1) I have a lot to learn about design – and I definitely know what I don’t like

I am attracted to tools with a well-designed interface first and foremost. I got suckered into spending more time then I should have playing around with tools that just didn’t do what I needed them to simply because of a clean interface. On the other hand, I struggled with some good tools with clunky interfaces, but for the most part dropped them before really giving them a thorough review.

After spending days investigating tools and criticizing them, I had to turn my eye back to my work-related LMS build. I immediately started seeing design choices that would have aggravated me if I had first seen them in another context. I’ve since cleaned up and streamlined some of my work-related course builds.

I know that I have a lot to learn about designing for the online space – most notably about streamlining and minimizing design elements. The non-LMS build really helped me to see that.

2) I am much more comfortable in an LMS – but I know branching out is necessary

The non-LMS build was very difficult for me. I kept comparing LMS and non-LMS tools, which was not really the point of the activity. The point was to find the strong non-LMS tools and try them out. I struggled every time I couldn’t identify immediately what data a tool collected or where it was hosted. Eventually I gave up my strangle-hold on the idea of Canadian-hosted servers only, and branched out to find some pretty cool tools.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that I view LMSs as “safe” spaces – little electronic bubbles. Of course, that isn’t necessarily true, and no LMS can do all of things being demanded by 21^st century teachers and students. While it is important to be mindful of where data is going and how it is being used, that shouldn’t stop us from utilizing the best tools to get the best outcomes for students.

3) I am not good at learning online – but I’m getting better

I struggle with many of things we have discussed throughout OLTD – burnout, disorganization, multitasking, and being self-motivated. I find it much too easy to put my online course on “pause” when my job gets hectic, or when something in my personal life demands my attention. I’ve learned (the hard way) that simply scheduling time is not enough for me, I need my calendar to pop up and remind me to take that time – and I need to sit in a space with few distractions.

I’ve found the lack of weekly synchronous sessions for OLTD 504 especially difficult to deal with. This final week I realized I have been half a week off from where I should have been for the majority of the course. In my professional life I have never needed micro-managing, and I survived a 5 year double-degree program with an extremely hectic course schedule, but haven’t seemed to find my groove when it comes to online learning. What gives?

I think the experience struggling with learning online will make me a better online teacher, however. The subjects I was best at tutoring were those I had to struggle to learn originally. To go back to learning theory – I had to build my own scaffolds and construct my own knowledge so my foundation was much stronger. I’m still actively trying to get online learning to “click” for me – but it is getting better.

4) I believe in ePortfolios – I just don’t like mine

I’ve been trying to get my artifacts together for my ePortfolio and am realizing how powerful they can be. I spent hours going through assessments, thinking about what I was supposed to learn and if I felt I had learned it. After that I had to validate why I thought I learned it – or think about why I didn’t and what I could have done differently. Building my ePortfolio has been a rewarding metacognitive experience.

My biggest issue with my ePortfolio right now is that seems very static. I would love to integrate my Twitter feed into it somehow, and maybe document and pull in more the evidence from my work life. I want my ePortfolio to be more active, and more holistic. I haven’t figured out the best way to do that yet, but I will continue to work on it. I feel like there are some specific skills I need to improve on (like working with webpages and HTML design) that I need to learn before I can really make my ePortfolio shine.

OLTD 504 has been a bit of a struggle for me, and pushed me out of my comfort zone more than I expected. This course has exemplified the need to “keep up” with the latest tech, tools and learning theories, and this program as a whole is giving me the drive and skills necessary to do so.

Bring it on 505!

 

I have always respected the Community of Inquiry (COI) Framework for online course design, in part due to its integration with constructivist learning theory. I have based my Non-LMS on the review Garrison (2007) provided on the framework.

I have taken Figure 1 from Garrison (2007) and added icon images of various non-LMS tools where I feel they fit best in the framework. There is a legend with links to the various tools at the bottom of this post.

How will you build community and inspire discourse?

Building community requires opportunities to interact socially as well as in the context of the course. In order to allow student to interact informally, I would utilize Twitter and Collaborize Classroom. I feel that Twitter can be used to help students begin to share information through the use of a course hashtag. Students can share with each other without the pressure of learning a completely new tool, and interactions can be less structured. Collaborize Classroom interactions would be more structured, but allow for more space to have discussions. I would initially use this tool informally and then begin to use it for more course-based discussions, attempting to create the personal to purposeful, intellectual relationships discussed in Garrison (2007).

Additional tools to help student develop community included are Google Drive and Wiggio. These are tools I would feel comfortable suggesting to students and supporting as they begin more serious interactions around content building and course material. Google Drive would allow students to share working documents and create content together. Wiggio is a fully online tool that allows students to self-organize groups, and provides checklists, calendars, file sharing and text and voice communication tools.

How will you provide content, interactivity with content, and organization?

Organization, in terms of design and facilitation, remains very teacher-driven in my opinion. The tool I will use as a dashboard or landing space for students is LiveBinders. A LiveBinder can integrate not only static documents, but web resources – including Google Documents. Therefore, LiveBinders provides a good “curating” tool for content, where interactive elements can be housed or linked to. I would also provide a course calendar using Google Calendars, as it can be easily embedded into LiveBinders and would allow students to subscribe using multiple other calendar tools.

In order to provide synchronous interaction between students and between the instructor and students I would utilize Twiddla, because of the whiteboard capabilities. Ideally, a synchronous tool would also include polling options and more desktop and sharing options – like those provided by Blackboard Collaborate. Twiddla does allow for audio and text chat, in addition to the shared whiteboard, and it is a free web-based tool that requires no sign in.

How will you handle assessment as, for and of learning?

This question is difficult to answer because I do not have a classroom to reference when thinking about my design. In the following paragraphs, I am thinking specifically of competency-based education with older learners.

In keeping with my commitment to the COI Framework, I would want to provide collaborative content creation spaces for students, so would like to see a wiki-type tool. In this specific design, I have settled on using Wikispaces, as they have a special platform specifically for education. I would utilize this tool for formative assessment of knowledge development, and perhaps summative assessment of project-based work. If I was working with younger students there are other collaborative tools that are easier to use, such as Padlet, which I would choose instead.

I would also hope to get students to develop ePortfolios of their work. The tool I like the best is WordPress. It is primarily blogging tool, so allows for multimedia interactivity (depending on what instance you are using) as well as a lot of variety for customization. Students would be able to structure their ePortfolios in the ways that make the most sense to them (chronologically, competency-focused, or some other category system) and would provide them a flexible space.

Reference
Garrison, D. R. (2007). Online community of inquiry review: Social, cognitive, and teaching presence issues.  Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11(1), 61-72. Retrieved from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ842688.pdf

Legend with URLs:

– Twitter: https://twitter.com/

– Collaborize Classroom: http://www.collaborizeclassroom.com/

– Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/

– Wiggio: http://wiggio.com/

– Livebinders: http://www.livebinders.com/

– Google Calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar/

– Twiddla: http://www.twiddla.com/

– Wikispaces: https://www.wikispaces.com/

– WordPress: http://wordpress.com/

 

In OLTD 502 course I looked at the Technology Acceptable Model (TAM) originally proposed by Davis (1989) as a way of framing my planning of training materials. TAM simply says that the perceived usefulness (PU) and the perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) of a technology affects how and when it is adopted by users. In my mind, the heart of the LMS / non-LMS discussion comes down to PU and PEOU –what are the capabilities of the systems and are they easy to use.

Capabilities (PU)

Web 2.0 tools, used in a non-LMS system, are highly attractive because if instructors are willing to look around and try different services, the possibilities are nearly endless. If one tool isn’t working the way instructors expected or hoped, they can try another one later in the course, or the next time they run the course. LMSs tend not to have that same flexibility – tools cannot be easily substituted for one another unless instructors start using systems outside the LMS.

However, LMSs are capable of providing a standardized, safe space for instructors and students. Students know what to expect and know where to go. Instructors know that their material can be kept secure behind an authentication wall. Commercial LMSs can also offer robust analytic and management tools that non-LMSs simply can’t.

Ease of Use (PEOU)

LMSs tend to have a very low PEOU. Most LMSs have a plethora of tools available, and in trying to provide all possible tools to instructors they become complex and overwhelming. Unless the instructors have a desire to use the system, they likely will avoid it. In most post-secondary cases, however, there is a technical team available to help instructors through learning the LMS and troubleshooting any issues with its use.

In contrast, a non-LMS based on Web 2.0 tools generally has a high PEOU, as many of the available tools are used by students and instructors in their personal lives. Most tools are generally used for a singular purpose, such as microblogging. While they can be used for other purposes, they do not have an overwhelming number of possibilities. It is much easier to focus on what tools instructors want to use in a non-LMS system, and completely customize a tool set. If a customized set of tools is used in a non-LMS system, however, instructors need to be prepared to be the technical support for their students, which can be challenging for some.

I don’t really believe there is a black and white answer to the LMS/ non-LMS discussion. An LMS can serve as a great dashboard and content storage area, and then direct students outward to the best hand-selected Web 2.0 tools. The tools that best support student learning and that align with the instructor’s philosophy of teaching should be used. The likelihood of the “next generation” LMS described in “Managing Courses, Defining Learning: What Faculty, Students, and Administrators Want” is very low, so instructors should become comfortable breaking the mold of their current LMS (if they are using one) and making use of the best non-LMS tools out there.

I have been working in Desire2Learn (VIULearn) for over a year and a half through my position at the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning (CIEL) at Vancouver Island University (VIU). I have spent a lot of time replying to support emails and phone calls and built or helped to develop parts of many courses. I am currently working on building a course on using VIULearn with another member of CIEL, under the direction of the Director of CIEL, Liesel Knaack.

Given my relatively unique position, I have a few thoughts about strengths and weaknesses of VIULearn.

The Weaknesses

VIULearn is an extremely robust system. There are very few things instructors want to do in the system that we have not been able to figure out how to do yet. That is a huge strength – but for entry-level instructors it is a massive weakness. The system seems too big, overwhelming and complicated for someone who just wants to dip their toe in the water. To try and combat that feeling, CIEL offers introduction workshops (or “get up and run” workshops), which offer just enough of the system to get comfortable, without any of the bells and whistles that can be overwhelming.

For more intermediate and advanced instructors who are used to other Learning Management Systems (LMSs) VIULearn doesn’t allow for a lot of customization. We are using a very specific Course Home layout, and the look and feel is the same for all courses and all programs across VIU. This was done, in part, for students: once they know where to find something it is in the same place in all of their classes.

Finally, there is a bit of a gaping hole in VIULearn when it comes to student collaboration. Students cannot easily “get together” using VIULearn without instructor help. We are hoping that Wiggo (recently acquired by Desire2Learn and being integrated into the LMS) will help to alleviate that issue. (Wiggio is also available for free outside of Desire2Learn here: http://wiggio.com/). I have written a blog post about Wiggio in the past here: http://wordpress.viu.ca/ciel/2013/08/02/wiggio/ as well.

The Strengths

Again, VIULearn is an extremely robust system, especially with the other products CIEL has integrated into the system. There are capabilities for most types of assessment and evaluation, synchronous and asynchronous discussions, file management, media integration, and a plethora of small, easily managed tools like Checklists, Glossary and FAQs.

Most tools can also be divided into introductory, intermediate and advanced use. I can tell you there is more to most tools then meets the eye – I am still learning about them after working with them for over a year – but an entry-level instructor can still use most tools relatively easily.

I believe that this system offers a lot of solutions for instructors who are able to invest the up-front time into it. A crowd favorite tool right now is “User Progress”. This allows the instructor to see how often a student logs into the system, what content items they have looked at, and for about how long they viewed those files. Some instructors find that information extremely helpful – it allows them to pick up on the students who may need some additional support without the student having to ask for it. Another tool many instructors like is “Rubrics”. After taking the time to build a rubric in the system, it can be attached to assignments so students can view them before submitting, and help to speed up marking as well.

I could go on and on about why I like using VIULearn, but I would rather hear from instructors and students of the system. What are your top likes and dislikes of the system?

Something I have been interested in for a while is the difference between teaching someone something and training them to do something. With the rise of so-called “eLearning” in both business and education, the lines between the two terms are blurred. Is corporate education teaching or training? Is job skills education training or teaching?

The staff at The Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning (CIEL), where I work as learning technology support, has had many conversations about teaching and training at our staff meetings. The technology side of CIEL runs workshops nearly year-round on different technologies, and we have discussed at length how to make these more useful for the faculty who attend them.

What it all comes down to, at least in my opinion, is answering why. Why does the technology work that way, why do you have to do things in that order (and is there a better way)? “Why” is the difference between teaching and training – teachers help students understand the “why” of what they are doing, trainers simply want the buttons pressed in the right order.

It might sound like I am belittling the role of trainers – and I want to say that I am certainly not. There is a place for training and place for teaching, and often a little of both must be used to achieve the best outcomes for students and trainees. The really challenging question is when to train and when to teach.

If I don’t know a faculty member well enough to know what is going to work best for them, and if they perhaps aren’t sure what they want, I usually err on the side of teaching. I will help them go through the steps, but explain why we are doing things a certain way at all stages. I also tend to let the faculty member think more, struggle a bit, and then intervene when necessary. Much like when I was a high school tutor – nothing is gained when an answer is provided before other person gets a chance to think about it.

What does this all have to do with collaborating?

I noticed when I began supporting my cohort with Desire2Learn that I moved into much more of a training mode. Part of that has to do with the asynchronous nature of the support – I assume they have gone through the struggle stage before getting in touch with me. Communication via email also doesn’t lend itself to longer explanations – I know from experience a paragraph of text explaining something is generally a lot less approachable then a numbered list.

But is that approach really helping anyone? I’m hoping to get some feedback from my group nearer the end of Week 3 to see what they thought. Luckily, some of my group members are also faculty at VIU, so perhaps they can speak to the different approaches to support.

What challenges and opportunities do you see for the realization of your philosophy of education in the evolution of eLearning as we know it?

I think that as online tools become ubiquitous in everyday life, they will need to become more entrenched into education as a whole.

The Challenges

I feel like the issue of security and privacy when using educational technology is going to be very important going forward. All the stakeholders, from students and parents to school boards and government, need to balance protecting students’ privacy with using new and interesting tools in the classroom. Teachers need to work closely with parents in order to ensure that the safety of the students is being protected at school, and at home as well.

I also feel there needs to be significant classroom development for teachers in order to use educational technology effectively and safely in their specific context. Teachers without a lot of digital experience are going to struggle when introducing technology in the classroom – especially because most educational technologies require an up-front time investment to learn how to use them effectively. As well, teachers need to feel comfortable enough with the technology to help students. Although many students enjoy using technology within the classroom, they do require training to use it effectively. Many teachers believe that students are native to digital technologies and understand how to use them, but there is an intrinsic difference between students’ use of digital technology in their everyday lives and using it in the context of learning.

The huge number of different educational technologies, from LMSs to social networking platforms, means that teachers need to be careful what tools they choose to use. It is easy to be swept up into a new tool without developing a pedagogically sound plan for it. Some teachers run into this obstacle because they feel pressure from students, parents or other teachers to use technology.

For all of the reasons above I need to be careful when trying to realize my pedagogy in a real classroom context. Without much in-classroom experience, I feel that being swept up in using technology will be especially dangerous for me.

The Opportunities

The growing pressure to integrate more digital and “new” media into the classroom is also creating new and different opportunities for students to interact with each other in meaningful ways. Technology can also help students to organize, express and share their work in ways that were not possible before. An especially apt example is available on teachinquiry.com (http://www.teachinquiry.com/index/Introduction.html). Teachers were able to leverage technology to enhance a powerful inquiry-based laboratory on decomposition.

I feel the other really exciting opportunities for STEM teachers include the ability to conduct remote laboratories with “real” scientific equipment, as well as the opportunities to use a variety of remarkable virtual reality tools to enhance poorly-equipped Science classrooms. I truly believe that Science is a way of thinking about and interacting with your world. All students, even those that “don’t like Science”, can benefit from “doing” Science in a meaningful way.

Additionally, there is greater opportunity to bring in experts from beyond the surrounding community to interact with students. Personally, the most important thing to do is inspire students, and who better to do that than those who have devoted their lives to their field? During my teacher training I was immensely lucky to be involved in a school-wide Science Fair where members of the University of Alberta took the time to support students during their projects and then come back to the school to see the students present their learning. There was a lot of powerful learning and inspiration catalyzed over the course of that Science Fair – in part because the students could see that the larger community cared about what they were doing which inspired them to push themselves. I believe these kinds of experiences can be possible for all students using technology for communication, community building and presentation of learning.

There is so much power and potential in technology in STEM fields, but the risks and concerns associated with technology use must be balanced.

 

Inspired by:

Ansell, S. E., & Park, J. (2003, May). Tracking Tech Trends. Education Week, 22(35), 43-52. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/tc/archives/TC03full.pdf

Gros, B., Garcia, I., & Escofet, A. (2012). Beyond the Net Generation Debate: A Comparison of Digital Learners in Face-to-Face and Virtual Universities. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(4). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1305/2311

Kear, K. (2011). Online and Social Networking Communities: A Best Practice Guide for Educators. [Kobo Version]. Retrieved from http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/online-and-social-networking-communities

Sauter, M., Uttal, D. H., Rapp, D. N., Downing, M., & Jona, K. (2013). Getting real: The authenticity of remote labs and simulations for science learning. Distance Education, 34(1), 37-47. doi:10.1080/01587919.2013.770431

Although I haven’t been testing Diigo very long, I can already see the utility of it – and I wish this tool existed (and/or I knew about it) back when I was completing my undergraduate degree.

On the surface, Diigo reminds me of RefWorks (http://www.refworks.com/) only instead of focusing on academic papers and research; Diigo focuses on the Internet – the whole internet. RefWorks allowed me to keep the research from multiple papers organized in folders, and gave me a quick “Author, date and title” view of the papers I had imported. Diigo lets me apply tags to the bookmarks, screenshots or highlighted text I bring in, allowing me to categorize the same item multiple ways. I’ve only been using it a few days, and I’m hooked!

I liked Diigo so much, I approached one of my co-workers would does a lot of web research and suggested she try using it. She very nicely laughed me off – she’s been using Diigo for years. Her other tool of choice is EndNote, and she tends to use them both depending on what specific project she is working on.

There are also Diigo groups, which I’m excited to learn more about. There is a specific group for education here: https://groups.diigo.com/group/diigoineducation . There seems to be a lot of resources around using Diigo in education, a couple of which I’ve included at the bottom of this post.

I think that Diigo will be an excellent tool to help me keep myself organized when researching for assignments throughout the rest of the OLTD program. I also think it would be an interesting tool to build resource areas to help jump start student projects.

 

Taking Diigo Beyond the Bookmark: http://www.knowthenetwork.com/2010/01/taking-diigo-beyond-the-bookmark/

Using Diigo in the Classroom: https://sites.google.com/site/team8project9440/using-diigo-in-the-classroom-2

As I do not have my classroom (at date of writing) this week’s seminar exploring of online communication tools didn’t have a lot of practical context for me. I was glad that the other members of my cohort shared so opening and honestly about their experiences, as I feel I learned a lot from them.

I did enjoy participating the Twitter chat (#bcedchat) as it provided me with some valuable professional networking and exposure to different people’s opinions. My successful participation in the chat also encouraged me to reply to a few tweets from people I follow this week, which has increased my appreciation of Twitter as a sharing platform in addition to a networking platform.

Sharing on Google+ was a less transformative experience for me. Although I do receive updates when items are shared in the OLTD cohort, I sometimes find the sheer volume overwhelming. That in itself is a helpful lesson for me on how much can be too much for students. It is also good for me to gain some experience with the Google+ platform, as prior to this course I had not used it, but I still see it as more a bulletin board of interesting articles and links then as a tool for collaboration and networking.

As one of my missions in teaching is to create an appreciation for Science and develop scientific literacy in students, I am very interested in using collaborative tools, such as discussion forums and wikis, to help students develop meaningful dialogues and produce materials that can be presented the the greater online community. I feel like microblogging and blogging would be a safe way to begin working on collaborative skills with students, and help them gain confidence with online tools.

Before I adopted any tools in my classroom, however, I would need to carefully consider who my students are and what their level of comfort with different tools may be. I dislike the term “digital natives” as I feel it can give educators a false sense of the skill levels and understanding student have in using digital tools. Any tools adopted would need to have a relatively low barrier to use, and I would need to be fully prepared to support students as they learn the tool – or have someone available who could.

I think the successful adoption of tools really depends on the understanding of what they are being used for and who is using them primarily.

Reference:
Kear, K. (2011). Online and Social Networking Communities: A Best Practice Guide for Educators. [Kobo Version]. Retrieved from http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/online-and-social-networking-communities

I signed up for my Twitter account this year, in June. The reason I signed up for my account was simple: I was attending a large, international conference in July and was terrified I would miss a lot of the information and sharing without Twitter. I was also terrified I wouldn’t be able to “figure out” Twitter unless I gave myself plenty of time to learn it, and a month seemed like plenty of time to me.

I went about learning how to use Twitter the same way I’ve learned most new technologies – I jumped in and mucked around. I started by following musicians and podcasters (as well as some celebrities) that I knew and enjoyed. This was a mistake.

After a couple of weeks I had fallen out of love with Twitter. What was the point anyway? It seemed as if all Twitter was about was reading what other people thought. I was missing that network piece everyone seemed to talk about when they spoke about Twitter.

The conference rolled around, and some of my first tweets were quotes from talks I went to (this actually ended up being helpful for tracking down some information later). I learned a lot more about the hashtag system, though I didn’t really “get” the difference between between a # and an @. Now, I think of a # as a conversation I’m adding a comment to, where I have no idea who as heard me. I think of an @ sign as tapping on someone’s shoulder at a party – they will probably hear what I have to say, but others might as well. (Am I wrong? Let me know in the comments!)

During the conference I started following more interesting people (including people I had the chance to meet in person) and was being followed by a few more people. I started to see two-way conversations happening – and Twitter suddenly made a lot more sense.

After the conference and before the new school year started there were a series of Twitter gaffs that happened to people I knew as well as myself. I’m not ashamed to say – I dropped Twitter like a hot potato for about a month because I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the world wide web. After a while I realized that the Twitter community was pretty forgiving – in part because the information put out there doesn’t stick around too long. There seems to be a near-constant stream of information passing through Twitter.

In the last couple of months I seem to have reached a “critical mass” – I’m following just shy of 200 people, and have about 40 followers – and I’m starting to see my tweets getting shared out. I re-tweet articles I read from others or share ed-tech news about once a day. I’m very careful about my hashtags – I would rather share without a hashtag then share to wrong one. I’ve download and am learning how best to use Hootsuite – which is great because of the ability to watch multiple streams of hashtags.

Overall, my experience with Twitter and “putting myself out there” has been pretty positive. I’ve been able to build my online presence and start connecting with professionals in my field. I’m hoping that I can continue to build my professional learning network and online footprint.

I recently attended a CEET Meet geared toward cyber citizenship education (the archive for the meet is located here and more CEET meets are available here ).

The content of the CEET meet, cyber citizenship education, was very interesting. The resources provided by the meet coordinator were varied and engaging.

One of my favourite resource was an article and series of videos titled “Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens” (located here ). The direction in the meet itself was to discuss to what extent is it each teacher’s responsibility to help students to become good Cyber Citizens, but the conversation turned into how we define cyber citizenship and what it looks like to teach it in the classroom – a much more applicable conversation.

In the social media segment of the course there was another off-topic but highly informative conversation about tweeting and using social media. I was amazed at the level of support the online meet attendees offered to each other.

With all that being said, although I enjoyed reading the articles and resources, as well as keeping up the discussion posts, I had a hard time participating with the meet. After the first three days worth of posts, I became more of a lurker then a participant. My biggest struggle was that given the quality of posts and the experience of the other participants, I didn’t feel I had anything valuable to add to discussions. Since I was not an active participant in the discussions, I didn’t really make any new contacts through the CEET Meet, which was disappointing.

I am also planning to attend the Global Education Conference (http://www.globaleducationconference.com/ ) starting on Monday. I am hoping that because the Global Education Conference bills itself as “involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels” that I will have more to add to the conversations and be more active in the communities overall.