrating and over-encumbering. When a learner is over-encumbered by extraneous tasks, such as manipulating the technology, learning is inhibited, if not impossible. Such encumbrances must be eliminated as they are discovered.

Scope, therefore, is something that is only recognizably accurate in hindsight for an instructional designer. Scope is a forecast, not a definition.

This idea of instructional design through rapid prototyping may be most necessary when the learning outcomes are skills-based. If you remove the severe time constraints that we’ve been on, this online course is a perfect example of effective instructional design through rapid prototyping. It is also a perfect example of how it is nearly impossible to define scope all at once; the learners have four skills that they must develop, and each skill is dramatically different in how it’s learned and how it’s practiced. Not only that, but as the learners progress through the course, the learning outcomes change, their needs change, and the tools that will best facilitate their skills must also change.

Is there a point at which an instructional design is complete? Not necessarily. Sometimes we finish a project when we’ve shown that we’ve met our learning objectives, sometimes the conclusion is based on more arbitrary factors. Budget, time, personality conflicts—all of these are capable of providing sufficient justification for the conclusion of any given project. But the point is that we are open, we are zen in the way we accept change, we are focused on the learners their experiences, and we base our success on effectiveness more than efficiency.

And though we in Distance Education pride ourselves in outwitting the limitations of time and space, efficiency must still be a principle concern to any director and any project manager. At the same time the process of rapid prototyping and a focus on the learner’s experience will help us take learning media from bad to better to best. I don’t think the two are necessarily at odds; by practicing the process we can only learn from experience, and our results can surely become better, faster and more efficient. The pay-off is clear; it’s merely the mind-sets that are muddled.