Monthly Archive for March, 2005

Weekly report 1: Blended Learning

Published
by
Michael
on 31/3/2005
in General and projects
. 2 Comments

Well it was only just over a week ago that I posted an idea for the collaborative development of a Guide to Blended Learning in the knowledge era. But it would be ridiculous to think of this idea as ‘my’ idea… it’s not. It’s really an idea that has been perculating (?) through the activity of all of us contributing to the Teach and Learn Online (TALO) email group - a group of people from a number of educational organistaions in Sydney (and overseas!).

Progress so far

It’s been an incredibly busy week! The original post generated some interest from the TALO group, and a few of us quickly set up our own blended learning email group to continue discussing the idea… and we’ve had 53 postings during our discussions so far, so it’s been quite busy!

Through these discussions we came up with the idea to use a Wiki to plan the project itself, and after checking out a number of options, set up the BlendedLearning Wiki on JotSpot. It’s taken a bit of getting used to, and we’re pretty certain that we won’t use JotSpot for the actual resource, but it’s been good to get started with the planning. We probably spent too much time trying out special features of JotSpot, but have started using the system to structure our thoughts for the project.

We’re currently focussing on evaluting which platforms might be most suitable for developing this resource, as well as finding out what resources are already out there (so that we don’t re-invent the wheel). I was also hoping to spend some effort looking at the licensing options, but haven’t had the chance yet.

So that’s it! It’s been a busy first week, but we seem to have some momentum going… hopefully we won’t lose it!

The Arts of a Wise Leader

Published
by
Michael
on 24/3/2005
in General and learning
. 0 Comments

The arts of the wise leaderNo, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’m the essence of wisdom… or that I’m a great leader… (or good at art for that matter!). A friend of mine (John) asked me recently to participate as a guinea-pig in a course that he’s preparing to run called The Arts of a Wise Leader, which has forced me yet again to consider how crucial conversation is - not just for leadership/management - but in all spheres of life!

The Queensland Education department has had some involvement with this course, you can read about it on the testamonial page.

The arts

The course provides a completely refreshing view of leadership/management, focusing not on cold processes, tasks and resources, but instead on the more humane ‘arts’ of leadership: Story, Brilliance, Promise and Grace (as depicted in the graphic above).

Using them is a matter of art not science, of subtlety and humanity, not process and formula.

The arts carry a very different focus from traditional management methods. Rather than focusing on efficiency or control, the arts focus on enabling people (employees) to live (and work) well. That’s not to say that traditional management methods aren’t useful, but rather to emphasize that people are at the centre of leadership/management, not tasks, processes or outcomes.

For example, it’s through story that we all understand our own situations - we know our own (hi)story and our current situation. Through conversation we build a story of a future that unites our own individual stories with shared meaning or purpose. Interacting with each others’ stories (irrespective of position or rank) allows us to discover brilliance in each others lives.

The use of the word ’story’ confused me at first, but I think it’s just being used in place of ‘communication’ to emphasise that people/characters converse to create ideas and meaning, rather than just communicate meaning. This is captured really well in the course with the statement:

Communication is the sharing of created meaning.
Conversation is the creation of shared meaning.

I won’t go into detail about the other ‘arts’ but just to tickle your curiosity, to lead with grace could mean to subvert systems that create distinctions between people just to hold rank, spending time with the workers at the coalface, getting to know them and discovering their brilliance. Leading with ‘promise’ entails realising the effect that our words can have on others and therefore speaking with intention and integrity. All of us are leaders in certain situations and all of us are followers in other situations, but it is important to remember that when we are leading, we are leading on behalf of others.

I guess these are the things that stuck out to me during our discussions (and some reading/reflection) - the course is not itself about providing nice definitions of leadership/wisdom/etc., but rather it uses heaps of individual and group activities (mind-maps, presentations, discussions, videos etc.) to create conversations about leadership.

Reflections and feedback

As we were just guinea-pigs in our group, we only had a 1-day taste of the 3-day course, so although we got a taste of the different aspects or ‘arts’ through the group’s interaction and conversation (as well as through John’s facilitation), we didn’t get to see the full course.

There were many things that stood out as useful to me. For example, identifying someone who has had a big impact on my life - in leading me - and creating a mind-map based around that person’s influence was really helpful for me to identify what was important in leadership from my own perspective (relationship).

Another interesting part of the day for me was looking at why we in western society try to fill projects or systems with lots of facts, processes and tasks without considering the stories of the people involved. It’s as if we think by breaking everything down to the n’th degree we can define the pure essence of management or devise the perfect management strategy, but at the same time we can lose much of the human creativity and brilliance through the process. We become so focused on getting the process right that we don’t often take the time to see how individuals might be able to create and contribute with their own brilliance. Again, the course was not trying to imply that traditional management techniques are bad - but rather to highlight a possible imbalance.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the biggest point that was reinforced for me was how crucial the ‘art’ of conversation is, in all spheres of life. I think this is particularly pertinent to me as it’s an area where I feel I need to learn from people around me… I can so easily sit and stare out a window at breakfast, or be so focused on work while colleagues are chatting over morning tea, or try to keep a meeting so focused on task that conversation is stifled. I’m starting to see that I’m often missing out on the real learning - the conversation and creation of shared meaning. That’s something that I’m now beginning to enjoy…

So thanks John for the opportunity to be a part of such a worthwhile course!

(Ad: you can read testimonials from people more important than me on the course’s website ;-))

A guide to blended Learning in the knowledge era…

Published
by
Michael
on 22/3/2005
in General, ideas and projects
. 13 Comments

Blended learning, a principle that has been around longer than e-learning or the Internet, has a simple definition of employing multiple approaches when teaching or learning. Yet with the advent of the Learning Management Systems (LMS), in practice many institutions have adopted the term to imply a combination of face-to-face activities and structured activities within an LMS environment.

As George Siemens argues:

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are often viewed as being the starting point (or critical component) of any elearning or blended learning program. This perspective is valid from a management and control standpoint, but antithetical to the way in which most people learn today.

With this understanding many educators on the frontier of online learning are experimenting with the use of more learner-centred tools such as blogs, wikis and news aggregators together with activities focusing on the active construction of the learner’s knowledge – empowering the learner. Yet these new tools can seem inaccessible to many facilitators and learners due simply to the different nature of the tools and a lack of established ideas for using them within learning activities. Even worse, facilitators can venture to try blogging in class but be turned off because of a negative experience (low student involvement). Even those of us who are familiar with the tools often struggle to use them in ways that engage our learners in the active construction of learning (well, I do anyway!).

Wouldn’t it be great to provide a dynamic resource for facilitators who are used to centralised information sources to ease their transition towards the distribution of free tools available now and in the future?

The idea:

To set up an infrastructure for a collaboratively-built online resource called “A guide to Blended Learning in the Knowledge Era.” (ideas for better names!?) This resource will be aimed at providing an easy transition for facilitators who might be wary of using the new tools (such as blogs, wikis and news aggregators), enabling them to have fun learning the new tools themselves while also suggesting lots of fun ideas for using the tools with their students. As facilitators become more confident using the distributed tools currently available they will hopefully become less dependent on this centralised resource (having established their own distributed feeds for learning). Yet at the same time these facilitators will be in a position to contribute back to the resource for those yet to make the transition - updating it with the new tools and strategies that they have gone on to discover!

With the fast-changing landscape of available tools this resource will only be worthwhile if it is able to keep pace with the changes - and this itself will only be possible if it is developed collaboratively from a wealth of experience larger than any one organisation can provide. Furthermore, for educators throughout the industry to see it as worthwhile to contribute some time and effort to such a free resource, I think the material contributed would have to be published under a Free For Education or Creative Commons license so that contributors can be certain that they will always have access to the resource that they helped to build.

The underlying technology…

The technologies that this resource could be based on include open-source Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Mambo or CivicSpace that all allow a wealth of online contributors to create the resource collaboratively. There are other Wiki tools that I’d like to check out, such as Wikipedia’s MediaWiki, but we need to evaluate which CMS is best suited to the task (for example, I think it needs to be easy to update without using special Wiki tags). I noticed that Drupal has a module for collaborative book or documentation writing and looks impressive all-round, so I might install it soon and check it out first.

Aims/Outcomes (incomplete)

My main outcome would be to:

  • Implement an infrastructure to support the collaborative generation of “A guide to blended learning in the knowledge era”

Other related outcomes that I’d be happy to be part of, as long as I’m not stepping on anyone else’s turf:

  • Collaboratively generate a resource of fun activities based on sound learning strategies for introducing new free tools to learners (both students and facilitators).
  • (edited according to Roisin’s comments) building teachers’ capacity to transform their teaching approaches to enable the development of engaging, community driven and technology-rich blended learning environments.
  • ensuring that copyright is strictly adhered to.
  • Involve users of the resource in the creation of new content as they discover new tools or applications or activities in their area of expertise.
  • ??

I’m planning this resource to compliment/support the possible Learnscope team project “Continuous Learning with Evolving Free and Open Source Software” headed by Maria Trevaskis, which is hoping to trial free and open source software in at least 4 industry areas as part of delivery of courses for students in 2005, but I’m hoping it might compliment other projects that people are working on (esp. people in the TALO community, given how formative the discussions there have been!). Hopefully this resource won’t be conflicting with any Learnscope projects - I was told that Learnscope is focused around Professional Development rather than resource development. I’m just keen to set up the infrastructure and get the ball rolling and am happy to support the needs of other projects.

So, what’s your reaction? Why would/wouldn’t you contribute to this resource? Do you know of something like the collaborative resource described that is already setup? Do you think this resource will be valuable in helping facilitators to make the transition to the new tools (and hence help their students to use them too)? Basically, is it worth setting up this infrastructure? Let me know below!

Teaching Web Design Pt. 2

Published
by
Michael
on 14/3/2005
in General and reflection
. 12 Comments

Website Design (generated by typogenerator.net)Back in November last year, we were musing about how we could improve the Web Design course for next semester. Well, now it’s Week 5 of that next semester, so I thought it might be a good time for us all to reflect a bit on how things have been going and get some feedback from all of us - participants and facilitators - on how the course is progressing.

Perceived Problems

First, just to recap what the perceived problems were. One of the issues highlighted through the feedback Genie collected last year was that participants thought the course was delivered either too fast or too slow (corresponding to too little or too much content).

problem?The other main issue that we facilitators identified was that, although students were learning the material throughout the 18 weeks, the last 3-4 weeks was the only time that it was all put into practise as a cohesive whole. This left some participants coming away having completed their client project successfully, but not feeling confident that they could do it again without the classroom support.

The new course…

This semester, we’ve tried to address these issues as well as improve the flexibility of the delivery in a number of ways.

Course and Student Blogs

The central point of contact online has been moved from a password-protected Learning Management System to the much simpler free blogger website: Tafe Web Developer - learning technologies together (note that this provides a point of contact, not a repository of resources that could potentially infringe copyright!). More importantly, participants in the class have been encouraged to create and use their own blog as a means of processing their own learning, communicating their own thoughts to the world and building their technical currency. The participant controls their own learning space beyond the boundaries of the formal course, providing a repository of much (but not all) the learning that they have processed as well as links to the online resources which they have found worthwhile.

I’m also hoping that as we progress through the semester the participant blogs will become a source of information for each other as we develop a learning community - each of us filtering relevant news and information for each other from the Web simply by our common interest.

Self-paced delivery

The participant blogs also provide a way for students to communicate their learning and reflections in their own time. Often in Adult Education the ability to attend the classroom activity varies according to other commitments (work or otherwise). The online learning spaces (blogs) go a small way towards enabling participants to interact with each other’s learning even when they are not physically in the classroom.

More importantly, participants are able to work through the learning at their own pace. Some students may demonstrate competence for a few modules in the first week, while others might want to set some extra time aside to work through unfamiliar material more thoroughly. This has been made possible by agreeing on individual learning contracts where desired and providing a number of self-paced mini-projects for students to learn the required competencies.

The mini-projects

The primary aim of the mini-projects is to provide a way for participants to learn the skills of website design holistically. In the past, each individual module/competency has been taught (usually one after the other) and then participants had to gel all of these together in their client project. What we are trying to do is introduce all topics in some small way in the first mini-project, then build on these from one project to the next.

For example, the first mini-project follows closely from Elizabeth Castro’s excellent new book, Creating a Web Page in HTML, ensuring that all participants learn HTML/CSS the right way from the start. But we also begin learning about client documentation, project management, information architecture, accessibility etc., during this first project so that we have a foundation to build upon for the second mini-project.

projectsThe focus of the second project shifts slightly to emphasise more communication skills such as client interviews, project management skills, further documentation, while giving participants an opportunity to practise their HTML/CSS skills as they implement the client requirements.

We will possibly begin a third project concurrently, a real client project from the community. This mini-project will not require handing-in on behalf of the participants, but rather should provide a platform for real learning where we can continue building on our foundation of project management, communication and technical skills by applying ourselves as a team to a real project in the classroom. This project may not be completed by the one class but may rollover into the next semester.

The aim of these mini-projects is that when participants begin their own client projects they will feel confident within themselves to implement the whole project with minimal help from the facilitators - from project planning right through to testing and sign-off. This will provide valid evidence for us facilitators to use for assessment and will hopefully leave successful participants feeling ready to continue implementing web-design projects beyond the boundaries of the course. Again, I’m also hoping that participants will continue to support each other after the course by contributing to each others’ learning on their blogs.

Reflections so far…

reflectionsThis is where I want to hand over to anyone and everyone. Whether you’re a facilitator of the course, or a participant, or someone who just happened to read this, I’m sure you’ve got some constructive criticism or feedback. Some people have already expressed some frustration at constantly updating their blog, others have been thankful for the flexibility that the course structure offers, so whatever you think, you probably won’t be alone! I’ll be adding my own comments expressing both the good and the bad