The discussion board saga

After last year’s epic fail on the discussion board front (three students, if that, posted anything and most of that was in the wrong place) I am trying a new approach. I have looked at the various options that Blackboard Learn provides for discussion and collaboration and it is no secret that I think the discussion boards are hideous and so unaesthetically pleasing that I can see why no-one would want to use them. Ever! 

My revolutionary approach revolves around 2 things which occurred to me after doing some reading around the subject of student participation 

a) students probably won’t be the 1^st to post so you have to do it, even if you have no intentions of moderating the thing thereafter

b) you can’t expect students to use something if you have not taught them how no matter how intuitive you think it is.

With that in mind I decided to use the blog function rather than the discussion boards, mostly because they look nicer and, I think, have a nice structure for students to use. My next big idea was to teach them how to use the things (I know - I am on a roll here) as a way of communicating with each other, sharing ideas and involving distance learners in discussions. I did this by making them post stuff while I was there to help and they seemed to get it although the best peice of feedback I had was "it was good that you told us we couldn't break it, because, you know, I was worried."

What remains to be seen on this grand plan of mine for world domination one discussion board at a time is if it will actually work. So watch this space.

Learning that really does hurt!

I was in the gym today and I had a boxing lesson with an awesome personal trainer followed by a 30 minutes abs session in which I am fairly certain she tried to kill me. This is excruciating learning in its purist form... I was learning... and it hurt. However, it got me thinking about why it was a good session and what I could take from it and put into my own 'teaching'. I use teaching in inverted commas because I don't teach, I build things which teach without me.
 For example, my current project is to build an interactive tool to help medical students identify different types of study design. Hopefully they will learn something but I am not actively teaching them anything (which in this case is a very good thing because I know nothing about medical study design).

I have never boxed before and I am not sure I was even terribly good at it but that is not the point a good teacher will tell you how to do something in a way that is easy to understand a great teacher will make you want to keep doing it and I think this is the key. Throughout the whole session I was being encouraged and pushed to be better and I think this is the key to great teaching but how do you take that into an on-line environment? (I really don't know but I am going to keep thinking about it) How do you maintain student motivation through something like 50 questions on medical statistics? How do you make someone keep doing stomach crunches when everything about it hurts?

The final question I can answer because someone makes me do it every week - constant encouragement, manageable chunks and a bit of good fun. The 1st two questions I am not so sure about but I am going to make an effort to try and fit them in to my 'teaching' and hope that it will help the students keep going until they get to question 50 on medical statistics!

Save the environment... start e-learning

I recently went on course for hockey coaching which turned the tables on me a little. I went from being learning provider to learner and I have to admit I didn't like it all that much. They say doctors make terrible patients and I imagine the same goes for teachers being hypercritical of other training providers. Well that is my excuse and I am sticking to it!

Both trainers were obviously very good hockey coaches but evidently disliked being in a classroom, as of course did the 30 odd hockey players sitting in front of them with a folder full of paper. A combination of a bunch of sports people sitting in a room and a load of unnecessary paper got me thinking. Why do we persist in forcing trainees to fill in lots of boxes on a bit of paper while half-heartedly discussing it in groups. I will confess at this point, I hate group work and always have but as a teacher I also see that there is limited point in giving people a question, asking them to discuss it and then showing the answers. 80% of the time there is nothing to be gained from the discussion which inevitably leaves the 20% that would be great to talk about with limited time. Equally giving people a stack of info and some papers seems a little bit like a test, not to mention a total waste of classroom time. Time which you could use to practice coaching techniques, discuss the rules or, just putting it out there... playing hockey!

So what is the answer?
Clearly everyone has access to a computer with the internet because one of the course pre-requisites was an on-line safeguarding course so why not give attendees and information handbook in .pdf (so if people want the paper copy they can) and a nice little on-line quiz which they can do in their own time before the course thus freeing up a nice amount of time to focus on things which are actually better when done in a group!

Learner time, learner control and learner engagement

I was reading Clive Shepherd's - Clive on Learning blog this week and have a few reflections on what he has written. Clive on Learning is primarily about providing training in the business sector so has slightly different priorities to those of learning techs in the education sector but in his series of visions I think he made some valid point that I think are worth considering for university students as well.

Vision 2 - economical learning

"time spent learning could have been used productively elsewhere" 

I think this is particularly relevant to the kind of ungraded e-learning content that I am working on providing. Students, many of whom also work, will always have course work or assessments to do which are a graded part of their course so why would they spend time doing other activities? If they are going to complete an exercise that is not graded they need to know how and why it is relevant to a course of study that they are taking. I think the best way to do this is probably to tell them as part of the assessment. This assessment is designed to... etc. 

Time is also important to students especially if they are juggling a course, a job and a family. In this respect I think it also important to tell students how long a task is going to take them, this should enable them to manage their time in a more efficient way. This probably falls under a topic I have written about before namely 'signposting' in an on-line environment this takes the place of the teacher as there is no one person who will physically give students this information. With learner time commitments in mind it is also very important that all questions are valid and worthwhile and adhere to the general principles of assessment.

Vision 4 - flexible learning

“Adults expect to have control over what they learn, when and where and will increasingly demand it. They expect it because they have grown accustomed to finding whatever information they need at the click of a mouse from Google, YouTube and Wikipedia. Synchronous learning (that takes place with others, at a specific time, perhaps in a virtual classroom) can be powerful, but it is certainly not flexible. It means you have have to compromise on when you learn in order to suit others. Similarly, face-to-face learning can add a great deal of value when used for the right purposes, but is highly inflexible. Being face-to-face means you have to compromise on where you learn in order to suit others.”

I don't really have any comments on this other than to say that this is what I am aiming to do and think it will become more and more relevant as the next generation of students who have been exposed to google, YouTube and Wikipedia for their whole lives come through into higher education and consequently bring with them a higher set of expectations relating to the technology they expect from their learning institutions. 

Vision 5 - Engaging learning

"Engaging the learner is about getting the elephant on board. While the rider may be engaged by the long-term benefits of a learning activity or an intellectual curiosity, the elephant is much more interested in what’s in it for him right now." In this example the elephant is the intellect and the rider is the learner.  

Clear goals, immediate feedback and a sense of control are some of the things which Clive suggests are a way of making learning engaging for adult learners and I whole heartedly agree. The sense of control in some ways come from the goals and the feedback, for example including links to information relating to the questions so students can find the answers to wrong questions rather than just showing right or wrong answers.  In addition showing learners what they will gain from an activity, particularly a voluntary one,  allows them to plan and direct their own learning and gives them a sense of control. Clive also suggests that "the elephant may also be motivated by a challenge - perhaps a game which involves some form of competition. Humour may also do the trick, or just plain novelty." In addition to that I would also (as you have probably worked out by now) suggest that something pleasing to look at and easy to use is also a good way, if not to motivate the elephant, to keep the elephant engaged while working through a boring or challenging subject. 

Should on-line education be aesthetically pleasing?

I am currently working on upgrading a course from Blackboard CE8 to Blackboard Learn. At face value the course is set up to look very visual with large icons and graphics. However because of the restrictions of the CE8 system the file contents where the student information actually kept, mostly in the form of pdf documents and weblinks. it looks in many ways like the file manager on windows 95. 
Blackboard learn is in some ways much friendlier and allows for icons and a much cleaner approach to the file systems making it look and feel a lot more like a smooth web tool than Windows 95, which is good, but I have found myself wondering... Is it worth it?

I personally think that students are more likely to engage with information that provided for them if it is easily accessible, well labelled and looks attractive. Which would be why publishers spend large amounts of money on the layout and design of textbooks. Furthermore in a digital age where students have grown up with the soft and well rounded aesthetics of sites like Facebook and the BBC I-player this is what they expect from educational websites. Perhaps a clunky, unfriendly system would have the same educational content but this means very little if students are unwilling to use, or fully engage with, the materials because the system is either hard to use or looks outdated. Which could in turn cause students to believe that the information is outdated.

Distance in a classroom

I was recently presented with an interesting situation, I have been tasked with adapting a blended lecture course to make it accessible for students to take wholly as a distance course. Part of this task is to film lectures which can then be posted on the university VLE thus allowing distance students to watch them and physical students to revisit them in their own time.

Due to a series of unfortunate events two out of four speakers were unable to attend and the final speaker not due until 3pm giving the students several hours to kill and no lectures. Fortuitously both missing lectures had given their presentations before and had been filmed so we could used the recoding equipment in reverse to show the lectures from last year. In addition to this, to create an element of interactivity I created forums to go with each lecture to allow students to post questions even though the lecturer was not there to answer them in person. I encountered a little resistance from the academics at this as they did not want to get drawn into a discussion in which they are required to participate every day. Taking this on board as a very valid point I went ahead and created the questions forum anyway (I know – slap on the wrist) but prefixed it by telling the students that the questions would be given single answers and were not open for discussion.

In defence of my rather wilful disobedience if the course is being opened up for total distance learning there will need to be ways in which students can interact with each other, with the materials and with the lecturers. So in theory as part of delivering a lecture speakers may perhaps need to add an additional hour into their schedules a few days after speaking to log in to the forums and answer questions. If it is established from the start what format the questions should be in and when and in what form the speakers will respond all parties will know what to expect. When moving into the world of distance learning, as my last moodle post alludes to, communication is everything.

I was also given the opportunity to observe students as they were watching the lectures in a way similar to how they would if they were alone. However as there was not lecturer present and talking was not quite so taboo the students started a discussion mid lecture. It seems to me that this kind of spontaneous discussion should, if possible, be captured without disruption to the lecture. After the video had finished I encouraged the students to go and start a discussion thread to see if they could take the debate out of the classroom and into the VLE.

In an ideal world discussions could be started and questions posted in real time via smartphones, ipads etc and after the lecture from the comfort of home. As it stands at the moment Blackboard does not load well on touch screen devices but that is a battle for another day.