Author Archives: Parm Gill

Mobile

At my workplace the focus is on adult education, so there is little, if any, regulation of student mobile devices.

I have sat through lectures where adult learners were distracted by mobile devices. However, I don’t believe the instructor or institute should create policies to control their use at a university level. It is my personal belief that by the time students are adult learners they should have gained the skills to self-regulate. This would be a component of digital literacy at a grade school level, or high school level. But I digress.

At the Justice Institute, where most of the training involves public safety, many of the training programs use mobile devices. For example, in the Primary Care Paramedic program, the text uses QR codes to link to training videos. When the students are practicing on their own, they refer to these videos to see if they are doing the procedures correctly. Most students use their own devices, but i-pads are available for signing out in the library. Mobile devices are used by Instructors as well. When the Fire Fighter students are being evaluated on their practical knowledge, the Instructors grade them on i-pads. This way the students, get immediate feedback online, and via generated e-mail and know what to focus on for the retest.

Mobile devices are used during Praxis Simulations communications. These simulations involve different public safety groups in a “real world scenarios” and the communications during the sim occurs in real-time and are as realistic as possible. For example, the Instructor reveals specific information and “dispatches” it to the Fire Fighters. As the Fire Fighters gather the information from the scene, they report back to the other Instructor and other parties involved, such as Police or Paramedics.

The JIBC has embraced mobile for education, and instructors and staff are willing to test and try new ways to interact and engage students. It may be the nature of the training, which lends itself to mobile learning.

If Lenora builds it, they will come.

In short, yes, a website is the way to go.

Lenora has found Indigenous online communities of practice, such as Cradleboard, to be very helpful. In today’s world internet is the most useful to connect to other people, over long distances.

I noticed the Cradleboard Teaching Project Teacher’s Circle (http://www.cradleboard.org), is designed in a way which would work well on low bandwidth or dial-up internet connections. The site used frames, basic formatting, and is not media rich. Taking a simple approach to the anti-bullying website design would make the site more accessible even in remote regions.

The problem still remains, that Lenora does not have the skills to create her own website for the anti-bullying resources. There are a number of ways she could address this:

  1. Lenora could ask others for help and support with her initiative. Since she is already participating in Indigenous online communities, that would be one place where she could ask, outside her regular connections.
  2. She could approach SD 83 (North Okanagan) with her idea and ask if they can host or sponsor such an educational initiative.
  3. Since the web site she needs is very basic, she could sign up to learn how to create basic web pages.
  4. She could pay someone to do this for her.

For her purposes, print or other methods of broadcast communication will not be able to foster the type of connections that she could in an online community.

Neither, Either or Both

“LMS are not pedagogically neutral technologies, but rather, through their very design, they influence and guide teaching. As the systems become more incorporated into everyday academic practices, they will work to shape and even define teachers’ imaginations…”

— Coates, 2005, p. 27

I think one question Benoît needs to ask himself before deciding to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn is how much influence on the  actual content of his course by the LMS is he willing to accept? As mentioned in the A Critical Examination of the Fffects of Learning Management Systems on University Teaching and Learning article by Coates, technology is not neutral and will inevitably have some influence on teaching and learning. In the 2005 article by Coates, he does mention that there has not been much research in that area. LMS’s provide structure to the learning content, and they lends themselves to institute wide standardization. Even if Benoît uses Moodle, which is less standardized in his case, this can both be a good thing or bad, depending on what is valued by the institute, his faculty instructors and himself.

If I was in Benoît’s position, I would consider the past, in order to make some decisions about how to move forward. His institute had previously used WebCT, and many of his colleague didn’t not feel the move to Blackboard Learn provided the functionality that WebCT did. It seems that using the LMS to deliver the actual content was not the issue, but rather the dependency on the LMS functionality.

I personally think Benoît should design his course for online, and not design it for a particular LMS. I think Benoit’s approach on storing the content on the FTP server is a good start and good way to centrally store the actual course content, regardless of his LMS selection.  As far as the LMS functionality, he should design the course to rely on LMS functionality as little as possible, so that he is able to “control” the content, and be able to adapt to LMS upgrades or migrations more easily in the future. For example, he could limit LMS use to assignment submissions only, and use tools like “the social web [which] has been offering myriad tools that support everyday communication, productivity and collaboration” (Porto, 2015) . Often those tools are more intuitive to use, are of better quality and functionality when compared to those previously found exclusively inside the LMS (Porto, 2015).

Use this approach will greatly reduce development time. Benoît will not need to learn the intricacies of either LMS. He would not have to write content to include for the discussions or testing areas in the LMS. This will save time in the future as far as edits to content, as the content is centralized on the FTP server, and not repeated or broken up into the different LMS areas.

A far as giving a total completion time, is is hard to predict given how little we know about Benoît’s current training materials. He already have his face-to-face materials prepared, but we don’t know what they are (PowerPoints, readings, lectures, etc) and nor do we know how he is grading the students. Whether he would like to include his lectures in video or animated graphics is not mentioned.  We don’t know if the text is used, and if that text book has a publisher’s companion site with interactive features already existing for student use. In fact, we know nothing about the students demographics, preferences, etc.  So as far as the design of the course content, and development, it is hard to accurately gauge.

 

 

Works Cited

Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of Learning Management Systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11,(1), 19-36. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11233-004-3567-9

Porto, S. (2015). The uncertain future of Learning Management Systems. The Evolllution: Illuminating the Lifelong Learning Movement. Retrieved from http://www.evolllution.com/opinions/uncertain-future-learning-management-systems/

Parm’s Flight Path

I started off my career wanting to be an elementary school teacher. I worked with children for a number of years. I taught art, assisted with teaching math and reading, and I tutored science and math. But I ended up getting side tracked and taking a computer program in graphic design. I ended up working in at the training college where I took the program. I took the web design program there as well. (Remember Netscape? A lot has changed since I first learned web design). From there, I got a position at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. Over the years there, I’ve worked in several departments at the JIBC in various roles. My work went from creating support materails for face-to-face learners, to working solely on online courses. I’ve also worked with other organizations, to create online, and blended courses, websites, marketing materials or other publications.

Somehow or another, I always end up being involved (workwise) with education or as in the case of the MET program, working on getting an education.

My goals through the MET program are:

  • To learn about good course design
  • To gain specialized skills and knowledge
  • To complete a Master’s degree

One of the reasons for these goals, is a practical one. I would like to have skills and knowledge, (and the piece of paper) to have some security in the work place, and perhaps even advance my career. Another reason is that I actually enjoy the work that I do. I feel very lucky that the work is challenging enough, and allows me to be creative, and input my ideas into the training. I really enjoy planning, writing content, creating graphics, and finding or creating media to re-enforce the learning.

A couple of years ago, I worked on a course where the subject matter expert was very open to including some of my suggestions. I felt I was able to introduce a different perspective to some of the key concepts covered. I enjoyed the whole process, from planning to learning about how students experienced the course. Eventually, I would like to do more work like that.

As far as specific skills from this course, I want to learn more about LMS platforms. I’ve worked in WebCT, Blackboard (Learn, Connect, Community), and I’ve dabbled in Canvas, D-2-L, and Moodle. Moodle in particular interests me, because it is open source and has been around for some time now. But also, I’ve noticed that book publishers are creating companion-learning sites. For example, Jones & Bartlett, uses Moodle, re-branded as Navigate, to deliver their courses based on their print texts. Actually, I would not be surprised if textbook publishers will find away to sell courses in the future. Maybe a financial model similar to how MOOC’s work. I can see that working for 1st year university courses, such as Psychology, or Anatomy and Physiology where it’s a matter of learning (or memorizing) information.

Personally I am not keen on the world of business creeping into education. I noticed that Blackboard has a tool which also some publishers to sell directly to the students. I don’t like the idea that educational institutes are letting these businesses access to students. I think the values embedded in the LMS impact the students. It is exploitative publishers in the guise of convenience are accessing students to sell books to. That is another reason why Moodle appeals to me, is that there doesn’t appear to be that same corporate interest associated with it.

Another topic that I would like to learn about is learning interaction and interactivity in online courses. I remember years ago, when Flash was popular, it was trendy for website to use flash intros. Now hardly anyone does that, because no one wants to wait to watch those. Similarly in the world of online courses, it used to be popular to include “interactivity” to make the course more engaging for students. But often that translated into making students click on something or move their mouse to reveal content. All that type of interaction did was to ensure there was a living, breathing, clicking person at the other end. I think those types of interactions do little to enhance the learning. I’m interested in learning more about what interactions are useful, and how they can be used. Chapter 7 in the PDF by Bates covers some of the information I would like to learn about.

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