First published on Feb. 3rd for ETEC565:

Okay so my title is a little dramatic, but honestly, that’s how technology in the classroom sometimes feels.  It’s like trying to stay on top of 20+ spinning plates, because if you can, you can generate enough power to light the room for a week.  This is what has been true in my experience, anyway, in my position within a school that had good wifi, 1:1 device:student ratio, and a subscription to EBSCOhost through the library.  All of my students were comfortable with mobile devices like tablets or smart-phones, but only for entertainment purposes.  They viewed their laptops as the tools that could bridge over to academic usage, and left their phones for ‘fun’ only – unless a laptop was broken and they had to get creative with how to continue on with their work.

From day one, I made it clear to students they were expected to use technology responsibly – that it was a privilege with incredible potential, but not a right.  We co-constructed expectations for device use together, and this set the ground-rules – if they broke them, I just had to remind them of what we had agreed was acceptable behaviour.  Thankfully I rarely had to confiscate a device after a verbal warning, and so we were able to use technology without many issues – it wasn’t perfect, but I was also willing to renege a certain level of control. With my senior students I made it clear deadlines were tight and expectations were high – if they didn’t take their work seriously, they were making their own beds to lie in.  With that established, I would help them cultivate research skills that would not only following  criteria of academic integrity, but lead them in the best directions to satisfy their curiousity on topics of their choosing within the framework of the course work or assignments.

What was created was essentially the blended classroom – technology was a tool that enriched my face-to-face interactions with students.  I used Edmodo as a way to post homework and for quick messaging between students, and WikiClassrooms as a main ‘hub’ for course activity.  There I would post learning goals for the lessons, curated resources for students to access, and any lesson content that they needed in order to proceed either in their groups or individually.  Assignments were also posted to the wiki, and occasionally class discussions took place there as well.  In the future I would like to maximize the constructivist potential of the Wiki by requiring students to create there for each other more actively – I had tried once before and found the results messy and disorganized, but swinging entirely in the other direction wasn’t satisfying either.  Part of the challenge there was that students would inadvertently over-write each other’s work if they were editing the same page at the same time, which was frustrating and de-motivating.  Any real-time collaborative work would therefore take place on platforms like Google docs or slides, or Padlet.

Although students saw their mobile devices as best suited for recreational use, they were able to find ways to incorporate it into their educational tasks through a few different methods.  One was with interactive class-based quizzes on the platform Kahoot!, which functioned as review, assessment, or simple survey.  It was low-stakes competition that they always got a kick out of, even if it was just a mood-lifter during the period.  Another was as recording devices – more than once I asked students to record each other and then either edit the recordings (e.g. to create news broadcasts), or at the very least upload them to YouTube (as unlisted) and then share with the class on the Wiki for future reference.  This helped weave into the classroom a sense of collaborative creation, which was often done preceding more individual tasks of creation.  For example, I asked students in my grade 11 English class to write a piece around their relationships with identity and language, then record themselves reading it to post to the wiki.  Many chose to write poems (as I had left the format open and was not grading their expertise within the chosen form, but rather their understanding of the prompt), since they had previous experience with poetry, and so we ended up with a nice collection of read poems for them to read and listen to aloud.  Later, I asked them to create Blogs (on a platform of their choice, though many chose Tumblr) on this same theme, and they could both collect past work to post and create new pieces.  They were required to visit each other’s blogs and leave feedback on a set number of posts, although some went above the basic number outlined.  Because they were already comfortable sharing their work with each other, and we had modeled constructive feedback during class time, they were wonderfully respectful and thoughtful on each other’s blogs.

What this all meant was that I spent a huge amount of my time conferencing with students one-on-one or in small groups to check in with them on their work, either in their chosen forms of technology or in their thought processes when developing content.  I could monitor group work when they added me to Google docs from my desk, but the best interactions came from checking in with them either during class or by following the links to their work after class-time, and then nudging them in the right direction either online or the following day.  An extreme example of tech. use from this past year once involved me using a free temporary chat room app I found through a Google search to do side-by-side essay conferences with students, after I lost my voice entirely after the flu.  It was odd, but oddly effective!

I was lucky to be able to learn how technology as a tool can better enrich my learning environment. I am not a fan of ‘technology for technology’s sake’, but thanks to creative peers and reliable recommendations, I haven’t used much that I wouldn’t use again (perhaps with some tweaking).  The fun part is that when it’s clear to my students that I to am learning, but that the goals are worth it, the use of tech. becomes less about making me happy and more about making their own work easier and more effective – extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation.  All in all, as per Ciampa’s article this week, I’ve been able to witness and learn within the six elements that help contribute to this shift in a learner’s motivation through tech., and I look forward to further refining my own skills to better guide those of my students.

References

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved fromhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

First published on Jan. 29th 2016 for ETEC565:

Our group was tasked with creating a rubric that would help determine the best LMS for a group of Year 3 medical students who would require video-based assessment through a distance education model.  Luckily for us, Momoe teaches within the medical field and was able to respond to questions we had regarding the nature of clinical assessment, and could lend her expertise towards the building of the rubric’s criteria.  Randy started us off in a Google document, and Nidal contributed early on with work he had done in another course, that looked into the best LMS to use based on the SECTIONS framework of Bates & Poole (2003) and Anderson (2008).  Mark also chimed in with research he conducted about popular criteria for choosing an LMS, which although it was not cited, helped us narrow in on what we all commonly agreed would be required in our rubric.

I did not contribute to this early research-gathering process, as the other members moved very quickly when gathering resources, but I contributed to early drafts of the rubric once we had decided upon criteria.  I had assumed we might find a time to live-chat, but due to the size of our group and the challenge of Nidal’s location, that never happened.  Thankfully I was placed into a group of initiative-takers, who all contributed where they saw fit and we were in constant communication over e-mail and in the Google doc itself.  Randy, Momoe and I spoke through the Google document chat and flushed out the rubric together during the week, with Nidal contributing when he was available.  Randy volunteered to take on the task of the precis and Mark the paragraph rationale.  I am usually much more involved in the creation process of group tasks, but I felt very fortunate to have this work for this particular task.  This is my last week at my current school and the days have been full of administration and goodbyes, with my evenings dedicated in part to another assignment due in another course.  I pledged to my group members that I would look for opportunities to take the lead in the future, and thankfully they are all gracious individuals.

I learned a lot from the perspectives and ideas of my group mates, and I hope I contributed in a way that was at least somewhat helpful this round.  I look forward to continuing on with them, and having a more focused personal energy to bring to the table.

—-

References

Anderson, T.  (2008). “Towards and Theory of Online Learning.”  In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University.

Bates and Poole. (2003) “A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology.”  In Effective Teaching with Technology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Pages 75-105.

First published on Jan. 27th 2016 for ETEC 565:

What immediately came to mind when reading Lenora’s situation was websites like Wix or Weebly, which provide templates that make website creation much more simple but still creates a final product that has a harmonious aesthetic but can be tailored to meet the needs or preferences of the instructor.  Wix doesn’t currently allow offline editing, but it looks like Weebly does – and has a mobile editing option!  So even with her inexperience, she could create a site offline that could then be updated or uploaded when she gets to school with a faster connection.

If uploading and downloading is a problem, I would suggest she use hosting services for files that she could link out of on whatever platform she is using.  So although she would need to upload the file to a cloud somewhere the first time, those who would wish to access them wouldn’t need to but instead access them remotely (e.g. youtube, .pdf, etc.).

I don’t know what kind of cell service she would have available, but using platforms like twitter, facebook, instagram, snapchat etc. could also be a way to connect to her audience (educators but also maybe youth, considering the initiative) that could be done with minimal training on her part but would take advantage of social networking.  That would depend on how connected her audience is, of course, and whether or not they would find that kind of thing valuable.

With these kinds of simpler sites there is also the potential for instructors to engage with the content, should she want it, with widgets that allow comments (like in a blog format).  I think that one of tailored/editable web site platforms she might need to get it going at work one day, but she could create a rhythm that would allow her to build the site when she has time, and update it when she has internet access.

First published on Jan. 21st 2016 as part of ETEC565:

After reading through the many excellent posts from my peers in the Oak group this week, I write this knowing that many great questions have already been asked!  Yet a post made by Mark in reply to Mo’s post sparked a new question in me, for Benoit: What is the goal of the long game? 

Mark brought up the point that LMS continue to be widely used, and the case study is currently applicable – but for how long?  I read the Porto (2015) and Spiro (2014) articles last, after completing readings for this and my other course, all of which have been about the viability of LMS or online teaching.  So after all that, to read pieces that essentially broke down the traditional LMS – well it almost made me laugh, in a way.  It became clear that in the long run, or in the ‘long game’ as I tend to think of it, Benoit is going to find himself on the other side of this project without much need for the results.

Previously asked questions regarding reliability, suitability, and ease of use are all excellent – but again I think I agree with the question of which has the best potential to evolve, as posed by Mark.  If it looks likely that LMS as we know them are already in flux, perhaps due to what Coates, James & Baldwin (2005) describes as their tendency to create an “overly systematised compression of different disciplines and styles of learning” (p.31).  But seeing as that article is 11 years old, the current LMS options are obviously still well-liked enough since then to have stuck around.

So to return to this week’s task of what to do for poor Benoit, out of the two options provided I would encourage him to go towards Moodle.  Although he would have less tech. support through the school (which is apparently unreliable, anyway), it sounds to me like the best option for him to grab the bull by the horns and a) learn how to design web spaces more purposefully and b) create such a space that will be available outside for the students in the longer term, even if eventually it is not used in favour of something else.  Considering Spiro’s list of what may herald the downfall of LMS in schools, Moodle seems to be the best compromise – it allows for the functionality of LMS for the school’s use, but will be open-share and thus not lose relevance (or accessibility) as the course closes.  Although it may require more independent work on Benoit’s part at the start, it sounds to me like a greater investment in his own skills, as well – no more uploading content to FTP and then walking away, now is the time to get his hands a little dirtier with the creation of things.  In terms of factors for the ‘long game’, I would say these would point him more in the direction of Moodle over Blackboard.

In regards to how long it might take him to approach this challenge given his 5 hour per week time allowance, I’m going to propose a longer time frame than many of my peers!  If we say that he spends 1 hour per day learning Moodle, 40 hours – or an average North American work week – would span 8 weeks.  Considering all that must go into the development of an online course, as Meghan beautifully outlined in her post (LMS learning time, content development, assessment, testing) – it would certainly be a lengthy process.  Imagining he had 8 hours per day to develop this, I would hazard to outline the following:

• 2 days to learn Moodle
• 8 days to curate course content
• 5 days to design assessment
• 2 days to test the platform

That would look like 17 8 hour days, or 136 working hours.   Considering he only has 5 hours per week to invest, if my math is right (and there is a VERY good chance it isn’t), Benoit would need approximately 27 weeks based on my timeline – about 6 months.  This is certainly much higher than it is for many of my peers, but to be honest I would think requesting 6 months to develop a new course, from scratch, sounds quite reasonable!  Then again I’ve never had to propose anything such as this before, so if anyone would like to comment, please do!

My moodle: HHG4M – Human Development Across the Lifespan

General Reflection

I chose to make a moodle because I identified it as a gap in my knowledge and skill-set.  I kept hearing about the platform but had no experience with it, whereas I had done some tinkering with Blackboard Connect in a previous course.  Since moodle is a free platform I could also better see the use of learning it for future use in my teaching.  I found that my previous experience with simple coding and Wiki classrooms were beneficial in tackling some of the finer details of the moodle, but for the most part YouTube tutorials were all I needed to guide me in the right direction when things became less intuitive.  I decided to take on the creation of a navigation bar at this stage, although it is not due until later in the term, because of how much clarity and ease of use it provides.  I was also lucky to benefit from the kindnesses of two of my classmates, Victoria and Colleen, who had already created their navigational menus and passed along valuable information to me.

Course Development

The course I chose to design around my moodle is one I have taught twice before, the second time with a blended approach using Wiki classrooms.  I would see the students every day in class, but the vast majority of the course materials were on the Wiki, and students were also occasionally responsible for building it themselves, as a Wiki allows.  By the time I was preparing to teach the course a second time I had read Anderson (2008a), and had begun to take the ideas within it and other literature into consideration when designing my blended classes.  What I appreciated so much about the use of Wiki classrooms was, as Anderson elaborates, the opportunities for “project-and workplace-based (assessment activities), that are constructed collaboratively, that benefit from peer and expert review, and that are infused with opportunity and requirement for self-assessment” (p. 50).  Especially in the social sciences, a dynamic and constantly developing field, I felt that students would be limited rather than fully served by the strict adherence to a class textbook, and thus wanted them to learn the important critical skills required for responsible research in academic journals and online.

As students become more accustomed to functioning and working online, I would both model but also assume a high standard of interaction with online materials.  My role would be something of content curator slash guide, who would expect an increasing level of independence when searching out the content required for concept comprehension and engagement.   The flipped (or inverted) lesson model, as created by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams in 2007 (Phillips & Trainor, 2014, p. 104) follows similar principles, which is that students arm themselves with the required content prior to face-to-face interaction, at which time they are required to engage with and apply it in a more critical way.  The online class could function in a similar way, in that teacher-chosen or created materials would be provided to students for self-study, and later engagement in meaningful formative assessments and project-based tasks.  Just as online courses required a front-heavy planning and workload for the teachers in order to ensure smoother instruction later on, so does flipping, and if careful attention to interactivity is paid, both models can provide the instructor with a clear idea of how individual students are faring in their understanding and progress.  This interaction can be as simple as mandatory posts in the forums or labeled participation in Google docs, but it can also be encouraged through other social media tools like blogs, wikis, or Twitter.  In fact for this reason I decided to embed a Twitter feed into my moodle, which is currently set to display tweets from my username, but in a real-life application of the course would follow instead a class hashtag, with students encouraged to create tweets for their peers to follow.   Through this and other interactive communication strategies, which will be further explored in this reflection, hopefully a positive learning environment that would feel “collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated” (Nel, Dreyer & Carsons, 2010, p. 245) would be established.

Communication & Assessment Strategies

As Anderson (2008a) describes on page 50, online tools can help to further assessment opportunities for students without the need for greater teacher participation.  Online quizzes are included in the article’s list, and provide important check-points for both the students and teacher in their knowledge base, but I believe these quizzes should be carefully partnered with other forms of assessment, especially those with a greater degree of critical thinking required.  Other than the essay questions, the moodle quiz question options were almost all knowledge-centered, and based around the retrieval of facts.  I was slightly shocked when I discovered that the ‘short answer’ option was actually more of a ‘cloze reading’ type of question, and not the format of question I was expecting from an English teaching background.  In a fully-online type course, I would likely use quizzes more often than in a blended environment, where I could check in with students and their understanding more frequently, but in both I would stress the importance of students interacting with each other and acting as collaborators.  Establishing this important “community centered” (p. 51) approach would be a key challenge in an online course, but in an effort to do so I have woven weekly discussions and occasional peer collaboration through Google docs throughout the course.

Despite being online, frequent opportunities for student assessment and feedback would be a vital part of keeping students engaged with the material, each other, and myself, the instructor.  All smaller forms of assessment would be building towards the final culminating activity, which I have deliberately chosen not to be an exam.  When reading Gibbs and Simpson  (2005), I heard my own experiences and beliefs echoed in their assertions that students prefer coursework to exams (p. 7).  I personally believe the opportunities for the teacher to get to know the students and their individual strengths and weaknesses are much more easily facilitated through consistent engagement and low-stakes assessment, so that by the end of the course there is rarely a surprise in a student’s abilities when submitting their final products.   Unmarked frequent assessments, peer assessments, and opportunities for constructivist learning – all of which could be facilitated through the moodle forums and/or external platforms like Google docs or Padlet – would all be better indicators of student understanding than occasional tests or one large final exam (p. 8).

The challenge implicit in the above aspirations for such an online-course environment centers around student motivation – although this is perhaps always the challenge of any teacher.   Ciampa (2013) outlines six elements that “make an activity both intrinsically and extrinsically motivating for a learner: challenge, curiousity, control, cooperation, competition and recognition” (p. 83).  In my experience the variable most difficult for teachers to encourage is that of curiousity, as many students will respond to the question of ‘why did you sign up for this course?’ with ‘because I had to’.   The other elements can be engineered through effective course design and varied tools that meet the students at their individual levels of ability and need, for example freedom of choice in topics or format for products, the use of varied instructional materials, etc.  However as outlined by Ciampa, curiousity falls into two categories, sensory and cognitive, and only the second could be truly stimulated online (p. 84).  Students would need to “discover that their knowledge is incomplete or inconsistent”, and then “have the desire to explore and attain new information and competence” (p. 84).  I have learned how to better foster curiousity through in-person interactions and rapport with students, but it would be an unknown as to whether or not students with low levels of curiousity could be equally encouraged through online interactions alone.  The hope is that through peer and teacher interaction, and the use of the other five elements of motivation, even students who begrudgingly signed up for the course would be able to complete it in a way they found satisfying.

In Conclusion

Although at times this assignment felt like a daunting one, I was glad to again have the chance to ‘get my hands dirty’ with a new form of technology, and acquaint myself with this popular platform.  I have constructed it around the assumption that the senior-level high school students would be exercising a high level of autonomy and self-direction, but have tried to integrate approachable means for communication and collaboration in order to better enrich their experience.   Although it requires a significant amount of backwards-design, the appeal of teaching through a moodle-designed course is clear, and despite the asynchronous and distance-based nature of the platform, could still facilitate an enjoyable interpersonal learning environment.

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

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer              Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’               learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from               http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M. (2010). Educational technologies: A classification and     evaluation. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 35(4), 238-258. Retrieved from         http://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/download/53794/42346

Phillips, C. R., & Trainor, J. E. (2014). MILLENIAL STUDENTS AND THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM. Journal of      Business and Educational Leadership, 5(1), 102-112. Retrieved from                http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1644485724?accountd=14656

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