Dion Hinchcliffe's cites "10 Issues Facing Web 2.0 Today".

He mentions several concerns that seem relevent: hype, lack of a clear definition, access, losing sight of technology's purpose, bad adherent's, and too much talk and not enough action.

This debate will easily continue throughout the coming year, which is a good thing. Let's hope the talk leads to action.

Found this link to a selection of contemporary poets reading their favorite Romantic (period) poetry.

As an undergraduate I focused a lot of my time studying poetry (I tried writing it as well but found I didn't have much of a gift). For me, poetry can re-present an entire lifetime of feeling and experiences and condense them into a handful of lines that can be challenging, moving, thought/feeling-provoking, sensuous and sonorous all at once.

Although I prefer more or less contemporary poets, it's fun to go back and listen to the voices and reactions that came before.

Here's an interesting post re: Guideline for blogging from Anne Davis.

I think Anne's list is a good start, that is, a good place to begin thinking about how to use blogs in education.

What's important in my mind is the reflective thinking aspect that she encorporates into the blogging process.

Reflective thinking is effective when there is an intention behind the reflection.

I am in the process of developing some guidelines for reflective thinking in teacher education utilizing blogs, so I thought I would share this latest find.

Let me know what you think.

As I continue to develop my thoughts about using weblogs to support reflective thinking in teacher education, I am beginning to assemble a number of questions that might be useful in facilitating this process.

As I talk to teachers, tutors, instructors and professional educators across the globe, I have come to learn that reflective thinking, e.g., thinking about what works in the classroom, what doesn't, how you might do things differently, is not necessarily a common practice among educators.

Is it a matter of personality? Is it a time issue? Is it a learning style concern? Is it an orientation or familiarity issue, i.e., since I've never heard about it or seen it practiced/modelled, I'm not familiar with it and it's affect/effect.

I'm particularly interested in collaborative reflective thinking. I believe that if the collaborative environment is structured to provide regular feedback and encorporates a diversity of opinion, then there is a greater chance that the reflective thinking will more likely be constructive and meaningful.

I'm not interested in developing a collaborative, reflective thinking taxonomy per se. However, a guideline might be useful in order to hopefully foster a constructive use of thought and space.

Weblogs offers several key features that I believe can support a constructive, collaborative, reflective environment. For one, it's convenient. The medium supports self-expression and "voice." Collaboration and connectivity can be conducted efficiently especially interms of participants' time or place. You can access and link to a number of appropriate resources. It provides multiple communication channels (e.g., you can write, record and/or cast your thoughts). Publishing your thoughts online forces you to concretize your thoughts.

Collaborative weblogs promote the idea of learners as creators of knowledge, not merely consumers of information. A collaborative environment like the one I'm suggesting can allow peers to be seen as valuable sources of knowledge and ideas; a connection that participants can rely on beyond any formal classroom structure, i.e., collaboration leading to a community of interest.

The drawbacks I can see involve the idea of publishing your thoughts, i.e., exposing yourself to others, especially if you do not feel compelled or interested in doing such. If you're not a good writer or are technologically "all thumbs," then you might feel overwhelmed by the medium. If participants do not see themselves of having anything of value to contribute, they might see this whole endeavor as a grand waste of time.

It's probably also worth mentioning that without a clear intention or purpose for collaborative inquiry/reflective thinking, you cannot really expect any type of results.

In a related sense, I'm also curious about how much guidance is needed for effective collaborative, reflective thinking among teaching professionals. Are strategies needed to get participants to respond to one anothers thoughts? Are rubrics needed by teacher educators to assess how well participants engage each other? How should we, as teacher educators, assess the quality of the dialogue?

Sorensen and Takle (2002) noted that within online discussion forums, "having forced requirements on the collaborative dialogue prompted students to engage in dialogue and actually caused more interactivity than was required" (p.28). This goes against the grain of the learner-centered, connectivist philosophy that I feel is critical in creating and sustaining life-long learning/learners.

Reflective thinking receives a lot of press in the teaching and learning professional development arena. However, collaborative, reflective thinking is not always clearly articulated or given a clear definition of how it can best be employed (or to what end). What should educators be reflecting on or about? What distinguishes between good and undesirable practice? What should be the priorities of philosophically informed critical reflection? These questions provide sufficient ground for introducing what writers like Peter McLaren dub “critical pedagogy.” Critical pedagogy serves as a theoretical starting point for educators to question the power structures inherent in both society-at-large and in the teaching and learning process. If we start with the premise that schooling itself is a political and value-laden process, teacher reflection can play an important role in ultimately transforming and improving our society, our world, as a whole.

I plan on coming back to this notion in future posts. Until then....

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education caught my attention. Vincent Kiernan reports on a survey conducted by ECAR that shows Students desire a balance of technological and human contact.

And that seems fair enough.

Dewey described education as a social process. And indeed, there is little for us to learn without other people around.

What struck me was the sentence that read:

Students in the survey most commonly said that convenience was the primary benefit of the use of technology in courses. They cited "connectedness" second.

Convenience is an interesting concept. It implies saving time, suitability to personal comfort or needs, and ease of use. [Is convenience a luxury, that is, something that is an indulgence rather than a necessity?] In terms of education, students seem to be saying that information technology provides a solution to the complex and dynamic world of college coursework.

However, the notion of connectedness needs more elucidation. I wonder what the survey meant by connectedness? Is it a personal association to other students, teachers, family or friends?
Does connectedness refer to the ability to aggregate ideas, information, and other people in a networking sense?

The report goes on to say that virtually all of the students who participated in the survey use their computers for “writing documents, handling e-mail, and surfing the Web. Three-quarters said that they used a computer to download or listen to music, while 24 percent said that they used a computer to create and edit video or audio files.”

What I was surprised to see was no mention of instant messaging or interaction within an online course management system. Also conspicuously absent was the mention of blogging. What about all the time students are supposedly spending on Facebook or Friendster or Live Journal? (See related story.)

Clearly the lack of a transparent definition for connectedness creates a number of concerns for me. This same juncture relates to a blurring of the boundary between formal and informal learning. Do college students consider personal blogging on LiveJournal a non-learning activity? A secondary act as connectedness is second to convenience?

I don’t know. According to the report, “[f]ew students cited improved learning as a benefit of technology, but that doesn't mean that the technology didn't help them learn more, said Mr. Kvavik, [survey co-author and professor of political science].”

It should be noted that convenience and connectedness both contribute to learning. They are proverbial peas in a pod, not separate concepts. Denham Grey notes: Knowing is an act of participation, knowledge is more a living process than acquisition of an object, it is closely tied to who we are and emerges in dialog or through copy and practice. Lasting knowledge is knowing more than definitions, concepts and relationships, it is feeling what is right in a particular situation, requires personal engagement, passion and a community to emerge. Learning and knowledge require an ecology to thrive and evolve.

It is good thing that students understand that technology is not separate from human beings. That students reportedly see technology as “supplemental rather than transformative” in their learning process is understandable given their reported use patterns. I have not read the actual ECAR report so I am not sure how accurately the Chronicle article captures the report’s findings.

This article left me with more questions than answers, which is probably a good thing. It also reminds me why my uni really needs effective pedagogical training for instructors who want to use the online course management system. Without it, I believe students are left with a sense that technology will always be supplemental in an educational sense. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way.

I participated in an fascinating conversation with some colleagues at my uni re: innovation and risk-taking.

We are working with a number of teachers who will be enrolling in an online degree program. These teachers span a wide range of abilities, motivations, and interests. Some are taking this degree because they want to increase their salary. Some are taking it because their district is paying for it. Others are taking it because they are interested in becoming a better educator-leader. For almost all of these participants, this will be their first foray into e-learning. And this leads us to some interesting concerns.

I want to define educational technologists or educators that are willing to use technology in their classrooms as “risk-takers” or “innovators.” These are people who are willing to try something new without worrying if it will be a success or failure. They derive pleasure from playing with both new and old ideas and employing them in a variety of ways. These people are natural problem solvers. They do puzzles for fun in their spare time.

As a researcher, I began to wonder: Is it possible to measure how innovative you are?


Story time

A close friend of mine was asked by her school’s principal to employ a prescriptive reading method (aptly titled “reading mastery”) in her classes that required her to snap her fingers after every word she read aloud. Her students were required to read each word with her to the beat.

My friend felt this was not the way to teach reading. She earned a master’s degree in teaching and learning which taught her that teaching kids to read in this manner was ineffective, especially when the drill sergeant/snapper was not present. This method taught kids to be dependent on external cues as opposed to internal ones. After two weeks of attempting to employ this curriculum/technique, she marched into her principal’s office and said she refused to teach in this manner any longer. The principal asked how she intended to teach her students to read wherein she replied, “I’ll figure it out. That’s what you hired me for.”

My friend in this story does not consider herself a risk taker or an innovator, but she really is. She refused to risk compromising her students’ minds using a prescriptive system that was uncritical, inhumane, and demoralizing. She took a risk in telling the principal “no way.” She was innovative in the sense that she had no idea what she was going to substitute the reading mastery method with, but she knew enough to know that she could come up with something better.

What this story illustrates for me is, if you want to make a difference in the lives of others, you have to be willing to take risks. Not all risk-taking is innovative. But if we are conscious of our actions, of cause and effect, then the risks we take are justified. Doing the right thing, for the right reasons… well, that’s innovative in my mind.


Back to my original discussion:

My colleagues and I want to do the right thing when it comes to working with these educators who will be taking their degree online with us. We, as educators, want to be innovative. And we want these educators, the students, to be innovative too. We want them to risk learning with us in a way that is both new and unfamiliar to many of them. We recognize that not all of the participants will be thinking this way. This degree is just one more hurdle, one more drain, on their time, energy, and resources.

Of course it doesn’t need to be that way.

How do we get students to feel that they are or can be innovators? I have a feeling that there is no one simple answer. Is it a personality thing? Are you born with it? Where do you learn it? Is it based on a Maslowian hierarchy? Can we measure somebody’s innovation level? And once we know a student’s innovation level, what do we do with it? How do we improve upon their ability to take appropriate risks?

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is this an idea worth investigating?

“Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end.”
-- Kahlil Gibran

Introduction
Many academics view online teaching and learning with suspicion (Buck, 2001). According to Buck (2001), many academics believe that comparing outcomes of face-to-face and online instruction do not produce authentic, meaningful results. However, taking such a perspective is not very helpful in assisting us to understand or frame the debate. We might ask, what are the unique and irreplaceable features of face-to-face teaching, and for what kind of learners are these indispensable? Is resistance futile or useful?

Resistance
According to Peter McLaren (1987), “the major drama of resistance in schools is an effort on the part of the students to bring their street corner culture into the classroom” (p. 191). In so saying, McLaren suggests that learners are tired of the school system as it currently operates; it does not allow issues meaningful or relevant to the student into the classroom. Although McLaren’s remarks are referring to socially oppressed students in elementary and secondary schools, I believe his comments can easily be applied to the state of higher education and its focus on preparing students to become passive, uncritical members of the status quo.

The debate between online learning and face-to-face learning creates discussions that are often polarizing in nature. In many ways, online learning can be considered revolutionary. It has the ability to extend educational opportunities beyond the traditional campus to those who cannot afford to come to campus, thus making education more affordable. Online learning has the power to reform teaching practice through an emphasis on student discussion, interactivity, and the elimination of the lecture as the central teaching activity. Online learning also provides a model for lifelong learning through the notion of communities of practice, i.e., connecting like-minded people who share mutual concerns, and interests.

Conversely, critics have labeled online learning as destructive to the teaching and learning enterprise (Yang & Cornelious, 2005). Some say it lowers the quality of instruction. Others believe that online learning leads to an environment where cheating cannot be controlled (Duffy & Kirkley, 2004).

Both sides of this argument are ultimately narrow in scope and fail to recognize the variety of aims and practices of teaching and learning. We might say what’s most important depends on how a course is designed and the level of student engagement rather than how it is delivered. A badly designed course is a badly designed course whether it is online or face-to-face.

More importantly, online teaching and learning has forced a closer study of and attention to teaching practices in higher education. Duffy and Kirkley (2004) report:

Very little research has actually looked at student learning in the classroom. The work that has been done leads to us to question the efficacy of our current classroom-based model (p. 4).

The role of the educator
Perhaps it is important at this point to ask ourselves what the role of the educator, the teacher, is and how should we define effective teaching.

In 1987 Chickering & Gamson published the now famous “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.” These principles are based on the perspective that the goal of a proper undergraduate education should be active, cooperative, challenging, and:

• encourage student-faculty contact;
• encourage cooperation among students;
• encourage active/engaged learning;
• give prompt feedback;
• emphasize time on task;
• communicate high expectations; and
• respect diverse talents and ways of learning.

We might ask, are the practices noted above limited by the environment that they are offered in? What, if anything, does the learning environment have to do with the effectiveness of instruction?

Rethinking the learning environment
Teaching online offers an opportunity for educators to re-learn and re-think how and what they are teaching. Teaching online affords educators the opportunity to employ “the strategy of disappropriation,” to “cast off authority as speaker so that that students can claim some authority on their own” (McLaren, 1998). However, simply shifting a course from a face-to-face environment to an online environment is no guarantee that a shift to a more engaging practice will take place. Tony Bates (2000) makes a critical point regarding this shift:

Because of the central role that faculty members play in the work of universities and colleges, any change, especially in core activities such as teaching and research, is completely dependent on their support. Presidents may dream visions, and vice presidents may design plans, and deans and department heads may try to implement them, but without the support of faculty members nothing will change (Bates, 2000, p. 95).

In other words, if faculties are expected to use technology well or move their courses online, they need to be supported in this endeavor or nothing will change. In most research universities, faculty are promoted or tenured based on their research interests and publication record; few, if any, are exposed to or provided any form of pedagogical or teacher training. The reality is, teaching well with technology is not a skill that is easily acquired. Bates (2000) goes on to suggest that given the place technology and the World Wide Web has assumed in our culture, “[i]t should be apparent by now that the use of technology for teaching and learning needs to be accompanied by some major changes in the way faculty members are trained and rewarded” (p. 98).

Professional development opportunities for educators are important; however, they are not enough to insure support for and acceptance of technology for teaching and learning. Building the issue around training faculty could be seen as counterproductive because it places the blame squarely on faculties. “Faculty are ineffective and broken; they must be fixed. Faculty must be trained.” This is not the way the issue should be framed.

If it ain’t broke…
Fear makes accepting change difficult and many faculty view integrating technology into the classroom with fear, disdain, anger, and resistance. It is worth noting that in many ways faculty members’ fears are justifiable. If you have been teaching for ten years or more you have probably seen more than your share of proposed best practices or “new” teaching solutions that prove to be shallow, ridiculous, and ultimately ineffective. Technology will be adopted by academics if they can clearly be shown that it is in their best interests to do so. This might include a systemic review of the appointment, tenure, and promotion process within their respective department. For those professors who prefer teaching to research, faculty must see how technology, used intelligently, can enhance the personal communication process with students that they find rewarding. A first step might including augmenting face-to-face classes with the integration of online discussion sessions, weblogging i.e., online reflective journaling, or creating useful online resources (e.g., wikis) or databases that can easily be adapted and shared with other students and colleagues.

There is another justifiable fear that using technology to enhance face-to-face teaching and learning will mean more work for faculty and thus reduce the amount of time they have to commit to other priorities. For many faculties starting out this has proven to be true. One answer lies in administrative recognition that providing proper instructional design and project management support can reduce faculty stress and anxiety in employing technology creatively and appropriately. Reinventing the wheel can be fun and informative, but it also can be time consuming, stressful and counterproductive.

There are two important points here. The first is that faculty fears are authentic and need to be addressed openly and constructively if administrators expect faculty to change. The second is that resistance is useful in that it points to the underlying issues that initiate the resistance in the first place. The question of which medium is more effective or generates higher student satisfaction ratings is not as important as the question concerning the most appropriate ways to support educators to do their best. Many if not most educators in higher education settings have never taken a single course on how to teach or how people learn. If administrators expect faculty to adopt new teaching and learning technologies, then they need to support faculty appropriately. This includes revisiting a number of policy, promotion, and support issues that effect faculty deeply.

Conclusion
Whether you are teaching online or face-to-face, educators are presented with a number of challenges in getting students to adopt skills and demonstrate intellectual and practical dexterity of many complex concepts. We might even say, teaching and learning is all about being open to and coping with perpetual change, taking calculated risks. Many academics view online teaching and learning with suspicion, and rightly so. Today’s learning technologies will revolutionize and affect colleges and universities as we know them. Faculty and administrators should be aware of the changes technology affords and question the implications deeply and critically. This act of looking critically should not stop at the technological level; it needs to consider the entire range of operations that comprise the acts of administration, teaching and learning; from the effectiveness of tenure and promotion policies to the effectiveness of multiple-choice high-stakes student examinations.



References:
Bates, A. W. (2000). Managing technological change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Buck, J. (2001). Assuring quality in distance education. Higher Education in Europe, 26(4), pp. 599-602.

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin. Retrieved 20 November 2005 from

Duffy, T.M. & Kirkley, J.R., (Eds.) (2004). Learner-centered theory and practice in distance education: Cases from higher education. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.

McLaren, P. (1998). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. New York: Longman.

Yang, Y. & Cornelious, L.F. (2005). Preparing instructors for quality online instruction. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8(1). Retrieved 20 November 2005 from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/yang81.htm