Trying New Strategies

Learning about the various teaching methodologies has been interesting for me.  I've never thought of it before but I would say that my default teaching methodology is as an Interactive Lecturer - I think I fall into quite a common group with that.

The 2 strategies I decided to try were Collaborative and Direct Instruction.  I introduced collaborative by asking students to work together on a wiki to produce a specimen answer to past exam papers of an exam they are sitting in January.  Each student had to write an attempted answer on one question and then edit and improve the work of their colleagues.  What I found interesting was that although nearly all students did "their" question, nobody did the editing until I chased them up about it.  They almost seemed quite surprised when I checked up on it but once they realised I was serious, they participated.

This led me to decide to use Direct Instruction in one element of the course- specifically on coaching students how to use the various aspects of moodle.  I realised after talking to students that for many, using an LMS was a very new experience for them.  One student told me she did not want to "make a fool of herself".  I found this very enlightening and decided to use DI to talk people through the process of using Moodle for contributing to a discussion. 

I think that what I have realise from this is that very often, my "natural" style is just my comfort zone.  I need to consider the best approach to effectively deliver the material for students to learn.  It has actually made my planning more complex, but in an enjoyable and stimulating kind of way.

Teaching Strategies - Individual Reflection

What I found most interesting in working on this project was that for the first time I realised the importance of the connection between the methodology of how you teach something and how you assess it.  Its pretty obvious really but I have never thought about it before in a coherent way.  At its core it is a pretty simple sequence:

• What do you want the students to be able to do?
• How are you going to teach it?
• How are you going to assess it?

In a grown up world, all of those things would be planned at the outset, but we all know that the world doesn’t work that way.  I now realise that the course delivery is an integral part of that process but I haven’t thought of it before.

As regards the different methodologies I now realise that I have used all of them to greater or lesser effect at various stages, but what I have never done is to coherently plan to do so, based on what the Learning Outcomes were.  I will definitely try to do this in future.

For example, although it is controversial, I feel Direct Instruction definitely has a place in certain aspects.  Where you need observable outcomes and a definite body of knowledge, or dealing with students who are having difficulty mastering basic concepts, DI has a role.  As an example it strikes me that completion of the bubble  sheets on the facesheet of the CEPA exam would be an ideal thing to teach by DI. The growing popularity of “cultural literacy” as promoted by ED Hirsch is also promoted by proponents of DI.   

I find myself feeling conflicted about Interactive Teaching.  I think it is the teaching style that I probably feel most at home with (I guess I am not alone in that).  However  on reading the work of the other group I could not help but come to the conclusion that the methodology was really just Direct Instruction that had been jazzed up a bit to make it more interesting for the students.  It is claimed that this methodology increases retention rates.  Retention of what?  There is still a body of knowledge that we want the students to know and we want them to be able to do the thing in the way we want them to do it.  I may be wrong but I was left with the feeling that this methodology was really for the 2^nd type of teacher in the videos we watched at the beginning of the module.

Collaborative learning seems to be not about the content but about the process.  We need to be aware of the distinction between cooperation and collaboration.  I think most of the group projects I have been involved in as a teacher were really cooperative projects.  I also find it interesting that at the time of writing, the one methodology that has so far not been presented is the group work on collaboration! J However, most institutions have Graduate Outcomes as well as Course Learning Outcomes and in order to truly achieve these, there needs to be an effort to integrate collaborative methodology into the curriculum

I found Problem Based Learning to be an interesting methodology.  It seems to be great for development of soft skills.  It can also be used to teach and develop other skills.  I needed to use them to see the work of the group as they had put it in Softchalk, which required me to download and run some additional software which my computer did not have.  I had a problem doing this which I still haven’t solved and ended up reading their work in html format.  I solved the problem to the level I needed to, but probably not to what would have given me a good grade if I was being assessed on it.

I would also suspect that PBL is very useful to teach and develop the higher levels of the taxonomy such as synthesize and evaluate.  I think it can be particularly effective where there is no “right answer” that the teacher is looking for.  However, using it inappropriately runs great risks.  If the course being delivered is really about a body of content knowledge then tying PBL into a coherent assessment strategy is extremely difficult.  How do you grade a student based on the work of another student?

I have written about the methodologies in the order that they seem to fit within Bloom’s Taxonomy.

1. Direct Instruction
2. Interactive Teaching
3. Collaborative Learning
4. Problem Based Learning

However, there is a danger in doing that.  The danger is that the perception could be that lower level courses should be taught by DI with the other methodologies being used as things get more complex.  But the truth is far more complex – as the “Hole in the Wall” example shows.  Students with very little knowledge of a subject can be taught aspects of it using various methods.  And students also need to be exposed to how to learn using different methodologies - otherwise how will they be able to function effectively later on?

So, in summary completion of this module has made me realise that there are a variety of teaching methodologies that can each play a role.  And I think that each of these methodologies could have been effectively utilised within parts of any course which I have ever taught.

My job as a teacher is to identify when, where and how to use them for the benefit of my students.

Aligning Goals With My Course

Before I start I have 3 issues with statements made within the videos:

Ø  Susan as a Deep learner “teaches herself.” So she gets no value from the teacher? If the lesson was different, she would.  The teacher also has a responsibility to maximise the benefit of the lesson for Susan.

Ø  Robert as a Strategic learner “will cut any corner to achieve his goal with minimum effort”.  This is said as if it is a bad thing.  Sorry, but that is basic common sense.  So will Susan – its just her goals are different to Robert’s.  If anyone ever does otherwise they are wasting resources.  The problem only occurs when the goals are inappropriate.  For example, what are my goals in doing this course? I certainly want to achieve them with the minimum of effort but if my only goal in doing the course is to obtain the qualification, I am missing an opportunity to develop skills which will help me in my career and hopefully increase my job satisfaction because my students will do better.  If my only goal is to get the qualification, in the long run that will serve neither me nor the awarding institution as the value of their credentials will be undermined.

  Ø  The last line of the 3^rd video states that the aim is to get “Robert to behave like Susan”.  To me that is wrong.  In a Level 3 teacher’s class, both Susan and Robert are behaving differently because the context is different.  Maybe by participating in different activities Susan will learn social skills that will help her develop and perform better in her career.

Anyway, now that my rant is over I better address the issue.  

One of the courses I am involved with this term is a module in International Business Environment which is part of a course in a Graduate Diploma in Management.  The awarding body sets the learning outcomes which mainly fall within applying and understanding in Bloom’s Taxonomy.  We have the opportunity to define the topics covered during the course

The awarding body also sets the method of assessment – which is one 3 hour exam worth 100% of the course grade.  We set the exam and write the exam questions which must be sent to and validated by the awarding body before the exam.  To me there are two very real dangers in delivering a course like this.  The first is that the lectures and lesson activities are engaging and the students get a good understanding of the subject - but the teacher forgets that the students need to write a 3 hour paper so they end up doing badly in the exam.  The second is that the teacher focusses on the exam so the students effectively memorise what they need to get it down on paper.  Neither of these is satisfactory

The next time the course is run I will insist that during the first lesson we do a brainstorm activity and get the students to select the topics for study during the term.  This term, the lead teacher chose them.  I feel the students will feel much more connected to the course if they have played an active role in selecting the topics within International Business which are covered.  This will mean that it is far more likely that they will select topics of which they have previous experience – so there will be more chance of them constructing knowledge on top of what they already know.  As the exam is to choose and answer 5 questions from a given 8, I would hope that all students will have sufficient opportunity  to be examined on topics of which they have experience.

As we have no choice over the method of assessment, I need to identify and implement opportunities through the course for formative assessment.  Fortunately we use Moodle as our LMS so I intend to utilise this as much as possible.  Opportunities for formative assessment are:

On line and in class discussion forums on selected topics

Requesting students to summarise and discuss academic literature and/or current events relevant to the topics

Ungraded exam practise or essay planning activities.  

Some of our students have not been in an academic environment for many years so they do need to be given the opportunity for exam practise – Moodle can create this opportunity by me setting exam type questions and asking them to try to answer it within 45 minutes at home and submit it on line for my feedback

I can also give positive feedback on their forum postings and ask them to consider further thoughts on the topic as appropriate.

This process is a really important part of the course planning process.  In future I want to ensure that all of the courses I am involved with plan their course structure around this framework.

100 Ideas for Assessment

Unfortunately we didn’t get to 100, and a lot of ideas were kind of the same.  It got me thinking about a couple of issues:

1.   What do we mean by assessment?  I think the ideas generated indicated that we are kind of trapped in an HCT mindset where all assessment has to count towards the student grade.  It doesn’t of course but within HCT the perceived reality seems to be that if it doesn’t count towards the final grade, students won’t do it.  Having left HCT I am now in an environment where that is not the case.  Externally set exams or assignments are how the grade is determined but there is a lot of other “assessment” that goes on  - both formal and informal such as discussions, peer review, self assessment of achievement of learning outcomes
2. Who is assessment for?  There are many possible answers to this.  The institution, teachers, students, society at large.
3. What is assessment for?  What does it actually tell us that is meaningful?  It seems to me that college has 2 main functions.  The traditional university environment as a place where people actually seek out new knowledge but also as a kind of greenhouse where students develop supposedly real world skills in a protected and speeded up environment.  But in reality what is it that our students can do in the real world.  And more importantly what will they do ? And how do we assess that?  We are all working on this qualification and hopefully we will get it.  What does attainment of the qualification mean -not only in terms of what I can do but also and more importantly in terms of what I will do?  I always felt the UK driving test is a pretty good assessment of driving competence.  But every day I see UK qualified drivers driving badly.  Once we have got the qualification, every day many of us drive in a way which, if we had done it on the day of the test, would have meant we failed.  The same probably applies to many qualifications – even teaching.  Many professions have a process of continual assessment – such as airline pilots.  They have to do a simulation of a flight every 6 months.  If they don’t pass, they can’t fly a plane.  Should other professions such as teaching be similar?

Module 3 Blog 1

Having left HCT in the summer the nature of my students and the motivations for learning has changed.  The vast majority are working students who come to study once a week in the evenings.  They are studying for professional qualifications to enhance their career prospects.  Ireland has been greatly affected by financial crisis has affected every family in the country.   I suppose also a number of students are doing the qualification for the same reason that I am doing this qualification – to have a better skill set to do the job that I do at present, and also hopefully because I want to be as good as I can be at what I do.

Most of my students are now studying professional qualifications so I and my institution are not in control of the nature of the summative assessment.  An example of this is the students taking the Post Graduate Diploma in Management, awarded by a UK body known as the Institute of Commercial Management.  Most of the modules are assessed by the students completing an assignment of about 4000 words.  The ICM gives a very clear assignment brief and grading criteria with each assignment and also enables the students to access past papers.  They also give general feedback on how students have performed previously so that lecturers and new students can see what the issues are that need to be watched for.

This all works because the assignments themselves actually set demanding tasks which clearly set out a level of knowledge and application in the learning outcomes.  The students can work together in groups to do the preparatory work but must complete the assignment individually.  Students completing this assignment have an ability to do something meaningful in a real world setting – its not just about revising for exams.

This is really helpful for me as a teacher because during the course I can set the students formative tasks throughout the course to give them the chance to develop the skills they need to have to be successful on the summative assignment.  They buy in to these tasks because although they realise the task in itself does not count towards their grade, the relevant skill will do so.

 

Module 2 Reflection

How I and the students used Google Docs.

This project centred on my teaching a Level 1 Economics class.  The class I was teaching consisted of a group of students who had all failed this and at least 2 other courses previously.  If they failed any courses this semester they would be dismissed from HCT.  They were in a tangible sense sitting in the “last chance saloon”.  It was the toughest course in the semester and the general feeling was that students with weak English or Math skills were lambs to the slaughter.

The premise seemed great.  The students had a 30% project to complete.  10% for the written report.  20% for an oral Q&A designed to ensure they had individually participated and could demonstrate the learning outcomes.  Google Docs seemed an ideal way for them to work together and to enable me to monitor their progress.  There was only 1 problem.  They didn’t use it.  At all.  They didn’t even try to pretend to use it to try to make me think they were using it.

And strangely enough I feel really positive about that and feel that I have learned and understood more about using technology in the classroom from this experience than if the project had worked brilliantly.

Here is my (probably flawed) thinking.  Firstly, I got everything back to front.  The project was designed and run by other teachers the previous semester.  It is a really good project to enable students to apply some basic economic theory but – and it is a big but – it was not designed with an underlying assumption that students would collaborate using Google Docs to put it together.  The students’ grade largely depended on their individual ability to answer questions about any area of the project.  That being the case, on reflection I find it difficult to identify any reason how a student benefits from doing one part of the project whilst someone else does another.  It may be a good way to complete formative assessment but probably not a good way to grade summatively.  If I had been a student I would probably have preferred to complete the project on my own.

Secondly, as I completed the literature review I found there was quite a bit of research where academics had used Google Docs with their students.  But all of the reading that I found indicated that students pretty much hated using it and that there was absolutely no evidence that it was a good collaborative tool which supported student learning.  If I had read this at the outset, I probably would not have used Google Docs as my project!  But that was my own fault.  Another thing that struck me is that I was being pretty disingenuous asking students to use a tool that I had very little experience of using myself.  Google Docs is supposed to be a tool which enables long distance real time collaboration.  HCT is an organisation where faculty and managers could really benefit from using it.  It could even be used by participants on the PGCHE.  But we don’t really use it – preferring to send word document attachments to our emails.

Student Reaction:

At the end of the semester, things got a bit chaotic and I didn’t have the opportunity to get formal feedback from my students about how they used Google Docs.  The best I could do was to ask them informally in a revision session at the end of the class.  A summary of their most common thoughts is as follows:

When they write a project they all sit together and complete it so they didn’t need to use Google Docs.  This makes sense for 2 reasons.  Firstly as their average IELTS writing band is 5.0 they naturally find writing in English challenging.  Their method of collaboration is actually the most effective way for them to complete a written project rather than work on it separately. So instead of helping them collaborate, Google Docs actually made it harder.

As they see each other every day they can work on the project in their breaks or after classes.  Again, this makes sense as Google Docs is a tool for those not physically in each others presence.

Most students complete the project at the last minute so getting feedback from the teacher on an ongoing basis is not going to happen.  I had to admit that was a fair point.

Reflections

So the summary of all of that was that I think in retrospect I learned that Google Docs is not an appropriate format for Level 1 HCT students to collaborate on a project.  To be honest, if I had had thought about it beforehand I probably would have said that anyway!  I could try to make a justification that it is good for them to experience using this tool as it enhances their technological and collaborative skills, but I don’t buy that for a second.  If the tool does not directly enhance their ability to demonstrate the learning outcomes of the course, then they should not be using it at this time.  It’s no use for me as a teacher to say to the student “ Mohamed, you really use Google Docs well.  I look forward to you doing it even better next semester when you retake Economics.”  However, learning that something doesn’t work is not a failure.  It could be even said to be a success.  So here are the main points about what I think I learned – or more accurately here is what I already knew which was reinforced

Everything has to be thought through and put together before the course starts.  The project and rubric was already planned.  Coming in after the event and telling my students I wanted them to do it in a certain way was not appropriate.  If I want the students to use Google Docs or any other tool, that has to be built in to the assessment design

Unless you are grading collaboration (which is not an assessable learning outcome in most courses at HCT) don’t try to force students to collaborate in a specific way.  They should be supported and allowed to work in the way which most helps them to achieve the learning outcomes required.

There are some great tools available to enhance student learning, many of them being used by people at HCT. Examples of some of these are as follows:

Because of the PGCHE (and more specifically because of the encouragement of Manal and Firoz) I used Turning Point in the classroom.  For HCT students it is brilliant.  If I were still teaching HCT students I would use it every day. 

Triptico is also a really useful bit of free software that can really liven up the class room. 

The Khan Academy is really good for economics.  I would use it a lot if I taught that course to those students again.  But HCT students benefit from repeated exposure rather than just seeing it once.

I would use Screenomatic quite a lot to make screencasts.  I would probably also make short videos using the webcam to show in class and put on the course site for revision.

The Economics course has some really good publisher made online materials.  A problem with them is that the language is really difficult – probably unfairly so if I am being honest.  Because they are challenging for the students at first, it is very easy to ignore them.  The first week 4 students had completed the quiz more quickly than I could!  But they each got less than 20% which I thought was statistically remarkable on a 4 answer multiple choice! However, by accident rather than design I persevered with the quizzes.  I noticed that some students were spending a long time trying to understand the material as they completed the quizzes.    After a few weeks these students started getting really good scores.  I could show this to the class – reinforcing the point that students who took time to understand the question before answering it did better than those who just guessed because they had not understood the question.  As the semester developed this had an effect on the grades of the majority of students, as they all spent longer trying to complete the quizzes properly rather than just press any answer to get it done. 

So in summary, looking at the semester as a whole although Google Docs may not have been a successful use of technology in my classroom, overall I feel that I used a variety of technologies to enhance the chances of success of my students.  The results at the end of the semester were not brilliant.  10 out of 17 students passed.  But I would definitely have taken that at the start of the semester.  And the results of all but 3 of the others had improved enough for me to recommend giving them a final chance to retake the course for a 3^rd and final time.  And I am pretty certain that using the technology that I did played at least a part in enabling some students to succeed.  

Which is, as far as I can see, the point.

Digital Literacy in my Work

I am not sure that I support the premise that these are 8 “essential” skills required to be a successful student in higher education in the digital age.  For a start, the source article was considering the skills that students of digital marketing .  To extrapolate that the same skills are “essential” for all students in higher education strikes me more as cheer leading than academically sound thought.

I can fully understand how a passion for digital literacy may be essential for a student who is studying digital marketing.  In the same way that a passion for cars might help if you want to work in Formula 1.  But I am less certain that the same passion is required for all disciplines.  I also didn’t really buy what was written about accountability and the bigger picture.  Mainly because I couldn’t find that it actually said anything.  At all.

I did find the video of Howard Rheingold interesting.  He talks about the importance of literacy which is the ability to communicate with others.   I think some of the factors  he lists (such as collaboration) are true in whatever forum we are working in, but the skill set required is different.  In the project my students were completing I would say the focus was on developing their technological participation, communication and collaboration skills.

I think the higher level skills such as critical consumption (Rheingold’s phrase) is unrealistic for Year 1 students learning in a second language.  And this leads me on to how to go about preventing plagiarism and “proper academic practise” (I hate that phrase).

The whole point about plagiarism is that in universities years ago it was absolutely vital to cite your sources for 2 separate reasons.  Firstly in scientific research, it would be very important to be able to verify where your data came from so that facts could be checked and theories tested (think of the MMR vaccine trials in the UK which were subsequently found to be based on tainted research).  In other disciplines citing was important so that you could demonstrate the ideas as being your own.

Today,  most teachers I come into contact with are concerned about 2 separate types of plagiarism.  Firstly, straightforward copying from the internet. But with tools like safe assign and turn it in available, that should be more difficult.  Additionally, if a student can complete any project using Wikipedia as a main referencing source, the teacher is doing something wrong.  In the economics project my students completed they were required to meet with a local business manager and apply basic economic principles to that business.  Obviously they could obtain information about the Law of Demand from the internet but they could not obtain information about that businesses cost curves without speaking to the business manager.

 The second most common form of plagiarism is where a student relies on another student to completed  the project but gets the grades for it.  Again, where this happens it is the fault of whoever constructed the assessment tool.  If 1 person could complete a project set for 4 people, then why set it for 4?  Unless you are grading them for collaboration.  But that is not usually one of the Learning Outcomes.  How we handled this in economics was that 30% of the grade came from the project.  But only 10% came from the final written report.  The other 20% came from the student’s own individual performance in an oral Q&A session based on drafts of the project.  This proved to be an excellent way of identifying the students that had worked on the project and understood it and the students who had taken a back seat.

Teaching 21st centruy learners

In my class this semester students were tasked with completing a project understanding how economic principles apply for a small business.  Technology enables them to complete this project in a much more authentic way.  From their ability to interact and receive information from the small business man, to watching a range of short videos explaining Price Elasticity of Demand, which they can watch over and over until they get it, technology can help them understand things more deeply.   

I have to say write off the bat that I got really irritated reading the article by Rodgers et al.  To me it seemed to be full of generalisations and opinion dressed up as fact.  For example, it claims that the 21^st century learner has short attention span because of multi tasking.  Short compared to what?  What evidence is there that learners from previous generations had a longer attention span?  My son and daughter (like countless millions of children of the current generation read all 7 of the Harry Potter books.  My generation didn’t show that sort of commitment to reading!  The writers also state that today’s learners prefer acronyms instead of text.  That’s like saying journalists prefer shorthand. It also states that we process more information in 24 hours than the average person 500 years ago would process in a lifetime.  I have absolutely no idea what that means. 

I also disagree fundamentally with the statement that in the past the primary challenge facing students was to “absorb a vast array of specific information”   I do not know what institutions the authors attended but that was not my experience 30 years ago.

But the real reason I didn’t like this article was that in its conclusions it focusses on the changes need in course design (how to learn) rather than considering if new technology should change what we expect students to show they can do. And that is the big question, which cannot be answered at faculty level.  That’s institutional and governmental.

Game Technology

I found this article very interesting.  I felt it combined a lot of stuff I already knew about best practises for teaching & learning with a lot of stuff I did not know about the framing of things using new technology.

For example, when I first started a job as a sales person, my manager told me not to think about my annual target.  He was fond of posing this question:  "How do you eat an elephant?"  The answer of course is "In bite sized chunks".  Delivering a course or completing a project works in a similar way.  And I found it interesting that I was reminded of this when reading about how game technologists design games so that players get frequent wins before moving on to a more difficult level.

In the current project which I am using as the topic of my research in this module, in hindsight I would have followed more of this framework and built in more frequent follow ups than the 2 drafts which were built in.  Although that in itself was an improvement on when the course was delivered last semester.

The other point I thought of when reading the article was that game technology is primarily focussed on the individual player.  My project is a group project so my real interest is in identifying how to utilise game technology theory to enable groups to collaborate effectively together.

It seems to me that this is a rich area for future study anbd action research

New Technologies, new pedagogies

I found the readings and information interesting and relevant. In many ways I wished I had read these prior to deciding on the topic for my research as it would have enabled me to consider how I could have set it up with my students to be as effective as possible.

One issue I need to think about is that my understanding of the way my students operate is that it is very different to the types of students that were the subjects of the research papers. What I mean by that is that I am fairly sure that my students will use technology in different ways to students in other parts of the world because their lives are different. For example, my students are not commuters and do not tend to spend time waiting at the bus stop. Additionally, as second language learners with limited English skills, they have not previously shown much interest in listening to podcasts about microeconomics ( I have tried!). That may sound a bit facetious but what I mean by that is that it is incumbent on me as a teacher to try to figure out how my students both can and will use this technology to create meaningful learning opportunities.

I think the main benefit of using mobile learning for my students in the current project in which they are involved is probably going to lie in their ability to use their own devices to record authentic experiences relevant to the project they are undertaking. They are studying Micreconomics and this part of the project is to discuss with a local businessman his costs, which they will then need to analyse and discuss. A potential problem with this is that the businessman may not be willing to have the interview recorded. This could be minimised both by my issuing of a letter on college headed paper and also by a promise to destroy the recording after the project has been finished. By using their mobile devices (with the interviewees consent!) they will then create a permanent record which both they and I can review as they continue with the project. As they look for meaning from the conversations recorded they will be able to reflect on the actual recording, rather than their memory of it. This will enable us to discuss the content of the interview in a way which would not be possible if they simply made notes of the conversation.

At the end of the project I will then be able to specifically ask them whether they felt this was helpful in enabling them to reflect in a deeper way on their learning

Reflection on Relevant Literature

What experiences have others had with similar technology?

As I read the literature it struck me that the research seemed to fall into 2 categories. Those that were looking for whether technology improved student collaboration (e.g. Blau & Caspi) and those that felt it was a great way to evidence whether or not the students had collaborated (e.g. Chu & Kennedy). Blau and Caspi found that students believed that their contributions to others work improved it but that others contributions to them made it worse! I thought that was brilliant! They also made interesting points about psychological ownership. Kessler Bikowski & Boggs found that in all groups there was an uneven split between the participants about how much work they contributed. It was always about 55%, 30%, 15%. If this is a general truth about group work, it seems insidious of educators to then mark individuals for their individual contribution. We should either be interested in the output of the group or the work of the individual. Not both.

What about the pedagogical approach?

In general I think I agree with Brodahl, Hadjerrouit, & Hansen who identified two pedagogical approaches being used, the social-constructivist learning theory and the community of practice, and their relationships to collaborative tools.

Did you get new ideas from the discussion in Moodle?

To be honest I have been disappointed with the level of discussion in Moodle. Instead of a discussion developing, people have just placed links to articles about the topic. Whilst this is useful and helps to broaden the information available to me, it is not actually a discussion. It is the equivalent of someone saying “here, read this as well”. Having said that I am equally guilty of doing this with other people's blogs. I think this is a fault caused by the structure of the discussion and blog posting requirements of the module.

What questions remain open?

I realized that the bigger question – to what extent does group work support individual student learning?, is an assumption that is implicit in the approach being used in the first place. As we are in an environment that requires all of our students to pass system wide assessments at the end of each semester, group work must be viewed through the prism of individual student learning which is going to be assessed in an individual assessment, very possible a timed exam. In that case I need to consider to what extent it is justified or valid for me to use it group work as a summative assessment? Would it be better if it was formative?

What new questions arise?

I think what I need to think about is how to use Google Docs effectively in an educational setting. I recently realized that I myself do not use google docs at all for collaborative projects in my every day work. I am at the moment involved in developing new course outlines for the college. This is ideal for Google docs but all of us in the team are used to emailing drafts to each other so that is what we are doing. Also, because our students are actually together most of the time, am I just trying to create a false reality by getting them to use Google Docs in a situation in which it wouldn't be used?

What am I planning to do next?

I am planning to take a much more “hands on” approach with the students in terms of monitoring their progress through the project. I think my focus will be on the extent to which it is a good tool for timely feedback from me, rather than monitoring contributions from the students

What kind of support do I need to proceed?

I’m not sure. I suppose the most useful would be to here form the experiences of others. I also need to think of a way to identify the best way to seek feedback from students. I am thinking of a survey

Implementation Plan

Project Plan:

Course Description: Economics for Managers (Level 1) . This course introduces the basic concepts of Microeconomics with an emphasis on their application in business decisions and the analysis of market structures. It focuses on the mechanism of demand and supply, price elasticity of demand, costs of production and the basic characteristics of market structures. Students are expected to use the theoretical concepts covered to analyze UAE businesses and their industries.

In groups of 3 or 4 the students have to work as if they have been hired by a business to prepare part of an analysis of the market forces affecting the business, including the demand and supply of its products/services and its competitive position. In addition, they have been asked to analyze the impact of the economic situation in the UAE on the firm’s industry and the impact of that industry on the economic situation in the UAE in recent years (2009/2010 or 2010/2011

I plan to use Google Docs as the learning technology to support the students’ development of their project. This will enable the students to work independently but collaborate together. Google Docs will also allow me to be involved and offer support in that process.

Additional Value:

· Encourage independent work on a group project (rather than 1 person doing it and submitting on behalf of everyone.

· Allow for more frequent teacher feedback.

· Encourage student/student feedback

How do I ensure that the learning is with the technology rather than from the technology? Good question. I think using Google docs helps to foster learning because it is a social medium. The students can use the tool for discussing, collaborating and supporting each other’s learning through the project

Signed up for twitter

I have signed up fo twitter - agerrarddxb is my twitter name. I was doing some rearching for PLNs and edtech and I found this which I thought was useful

http://bit.ly/Adqu4b

Personal Learning Networks

This is an interesting topic and is open to an infinite number of perspectives. I have to admit at the outset that I currently do not have much of a PLN as far as I can tell. I think my own PLN originally was very low tech. It involved engaging in long conversations with colleagues about teaching pedagogy. However, I have to say that for me, it was brilliant. But it is over 3 years since I was a full time teacher and I currently have a teaching load of just 4 hours per week.
My facebook friends are limited to my direct family. I do have a LinkedIn account which I developed when I was doing a previous role which benefitted from contacts with local and international industry. However that was much more along the lines of business introduction and I do not think LinkedIn would work for me as an educator. I signed up for Twitter a few years ago but used it very little. But I could see from reading the articles and blogs how this could be a very useful and quick way of getting ideas and keeping updated. I think I will try to get more involved in it. I also like the look of Pinterest and could see possible applicatins for that. I have signed up and will see how that works out.

One of the issues I feel I have always faced is that I have never really felt that there were loads of educators on line in a similar situation to me. To be honest, an awful lot of the online stuff I find is either for school teachers or for ELT teachers. I don’t seem to find that many for teachers who are teaching content subjects to second language learners. And maybe it is a weakness that I have, but it feels that this is a significant problem. And it also occurs to me that probably the most relevant PLN I could develop is with other colleagues in HCT and other institutions in the Middle East who are in a similar situation. But at HCT we seem to be incredibly bad at collaborating with each other across colleges or soemtimes even in the saem college!. I cant really figure out why that is. Maybe it is the environnment created by the organisation. Why is it easier and more relevant to have contacts with people from across the world in totally different situations, when I hardly ever speak to the colleague working for the same employer, teaching the same course to the same type of students in a college a few miles down the road?

So I suppose where I am heading with this is that the first step in developing an effective PLN for me is to find a way to engage more effectively so that I can learn from the experiences and knowledge of people in a similar situation to me within HCT. It often seems that we are all so busy at work that we do not have the time to stop and talk to discuss and share ideas. Instead we do all that at home in our own time online! That’s not to say by any means that I don’t want to engage or learn from others with different experiences, but it does mean that I want to make a determined effort to connect with my HCT colleagues. I believe they are probably the best and most relevant resource I could access if I want to improve as an educator in my current situation. Not taking full advantage of that would be stupid.

I work in the Business & CIS department at Dubai Men’s College. I first experienced on line learning getting to grips with WebCT when Rob Peregoodoff was the college coordinator. He was really helpful and I realized that the best way to learn something was to have a go but to have access to “just in time” training support as well. I became quite adept at using WebCT and could upload audio recordings for online quizzes and other bits which felt quite advanced at the time. Then it changed to Blackboard and I found that everything I knew how to do was redundant, which was incredibly frustrating. So I started using Moodle – which I thought was pretty good. At that point I completed the qualification to be a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technologists. Then I got another role at DMC and stopped teaching! I have just returned to the class room and have started using BB Vista more frequently.
As a course administrator my most positive and memorable experiences of educational technology was learning how to write the HTML code to incorporate and audio clip into a listening test! But as an educator I really valued taking the opportunity for the students to use independent learning for some of my class time in an Ethics course. This meant I could focus on smaller numbers of students each week. Even now, nearly 10 years later many of my old students will tell me how much they enjoyed and remember that course.
I do have a number of concerns about the use of education technology. The technology changes so fast and its capacity is expanding so quickly that the cycle of “storming, forming, norming and performing” never seems to get fully completed. We always seem to be in the storming or forming stage.
The article by John Page contains a number of good points which I agree with. Expansion of time and place is definitely a benefit of educational technology. However, I think the key to effective use of educational technology is to always remember that the purpose of education is to find out information or develop skills which we can use in the real world. For that reason, Emirates Airlines spent millions on flight simulators so they could enhance the training if their pilots and make it more cost effective in the long run. But the skill they were interested in developing was an ability to fly and land a plane safely in real conditions – not in a simulator.
We need to ensure that with educational technology we always use it because it is the best option available in the circumstances – not a convenient but less appropriate alternative (like sending an email instead of walking across the office to talk to someone!)
By taking this course I am hoping that I will improve my skills not only in how to use educational technology, but also when.

The course I will choose for my project is BUS 1103 Economcis for Managers. It is a Semester 1 course in the new Business Bachelors programme. It uses on line material from Pearson MyLabs so I think has a structured use of educational technology which will be helpful for me in this module

Living in a Parallel Universe

Andrew was in his seat. His lesson was scheduled to start but as usual he was alone. The icon popping up on his screen showed him that most of the students had already joined the class on line. He pressed the button so that the entire session would be recorded.

He exchanged the usual pleasantries with the group. Mohamed said that he was in Germany as his mother was receiving medical treatment. Omar was at work but his supervisor had allowed him 1 hour to take this class. Most of the other students were at home although 3 or 4 of them were meeting at Starbucks in Mirdif

“OK, at the end of last week’s class I asked you to think about an issue. Click on the link I sent last week to see the discussion task.” The link contained an attachment which read as follows

“Imagine a world which is exactly like ours apart from some significant differences. This world has very limited technology. The internet does not exist. Mobile phones only appear in science fiction movies. Personal Computers and Smart Phones have not been dreamt of. The only way of finding out information is to read a hard copy or by spending time face to face with someone who already has the information you need.

Your group has been asked to develop a plan for the best way to teach young people the skills they need to lead successful lives. In developing this plan, three key issues need to be considered

How is useful information stored so it can be retrieved quickly when needed?

How will people who have information and those who want to learn end up in the same place at the same time?

How will people be able to communicate with others when they have questions or ideas they need to discuss or problems they are having?”

Andrew checked that everyone could see the text. Some of the students admitted they had a problem understanding all of the language in the reading materials. They asked Andrew to confirm that students could use the voice and text translate software that was available. He did.

“OK, who would like to start the discussion?”

There followed an explanation of the work the students had done. Over the course of the week they had shared articles, videos and held discussions with each other to agree on a common framework that nearly the entire group supported. Their findings can be summarized as follows:

1: Information needs to be stored in one place where people can go when needed. The information would need to be catalogued and ordered in such a way that information about the same subject was in the same place so that students could find it easily. It would have to be somebody's job to decide which information was stored

2: To enable them to communicate with each other, teachers and students would need to be physically present in the same place

3: To enable informal discussion between students they would all need to live and work in the same area.

Andrew asked the group what they would call these 3 places. The group said that they had come up with some new words seeing as these things did not exist. The words they had decided on were library, classroom and university.

Andrew questioned the group members on their plan. “So what you are saying is that these 3 places, the library, classroom and university, are solutions to the problems faced by a world which has extremely limited methods of communication?” The students agreed that this was true.

Andrew continued “How about if that method of learning was transported to our world? How would that work?”

At this point Ahmed spoke up for the first time. “I’m sorry but I am really frustrated here. I have a question which I really need to bring up. I am taking a course in lifelong learning skills. Why think about what we would do in a world that doesn’t exist? Why not focus on the world we have in front of us now?”

Andrew responded by saying that Ahmed’s point was a good one. However, the world he was asking them to live in was very similar to our own world in the past. That gave him the opportunity to rehash one of his favourite quotations.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

That started a discussion among the students about what it meant. Mohamed said that he had googled the quotation. He sent the link to everybody and said it had originally come from “George Santayana (philosopher, poet and essayist. (born 16 December 1863 in Madrid, died 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy). Mohamed seemed quite proud of that.

Later during the discussion Rashed said he had an important point to make. He had been doing further research on the Santayana quotation. Apparently, its real meaning is often misunderstood. He argued that “progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains nothing to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.”

Abdulla then asked this question

“Mr Andrew, when the internet and all the communication tools were first being introduced, all of the information from a million libraries suddenly could be accessed from home. And people could make videos and upload it and do all of the things we can do now for the first time. Loads of social media sites started up and suddenly everybody was online. But that just increased the amount of information. How did people know which information was useful and valid? And how did people decide which was the best way to communicate in different situations? How did they avoid they avoid the perpetual infancy that Santayana talked about?”

Andrew replied “Abdulla, that is a brilliant question. What you are saying is that libraries, classrooms and universities are great solutions for a world with those problems. One of the biggest problems to enable learning to take place would be how to store information. If we cannot store information to enable it to be passed on to others, we would always be in a state of perpetual infancy. This would mean we would not be able to learn from others who lived before us. As Isaac Newton said, he was only "standing on the shoulders of giants." Your idea of a library would solve that problem. Your idea of a university where students and teachers can discuss and work on problems formally and informally is also a great solution. But your solutions also raise some issues which cannot be solved. What if some information you need is in a place you don’t know about? What if a student is somewhere else so cannot contribute? Luckily we do not live in that world. Modern tools solve many problems not solved by the solutions of a former age. But (and here is the thing) the modern world brings with it a whole new set of problems that need to be solved for the first time. And you always need to remember what it is you are trying to do in the first place. Because to be honest, all of our lives, from the day we are born until the day we die is spent trying to make sense of the world and to solve the problems we face. And that has been true as long as there have been humans on earth. And it always will be true

After the session ended, for the next discussion topic Andrew posted the following link:

What is the purpose of higher education? What is it students need to learn in today's world? And how should they learn it? As a starting point compare and contrast the following 2 texts.

TEXT 1

One of Einstein's colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. "You don't remember your own number?" the man asked, startled.

"No" Einstein answered. "Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from somewhere else?

TEXT 2

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!” (Thomas Gradgrind, a character in the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens)

As Andrew drove home he thought to himself "That will get them thinking"