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Moodle muddle

I finally discovered Moodle. I had been waiting for it for weeks, checking the Weekly Updates discussion board for some sign of Moodle’s arrival. Then, yesterday, I happened to scroll wa-a-ay down the Discussions page and discovered a board devoted to Moodle. There, Franc had posted the address of the Moodle server — weeks ago.

Terry Anderson concludes his Chapter 14 with “three sets of qualities that define an excellent e-teacher” — passion and subject knowledge; technical skills; and “resilience, innovativeness, and perseverance” (p. 360). Franc certainly has these qualities.

I would like to add a fourth set, however, which I will loosely label organizational-publishing skills. I’ve carped on this before, but I think it bears repeating because it gets continually overlooked in the literature, and I can’t recall it ever being mentioned in any of the MET courses I have taken. This is no surprise — these skills are somewhat lacking in many of the MET courses I have taken.  Finding basic — really basic — course information should not be an Easter egg hunt. Looking for such information, and feeling lost and frustrated, draws the students’ mental resources away from the course content and learning activities.

I would even venture to say that organizational-publishing skills are another important form of teacher presence — they enable the instructor to support the students while demonstrating that the instructor has been thoughtful, caring and in tune with his students’ needs.

I hope the name organizational-publishing, by the way, is self-explanatory. This skill set is simply the ability to organize information in ways that make it easy to find, and to publish the information in ways that are intuitive and clear. One learns organizational skills in library school, and publishing skills in journalism school, among other places.

But our LMSs could do more to assist course developers in these areas, by providing templates that are clear and consistent. For example, I find it interesting that no convention or consistent format has emerged among the various LMSs for a course updates folder, board, medium, what-have-you. Thus these updates have been handled by various instructors in disparate ways. One instructor sends them by email; another by pop-ups when you log into the course site; and Franc uses the Weekly Updates board and other boards besides.

I find this lack of consistency very unfortunate. I see a lot of comments and queries from my fellow students that indicate that I am not the only person who is finding this course confusing.

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Technolust — in the blogosphere?

“…these new blog forms of discourse have generated renewed interest in reflective forms of writing to support learning (Cameron & Anderson, 2006)”

Terry, say it ain’t so! The availability of blogging services (i.e., blogging software) has driven a pedagogical shift to reflective learning? Is this because blogging makes reflective learning easy? Makes it sexy? Or because it reminds educators that reflective learning exists as an option?

A few sentences later, Anderson is tying himself into a pretzel in order to justify instructors’ grading participation in online forums — i.e., LMS discussion boards — which some students, he notes, consider akin to having their attendance taken. Why this pouting among students, and why would such grading need to be justified? Hasn’t participation in classroom discussions always been part of the assessment mix? It certainly was in all the undergraduate humanities classes I can remember taking in the 1970s and ’80s (though less so perhaps during my MLIS in the mid ’90s). Has non-attendance become a student entitlement in the intervening years?

For some, however, the practice of marking for participation seems only to recall the onerous practice of attendance marking that rewards the quantity, and not the quality, of participation (Anderson, 352).

Granted, Anderson seems to be alluding to marking via the crude statistics generated by LMSs, where number of posts is quantified much the way the number of times (and duration) students log onto the LMS. This accords the same weight to terse “I agree with you” posts as to longer, more thoughtful and more risky or challenging ones. If students think that’s how they’re graded then the instructor isn’t doing his job of informing them clearly as to how they’re assessed. If that is how they’re graded, then the instructor isn’t really doing his job, period.

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Pacing and Presence

“I have noticed a deep division between those who yearn for the immediacy of real-time communication, and those who are adamant that they have chosen online learning alternatives to avoid the time constraints imposed by synchronous or paced learning activities.” (Anderson, p. 349)

I suspect this is a false dichotomy, and that the vast majority of us want a blend or happy medium of the two modes —  we want some asynchronous flexibility within a paced environment. Pacing is a major reason why we take courses — without it, we would flounder and never complete our studies.

“there are still opportunities to inject more than
text-based lectures and discussions into the course” (Anderson, p. 349)

Indeed, there are. As I’ve noted in other posts, however, this has very rarely happened during the course of my MET studies. Evidently “presence” isn’t highly valued in the cerebral world of graduate studies, and yet I would have expected to see more in the ed tech discipline. Instructors have been assiduous in fostering “trust formation” (Anderson, p. 350), but not presence.

Avatars

And what of student-to-student presence (as distinct from teacher-to-student)? Why not have students establish profiles that are accessible (for reference) throughout the course? Why not photos next to our posts, as in Facebook? Why not avatars? All we ever have are names — not a lot of presence to go on, frankly. My fellow students are strangely abstract to me. Would posting profiles undermine the students’ trust formation (e.g., their freedom to speak their minds in the discourse community)?

Posting introductory comments at the outset does, as Anderson states, facilitate trust formation, and I agree that’s important. But it doesn’t contribute much to ongoing presence throughout the course. By and large, I can’t remember who said what about him- or herself in the first week, and so all I see are disembodied names.

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Assumed? Or delegated?

The creation of teaching presence is not always the sole task of the formal teacher. In many contexts, especially when teaching at senior levels, teaching presence is delegated to or assumed by students as they contribute their own skills and knowledge to the developing learning community (Anderson, 2008).

It’s funny to come across this statement in the final course of my MET. In several courses I’ve wondered at the complete absence of “formal” teaching presence. At first it was slightly unnerving or mystifying; then I assumed that the ETEC instructors were demonstrating (at least implicitly) a radically Constructivist form of social learning. Then I ceased thinking about it much at all. I’m glad that Anderson finally said it — and that he noted, “especially when teaching at senior levels.”

So, has teaching presence in these MET courses been “delegated to or assumed by students”? Both, really.  (What other instructional techniques better suited to senior students are at work in this course?  Lots of reflective learning, in the form of these blogs. Perhaps some negotiated content, in that we determine the learning context of our Moodle projects.)

It also strikes me that no direct parallel appears to exist in classroom teaching — i.e., an instructor couldn’t simply be “absent” from class-wide discussions throughout a course, although students might be assigned to smaller discussion groups (somewhat analogous to our discussion threads, which are spontaneous) that convene regularly, e.g. for a portion of every class (however, even in that case, an instructor’s consistent “non presence” would be very unusual).

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You get what you pay for

I find myself very disappointed by the following statement by Terry Anderson:

the capacity of the Net to access huge repositories of content on
every conceivable subject – including content created by the teacher
and fellow students – creates learning and study resources previously
available only in the largest research libraries, but now accessible in
almost every home and workplace

What bothers me is “resources previously available only in the largest research libraries, but now accessible in almost every home and workplace.” As any librarian knows, this kind of remark is naive and misleading. To say the least, the Internet has not brought resources comparable to the largest research libraries into people’s homes and workplaces. The quality of online resources available to a student will depend mainly on his/her college’s or university’s database subscriptions, which are determined by the level of funding that institution’s library receives.

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Trinh’s virtual office and many, many students

Returning to the lamentable absence of copy editing in online courses, I offer the following:

…students enrolled at universities in New Zealand, South Africa, and Finland all take her course.

They all take Trinh’s course? All the students enrolled at these countries’ universities?

At least the intended meaning in the above is clear enough (barely) — that Trinh’s students include ones from those countries’ universities. In the following, not so much:

Were this a F2F course, she would set up office hours – but that’s not an office in an online course, is it?

What is “that” referring to? Do we mean that instructors of online courses don’t have offices where they can meet their students? I strongly suspect that the  second occurrence of “office” should have been “option” instead.

Again, this underscores that there’s effectively no margin for error in online courses where text is the sole means of content delivery. In the online environment, a student can’t check the meaning of a garbled statement by the instructor. Academic as it might be, the MET program is also a professional program, and so the courses should really model a certain level of professionalism, in my opinion.

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Theory & practice

I’m re-reading Terry Anderson’s Towards a Better Theory of Online Learning, and I’m struck again by the compelling case he makes (paraphrasing B. Wilson) for the efficiency of theories, insofar as “a good theory helps us to make things” by “demanding that we maximize the efficiency of our development”. This is contrary to the notion that theories are merely ivory tower, and yet it rings true: assessing a learning situation through the lens of theory brings more rigour to the process and forces us to consider what works best for the learner before we plunge in and expend resources on what may be an ill-conceived project.

I’m also struck (again) by Anderson’s observation that online learning has a singular advantage over classroom learning in that

the Net provides expanded opportunities for learners to plunge ever deeper into knowledge resources, providing a near limitless means for them to grow their knowledge and find their own way around the knowledge of the discipline, benefitting from its expression in thousands of formats and contexts.

Amen to Constructivism. Such opportunities are not of course precluded from classroom learning, but the online context obviously facilitates such exploration and sharing enormously.

I find myself perplexed, though, by Anderson’s claim that “the diminution of opportunities for immediate interaction between learners and teachers may reduce opportunities for process assessment.” What diminution? Is he referring to the absence of conventional classroom discussion? If so, don’t LMS discussion boards fill that gap? I wish Anderson had explicated this statement.

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Function follows (plat)form

In reading Module 2 I’m reminded once again of a tendency (on my part, at least) to think of LMSes as the sole platform option in online course delivery. But of course, LMSes (even Moodle) demand considerable resources, and this must be weighed against “reasonable” alternatives. Could a wiki, for example, be considered an LMS-on-the-cheap? Wikis lack discussion-thread software, although this might be simulated, in a crude way, by assigning a group of pages for this purpose, with a page devoted to each topic/thread.

Moodle muddle

We want our LMSes (or equivalents) to be containers, which implies our courses should be thus self-contained, yet this is often a fallacy. In practice, instructors usually expect students to venture beyond these containers — for readings, research, etc.

Example: for this module we’re expected to read an article by Perkins & Pfaffman, yet I could find no link within the Vista course (a link to Panettieri was there, however). After looking through Ebsco, Eric and Google, I eventually found a rough html facsimile of the Perkins & Pfaffman article (probably unauthorized) via Google Scholar. This was presumably an unintended detour outside the Vista course envelope, but nonetheless, the course was not self-contained. [NOTE: I take part of that back — the Panettieri article wasn‘t there! The link was dead, having been last checked or updated last spring. This goes back to my first post about editing and proofing of online course material.]

Where am I going with this? Perhaps my point is that the notion of a self-contained course is a myth, and what’s really needed is good navigation. Yes, navigation — a buzzword in the 1990s that now sounds a bit quaint, and yet I’ve yet to encounter an LMS-based course with what I would consider really intuitive navigation, which I find a shame — learners shouldn’t have to struggle at all with navigation, or what’s the point of an LMS?

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Form follows function

I’ve been exploring the formatting capabilities of WordPress, and I’m fairly impressed. This blogging platform has come a long way, and gives the user control over many styles that people are accustomed to in word processors. When you insert a picture, you can adjust the positioning, wrap, size and other attributes easily. And the formatting sticks — it doesn’t go wonky (and irreparable) for inexplicable reasons, as it does when using the Java editor in Vista. There are many limitations — one can’t use a textbox to create a sidebar, for example. And yet WordPress gets many things right — e.g., the interface encourages the user to insert multimedia.

Why does this matter? Some might even view such features as time-wasters. But from a learning perspective, they do matter. In flexing his formatting chops, or incorporating multimedia, the learner not only communicates his ideas more vividly and meaningfully in the immediate term; he also develops his ability to use these techniques in the long term, and thus to communicate effectively in a society whose norms and expectations regarding “written” expression have exploded since the days of the typewriter.

It goes beyond impact (adding sizzle to your steak, e.g., with a picture). The ability to format text more precisely facilitates nuance and clarity of expression. Obviously, italics are better than all-caps, but the learner should also learn not to overuse italics. Another example: the ability to colour text grey, or shrink its font size, can enable de-emphasis. The act of using or experimenting with such styles can foster stronger engagement with the ideas one is expressing. Not all learners will avail themselves of these features, at least to the same extent. But even some of the reluctant may feel emboldened to do so, as they see their peer learners organizing their ideas more vividly, thoughtfully, clearly and engagingly. In any event, giving learners the ability to format more effectively and incorporate multimedia will appeal to more learning styles, e.g., those who think graphically or visually.

Which brings me back to the Java editor in Vista/Blackboard, which by comparison with WordPress seems fussy, antiquated, even dysfunctional (in the discussion lists of this course, I’ve learned that some fellow students have given up in frustration). In sticking with such an editor or word-processor, Blackboard Inc. is inhibiting aspects of learning that WordPress facilitates. Perhaps Blackboard needs to make its learning-management system more of a learners’ management system.

SIDEBAR (not really)
This is a sidebar generated in Dreamweaver as a table and then pasted into this posting as HTML. It demonstrates that it can be done — in theory (as you can see, WordPress isn’t reading the “align=right” and “width=20%” code). But very few people are going to take the time even to try it, much less work out the kinks when it doesn’t turn out right.

Image ©  Popular Mechanics.

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Regarding editorial standards

I’ll take the following sentence, extracted from the “Set up your WordPress e-portfolio” course page, as an invitation to comment on aspects of the course (and e-learning in general):

And appreciated Your opinions are valuable—important, in fact.

This wonderfully garbled sentence illustrates something that confounds me — that editorial standards are so lax in the realm of e-learning.

True, these pages aren’t ‘published’ in the normal sense — only those taking a course can see them. Yet standards still matter — for clarity, of  course, but also for credibility. Do sentences like the one above inspire confidence in a course?

Moreover, some branches of learning theory hold that the instructor should model the expected behaviour, for the students’ benefit. Indeed, Chickering & Gamson, no less, include “communicates high expectations” among their “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.”

Here’s an “expectation,” although I wouldn’t think it’s terribly high: Since students in this course are expected to write with clarity (as is anyone with a bachelor’s degree), I expect the course material to walk the talk.

In a previous life, I worked as a copy editor for a magazine — exacting and demanding work. Perhaps I could teach the folks at  External Programs and Learning Technology, or whoever puts these Vista courses together, something about proofreading — its importance, for starters.

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