Category Archives: Class Discussion

My experience with the four centred learning types vary quite distinctly. I have never taught an online course, so my perspective is only from the four courses that I have participated in within the MET program.

Learner: I feel that this is one trickier aspects of the four types that Anderson brings up. It is all about accessibility, flexibility, and making sure the learner is given the opportunity for success, whatever that may entail. So while I feel that online learning allows learner-centred learning it doesn’t necessarily deliver learner-centred learning for everyone. Mainly because not every student has the same needs and desires for their learning environment. Personally, I find online a difficult platform for myself due to my expectations for my learner-centred learning.

Knowledge: For online learning, this seems pretty standard and well supported. Not only does multimedia allow us the capabilities of delivering the engaging presentation styles of master teachers but the Internet has proven to be a great source of knowledge. It is fantastic to be able to consolidate all this relevant information into an online resource that is structured for learning about appropriate topics. It always reminds me of the days in undergrad when we had to buy an entire science textbook for only half the chapters. With my experiences in online programs, we rarely have to deal with excessive information.

Assessment: My experiences with assessments within the MET program have been positive. However, they are almost all project-based or written responses. There doesn’t seem to be the more common types of assessments that would occur in other types of programs. Since the MET program is fairly unique in its educational direction, the assessments of our knowledge seem appropriate for the subject matter. I personally like working on multimedia projects and think they are engaging as well as challenging. I do worry that some people that prefer different types of assessments would have a difficult time with the kind we get in MET.

Community: I have had a challenging time with this learning focus in an online platform. There’s just something about building community online that just doesn’t quite resonate with me. I think there is tremendous room for improvement for online learning communities and that we are really just at the beginning of those those communities will allow us to interact with one another. So while I struggle with building/contributing to a community, I have hope that some tool or form is going to connect with me in the future.

The thing I got most out of Anderson’s article was that I was reminded on how different learners can be. All of the points he brings up can vary in importance from learner to learner and especially teachers. We are at a great time right now, what with the ubiquity of online learning, multimedia development tools, social platforms, mobile technology, etc. and I think meaningful interactions are happening and maturing all the time in the online environment. The one tool that really excites me beyond what we are currently used to is virtual reality. VR is going to give us an immersion that is going to blow people away. For some learners this is going to change everything for them. I could definitely see myself being one of those people.

Prior to starting the MET program I have not enrolled in any online courses. I think that for the most part the courses I have taken have strived to create the learning environment described by Anderson (2008). I would agree with some of my classmates who have argued that “learner-centered” should be renamed “learning”-centered so that the needs of the teacher, institutions and society as a whole are factored in (p.47). Through the course introductions teachers have been able to gain a better understanding of the variety of workplace settings that the students are working in. This provides insight into their prerequisite knowledge. One area that has not particularly been emphasized in the MET courses has been acknowledging cultural variations with respect to how students interpret and build knowledge (pg. 47). I am not certain whether it is because the majority of the students have studied in Canada so there is not much of a need. There may be a need to change in the future if future MET students from overseas enroll in the program.

All of the courses have included a combination of formative and summative assessments in various forms. Some courses have required the completion of three short papers each with progressively greater value in the overall grading of the course. The feedback for these papers were valuable to both the student and teacher to evaluate a sample of writing. The courses all include a final paper or major project component in which the knowledge gained throughout the modules should be applied. Of course, being knowledge-centered is not complete without the opportunities for reflection of one’s own thinking (pg. 49) as evidenced by our ePortfolio in this course.

The community-centered component of Anderson’s learning environment has been quite evident in all the MET courses as well as before starting the program through the MET Forum. The forum allowed new students to start messaging others students/alumni prior to starting the program. This forum allowed me to learn from other students what courses they took and how valuable they found them for their own learning. The community-centered feel becomes more evident I found with each subsequent course you take and realize that you have worked with some classmates in a group project before. The group work has challenged me to become more open to different opinions and come to a consensus when deciding on the direction of project. These collaborative skills are invaluable for dealing with situations in the work place.

In creating meaningful interactions, I will consider the learning objectives and how the knowledge needs to be deployed. The learning technologies will serve to provide multimodal options for the learners such that differing learning styles are considered. A combination of both synchronous and asynchronous communications channels will enable both the introverted and extroverted learners to benefit.

References

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Anderson asserts that a theory of online learning needs to reflect what is known about effective learning environments in general, and that the attributes of learning are; learner-centred, knowledge-centred, assessment-centred and community-centred. I found Anderson’s descriptions of some of the terms somewhat limited, and I wonder if it has to do with how Anderson sees them in a post-secondary environment as oppose to a K-12 context.

Anderson uses “learner-centred” to refer to the idea that the context of the learner, specifically his or her background, and prior knowledge be understood by the teacher, and that the learning environment take this into account, more for the purpose of the teacher correcting any “misconceptions the learner starts with in their construction of new knowledge” (47), than for anything else. While I see this as necessary in the most effective learning environments, I think Anderson’s view is narrowly constructed.  Anderson’s assertion that the focus would be better termed “learning-centred” rather than learner-centred is problematic to me in that it assumes a standard learner and ignore the real diversity in learners. I have seen examples of online learning support diversity in learners more in 8-12 contexts (as opposed to most – but not all – post-secondary contexts I have experiences) where students are able to access information in different formats and represent their learning in different ways.

Regarding “community-centred” learning, I have experienced some online courses that have been able to develop a sense of community among the learners in an online environment. When I think about these situations, the following factors have been present:

•  Multiple opportunities for students to work together in smaller groups
• A learning environment where learners were encouraged to take risks
• A learning environment where learners were asked to help each other learn

On a different (but related) note, there has been some work done by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation in the OECD called the Innovative Learning Environments Project which also refers to attributes or principles of learning. The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice is a lengthy document, but worth the read. Chapter 8 specifically deals with Learning with Technology and provides a framework to distinguish the difference between technology-centred and learner-centred approaches to learning with technology. The chapter can be found here.

The research for the project was synthesized to identify 7 principles of learning. They include the following concepts:

•  Learners at the centre of the learning (includes self-regulation)
• The social nature of learning (encourages the well-organized cooperative learning)
• Emotions are integral to learning (recognizing the role of emotions in achievement)
• Recognizing individual differences (includes recognizing prior knowledge and makes room for differentiation)
• Stretching all students (work is challenging without excessive overload)
• Assessment for learning (a strong emphasis on effective formative assessment)
• Building horizontal connections (promoting connectedness across community and the wider world)

(from The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice – Practitioner Guide from the Innovative Learning Environments Project available here)

Jo

Even before I knew it was a ‘thing’, I’ve been using the internet as a way of furthering my own learning in personal areas of interest, as I’m sure many of us who miss the ‘Net’ generation moniker have.  Before it was more than a burgeoning service and system, and certainly before it was explicitly being used in education, the net has been a place where motivated individuals could create their own learner, knowledge, community, and event assessment-centered experiences.  In my case, it was learning simple code to create a website to house my teenage attempts at artwork and writing, mostly fanworks but also including some original work.  As I was a self-directed learner, I was self-assessing my areas of knowledge and weakness as I went, and looked for teachers both in peers and online (prior to the days of YouTube it was written tutorials).  The knowledge acquisition was highly contextualized, embedded in my desire to create an attractive site that worked without bugs, and the assessment came in the form of feedback from visitors who either could or could not enjoy the work I hosted on the site.  I was constantly self-checking the code, my understanding of the process, and re-vamping the site as I either learned more or felt the need to mix it up.

As a teacher, I think the greatest challenge thus far has been creating interactions with students in a blended classroom environment that both encourages their own autonomy and self-efficacy but also supports them at their present levels of ability.  In schools where I have recently been working, inquiry-based learning has been a major point of discussion and development, and I believe it’s because it encompasses the four attributes of effective learning as described by Anderson (2008).  True inquiry-based learning is not something I have been able to achieve as of yet, but I have been making attempts to use its principles more and more, in that I give the students a framework within which they can exercise inquiry-based principles.  This has made a world of difference in the amount of interaction with my students, which as Anderson (2008) explains on p. 55, “is a key learning component in constructivist learning theories and in inducing mindfulness in learners”.

Providing students with learning goals, with may be skill AND content based, and then giving them license to explore within those, has lead to some of my favourite teaching experiences.  An example took place with a grade 12 human development course last term, where the learning goals (pulled from the Ontario curriculum) where these:

Learning Goals:
I will be able to..

• Social-Emotional Development: demonstrate an understanding of social-emotional development throughout the lifespan and of ways of influencing such development;
• Personality and Identity: demonstrate an understanding of various influences on personality development and identity formation throughout the lifespan;
• Factors Affecting Social-Emotional Development: demonstrate an understanding of how factors affect social-emotional development, with an emphasis on the process of socialization.

They had to also meet learning goals related to thesis development and choosing an appropriate mode of communication (they could choose between an essay, website, or presentation), but within the framework of those learning goals they were free to choose their topics based on their areas of interest, as piqued through in-class lessons we had participated in together.

One student, as part of her exploration of personality and identity and factors that effect it, wanted to research introversion and extroversion and how physiological factors might affect these traits.  Through her own research, she discovered – and in fact, taught me – about recent studies that show how the blood flow in the brains of introverts versus extroverts differs, and what this means for information processing.  She found this originally on a .com site, but thanks to good citation, we put our heads together and found primary source case studies (I used my UBC library access to help dig these up), and she used these to learn more about this fascinating development.  I believe this was an instance, rare as it may feel at times, where the “students transform the inert information passed to them from another and construct it into knowledge with personal application and value” (p. 55).  I stressed students use the internet with academic integrity, and mirrored this in my own use of a class Wikispace and through explicit lessons.  At times I had students share or construct their work with each other by building pages on the wiki, but I also tried to emphasize the nature of the internet AS a community, one in which they must have responsible conduct in academic roles – and in general, although they did not generally show an understanding of having one authentic self in all of their online personae.  Assessment took place on an individual and community level in the form of check-lists and peer assessments, as well as with me in almost constant-conferencing.

What I seek to learn is even better ways of pursuing these kinds of interactions, especially at the younger levels.  I’ve been able to play with these methods in grade 10, but those students needed a lot more guidance within their frameworks.  As of yet this is the case with inquiry-based learning for me – it works well with students who are curious AND responsible, but those who are not struggle to find meaningful connections to the curriculum that also meet the academic standard.  I taught myself how to make a simple site, but could I have passed a computer-science class, at the same age?  Probably not.  I think new understanding of technology and its potential provides teachers with the ability to meet students where they are, help them find themselves within the curriculum, and then push them within and outside of it.

—

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F, Elloumi (Eds.),Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved fromhttp://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

This is my first experience with an online course so I do not have anything to compare it to, and, as we are in the middle of this course, I can not fully reflect on my experience yet. My lack of experience with online courses really makes this discussion post difficult for me, so I’m going to focus on how I would approach creating meaningful interactions.

When I finished the Anderson (2008) reading, my first thought was, “How can I add interactivity while honouring the culture of my students?” Anderson does state that “[a] learner-centred context is not one in which the whims and peculiarities of each individual learner are slavishly catered to” (p.47) and I completely agree. If that were the case, everyone in the world would need to be a course designer in order to make a course that’s perfect for every student. However, interactivity is a contentious topic at my school. While my school is moving toward 21st-century learning and teaching, overwhelmingly we’re still focused on student-content interaction. Teachers and students have been reprimanded for classrooms being disorderly or too loud. I’ll admit, the traditional Chinese teaching style is traditionally student-content interaction–students read, students listen to a lecture, students complete homework, students get feedback, repeat. Relying on this type of interaction alone is the complete opposite of what Anderson suggests, so, of course, my knee-jerk reaction is to start adding other types of interaction immediately. But I am cautious and unsure of how to proceed because it’s important to understand that this is the culture of learning my students are accustomed to. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say they prefer it, it is habit and habits are hard to break.

This brings me back to Anderson’s (2008) comment that, for learner-centred approaches, teachers must respect cultural attributes (p.47). Student-content interaction (as I described it earlier) is a cultural attribute of learning in Chinese schools. I recognize that, as students of a Chinese-Canadian school, students are required to face both Chinese and Canadian cultural attributes, in fact, that is a part of our mission statement. The question is, how best to implement additional types of interaction for our incoming grade 10 students who may know nothing but student-content interaction?

I think the answer is implement slowly with a lot of scaffolding. Anderson (2008) mentions scaffolding in his discussion of knowledge-centred approaches to learning so students can grow their own knowledge (p.49). My previous experience in introducing various types of interactivity (not technology based–I’m talking group work, and peer review activities) is that the students don’t know how to handle new experiences unless they are prepared. I haven’t been using learning technology for interactions beyond student-content yet, so the rest of this post is hypothetical–it is how I propose I will prepare for and use learning technology to help create meaningful interactions.Choose wisely.

Step 1: Choose wisely.

Anderson (2008) says that a challenge of Assessment-Centred approaches is “understanding what is most useful — rather than most easily – assessed is challenging” (p49).  While this refers to choosing assessment tools, it applies to using learning technology to create interaction as well. I need to balance what will work for me, what will work for the students, and what will work within the constraints of our tech systems (ultimately, I imagine that I will rely on Bates’ (2014) SECTIONS model). Navigating the needs and constraints will be challenging, but not impossible.

Step 2: Start slow.

When I’ve chosen an appropriate avenue for interaction, I will start slowly. While immersing students in an interactive environment could shock them into adapting, I don’t think that’s the best course of action. I think the best option, in the beginning, is to continue with student-content interaction, adding the features Anderson (2008) mentions that the Web affords (virtual labs, online computer-assisted learning tutorials, etc) (p.58). Then, introduce student-student interactivity; I would love to begin with peer review and online group work.

Step 3: Challenge students at a steady pace.

As the students become more accustomed to interactivity beyond student-content, I propose to continue adding opportunities for interactivity in a manner that challenges the students, while maintaining a steady pace. Anderson (2008) suggests that we need theory to take advantage of the NET and to avoid obsolete contexts (p.46). That being said, if I do not continue to introduce different opportunities for interaction at a steady pace, there is a risk of being left behind as affordances of the NET advance beyond the abilities and comfort levels of my students. The area that my students need to be exposed to the most is engaging with content without a teacher dictating what they need to find. I think my students would benefit from working together in groups–it’s essential for their post-secondary experiences and it’s something they don’t get to practice enough. However, student-student interaction is difficult in grade 10 because the culture here is pro “helping” (cheating, copying) and it takes time to move past “helping” to mutually beneficial interactions. But, we do make a dent in it–it’s just that it takes time and reinforcement.

I know that my approach is dangerous in that I seem to be catering to my students needs, thus creating a situation where I could quickly experience burnout. It’s not a perfect approach, but I think it’s a start for balancing the current teaching/learning environment and the demand for added interaction.

It’s a shame that, at this moment, this is only a hypothetical situation for me–the climate and timing are not right for a making drastic changes to the program. However, my situation does reinforce Anderson’s (2008) argument for the use of a theoretical framework when approaching online learning and it has definitely helped me in my considerations for my Moodle course and it is something I will refer to when I am ready to make a move and start making changes to my course.

References

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F, Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Bates, T. (2014) Teaching in a digital age. (Chapter 8). Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/