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