I'm having a problem with the screen layout of some online course materials. The student is being taught how to write definitions, and in one section they're presented with six different definitions of globalisation and have to fill in a table to analyse, for each of them, the different components of the definition. It's a common sort of distance learning activity, and the screen layout problem is a common one too: the student really needs to be able to see the definition they're working on and the table into which they're writing their analysis at the same time. I don't know how we're going to achieve this on our VLE - unless we put each of the definitions on a separate screen and repeat the table six times!
I find it astonishing that with all the effort and design talent which has gone into developing online learning platforms it is still the exception rather than the rule to find an easy way of enabling a learner to hold two things in view simultaneously. (For OU staff only: here is a rare exemple from D821.)
But this doing two things at once, or switching rapidly between them, is the essence of learning, is it not?
If we think we're simply transmitting information (as tends to be the assumption with people from the IT industry, which is based on information theory's conceptualisation of complex problems as the transmission, modification and reception of information), then a single view, single activity interface is not a problem. The student is just reading text, or looking at a picture, or watching a video, etc.
But if we're thinking about learning, then the student needs to be not only in the text, the picture or the video, but standing back from it and doing something else: relating it to their existing knowledge, forming new knowledge structures to accommodate it, thinking how to apply it to other circumstances. (It's the back end of the Kolb learning cycle.)
Good students, of course, do this whether we make it easy for them to do it or not. They take notes, they think about what we've shown them, they talk about it with their mates, they try it out.
But given how fundamental to learning is this doing-two-things-at-once (or, more accurately, switching between them quickly), and given that the distinctive capability of the contemporary digital computer is the integration of different functions on the same screen, isn't it extraordinary how little our VLEs and teaching platforms help our learners with this second function, being still designed on the assumption that they will be doing only one thing at a time?
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Seen and heard - October 2009
A.S. Byatt, "The Childrens Book"
Coll Bardolet paintings at the Fundació Cultural Coll Bardolet, Valdemossa, Mallorca
"Electric dreams" (BBC TV)
"An online university - with no fees", article in Education Guardian about University of the People
"Disney.Pixar" on The South Bank Show (ITV)
The Clerks, at Olney parish church - concert including items from their new album "Don't Talk - Just Listen!"
"Assignment feedback in language courses: current practice and student perceptions", research seminar by Maria Fernández-Toro and Concha Furnborough with Mike Truman, Department of Languages, The Open University
"Six Characters in Search of an Author", by Luigi Pirandello, in the new production by Rupert Goold and Ben Power, at Cambridge Arts Theatre
"Glamour's Golden Age" (BBC TV)
Coll Bardolet paintings at the Fundació Cultural Coll Bardolet, Valdemossa, Mallorca
"Electric dreams" (BBC TV)
"An online university - with no fees", article in Education Guardian about University of the People
"Disney.Pixar" on The South Bank Show (ITV)
The Clerks, at Olney parish church - concert including items from their new album "Don't Talk - Just Listen!"
"Assignment feedback in language courses: current practice and student perceptions", research seminar by Maria Fernández-Toro and Concha Furnborough with Mike Truman, Department of Languages, The Open University
"Six Characters in Search of an Author", by Luigi Pirandello, in the new production by Rupert Goold and Ben Power, at Cambridge Arts Theatre
"Glamour's Golden Age" (BBC TV)
Friday, 16 October 2009
Electric dreams - what historical reconstructions can't show
The OU / BBC co-production Electric Dreams - following a contemporary family re-experience the household technologies of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, with time advancing at the rate of a year a day - has turned out to be a really good talking point. You didn't need to like the people or assume that they were representative to see lovely issues emerging about how we use technology and the effect it has on us.
But I was struck that despite the heroic and largely successful efforts to find and recondition authentic period gadgets (the Tech Team were at least as much the stars of the show as the Family), one thing which they could not recreate was the social milieu. So for example, to my surprise (and the surprise of the Tech Team) when the children were offered a choice between a Sinclair Spectrum and a BBC Microcomputer, they chose the BBC Micro, despite its nerdy image, talked up by one of the presenters. Had they been subject to the peer pressure of their friends, I'm sure they'd have chosen the Spectrum instead, because it had more of a games image. (Or should we take comfort from this, that young people can actually make sensible decisions, if separated from peer pressure?!)
The arrival of the computer and hand-held gaming devices (Game and Watches) in the home was interesting for its social effects. In the 1970s the family had all been together in the living room, playing Buckaroo or watching television (Saturday nights in the '70s = The Generation Game + The Two Ronnies + Ironside / Kojak / Starskey and Hutch) - at least partly because their bedrooms were bitterly cold (the central heating having been turned off, most houses not having it in 1970) and anyway there was nothing to do there. In the 1980s they all turned to their own gadgets and the family focus was broken. There was also a gender divide which opened up between Dad and the boy and Mum and the two girls (not including the toddler, who must have been mystified by the whole experiment).
All of that rang true to my experience of home computers in the 1980s. But even if we largely used our computers on our own, or maybe with a mate from school or (in my case) university, this didn't mean that we were isolated, because of the social environment created by the user magazines. Every machine had its own magazine; most had several. From them, you could find out what other people were playing and which games were worth buying. For anyone who was into adventure games, as I was, the network of other players was critical because when you got stuck with one of the puzzles you wrote to or phoned someone else who had completed the game: the magazines published their contact details. Anyone who played adventures on the Amstrad CPC in the 1980s will recall the name of Joan Pancott - an elderly woman, who didn't get out much because of her arthritis, but who had completed pretty much every adventure written for the machine and who must have helped hundreds and hundreds of much younger gamers. I owe her my sanity.
And there were fanzines too - word processed on our dot-matrix printers and photocopied. I subscribed to Adventure Quest, set up by Pat Winstanley for adventure game writers, where we exchanged ideas for plots and puzzles and tips for coding on the various authoring systems. It was through Adventure Quest and its sister fanzine for players Adventure Probe that I distributed my own adventure Bestiary.
Curious to think about it all now, because if we were doing it all today of course we'd be doing it on the internet, through Ning or some other kind of social networking software. The social relationships were the same, even though our technology was Royal Mail and printer paper. Things have perhaps changed less than we think.
But I was struck that despite the heroic and largely successful efforts to find and recondition authentic period gadgets (the Tech Team were at least as much the stars of the show as the Family), one thing which they could not recreate was the social milieu. So for example, to my surprise (and the surprise of the Tech Team) when the children were offered a choice between a Sinclair Spectrum and a BBC Microcomputer, they chose the BBC Micro, despite its nerdy image, talked up by one of the presenters. Had they been subject to the peer pressure of their friends, I'm sure they'd have chosen the Spectrum instead, because it had more of a games image. (Or should we take comfort from this, that young people can actually make sensible decisions, if separated from peer pressure?!)
The arrival of the computer and hand-held gaming devices (Game and Watches) in the home was interesting for its social effects. In the 1970s the family had all been together in the living room, playing Buckaroo or watching television (Saturday nights in the '70s = The Generation Game + The Two Ronnies + Ironside / Kojak / Starskey and Hutch) - at least partly because their bedrooms were bitterly cold (the central heating having been turned off, most houses not having it in 1970) and anyway there was nothing to do there. In the 1980s they all turned to their own gadgets and the family focus was broken. There was also a gender divide which opened up between Dad and the boy and Mum and the two girls (not including the toddler, who must have been mystified by the whole experiment).
All of that rang true to my experience of home computers in the 1980s. But even if we largely used our computers on our own, or maybe with a mate from school or (in my case) university, this didn't mean that we were isolated, because of the social environment created by the user magazines. Every machine had its own magazine; most had several. From them, you could find out what other people were playing and which games were worth buying. For anyone who was into adventure games, as I was, the network of other players was critical because when you got stuck with one of the puzzles you wrote to or phoned someone else who had completed the game: the magazines published their contact details. Anyone who played adventures on the Amstrad CPC in the 1980s will recall the name of Joan Pancott - an elderly woman, who didn't get out much because of her arthritis, but who had completed pretty much every adventure written for the machine and who must have helped hundreds and hundreds of much younger gamers. I owe her my sanity.
And there were fanzines too - word processed on our dot-matrix printers and photocopied. I subscribed to Adventure Quest, set up by Pat Winstanley for adventure game writers, where we exchanged ideas for plots and puzzles and tips for coding on the various authoring systems. It was through Adventure Quest and its sister fanzine for players Adventure Probe that I distributed my own adventure Bestiary.
Curious to think about it all now, because if we were doing it all today of course we'd be doing it on the internet, through Ning or some other kind of social networking software. The social relationships were the same, even though our technology was Royal Mail and printer paper. Things have perhaps changed less than we think.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Seen and heard - September 2009
"How to Write an Instruction Manual" (BBC Radio 4, 21 August 2009, via podcast).
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967 film, shown on TV).
"Dummes' Guides to Teaching Insult Our Intelligence" (Times Higher Education article, plus long online discussion)."
"The Beatles on Record" (BBC2, 5 September 2009).Michael Wesch, Keynote address at Alt-C, 8 September 2009, "Mediated culture / mediated education".Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham, "Frameworks for developing digitally literate learners", workshop at Alt-C 8 September 2009, based on the Learning Literacies for a Digital Age (LLida) project.
David White, "It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there: using the 'Visitor-Resident' principle to guide approches to the participatory web", paper at Alt-C, 9 September 2009.Chris Jones, "Is there a Net generation coming to university?", paper at Alt-C, 9 September 2009.Martin Bean, Keynote address at Alt-C, 9 September 2009
"Duet for One", with Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman (Milton Keynes Theatre)
"The Frankincense Trail" (BBC TV)
"Julie and Julia" (film, in cinema)
"The Fountain" (film, on television)
Profile of David Hargreaves in Guardian Education
"Upgrade me" (BBC TV)
"Is that message really necessary?", Guardian article about information overload by Paul Hemp, based on his article in Harvard Business Review.
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967 film, shown on TV).
"Dummes' Guides to Teaching Insult Our Intelligence" (Times Higher Education article, plus long online discussion)."
"The Beatles on Record" (BBC2, 5 September 2009).Michael Wesch, Keynote address at Alt-C, 8 September 2009, "Mediated culture / mediated education".Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham, "Frameworks for developing digitally literate learners", workshop at Alt-C 8 September 2009, based on the Learning Literacies for a Digital Age (LLida) project.
David White, "It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there: using the 'Visitor-Resident' principle to guide approches to the participatory web", paper at Alt-C, 9 September 2009.Chris Jones, "Is there a Net generation coming to university?", paper at Alt-C, 9 September 2009.Martin Bean, Keynote address at Alt-C, 9 September 2009
"Duet for One", with Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman (Milton Keynes Theatre)
"The Frankincense Trail" (BBC TV)
"Julie and Julia" (film, in cinema)
"The Fountain" (film, on television)
Profile of David Hargreaves in Guardian Education
"Upgrade me" (BBC TV)
"Is that message really necessary?", Guardian article about information overload by Paul Hemp, based on his article in Harvard Business Review.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Audio feedback on written assignments (2)
Since my previous post on this subject, there's been a lot of talk about audio feedback at Alt-C (the Association of Learning Technology Conference): at least two papers on it and mentions in many more.
Much of the talk has been wildly enthusiastic, but as Isobel Falconer observed to me, most of the examples presented of good audio feedback were just examples of good feedback pure and simple, which would have been good even if they were given in print. People found it hard to distinguish the benefits which were due to the audio medium and the benefits which were simply due to giving better feedback. For example, in one workshop, we were invited to compare a piece of written feedback which was impersonal, brief and bueaucratic, written to a form template, with a piece of audio feedback which was warm and personal, supportive and encouraging, with suggestions for how to improve. Not exactly comparing like with like.
The Open University since its foundation has made it its business to provide its students with personal, supportive and extended feedback; in fact, it is is this, rather than its TV programmes or even its printed course materials to which its success is chiefly attributable. So what WE want to know is whether there is anything additional which the audio medium adds.
From the sessions I attended - together with the much more sophisticated research paper also presented at Alt-C by Sue Rodway-Dyer et al - here are some of the potential advantages.
It may make it easier for tutors to give better feedback, for example:
Having just heard Mike Wesch's keynote address on how media are not just tools but mediate relationships, it occured to me that this may be a case where a change in medium opens the possibility, at least of a change to the relationship: making it more personal, more aware, and more critical.
Much of the talk has been wildly enthusiastic, but as Isobel Falconer observed to me, most of the examples presented of good audio feedback were just examples of good feedback pure and simple, which would have been good even if they were given in print. People found it hard to distinguish the benefits which were due to the audio medium and the benefits which were simply due to giving better feedback. For example, in one workshop, we were invited to compare a piece of written feedback which was impersonal, brief and bueaucratic, written to a form template, with a piece of audio feedback which was warm and personal, supportive and encouraging, with suggestions for how to improve. Not exactly comparing like with like.
The Open University since its foundation has made it its business to provide its students with personal, supportive and extended feedback; in fact, it is is this, rather than its TV programmes or even its printed course materials to which its success is chiefly attributable. So what WE want to know is whether there is anything additional which the audio medium adds.
From the sessions I attended - together with the much more sophisticated research paper also presented at Alt-C by Sue Rodway-Dyer et al - here are some of the potential advantages.
It may make it easier for tutors to give better feedback, for example:
- they are less likely to slip into academic language
- it may be easier for non-native speakers of English, the medium being more tolerant of verbal idiosyncracies
- by making their feedback more of an object, from which they can stand back and experience it as students will, it prompts tutors to be more critical.
- they may find it easier to take in, if their literacy is poor
- it forces them to pay attention, because it can't be skimmed over the way written feedback can (we know this is a problem) - in fact, students apparently often listen to audio feedback two or three times and sometimes make notes
- BUT where their assignments are long and discursive, it can be harder for them to locate the particular places being referred to in the feedback.
Having just heard Mike Wesch's keynote address on how media are not just tools but mediate relationships, it occured to me that this may be a case where a change in medium opens the possibility, at least of a change to the relationship: making it more personal, more aware, and more critical.
Don't you wish your professor was cool like mine (2)
Alt-C had an inspiring conference keynote address yesterday from Michael Wesch, including extracts from his three excellent videos, all available on YouTube: The Machine is Us/ing Us, A Vision of Students Today, and An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube - the last two of which were the results of class projects. How cool must it be to study with him!
The keynote was pretty good too. I loved the idea of starting a conference about educational technology - in which every other person in the room had a netbook open and was madly blogging or tweeting - with an anthropologist talking about his fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where there was not only no wi-fi or broadband, but no electricity or running water, and the people don't have fixed personal names (making census-taking - which is what Wesch was there to observe - highly problematic, until they invented the concept of the "census name").
His basic message - that media are not just tools but mediate relationships, so that when you change the medium you change the relationship, creating new ways of relating to others and knowing ourselves - was especially welcome to me, since I've been contending for a long time that we need to stop thinking of educational technology in the IT terms of information transfer or the liberal individualist terms of choice and consumption, and more in terms of the network of relationships in which all these activities happen.
The keynote was pretty good too. I loved the idea of starting a conference about educational technology - in which every other person in the room had a netbook open and was madly blogging or tweeting - with an anthropologist talking about his fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where there was not only no wi-fi or broadband, but no electricity or running water, and the people don't have fixed personal names (making census-taking - which is what Wesch was there to observe - highly problematic, until they invented the concept of the "census name").
His basic message - that media are not just tools but mediate relationships, so that when you change the medium you change the relationship, creating new ways of relating to others and knowing ourselves - was especially welcome to me, since I've been contending for a long time that we need to stop thinking of educational technology in the IT terms of information transfer or the liberal individualist terms of choice and consumption, and more in terms of the network of relationships in which all these activities happen.
Training the unconfident: reading first or experience first?
Last week, a colleague urgently needed training in Elluminate (a synchronous audiographic conferencing tool) in order to support a live Elluminate session. I arranged for us to meet to set up a live online session together, working on separate machines in adjacent rooms, and on the advice of our local Elluminate "champion" urged her first to read the basic introductory guide so that she would "get the most out of the session", as we learning designers say. I also suggested that she prepare by going into the Elluminate "room" on her own, so that she could practice finding and using all the tools and buttons, even if there was nobody there to talk to.
As things turned out, she wasn't able to do any of the preparation - and I wonder if in fact this wasn't for the best. She was a very unconfident explorer of new software, despite being an experienced computer user, and perhaps the most useful thing I was able to do for her was to sit by her and take her on a tour of Elluminate - which I could do quite briefly, because I could say "and you can follow that up later in the documentation which I sent you".
Many computer users are confident enough within their regular everyday comfort zone but are paralysed when attempting to move outside it for fear of something going wrong which they can't repair. It's mistakes and difficulties which IT training never seems to address (unless it's following John Carroll's "minimalist" approach): trainers only tell you the procedure to follow, not how to recover when things go wrong. For many users, our standard "read first, experience afterwards" will be fine, but for such unconfident users it may be the company of a person (or the support of a personal relationship) which they need first to take them over the threshold. Then, once they have the experience and the confidence, they can explore and read on their own.
As things turned out, she wasn't able to do any of the preparation - and I wonder if in fact this wasn't for the best. She was a very unconfident explorer of new software, despite being an experienced computer user, and perhaps the most useful thing I was able to do for her was to sit by her and take her on a tour of Elluminate - which I could do quite briefly, because I could say "and you can follow that up later in the documentation which I sent you".
Many computer users are confident enough within their regular everyday comfort zone but are paralysed when attempting to move outside it for fear of something going wrong which they can't repair. It's mistakes and difficulties which IT training never seems to address (unless it's following John Carroll's "minimalist" approach): trainers only tell you the procedure to follow, not how to recover when things go wrong. For many users, our standard "read first, experience afterwards" will be fine, but for such unconfident users it may be the company of a person (or the support of a personal relationship) which they need first to take them over the threshold. Then, once they have the experience and the confidence, they can explore and read on their own.
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