Web Based Learning and Teaching #1: Cool course - cool ways to start a course

I have just started a formal blended learning MA module: Web Based Learning and Teaching for my professional development. I love my MOOCs – but occasionally I also enjoy the shape and feel of a formal course. I enjoy being with real live human beings in a classroom. I love the buzz of real conversation – and I am always fascinated by seeing how other people organise the teaching and learning – the bonding and belonging…

The course itself is delivered by JG and JD (I must check with them before I use their names on the web) – and they delivered a wonderful experience which made me as a participant feel welcomed, enabled and confident that I understood the course and its assignments; that I would be supported if I struggled; that I had an idea about my personal direction through the course; and, most importantly, that I was excited – I wanted to do this thing! I also spotted some lovely strategies that they used to help me on this journey:

Ice Breaker

There was a brief ice breaker activity where we were asked to sit with somebody that we did not know – share our contexts and reasons for doing the course – and then to introduce that person back to the rest of the class.  Immediately most of us had to move around – had to attempt human contact with at least one person – and then had to make contact with the rest of the group. Simple, friendly – effective.

Hopes and fears

After an introduction to the what, why and how of the course, we were given a green, red and yellow post-it – and asked to write our positive thoughts about TEL (technology enhanced learning); our concerns about TEL; and our hopes for the course. We stuck these to the whiteboard at the front of the class (we had both electronic and conventional whiteboards) – the tutors read them out… and we responded.

I thought this an excellent way to enable people to voice their hopes and fears without having to make themselves immediately vulnerable. If we wanted to, we could ‘own’ a point – or we could just join in with the discussion…

Finally I am feeling…

To round off the class JG said, ‘I am feeling…’ – and pointed to a participant – who completed the sentence: I am feeling excited by the course, I already have an idea what I want to do for my presentation and my project; I am feeling …

Overall the feelings were full of excitement and optimism – but we were also empowered to say if we were worried or afraid.

I am stealing these immediately!

So what is WBLT?

We will be building our own course on course site: https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/pages/index.html - a free online service offered by BlackBoard – to experience the process of designing and building a managed, virtual learning environment. We have to give a presentation on one new tool or TEL-enabled strategy that we have trialled with volunteer ‘students’, we will have to complete a reflective journal – and we will have to write a 3000 word meta-reflection. All good stuff – and I will hope to tinker with the final essay and offer it for publication somewhere – so that is an additional bonus.

And finally

I prepared for WBLT by engaging with Hybrid Pedagogy’s #moocmooc: http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/subversion-and-instructional-design/ - which I also enjoyed enormously… but which I could not give sufficient time to because of my heavy workload. I am hoping that the added gravity of a physical course will anchor me and make sure that I actually do all the work – all the assignments…

Here’s hoping.

I thought that I would blog about my journey through WBLT – because that’s the best way I know to make the learning conscious to me. It would be great if some of you out there followed me – gave me some tips and tricks – asked me some stuff to get me thinking harder.

Best, Sandra-on-the-web

#rhizo14 – week 2: Seeding independent learning: wrestling with writing

Lots of wrestling in FB this week with what could be argued to be an essential ‘issue’ with MOOCs – they are open – free – out there… surely this is thus egalitarian learning at its very best? But no – some are still silenced – some are still feeling the pain of not being good enough – that ‘fish out of water’ feeling that is the experience of so many non-traditional students in the traditional classroom.

We have some strategies that work here to overcome this: say hello – be welcoming – comment – reply – extend a welcoming hand to other students. In doing this we ARE the community, all of us, everyone who does this friendly human thing in this strange and potentially impersonal world.

I blogged about this before – how doing the MOOCs really reinforced the need to bring the human back into the physical classroom. To make time for students to get to know each other – to bond – to feel that it is okay to speak – to listen to and be with their fellow students.

This year we found that role plays and simulations in the trad ‘lecture’ time really helped this to happen. We had a Post-apocalypse scenario running over several weeks:

Who would you keep in your bunker and why?

What education system would you build – immediately on leaving the bunker; five years later; ten years on…

What cultural activities would you save and why – and how would you build a sense of self-efficacy in future students?

The students were puzzled at this strange ‘lecture’ programme at first – but leapt into the discussions and found their voices – and found that they could speak to and with their fellow class mates. I think they formed a ‘cohort identity’ (BLAH) – and the classes definitely FEEL different.

We are also using creative techniques: drawing, collage, poetry… to help us all to think differently – to find our voices in different ways and in different media… And we are asking the students to blog about their learning hoping that this semi-academic space which is open for their colonizing develops their voices in powerful ways.

At the same time, they are going to have to wrestle with the slow, painful and iterative process that is academic writing.

How can we encourage and support our students in this struggle? How do we keep the flow going – and hopefully the joy – when this mountain does have to be climbed?

It’s really hard because writing is hard and the fear of failure is so PRESENT. That fear of making a fool of yourself – of not getting it right – of making your own ignorance visible to the world – of being judged. (Yes folks – let’s check out our FB page – we fear it too – you know!)

Especially when this fear is manifest in a vision and practice of writing that seems to tell students that they must get it right first go. That writing is the pouring out of perfectly formed, pre-digested learning - rather than the stuff and process of learning – and anything else is just pure visible, recorded proof of personal inadequacy and failure.

Below is what I have just sent to a student who has already written her Project – all of it: the proposal part is not due in till W19 (this is W15) and the final report part of it is not due in till W30. She is engaged. She is a motivated student. She has started early. It’s a great first draft – yet I fear that any feedback that suggests that it needs revision will wound.

So this is what I wrote:

I can see that you are going to be a tortured perfectionist! Apart from the pain (!!!) - this will make sure that you do get a wonderful degree. But you are going to have to give yourself permission to write stuff which will not be perfect first go (and nor should it be!) - and then go over it a few times to knock it into shape.

So, yes, there are some bits of the writing that need a little 'smoothing' - some bits are better than others - but there is a project sitting there - waiting to be 'emerged' through a revision process.

This is one reason we *try* to get students to write early (but most of them never do!). When you first write something it is great and so are you! After a little while, because your brain has continued to wrestle with your ideas, you go back over your piece, you see that it is not perfect - and you start to tidy it up. 

You change a bit here and there... you realise that those two longish sentences can be cut down into one short sentence that actually makes your point in an even better way... 

This is the struggle to write - and it is what we all should do to get our ideas across. It is a brilliant, slow and sometimes painful process - but it is the writing process. 

We have to give ourselves permission to write something - and then to change it. So - give yourself a couple of days - then go through your writing again yourself. Try to be shorter (we always need to be shorter!) - make sure you are saying exactly what you mean - change it a bit... Remember to *Save As* the versions: v1, v2, v3 and so on (we often go through 17 or more versions to get to something we are happy with). It is great to keep all the versions - especially as sometimes we delete whole sections of our writing - and then think that it was really important and needs to be in the piece after all...

We need to learn that this IS proper academic writing: this PROCESS is... (and also - it will give you data for future auto-ethnographic studies!). Most people think writing should be 'right first go' - or that if they have to change something - then they are a 'bad person' or a 'poor student' - but no - this is the necessary process of writing. 

Think of it as having a structured academic conversation with yourself.

This is the hardest thing for us tutors to get students to do. It is also hard to get other academics to realise that THIS is what we need to help students to do. It's not about shouting about spelling, punctuation and grammar - important as they are - but making time and space for this slow and thoughtful process to happen - especially when our students do not want to do this. It all feels too slow and painful.

Anyway - once you have improved it a bit yourself - print all of that off - and bring it to the class on Wednesday. We can give you feedback and hopefully help you to the next step!

But these are just words!

When I was a first year student we had no high stakes assessment that I can remember. All the first year stuff was designed to get us to think – to engage – to learn… It was brilliant – it was a bit like… a MOOC!!

Since I went through HE, ‘they’ broke it a bit more – made it harder – more formal – with more opportunities to fail – and then they let a few more non-traditional students in – and started to blame them for their failure or their fears – or their ‘fragility’ – instead of trying to fix the problem of education…

And now I don’t know how to get these bullied students to embrace this horrible and beautiful struggle with writing….

I am enjoying #rhizo14 so much – and as the community is the curriculum – this is the issue I thought I’d pop out there this week. I do hope for some Comments here folks. I need your thoughts!

#Artmooc: Introduction to art: concepts and techniques

So despite all sensible thoughts to the contrary (too busy, too exhausted, too stretched, too near my physical limits, too old…), I’ve signed up for another MOOC. This time I’m on Coursera’s ‘Introduction to art: concepts and techniques’  and I will be following the practical, Studio, route through. This means that as well as studying art, artists and art movements, I will also be attempting at least one art assignment per week – and engaging in peer review of other pieces.

You can find out more here: https://class.coursera.org/art-001/class/index 

I am doing this for fun – but I am also looking for creative ways to improve teaching, learning and assessment at my University.

Lesson #1: The role of the social in studying

My first MOOC was also from Coursera: Edinburgh University’s 'E-learning and Digital Cultures', a brilliant six-week course, tagged and tweeted as #edcmooc.

As a student of that course I was really lucky that a friend got ‘in there’ before me and invited me into the Google+ groups that were attached to it (one with thousands of people – one with just 16 members) and also into the FaceBook group. This meant that I very quickly found the size and shape of the social space that I needed to help me feel like I belonged  - and that ‘held’ me in that course.

Fraingers (virtual friends and strangers) from the smaller Google+ group have already written on the experience of collaborating in informal spaces – and of how this helps to tame the otherwise potentially overwhelming experience of a MOOC:

http://elearningeuropa.info/en/article/Realising-the-Potential-of-Peer-to-Peer-Learning%3A-Taming-a-MOOC-with-Social-Media

http://elearningeuropa.info/en/article/Quad-blogging%3A-Promoting-Peer-to--Peer-Learning-in-a-MOOC

It is ironic that this very human lesson occurred in virtual or cyberspace – and I’d argue that this is a lesson that we need to bring very quickly back to our physical, human teaching and learning spaces.

Humanising the education marketplace

If we want to keep and nurture our students – especially our non-traditional students – we need to re-humanise higher education. Our students are experiencing rapid educational change; for them university is highly marketised and impersonal: not so much a stroll across the quad – but a sense of pile ‘em high and teach ‘em cheap. Not hallowed halls, but commodified courses sold like toothpaste. So we should not be surprised when students notice and internalize this - or get switched off and drop out! But if we want to do something about it , we need to help students to find friends on and off their courses – get them actually into those Clubs and Societies - hook them up with Peer Mentors – make it human and they will feel humanized and they will stay and blossom.

Lesson #2: Assignments can be fun

So as said, I was wobbling as to whether I could stay on this MOOC when SO BUSY… so I checked out the assignments for the course to see if they'd be so awful I could legitimately sigh and go. They looked brilliant. I wanted to do each and every one of them. So here’s another lesson for us in HE who teach anything but art: assignments CAN BE FUN. Yes, we are serious academics, intellectual gatekeepers of the academy; maintaining high standards and blah blah blah… But that does not mean that we have to set tasks that are boring, dull, re-gurgitative – we can challenge and extend our students.

I have written about this in posts below – most recently reflecting on a 'Becoming an educationalist' module that was paired with a second year 'Peer Mentoring in Practice' module. Here both sets of students were taught a creative curriculum – and the first year students were also set primary research as one of their assignments. With our modules, we regularly set the design and making of teaching and learning resources or digital artefacts as assessment alternatives to the academic essay…

This #artmooc is setting some wonderful assignments that will oh so easily translate into activities to enrich any module.

The assignments

So this week we looked at line, shape, value, texture, colour and collage and for our first assignment we had to construct and post a self-portrait that captured the essence of who and what we were. We had to post an image of our picture in an online Forum, with a brief  account of the what, why and how of it. We will move on to explore fantasy and the bizarre; correspondence, memory and mail art; photography, portraiture and collage; installation, space and the artwork; the world of wonder and cabinets of curiosities. I can see each of these as art – but also as reflective learning and multi-modal communications… I cannot wait to embed them in next year’s practice.

Here’s my effort:

This is a drawing of me, on the left, and my colleagues Chris O’Reilly and Tom Burns with whom I am doing a lot of work at the moment – especially with digital artefacts. I have done this as a ‘blind drawing’ and watercolour. Blind drawing is where you look at what you are drawing – but not at the picture developing on the paper – and you try to keep your pen on the paper as well. What I like about blind drawing is that it cannot be a realistic representation of the object that you are drawing. You are released from accuracy and into exploration. You never know what the piece is going to look like… You may not even like the picture that emerges – at first. So I find that blind drawing becomes a lesson in patience and joy.

This picture is deliberately not on good quality paper: there is nothing arty or iconic about it. I produced it to illustrate a conference presentation. I wanted to capture the sense of a moment, snatched and dashed down; a contingent, passing and ephemeral moment. I wanted it to be our Team – but also to illustrate that anyone can draw something. I love the freedom of blind drawing - and the child-like quality of 'colouring in' the drawing once I have done it. When I do this I am that child again, totally absorbed, lost in the moment of fierce and purposeful play. I am definitely hoping for more of this fierce play through this course.