I was very impressed with Alistair's email as it re-enforced my view that except for those few who have a responsibility for distance learning most staff move tentatively into e-learning by incremenatlly integrating ICT tools and resources into their existing programmes. For example, starting with some internet based research activities or a simulation projected onto a whiteboard .........and expanding the breadth and use of tools as confidence grows.
I think that we will lean a great deal by investigating what teachers are doing now with ICT (plus the results of seeding some more activities). Is there is a danger in assuming a teacher is going to deliver a whole learning activity either online or not rather than picking the best of the available resources (both traditional and new) to support their students?
Cheers
Clive
P.s As the success of each lesson is dependent on the teacher (skills, enthusiasm, personality etc.) in using the resources at his/ her disposal and the 'chemistry' of each particular group how can different leanring design models be effectively evaluated.......or am I just a crusty old cynic??!!
-----Original Message-----
From: e-learning and Pedagogy Experts Group on behalf of HELEN BEETHAM
Sent: Mon 19/04/2004 15:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Are we talking the same languages? e-learning and the learner
Re. Alistair's original question - do we have a common understanding of what e-learning is?
There was some interesting discussion at the Shock of the Old conference in Oxford last week about the fact that the existence of computer-based learning environments and tools means we have to be clearer about what 'learning activities' are, whether or not they are computer-based.
Computer-based environments require everything to be represented explicitly. So designers of online and virtual materials have to anticipate and explain what the learner will need, in ways that the face to face tutors does not have to - because s/he can negotiate meanings in situ. So instructional design has evolved as a way of representing learning content that takes account of the many different ways that a learner might try to understand (or misunderstand) that content.
Similarly with design of learning activities, computer-basd environments also depend on very limited, stereotyped kinds of interactions (e.g. 'access', 'post', keystrokes, or at best some kind of directional input from a joystick etc). So for an activity to have any meaning to a learner, a lot of thought needs to go into how those unsubtle interactions will be orchestrated and arranged, and to the content of learners interactions (e.g. the issues they will discuss with each other, the question that will structure their search online) . The theory is that learning design will do for learning activities what instructional design did (or failed to do, depending on your point of view) for learning content.
But once computer-based technologies are an option, we need to be able to describe the alternatives in similarly conventional ways. In other words, if I'm to decide between delivering a lesson using 'conventional' technologies of whiteboard, OHP, lab equipment, pencil etc, or using computer-based technologies such as a VLE, or using emergent technologies such as gaming, I need some way of comparing these different options.
This is why I think when it comes to 'modelling learning activities' we hvae taken the view that we need to understand the learning activity first, and explore the 'e' or 'non-e' alternatives second. Before 'e' there were attempts to systematise our understanding of learnign activities, e.g. Bloom's classification of learning outcomes (or Marten's), and I think we can draw on these. But there is perhaps more of an imperative to do this, now that the learning environments themselves are more standards-based and - in terms of interactivity - *less* rich and adaptive. i.e. now that we perhaps need a clearer idea of what we are doing before we set out and just do it.
Helen
----- Original Message -----
From: Fred Garnett <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 3:53 PM
Subject: Re: Are we talking the same languages? e-learning and the learner
Hi,
I don't disagree with anything on Alistairs list, but I would rather extended it in terms of the skill set in the learner.
Looking back on it I think that when I developed e-learning resources I developed the learners skill set in two ways.
1. I made explicit the implicit assumptions in effective face-to-face teaching (in FE), such as the necessity to develop a "safe" learning environment ("safe" to "fail", or to debate or throw out ideas), and also encouraged the development of the self-supporting learning communities that I wanted learners to work together in.
2. I also used tools and principles that had been developed on the net and the web so that learners skills where appropriate to that environment, "own your own words", netiquette, "commons" (netizens?), discussion lists, self-moderation, support for newbies, faqs, evaluating resources, managing your own path through the thickets of the web and so on.
I then developed activities to take them through the parameters of these two skills sets and called that an e-learning skill set which they then used for further learning activities (called assignments where I came from!).
I was working on my baseline principle that if you motivate people to learn they will learn more than if you give them technically correct, but uninspiring answers. From this perspective an individuals learning style involves them making decisions about what resources they will use on an individual and collaborative basis. So when learners are equipped to navigate their own learning if they stumble across an e-learning resource, such as a webquest or an NLN learning object, or a CD-ROM in other resource they can take a decision on whether that resource helps them in the learning activity that they have been tasked with.
Admittedly this is not sufficient in itself to get learners through the entirety of a sylabus, and possibly the qualification and acreditation aspects, but it equips them as researchers and problem solvers and stimulates a curiosity in the learning process itself, by making it motivational and social
Hope this helps
fred
-----Original Message-----
From: Alistair McNaught
Sent: 08 April 2004 10:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Are we talking the same languages? - some suggested "concrete-speak"
One of the things I'm still not sure we have - even in this group - is a common perception of what e-learning is. This may contribute to the diversity of the wish list.
I think we might have more consensus if we were viewing the many facets of e-learning more discretely.
For example the list below is an "off the top of the head" stab at some different incarnations of e-learning. The needs of the practitioner in each case may be very different. Furthermore, the definition, evaluation and dissemination routeways of good practice would differ in each case. Maybe by using concrete examples as below we can move the debate forward - at least we know we're talking about the same things if we can give them a number or letter!
a) use of laptop and data projector to plot biology data into "live" excel graph during the course of a practical which has different groups conducting the same experiment with altered variables.
b) use of 4 PCs round a room with Word document and aerial image of urban area. Groups of students work together to design new urban development by dragging and dropping houses, shops, schools etc (Word AutoShapes) from a "storage area" at the bottom of document in order to present and justify planning considerations to whole group using laptop and dataprojector.
c) use of digital cameras for sports science students to role play and record MPEG video clips on coaching techniques. The students create explanatory Powerpoints with the video clips embedded.
d) use of digital camera attached to data projector (no PC involved) in order to illustrate fine scale cake icing techniques to a class of caterers (or dissection techniques to a class of medical students)
e) use of bulletin board for remote (transcontinental) discussions on current affairs with a group of language students
f) use of VLE to record learner progress through a collection of online references
g) use of VLE to provide easily navigated alternative resources for learners with different learning styles (eg video clips; models and mindmap alternative to lecture notes)
h) use of VLE or Intranet to provide self testing opportunities for formative assessments
i) use of VLE or Intranet to provide links to range of resources suitable for (and signposted for) learners of different abilities
j) use of VLE or Intranet to provide learners with raw materials (information, data, images) from which they have to synthesise a coherent argument (maybe as a Powerpoint summarising main findings)
k) Use of VLE or Intranet to deliver content, receive assignments and mentor remotely for a distance learning course.
j) use of VLE or Intranet to provide learners with a wide range of materials from which they can choose routes (and themes) of personal interest and motivation.
A useful distinction at this point is to consider what the ingredients of an e-learning experience might be. A learning object has been well described elsewhere ( http://ferl.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?page=450 et seq) as consisting of an asset layer, content layer, learning layer and use layer. Different learning experiences may involve EITHER the learner OR the teacher/lecturer working at any of those levels - creating learning objects or using them.
For example the learner may collect the assets (take digital images of an experiment) or add content (add annotations to existing images or their own images) or create tasks (set questions and provide feedback on the annotated images) or deliver a learning experience (lead a presentation based on the resource/activity they or somebody else created). With potentially 4 levels for the learner and the teacher to contribute to, there are very many permutations of learner involvement in the learning experience and therefore very many flavours of e-learning.
Maybe if we began to consider "in-class" e-learning distinctly from "out of class" e-learning there may be more obvious areas of consensus.
Alistair
Alistair McNaught
FPP Development Officer
07801 612 458
-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah Knight [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 01 April 2004 17:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Feedback from the experts' meeting
Posted on behalf of Helen Beetham:
Dear colleagues
Attached is a slightly amended version of the feedback that Sarah put on the web site earlier in the week, incorporating resopnses to the questionnaire we circulated at the LTSN conference. I've ordered responses to try and help make sense of them.
Reading through this version, I am struck by an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, there is a call for outcomes to be 'bite-sized', 'accessible', easy to use, readily and quickly incorporated into existing practice (especially tips and toolkits). But on the other hand there is some suspicion of toolkits, 'ready' answers and customised or personalised solutions where the 'thinking' seems to have been done for the practitioner by a designer or expert system. There is also a sense of really valuing contact with more expert practitioners, e.g. mentors, developers and collegues, and the 'rich' representations or stories that they have to tell. This ties in with findings of a survey I did a couple of years ago, where practitioners (especially those starting out with learning technologies) expressed a desire for a 'database of tips and tricks' that would magically 'come up with the answer' for their particular situation, in terms of appropriate technologies and approaches. However, when I asked about what had *actually* had an impact on their choices about use of e-learning they invariably cited a colleague or mentor who had shown them 'the real thing', along with a descriptive narrative about their experience - 'what happened, what went wrong, how they survived'.
Is this a case of different people wanting different things? Of the same people wanting different things at different points in their development? Or of people not really knowing what they want?? ;-)
Helen
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