A reflection on “Web 2.0 Technologies as Cognitive Tools of the New Media Age”, “Defining the Connected Educator” and “Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education“
D.I.Y. is dead, long live D.I.O.
Sure, student-centered learning environments ask us to release perhaps long-held habits of dependency on expert guidance. Nussbaum-Beach tells us that self-reliance and a can-do D.I.Y. spirit are the very keys to personal and professional development. Especially for those of us who are afforded few formal opportunities for PD as educators, it’s clear that self-initiative is a requisite for keeping up with best-practice pedagogy.
Still, in the “flat” global one-room schoolhouse that is our 21st century world, the D.I.Y. approach has been rendered insufficient. Instead, as we look to the insights, tragedies and triumphs of our fellow educators to inform our own practices, we have shifted to a more robust model: Do-It-Ourselves.
I don’t mean to undermine the importance of getting our hands dirty. Testing, failing, and refining are crucial steps to learning, especially when engaging with new technologies. Hsu, Ching, and Grabowski argue that “hands-on experiences with these technologies allow teachers to explore their affordance of educational use for different contexts and learning objectives.” That said, an ability to share our experiences and learn from those of our peers defines successful, self-directed professional development for 21st century educators.
In this spirit, I found great insight in reading the case studies of teachers who applied Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms. Along with the reminder to start small, my primary take-away from Hsu et al.’s text was the importance of aligning tech tools with the appropriate targeted cognitive activities.
For the past seven years, I have co-instructed a large-format online General Education performing arts course. With 75 students in every section, I teach a total of 225 students every semester. Students engage with the instructional content through four primary activities: reading texts on the history of performing art genres, taking multiple choice exams to test recall of material, attending performances on campus, and writing reviews of those events.
As I learn more about the potential of Web 2.0 tools to support student-directed learning for understanding, I become increasingly aware of the deficiencies of the course structure as it stands. Still, I’m inspired to push for change so that I can become a “Connected Educator”: inspiring, modeling, and developing opportunities for learning and creativity.
Knowledge Construction
As of now, my students have few formal opportunities to interact and socially construct their knowledge. This year, my co-instructor and I are experimenting with implementing the Yammer social network as an informal, digitally-mediated space for student interaction. Our goal here was to create a sort of Q&A repository where content would be driven by student interest and need.
We decided not to require participation on Yammer as a formal part of the course by linking it with a grade. With an interface and functionality reminiscent of Facebook, we had assumed that most students would be comfortable using this tool. So far this semester, though, few students have posted and fewer still have replied to their peers’ posts. This lack of engagement may be a result of insufficient scaffolding on my part, a failure to show students how to use the network and to establish expectations of content and quality.
Critical Thinking and Metacognition
The main opportunity for critical thinking in my course comes in a written review in which students reflect on performance choices that contribute to or detract from an event’s success. At the moment, I am the only reader of these reviews. With 150+ papers to grade on a near-weekly basis, I often find it challenging to provide students with meaningful feedback.
Reading about the power of the commenting function on blogs has inspired me to rethink the delivery and feedback tools for these review assignments. If students were to post their work on personal Sites@PSU blogs, their peers could read, comment, question, and argue. Authors would benefit from a diversity of perspectives in the feedback they receive. In turn, the commenters would develop their critical thinking skills by reflecting on the elements of writing and thinking that determine the success of their peers’ works.
Hey Maria,
I love your title. I wonder if there is a subtle sense of irony hidden in it about one thing replacing another thing?
I appreciate you seem to feel the D.I.O. model is “more robust.” Not to sound cynical, but I do wonder if in 5 years we’ll be saying something else is replacing D.I.O.?
I ask my question in the context of the work you’ve been doing. (Which sounds interesting. I’d love to hear more about the parts of your online learning platform – what works, what doesn’t work, what your next iteration will look like…) Back to my question. What you are doing sounds great and it’s an example of the type of work education theorists were saying we should be doing 5 and 10 years ago. And now we’re saying we should change that cause it is missing something or lacking in someways.
Next, I’m interested in your comments about the lack of engagement…or maybe what I should be saying is lack of contribution. It is possible that they are engaged but don’t want to say anything, or don’t feel they have anything to contribute that hasn’t been said already? Or is it something else?
For example, I appreciate and enjoy that for this class we are using a variety of different platforms (forums, Blogs, voicethread, wiki). It makes sense. We need to be exposed to them and we need to see their educational value (which I am seeing).
However I finding it tiring and requires too much effort to keep track of conversation threads. To keep track of ideas sparked here and there. To illustrate this: I read the “Handbook…” PDF in Adobe Reader so I could annotate the document as I read it. I made notes about the Khan video in OneNote. In week two of our class I found out that notes and highlights I’d made on my iPad’s Diigo app didn’t sync with our class group page. I’m reading another book in Kindle and annotating the book in the Kindle app.
Anyone who has used notebooks or written notes on napkins will correctly say, “Stop yer whining Sean! We’ve been making notes all over the place for ever. This problem isn’t new.” I think the one difference is that the rate of all this happening has accelerated more than even the most adroit person can handle or sustain AND when I am asked to engage in commenting I find myself saying, “I don’t have anything distinct to say beyond, ‘Yeah, me too'” or I feel like I’m having to say something for the sake of saying it – which feels inauthentic.
Sean
Sean,
Thank you! You have just highlighted an issue that often crops up for me as I am taking online classes. The lack of contribution is sometimes just a lack of something new to add because the topic has been covered and discussed so thoroughly. Sometimes my thoughts and ideas feel contrived just to be able to add something to the conversation. I understand the need to participate and interact, but listening, processing and thinking about new information can be effective ways to learn as well. I wonder what the balance is?
Like Sean, I also enjoyed your blog title. 🙂 I also really enjoyed how you broke down the current design of your course and considered how you could potentially implement and incorporate some of the web 2.0 tools we’ve been learning about. I’m curious, have you noticed a difference in the students who have participated in the Yammer social network versus the students who have not?
I am interested in your class sizes, and student participation. Do you think the 75 student sections make some students reluctant to participate, even in online environments? I certainly know that I am far less likely to contribute to a discussion as a group gets larger.
Maria, I think your example of Yammer not working is consistent with what a lot of research has shown and there might be several reasons for it — as you mentioned modeling and clarifying the purpose of the activity helps. Also tools like Yammer and Facebook suffer from a confounding effect in that students are used to using these for personal communication and they don’t tend to make the switch for academic purposes quite so easily. Here is a study that used Yammer with good effect — perhaps it’ll help. http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marcela_Borge/publication/262486335_Towards_the_Facilitation_of_an_Online_Community_of_Learners_Assessing_the_Quality_of_Interactions_in_Yammer/links/02e7e537ce340b1cc0000000.pdf Best of luck as you try to identify other design steps!