A few of my favourite things…..

As part of my final reflections on the blog and 3250 I wanted to talk about the other blogs that I enjoyed in the course.

A favorite blog has been the blog of Richard Wood.

Richard has been posting his blog and charting his progress as a (very) distance student from Nunavat. As someone interested in online education, e-learning, and gamification reading about Richard and his struggles to connect with a larger community and navigate low and unstable bandwidth was fascinating. As well, seeing how he was able to partake in course and develop discourse and discussion by using technology was inspiring.

I enjoyed the creative and visually arrested style of Garima Kamboj’s blog.

This is the End, my Friend

I am now coming the end of the 3250. It’s been a very rewarding course that introduced me to some exciting new ideas as well as challenging some of my previously held ideas, which is really the most that you could ask from a course such as this.

Since I’ve been reflecting on the course I thought that I would list some of the favorite things that I will be taking away from this. Of course the list won’t include everything that I have been exposed to but these are a few that really resonated with me.

• Needs are going to change from learner to learner – One of the topics that would come up a lot in the message boards was how would a certain instructional strategy effect an introvert vs. an extrovert. This was the most common type of comparison but I could see how difference such as culture, age, and technological skill could change the success of a strategy. As well, we often talked about what were the common needs that had to be met before a student could succeed. It was clear that there wasn’t just one strategy that instructors should hang their hat on use as the perfect approach to engage everyone.
• Identify your resources – As well, we talked about great strategies and how they could be used to reach every type of learner out there. However, it is unlikely that I would ever have the staff, time, or budget to employ every strategy that I learned here at once. It doesn’t matter how engaging they are. Resources are another factor that need to be considered when employing a strategy.
• Think outside the box (and classroom) – The classroom is a structure that was created to meet needs that no longer really apply. A great deal of the strategies that we learned here can work outside of the traditional four walls (flipped classroom, gamification, digital learning, self- directed learning). Rather than making the learners fit into the structure of education, look at the lives of learners and ask how we can fit learning into their lives.
• The brain wants what it wants – I was impressed with how almost every discussion of an instructional strategy explored the cognitive qualities of the instructional strategy and how it interacts with the learner’s brain. What really stuck out in all of the discussion is that learner’s brain are wired a certain way and no amount of discipline, hard work, rewards, labels such as good or immoral will change that. Instructor’s need to recognize the specific needs and work with them or they won’t be reached.
• Measure it or it doesn’t exist – Grading on qualities such as classroom participation and group work are very hard to measure and should be kept as an activity. Unless this is somehow tied to a learning outcome it should remain and activity and not an assessment. This, however, doesn’t mean that they can’t be addressed in the expectations of the course.

And one final thought that really struck me. We are experienced. Every participant in the class told of interesting and exciting solutions that they managed to find out for themselves either as students or as instructors. Again, no particular strategy worked for everyone but if we keep trying and working towards the goals of helping each other while looking at each other’s need with empathy and not judgment, our society would be better for it.

My kingdom for some feedback!

Last week, I completed my turn hosting and mediating the classroom forum. I was looking forward to my week as hosting as I had really enjoyed partaking in the previous weeks boards.

In the previous threads new ideas were introduced by both the forum host and by participants and the results were both compelling and informative. Having a deep interest in the topic that I was discussing, I looked forward to the perspectives that my classmates would bring to it and what I could learn from them.

My topic was on gamification and I immediately saw in my first post that most participants had confused the concept with game based learning. This is common misconception and one that I had planned on discussing in the forum as I initially had troubles with it. I geared my next few topics around this idea as it was one of the take-aways that I really wanted to convey.

And the suddenly the posts stopped.

I asked questions and received no answers. At the end of the week my last two posts had exactly 0 replies. I have had this happen in a classroom and it is easy enough there to pick a student and ask them directly if they understood and ask them to demonstrate. Online, however, there was no way to do this. It became clear that a lack of feedback online is just as likely to happen as in the classroom.

Except now, there was feeling of being adrift.

Without feedback, I suddenly tried to find reasons that nobody was responding. Some theories were: I had offended every single person in the course with some previous post, the post made no sense, I had come off as condescending, and many more self-flagellating ideas such as these.

The truth is that whatever the reasons were for the 0 replies, I will never know.

In the future, whenever I am creating online training I am going to provide as many opportunities for feedback to the instructor as possible. This might be including feedback as part of the classroom expectations, closing surveys, anonymous message boxes, and reaching out directly to students that are not appearing engaged and committed.

Can you manage this?

Another topic that is being discussed in this course is the concept of classroom management.

As someone that has spent a bit of time training in the classroom, I understand the importance of classroom management and how quickly poor classroom management can derail a lesson.

Now that most of my recent work has been involved with the creation of e-learning materials, I have to wonder if the ideas of classroom management are applicable to e-learning as well.

Classroom management is important to addressing the common issues that a classroom can face, such as chatter or too much socializing or lack of participation. These issues will not occur in the same manner but I feel the equivalent of the classroom management problems in a e-learning would be learners that complete other tasks or even walk away while an e-learning is playing or learners that would just skip through slides to complete the e-learning as quickly as possible.

In both cases, I feel that the problems are usually a lack of expectations, a lack of clarity in the purpose of the activities, or a lack of engagements.

I usually address expectations at the start of class and ask students to agree to it. In the same way I try to address the expectations at the start of the e-learning but also include some sort of interactivity (if even it is just clicking, I agree to these terms) so they are forced to take an action and agree to the expectations.

Clarity is something I try to address with the gamification and leveling up that I have discussed here before. One of the qualities that I love about gamification is that learners are always at the proper level and are aware of what they are working towards.

This of course also addresses the concern of engagement. E-learning needs to be engaging so that learners will not want to skip ahead but at the same time should be allowed to move to the appropriate level for their skill. An open menu divided into small unit should allow for this. Each unit should have a small knowledge checks that needs to be completed before advancing the next unit. These check should be short enough that a more advanced learner won’t need a great deal of time to move ahead to the appropriate level but they will stop a disengaged learner from simply skipping ahead to the end without learning anything and will also increase engagement.

Management will always be an important part of a teacher’s work but the environment might change over time.

Games That Introverts Play

Until a fellow learner brought it up on a message board, I had never really thought about the division between introverts and extroverts in the gamification before.

This is mostly because I’ve usually worked with the idea of online gamification that are layered on top of classroom sessions. It can work for both types here because they are used to keep learners at the proper levels, where they can progress according to however their introvert/extrovert tendencies feel. But I can see how in a classroom this might feel different.

Gamification in a classroom can be very intense and it’s something that I have encountered. It’s also one of the times that I think that the difference between learning games and gamification is important. Gamifying a whole curriculum ensures that with each level learners are working towards goals. These goals would be the course outcomes/goals and the specific tasks that the learner should be able to accomplish at the end.

Just tossing a game into the learning only provides a single short term goal of winning the game rather than achieving a learning outcome and it can get a little intense sometimes. I’ve used games in classrooms where learners got so distracted from the learning outcomes and focused on the winning the game that they said mean-spirited things, cheated, or argued the minutia of rules for hours. In one game, learners had to ring in with a correct answer by hitting a little desk bell, the kind that you find on an old fashioned hotel desk. The learner rang in first but hit it hard enough that she punched a hole in hand and drew blood.

In all these cases, I had to keep reminding them that the real focus was learning the material.

I can see how this environment would not be ideal, for introverts or extroverts.

Interestingly, according to this research extroverts respond much better to badges or rewards while introverts respond better to leader boards, which is the opposite of what I expected. I thought that introverts would rather be quietly reflecting and working towards badges but I guess everyone has a competitive streak, just in different ways.

http://www.openu.ac.il/innovation/chais2014/download/E2-2.pdf

Yo! Flip Tha’ Class!

One of the ideas that have come up in this course is the concept of a flipped classroom.

The basic idea of a flipped classroom is that the learners take home reading and other assignments and then in the classroom have discussions or work on projects. as opposed to the traditional idea of students attending a lecture or taking in information in the classroom and then going off to do homework where they create a project or write an essay.

I have to say that I was somewhat confused by this term whenever it came up. To me the supposed flip classroom was used in the majority of classes that I had attended. In most of my courses I was assigned readings, etc. and then in class a discussion or some other sort of activity was held. I don’t recall many classes where I was asked to come in, sit down and read Hamlet for an hour, and then go home and work it out.

I think that the arts and social science courses that I took already lent themselves to this a bit, but in a truly flipped classroom the learners do all their work in the classroom and where they receive the coaching and tutoring in the class when they are stuck. That English teacher wouldn’t have any lectures on Hamlet at all but would send us away with videos of lectures and then hold a discussion and debate in the next class.

I think it’s an exciting approach and one that I would like to embrace more. At this point in my life time is a very precious commodity. I can fit in readings, lectures, and media content at various points in the day (but most likely late at night if I am being honest) but when I am stuck, struggling, and trying to work something out and need help I need to take full advantage of the resources available to me. If I know that I can work out the problem with a teacher or instructor at a certain time – I will make sure to use that time as efficiently as possible because I know that the next time I have a free moment (at 11’oclock at night or sitting in the car during my son’s swim lessons) they won’t be available.

Are Instructional Strategies Part of Your Outcomes?

In the forum discussions, I saw an interesting debate regarding group learning as an instructional strategy. This debate mostly revolved around the idea of how group work would be assessed and graded.

It made me think about whether this was fair to the students.

Are they being assessed on something that was not part of their original learning goals?

I recall seeing this in action during university English classes where exceptional students had their grades pulled down during group work. These were introverted bookish people that would be absorbed into the books they were reading and write exceptionally insightful papers. They were by all descriptions, perfect students for this course. However, they grade suffered because they didn’t excel at their group work.

In the forums there were examples of how the group work would prepare these learner’s for their work that they were pursuing. One example was of how the group work helped future nurses learn to work as part of a team, communicate effectively, and speak assertively. Which is great because it relates to a clearly defined learning outcome.

However, the learner’s in my English class didn’t take it to learn to be more assertive or come out of their shell. Nor did the course purport to develop anything in the learner other than an understanding of Romantic Poetry.

The whole thing reminded me that when choosing an instructional strategy I shouldn’t project me own values and judgments onto whatever I’m teaching. My goal as an instructor is teach the course outcomes rather than what I think might be good for the person. The learning outcomes of the course are an agreement between the teacher and the learner. If students don’t achieve the outcomes, then they have not completed the course but if I don’t teach the outcomes I haven’t taught the course. We can’t hold each other to any other standards.

Digital Project Reflection

Well, I did it! I managed to find a way to upload my digital project for the class. (Thanks Scorm Cloud!)

Along with uploading it and learning about the topic, I also managed to find I new found love of feedback based on the prospect of not receiving any feedback at all (as described in my last post). I was actually afraid of not hearing about my mistakes when normally that can be a bit of painful process that I don’t always look forward to.

Aside from the uploading challenges, the digital project was a lot of fun to create. It was a topic that I was very interested in and was engaged not only in learning the content but also taking it and applying it to my current workplace.

As with anything though, the real growth lay in the most difficult areas. The most difficult part of writing about gamification was in actually defining the concept. It seems to be an area that a lot users of gamification struggle with as the theory doesn’t refer to creating a great learning game but adding game elements to an activity that is not a game but name itself certainly sounds like it has much more to do with building a learning game or adding one into a learning curriculum. It’s any easy enough mistake to make. As I researched the digital project, I would often uncover something that I though would make a great example but as I examined it, I would realize that it was just a learning game and not an example of gamification.

Finally I realized that the best way to outline the common misconception was to tackle it head on and talk about the area where I was confused. I added a new section after the definition. Now I had a slide titled “What is Gamification?” and “What is Not Gamification?” It outlined and contained the topic better than a simple definition would and helped me understand the concept better. I can only imagine that the audience would have the same confusion as me, so hopefully it addressed their confusion as well.

It was good reminder to consider all the factors and contexts of subject when teaching it.

Feedback and Static

I’ve been developing my digital project for this course. It’s on a topic that I am really interested and I had fun recording it and think that I made a pretty good assignment.

But what I learned the most about this assignment isn’t regarding the actual topic but about the value of feedback.

I recorded my assignment using Articulate Storyline. It’s software that I use at work and I figured the more skills that I can develop with it the better for work. Once finishing my assignment, I made the move to upload this to YouTube. My options were to record a screencast of the Storyline and then upload it but it seems that all the screencasts that I made recorded the sound directly off my laptop and make it muddy and distorted rather than clear from an external mike. I’ve tried uploading the Storyline direct but can’t find a workable e-learning host and don’t have access to a Learning Management System.

Now, I have three options:

1)Re-record the entire project over again in something compatible like PowerPoint

2) Keep searching for an e-learning host, or

3) Find away to screencast the audio correctly.

Regardless of the option that I choose, it looks unlikely that I will meet the assignment deadline.

Now, the way that our course grading works is that a late submission are still accepted but it won’t receive any feedback. At 13, I would have thought “Great! So long as I get my grade!” but now it really has me bothered.

As I mentioned above, I thought that the project was pretty good. I have a general sense of what it should be graded at but without the feedback I won’t know what areas could be improved and what ideas I didn’t think of. I might learn that I made a mistake but I won’t know what it was or how I can improve on it. If I really am off and the project is much less than I think it is, I won’t know why and might likely do it again – in a riskier place like work!

I took this course so that I could be better at my job. A letter grade won’t help me do that feedback certainly will.

Resources

Taking this course has made me consider one of the elements that is incredibly important in the success of an instructional strategy.

Taking the course has excited me about different strategies and new exciting ways to engage learners.

However, when trying the use these strategies at my work I was suddenly presented with a great challenge – lack of resources.

A lack of resources doesn’t mean that the participants in my training programs are not receiving the best training available to them, it means that they are receiving the best training available by taking all the factors of the training program into consideration.

I would have loved to have created an immersive online simulation but I just don’t have the time, resources, or technology to design something like this for a group of 30 participants. I have seen some training try to adapt a more technology based training to a limited set of resources and learners were disengaged by the low-level tech such as sitting in a room listening to iPods.

In this case, a better strategy might be something that was lower technology and more student lead within the classroom as the number of trainers would be limited.

Student needs should always be the first priority in assessing the best instructional strategies for your classroom but the available resources can’t be ignored in a successful plan.