Requiem

So now it´s over. Once again I have managed to complete something I set out to do, feeling satisfied that I did not fail but rather disappointed that I didn’t succeed, either.

My wife tells me I collect degrees without a purpose. I admit that I like getting tangible results such as getting a certificate from a course. I guess my dilemma is that I seldom manage to muster enough energy to really get into the topic deeply, and actually learn something. The certificate tends to be more important than the knowledge, I am afraid.

I guess all of us who work with degree students recognize this. Too often students participate in courses mechanically, passing it without really learning much. Work, social life, other priorities take over.

So what could have been different for me in this course? What could have made me work a bit harder, getting more out of it? What lessons for creators of digital courses can be learnt?

Firstly, I think the limited number of deadlines is an issue. Where you have a deadline every two or three weeks it allows you to “drop” the topic for too long, coming back to it only on the final day before the deadline. With traditional classes I find that a regular session every week leads to students staying on board better than if I have a couple of seminar days only. So I would certainly consider setting some kind of weekly deadlines.

Secondly, building group cohesion might help. Perhaps in a course with 115 members it is hard to bond, and the task of reading 115 blogs simply puts you off. On the other hand, with three members only in a PBL you do not get a very broad base if you stay within that group only. So perhaps some type of “multi-layer” structure would have helped: having, for example a group of business teachers that you would bond to, in addition to your PBL-group.

Ultimately a lack of commitment is not the course’s fault, it is up to the individual participant (Husman&Lens 1999). The only thing the course designers can do is to provide a good structure, good contents and thus try to eliminate some of the challenges.

In one of the first webinars in this course there was a survey where we could categorize ourselves. I recall voting “Vocal sceptic” or something like that. Partly that reflects my personality, but also my experiences back at the university, having run a few online courses and having taken part in a few. I maintain my position after this course – online courses can be great but there are major challenges for some students. When designing an online course one of the choices the designer must make is whether the course “OK for all” or “great for a few”.  Not an easy choice….

Sources:

The role of the future in student motivation

Jenefer Husman and Willy Lens

Educational Psychologist Vol. 34 , Iss. 2,1999

To meet or not to meet, that is the question

For Topic 4 our PBL-group took an approach different from the previous topics. We decided to avoid having online meetings and to collaborate only in writing, in the Google+ community and the FISH document. We wanted to see how that felt, compared to the previous topics where we had several online meetings.

So what did I learn from this?

1. The level of collaboration was reduced. Time savings from not meeting online did not increase the time spent on writing. The amount and quality of the text was not significantly different from the previous topics
2. One of the group members was rather absent, with very limited contribution to this topic
3. One team member felt that the lack of online discussion was a major loss, stating that he/she felt “disconnected from the topic”

So, contrary to my expectations, the time saved by not trying to set up online meetings that some people could not make it to anyway, did not outweigh the disadvantages!

So what might we be observing here?

1. Communication is a complex process, which entails both verbal and non-verbal elements. Communicating in writing will impair the two-way communication as many “signals” are not transmitted. An online meeting with voice will allow for emphasis, for example, to be communicated better than in writing. If video is added as well, lots of signals are communicated visually (Prozesky 2000)
2. Barriers to communication include the receiver not understanding what is being communicated, One of the easiest ways to overcome this barrier is to enable immediate feedback (Prozesky 2000). In an online meeting, the feedback can be instant, whereas when working with a written document the delay may be hours or days
3. Bonding between participants is important for the collaboration. Typically, bonding is easiest in face-to-face situation, but if such meetings are not possible then an online meeting will certainly help the process better than just writing. Where bonding has already occurred, regular sessions are required to maintain it (Haythornthwaite & Kazmer p.84).
4. Firm deadlines help keeping the process alive. A scheduled online meeting is a deadline which will drive each participant to do what was supposed to be done by that meeting, and failure to meet the deadline will cause embarrassment.

So I guess the evidence is clear. Online meetings do serve a purpose and if well managed are certainly worth the time spent on them!

Sources:

Prozesky, D. Communication and Effective Teaching.Community Eye Health Journal, 2000

Haythornthwaite, C & Kazmer, M (ed). Learning. Culture and Community in Online Education: Research and Practice. Peter Lang Publishing, New York 2004

Form over substance….

Decades ago, I used to work as an auditor with one of the “Big Six” audit firms at the time, checking the numbers and financial reports of large and smaller companies. In the profession there is a saying “Substance over form”, meaning that you have to look at the actual information content given, and not just whether it looks nice. Us audit assistants, seeing what senior staff and partners actually seemed to focus on, soon rephrased this into “Form over substance”.

I was very pleased to note that with Topic 3, our group actually managed to get close to the intended order of things: we spent less time on discussing just how to get the task done and how to display it, and actually spent time discussing the topic itself. Finally, substance over form!

In real educational situations, the teacher needs to strike a delicate balance. Without any form, meaning modern tools and technologies or fancy presentations, it will be hard to get the participants to maintain their interest. But if too much focus – or time – gets allocated to getting to grips with the technology or those nice graphics, there is a risk that the substance taught gets too little attention.

In collaborative settings I think this is an even bigger issue.  There, it is not only the teacher who prepares materials that strike the optimal balance, but each participant is likely to contribute with form and substance – to varying degrees. With a large and perhaps technologically diverse group, you might end up with quite a mess… I mean, one student posts clippings from legal text, whereas another draws a cartoon or sings a song – to pick extremes.

I believe one solution to this is to actually make the teacher focus on the form, and get the collaborating students to focus on the substance. This will keep the entire package better within given boundaries, while enduring that students learn the subject while collaborating. This could mean that the teacher chooses collaboration platforms, presentation tools and templates, and gives fairly detailed scripts to the participants to stick to.

The alternative may, at worst, be a frustrating mess, which will put both teachers and students off for a very long time to come…

Finally, here a few articles more or less on the topic:

Bonk, C.J., Kim, K.J. and Zeng, T., 2006. Future directions of blended learning in higher education and workplace learning settings. Handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives, local designs, pp.550-567.

Theriault, M. 5 Principles for Making Powerpoint Slides with Impact. Forbes 25.11.2013

McKnight, K. Use Graphic Organizers for Effective Learning. TeachHub.com, accessed 6.4.2017

 

And then there were only….

In our PBL-group we are now experiencing what I believe is a major challenge in MOOC’s and other large-scale courses: participants dropping out. The reasons are often personal, or workload-related, but certainly they are valid for that participant. The problem is, of course, that others are affected as well when work is to be done in groups. Our PBL-group started out with seven participants and now four are left. And we are at topic two only….

I see this in my regular teaching as well. Actually, just yesterday I finished a BBA-course where the students we put to work in groups, 3-4 students in each one. With 15 such groups, we experienced “sudden drop-outs” in four. The most extreme case was where a student dropped out just a day before the group’s final presentation, leaving the other group members in a very nasty position.

Why do we see this happening at such large scale? I think this is mainly about lack of cohesion within the team (French, 1941). At workplaces, people know they have to work with the teams for a long period of time, and they will be careful not to upset the others, but in courses that are limited in duration the “badwill” may not matter too much. For MOOC’s, where participants are numerous and anonymous, the cohesion within and commitment to the team is likely to be very low.

What can then be done to deal with this? Cohesion in groups is a much-researched subject but on a very practical level I think there are a few things that could help create cohesion:

• Place a “cost” on dropping out. This can be in the form of an entry fee which is lost if dropping out, or a public commitment (e.g. participant names are widely published in social media) which will lead to drop-outs feeling embarrassed
• allowing participants to pick their teams, in which case they will bond better with the others, who are likely to be friends, colleagues or at least have a similar background.

Or then, of course, have no group work at all, letting every student have it her way, without effect on others. But then the collaborative aspect will be lost….

 

Sources: French Jr, JRP: The disruption and cohesion of groups.The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol 36(3), Jul 1941, 361-377.

What´s digital literacy?

In my reflections, I keep coming back to this same question: what do we actually mean by digital literacy? Knowing how to use digital devices? Understanding the societal effects of digitalization? Being able to write a blog? Distinguishing between truth and alternative truth? What?

My conclusion is that it depends on the context and the perspective. To an elderly person it might be the ability to switch on the iPad, to a teenager the writing of a popular blog. To the voter, being able to read the news critically, to the educator the ability to use new digital tools to achieve teaching objectives.

This is what Wikipedia offers:

“Digital literacy is the set of competencies required for full participation in a knowledge society. It includes knowledge, skills, and behaviors involving the effective use of digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop PCs for purposes of communication, expression, collaboration and advocacy. “(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_literacy, accessed 3.3.2017)

In my humble opinion, Wikipedia agrees with me! The concept is wide and, as so often, the weakest link is the one that fails. Any effort to increase the digital literacy of a group of people (students, educators, citizens) needs to start with an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the participants in order to target the areas needing attention.

Looking at this Topic 1, and the time spent on it so far, I think it is obvious that that the biggest challenge for our group has been related to one specific area: collaboration. We have fairly well been able to overcome the technical hurdles, we have been able to use our academic experience to find and analyze literature available digitally and we have been able to get something written down, to be published digitally. But where I believe we have made little progress so far is in the collaboration.

In a study of European organizations, the consultancy firm Deloitte, presents views on digital collaboration (https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/se/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-digital-collaboration.pdf, accessed 3.3.2017). In their opinion, there is “a movement away from a narrow definition of collaboration as interaction based on proximity to one that encompasses many different forms of sharing and collective working practices.”

Many forms of sharing and collective working practices. Ok, what have we done? We have posted on our Google+ community, we have posted texts on Drive, we have held Adobe Connect-sessions. And how has all of this worked out – not too well, in my opinion.

The biggest challenge to our group has, in my view, been project management, and none of the tools we have used has really been feasible for that. Who does what, how, and by when, has been discussed in Adobe Connect -sessions but as about half the participants have been missing each time it has been hugely inefficient. The Google-community has expanded to over a hundred postings, making it virtually impossible to find anything you are looking for.

So what has been the Nr 1 learning point from this week? That no matter what tools and techniques you use – digital or analog – virtual or real, old-fashion project management is the key to getting the work done. So that´s another item to the components of digital literacy: managing projects in a digitalized environment.

 

 

 

Why, and how?

So welcome to my new blog, and my first-ever posting. In this blog I will try to reflect on the ONL171-course, my learning from it and education in general.

I do not see myself a an academic: I think of myself as a career teacher. I am not really interested in research, nor in pedagogics; my interest is in the topics I teach. Financial management, and finance, that is.

The reason I signed up for this course is that I get very annoyed when people complain and then do nothing about it. At Arcada, there is a lot of talk about “we should” and “we are not good at” but I think way too few of us actually do something (except whine). So that is the Why: I want to do something about digitizing and modernizing my teaching, and hopefully take not only my courses “to the next level” but also drag some colleagues along.

Obviously there are many ways to go about developing yourself. Instinctively, I would do this on my own: read a book and then just do it. Simple, fast, no endless web-meetings with bad connections: much more time efficient than taking this course, I fear. But now I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and see what happens when I have to collaborate (which I dislike) and use social media (which I hate). So this is a journey into the unknown – I just hope I will be able to overcome the technical difficulties before I get totally frustrated and quit…..

That, as mentioned, my first ever blog posting.

See you later!