Thinking about what Michelle said about class blogs and "debate"

 I once taught a class where there wasn't a "class blog," and each student had his/her own blog (as in this class). But the blogs were all resident within the classroom-- I can't explain it, but you know what I mean. There was a tab for "Blogs," and you clicked on that and there was a page with the thumbnail of each blog. I found there was a lot less contentiousness and a lot more friendliness because-- this is odd-- the students kind of respected each other's "ownership." It was like if you go to Aunt Mary's house, you don't argue with her, where if you were at a restaurant and she said the only true sign of womanhood was childrearing or whatever, you might take issue with it. So if you went to Sarah's blog, you might comment, but you wouldn't object to what she said because, after all, it was her blog.

I don't know if that was good or bad, this "ownership" and courtesy. I've had an editing blog for years, and I have to admit that while I loved getting questions and comments, there was one commenter who constantly disagreed with me. (I mean, the subject of most of the blog posts was "punctuation," but she still managed to disagree about commas. <G>) I think I was a lot more annoyed at her because it was MY blog. (And, to be fair to me, she was generally just WRONG and was pretty obviously disagreeing because she didn't like someone else being an "expert".) I kept wanting to say to her, "Why don't you start your own damn editing blog, and there you can say that introductory elements don't need commas, huh?"

Some Web 2.0 media is "social," but some is still "private ownership." And I bet that dictates to some degree the level of formality or something. Like email is "private" and "mine," which is why we get annoyed with spam-- what is this junk in MY inbox, where we wouldn't worry too much about ads on the Yahoo page, say. 

Something to take into consideration. Do we want to encourage "ownership" as an "investment" so we assign "private" Web 2.0 devices? Or do we want more to encourage collaboration, so everything is "joint?"

Consistency post from discussions

Yes, intellectual freedom is an issue here. First, in my experience, many online courses (especially intro courses) are taught by adjuncts who don't have intellectual freedom-- the term-to-term "contract," the lack of access to materials and technology, the actual discouragement of learning more or getting another degree or going to conferences (all of which could make this teacher too expensive <G>). Often they are presented with a completely designed course and no alterations are allowed. This is a sad reality. A friend of mine said, "I think my department would like my only interaction with students to be grading their assignments... they want me to be a grading robot."

That's the extreme (but quite common) of "consistency," and probably no professor with tenure and a bit of power would allow that. Power does come into the equation, I think... and in the ever-growing conflict between faculty and administration, "consistency" is a powerful weapon for the administration, as it's so much cheaper and more standardizable and more assessible. 

But avoiding that extreme of the "robot could teach this", I can see a list of where consistency would be really useful. Burgess, Barth, & Mercereau (2008) discuss the  usefulness of a "template" with consistent design elements: "Student satisfaction results from a logical, consistent course design that allows them to focus on course content and interact with their instructor."

1. Logo or banner that reassures the student that this is indeed the right class/school. That familiarity is important for making the student comfortable, and the "branding" I think can subtly increase the value of this course or material by linking it to the greater collection of good stuff that is the university or department.

2. Consistency of material placement, so that students know where to find the assignments and where to find the grades and where to find the lectures. Why have students without much time waste their classroom time searching for that elusive Lecture 4?

3. Consistency of interaction possibilities. A student who knows there's always a conference set up for questions will be more likely to ask a question.

4. Modes of delivery-- I don't like "multimedia for multimedia's sake," but if the instructor/designer knows there is the opportunity and expectation of something beyond text, he/she is more likely to start looking for ways to incorporate that or aspects of knowledge that would be better conveyed by some multimedia.

5. With text-- still and probably always a primary "delivery mode"-- a consistent standard font will train students to expect something different when a different font or color are used. The consistency can set up the mental equation that "different=important" which can help students focus on new material or better grasp complex material.

I keep seeing in the design lit "consistency of length," but I find that actually can restrict not just the length but the depth.  This isn't a bumper sticker or tweet, it's the analysis of a complicated problem, or of a poem, and can serve as a model of how to analyze, read closely, think deeply, determine cause and effect, etc. This is not the place to require consistency, I think, though encouragement can be made to present material more cogently, maybe. But the point is to present complex material more clearly, not simplify the material so it can be presented consistently. So while I can see the advantage of breaking up complicated material into smaller parts, I think it really would interfere on a number of levels to have some requirement that, say, I have three paragraphs and 12 lines to teach thesis statements.

I  have found it quite helpful though to require (of myself) a sort of consistent "mood" approach-- that is, affirmative and positive. That has really informed several aspects of creation of course material, from design (starting with easy first and progressing to more difficult, so that the student "succeeds" early on), to language, always positive (not "Avoid these bad things," but rather "try these good things"), and especially to the encouragement of experimentation-- helping the student feel free to try things and not feel like a failure if some attempts don't turn out to be effective. I'd like to work in collaboration to this, like suggesting that other students chip in with suggestions for revision of this or other ways of experimenting. I'm not sure this is "consistency," but I do want that consistent tone of encouragement and experimentation. That feels like a way of empowering the student to try things out.

I guess I like "consistency" when it adds to the student's immediate sense of familiarity and ability-- "I can do this." Inconsistency in all aspects can lead to that "overwhelm," where the student starts out feeling powerless. Consistency in certain aspects in contrast can overcome the overwhelm, and help students start out feeling capable. But I think maybe the deeper they get into the course, the more we should let complexity and individuation be important, as they'll now be feeling more able to understand.

Alicia

Burgess, V.,  Barth, K., Mersereau, C. (2008). Quality Online Instruction – A Template for Consistent and Effective Online Course Design. Retrieved from http://sloanconsortium.org/effective_practices/quality-online-instruction-%E2%80%93-template-consistent-and-effective-online-course-des

Cooperation vs. competition

I was just up in Canada, in Stratford, at the truly great world treasure Shakespeare Festival. It's sort of easy to claim this for our own, first because it's within driving distance and the accents sound like us and Ontario looks almost exactly like Ohio.

But it's in Canada, you know? A different country! Their money has colors (and not just green)! They pronounce the "U" in "house" as a separate sound!

So we went to dinner with a couple there. They'd both lived in the US, so of course we asked if they noticed any differences. "A thousand subtle ones," one said, and gave a few examples. And the one big one-- Americans are competitive. REALLY competitive. Not "we won the gold medal in hockey the last Olympics" competitive (the Canadians are pretty competitive that way :), but the constant assessment-- am I better than he is? Is she dissing me? What's my place in this hierarchy? Who do I have to step on to get higher? <G>

Of course, being a competitive American, I snapped, "That might be exactly why we made it to the moon first, and you-- oh. Right. Canada doesn't have a space program, does it?" (Okay, that was low!)

But as I was working on my community of practice paper, I was noticing that these communities are usually cooperative. And it's especially striking because many of these kinds of communities (like professional networks) are actually composed of people who are kind of rivals-- Fifty attorneys in the same small city. 800 writers trying to get the attention of 6 big publishing companies. Four graduate students in the same program.

It's almost as if for the purpose of the community, they tacitly agree not to compete in this forum. That's essential, isn't it? Otherwise, can you trust? Like I've been in writing communities for a long time, and there's constant exchanges of information and wisdom. If I thought Amy Author over there was trying to undermine me to get some advantage in the marketplace, I can't trust it when she says, "Oh, Avon isn't looking for medieval novels this year." And for the community to work, we have to trust each other. Does that mean we can't compete? Or just not when we're in the "community center?"

My source for the early years of the COP I wrote about remembers that the cooperative spirit of the early year started breaking down once there was a "prize," when the "top rated" manuscripts were to be given evaluations and consideration by a big-name editor. Suddenly it wasn't a bunch of writers trying to improve and helping each other improve, but a group of competitors for the prize of editor attention. It was, in her mind, the beginning of the end (though the community still exists).

It still exists, so isn't that a success? The ones who participate now seem eager and willing-- but the emphasis seems to be more on making friends who will "vote you up" so you win the right to present to the editor.

My source has quit with some of the early members. They still keep in touch, but there's no community-- pairings, friendships, but not community.

So as I read Siemens, as he talks about connectivism and its value, I very much agree. But how does it work with American competitiveness? I have thought for years that the Millennial generation is much less competitive than my own, though I think the culture has been trying to force competition on them by making it clear that only 10% or so will be "winners" and everyone else I guess will be "losers." I love how hard the young people work to resist that, which is hard for many of them because they are such a compliant and pleasant generation and not very rebellious. They are so much more "connectivist" in the Siemen sense-- quick to form groups, eager to find consensus, skilled at cooperation. We are fortunate in this age of online that they are our students, as they are much more likely to be good at collaborating than the Gen-Xers, for sure.

Who what when

I met someone at a dinner party-- how would we go on without synchronicity? -- who worked for a company that did focus groups, and she asked me, does your department ever do student focus groups?

And I blurted out, "No-- we're scared what they'll say."

And I know that's true with my own potential final best practices subject. I'd be interested in a focus group that looked at my group's practices and materials, but I'm really pretty sure that the organization itself does not want to hear it.

Very difficult. I don't know. I like the work, I love the students. Yeah, if I had the choice, I'd do things differently. (To be honest, I DO things differently. I just kind of ignore what I'm told to do and I think is unhelpful. I do what I think will work best with the situation, not what I'm supposed to do, but seriously, if anyone was paying attention, they'd not be happy that I did what I thought was best. Which is not, actually, what I'm "supposed to do.")

Anyway. Point is.

I am thinking of doing a best practices memo for final assignment on this job, and creating a focus group of students to evaluate materials -- most of my work is direct interaction with students, but most of my time is spent creating materials customized to the specific course and assignment-- I'm hoping even if the students don't respond, they'll read the material and have those models.

But let's just say... this is not the sort of thing that is encouraged. <G>.

I do have an alternative of looking at a past job. I'd like to design the whole semester online course so that everything -- the discussion forums, the assignments-- is very purposeful, aimed at accumulating material and sources and analysis for the final project. (That is, there's an "annotated bib" assignment, but it's about the topic that the students will be addressing in the final project.) I'd probably pose this as cognitive -- about skills, but also constructivist because of the scaffolding.

That's safer. More than that, it's not so frustrating. It's hard to just keep battering against the brick wall of utter uninterest. It's frustrating to have to keep saying, "Listen. I do the work, I interact with the students. Why aren't you interested in my experience?" But I've kept saying that, and I get the big sigh of exasperation and the implication that I'm annoying and boring, going on and on about the mission of the writing center and what I've learned from my students, and how we should be doing research or at least keeping track of what we do and what results that produces.... but that's like heresy. It's insubordination.

Oh, well. I've resolved to keep my head down, do my work as best I can, and stay out of trouble. And keep my mouth shut.   (This will last a day or two.)

I think I'll do the other project. That won't, at least, get me fired if anyone is googling and locates this blog.

Plagiarism? Pshaw.

I do NOT need another Best Practices Memo topic, but the Engage discussion going on currently about plagiarism-- mostly about "how to catch it so the students can be disciplined"-- seems so wrong-headed and against all our theories! (Except maybe behaviorism -- punishing "wrong action"-- but even behaviorism doesn't just randomly punish confusion.) I think a more positive approach would be to help students learn to use sources better, and oh, by the way, also avoid plagiarism. It's really like eating rather than smoking. Smoking is just bad for you, so it's a good thing to avoid. But you can't avoid eating, like you can't avoid using sources in an academic paper. The thing is to eat RIGHT, and that you might have to be trained in (me, I'd eat wrong at every opportunity left to my own devices). Similarly, students are expected to use sources in their writing and research, and it's not enough to tell them, "Use sources. Avoid plagiarizing said sources." We have to tell them HOW. We're teachers. This is something that can be taught.

Universities might work on more coordinated definitions of "plagiarism," because this isn't quite like "armed robbery," easy to define. My sister went to a school with an "honor code," where with every assignment they had to write and sign that they had not "given nor received help" in this assignment. Well, that really doesn't work much anymore, when we expect students to brainstorm together, to ask for help in class, to visit the tutoring centers. We want them to learn to seek out and evaluate help from others, don't we? Well, then that "connectivism" shouldn't be regarded as an academic crime.

Except for the egregious cases (lifting a whole article and passing it off as your own), plagiarism is usually a matter of missing attribution and overuse of sources. Most students don't actually want to plagiarize, and on the one hand, we're stressing they need to use X number of sources, and other the other hand, "Don't use too many sources too closely." This is a teachable moment. Why is what this student did running afoul of the plagiarism rules? What could he/she have done differently to stay within the rules? Working with the student's own paper, we could be showing how this use of a source could have been done "legally," how this quote could have been better as a paraphrase, how the student's own ideas could form the topic sentences, and the sources used only as support... these are part of the writing tasks, and can be taught and learned just like any other writing task.

But I think we need to distinguish between "pure plagiarism," where there's a clear intent to pass off someone else's writing as your own, and the confused type, where the student is trying to use sources and does it badly. 20 years of teaching writing and writing center work tells me-- MOST students use sources badly at first, but they can be taught to do better.

The first thing I think is to make sure that the paper is structured around the student's ideas, rather than sources, which could mean that the student do an outline or a draft BEFORE reading much in the sources-- sketching out the issues within this topic and focusing on ideas, and only then starting the research. That's sort of heretical, but I think a student who starts with a basic sketch of "this is what I want to explore or analyze, and here are the parts" is then positioned to use sources the way they should be used-- as support for the student's points.

Alicia

I am... constructivist! I am... affirmative!

I think I want to focus in my own practice on constructivist tools. I'm really into analysis myself, and then sharing my analysis, explaining it (at great length) and assuming anyone who can learn from that will learn, because no one is ever going to explain at such length. :)

But that's fine with my "writing practice". I mean, the people who read and learn from my Edittorrent blog learn from that sort of analysis.

Thinking of my "college student" practice-- what works with them? First, affirmative. Always. I don't care about tough love. That's not who I am. I'm the person who always says, "That's interesting. Tell me more." And I say that even if their initial post is full of typos and a-fluencies. It's always interesting. I always want to know more. Most important, I think that works with students who might be worried or even ashamed of their lack of skill.

Shame-- I keep coming back to that. Shame is the dark secret of universal education. No one who gets into Harvard is ashamed, even that Bush clone who got in as a legacy and probably OUGHT to be ashamed of taking the place of a better student or someone who really worked hard to be there.

No, my students are always a step away from shame. They're afraid they'll get unmasked as impostors. They're afraid at every point that someone will point out that they -- poor, or working class, or enlisted, or learning disabled, or just never any good at this school thing, or a non-native English speaker, or a minority who isn't supposed to aspire, or... -- don't belong here in higher education.

You know who that is-- my mother. The immigrant kid from an industrial wasteland of a town, whose father worked in a factory and whose mother waited tables.
Or my father, as native as could be (ancestors fought in the Revolution), but working class as could be, no one in his family ever going to college, no one in his TOWN ever going to college--

And you know, they felt ashamed every single course until the PhD. (Yeah, both got PhDs. The GI bill was pretty wonderful.) They kept waiting to be outed-- but they were somewhat fortunate to be in the post WWII generation, when the colleges were full of working class kids, and many were damned good.

I see that now-- all that progress lost. Anyone who says the US is "classless" should look at this. I grew up actually pretty classless (parents at the top of education scale, but the bottom of the income scale-- two professors!), but I can see from when I went to an elite private college surrounded by other scholarship students that now-- now, really. Many of our students have to constantly battle society's edict that "you don't really belong here"-- the university's edict too. Yeah, even when I lament that my students are so unprepared, that's kind of what I'm saying-- you don't belong here. Sneer.

I will never shame a student. Never. They are there. I don't know whether they will learn or not. I don't know whether they will drop out and invent Facebook. I don't know if they are wonderful people who will make a difference in their communities. All I know is-- they deserve my support because they are students and I'll assume they are trying to learn.

There's a real disconnect, I think, between those who think most people can't learn and those who think most people can. The first are very into shaming-- if you are not "one of us" and you're here at the university, you are encroaching. You are stepping out of your place. You're cutting in line.

I don't want to be that snobbish, slighting type.

I know this-- the greatest American intellectuals of the 20th Century didn't come from the upper classes. They  went to CCNY. They were immigrants. They were Jewish. They didn't speak English in the home. Hey, maybe that's why they thought so deeply.

My mother-- the child of immigrants -- was the second in her family to go to college, the first being her older brother, who died in grad school. Late in her life, she discovered Google, and because her family name was one of those Ellis Island inventions, we were able to find just about every relative she had in the US (that is, everyone with her maiden name was at most a second cousin, descended from the grandfather who came in Ellis Island and was given that name).

So here you have a Slovak family from a tiny industrial town. In her (depression-era) generation there might have been 20 people. FIVE -- FIVE-- became scientists (at the PhD level). (Would have been six, but her brother died before finishing grad school.)

None of them won Nobel Prizes. However, there were 11 patents registered to people in this family. (Mostly in food, believe it or not-- my mother was a food scientist-- but come on, Slovak life was a lot about food. :) Somehow I doubt that the Rockefellers or Astors or Bushes have that many patents. Maybe it takes a seeker, not a haver, to invent?

I cannot remember that and think about shaming anyone who has the courage-- without money or family support or tradition-- to decide to be the first to attempt college. Who knows. Not me. They are brave and they are seeking, and they could surprise themselves and us all. They probably will surprise us somehow, no matter how far they get in the academy.

(Just a historical note: I grew up in a college town, so the high school was full of professor's kids, but it was in Appalachia so there were also kids from the deep backwoods. Anyway, here it is, decades later, and I realized recently that "America's worst serial killer" and one of the Google founders were in school there about the same time I was! I have 7 siblings, so for a couple decades, one Todd or another was there, and none of us can remember either of these guys. So one unmemorable nerd becomes a serial murderer, and the other a billionaire. There you have it. It was a lovely town, small and quiet, but you know, there's this odd echo of murder-- this was where that massacre took place on-campus a few years ago, and one of my classmates' parents were murdered in their home in a Manson-like killing, and then this serial murderer dude. Really, there was almost no crime there. Except murder.)
(And I suspect the Google guy didn't enjoy his time at good ole BHS, because he doesn't come back for reunions-- neither do I, live in the moment as I do, loathe thinking about the past, never remember anyone's name) and hasn't given any money though he's notoriously generous. Note to high schools: Be nice to nerds. You never know.... David Letterman actually grew up about 3 blocks from where I live now, and he's given huge amounts to the grade school and the state university and the little league... but none to his high school down the street. Methinks high school for him really was over a hellmouth, to quote Buffy.)

Best practices

Thinking of that best practices memo.

Thinking of doing the Best Practices assignment about the writing center where I work, though I'm going to narrow the topic down to just the language of the materials (comparing negative constructions: Two things you must avoid... Don't do this.... with positive constructions-- Here are two things you should try to achieve... and Try this) and the possible use of student focus groups to assess which gets the better response from students. 

I'll say (thinking out loud here), that this offers twin benefits, one that we get information on student responses, and two that this could be the basis of research, like someone could write an article on using focus groups in the writing center. 

One of the problems that comes with the good thing of having lots of work is that we are not encouraged to take time to do research, though there are wonderful research possibilities primarily in the area of "what helps students learn whatever." We have such good opportunity to observe what works and what doesn't or in what situation some policy helps or doesn't. But there's no time to stop and think or even make note of what we've just experienced. There's always another week starting with four more new classes. It's such a missed opportunity. This is a good reason to consider writing center advisors "faculty," however low-level (I've always been adjunct in my teaching, so I know how low the levels can go). We're "staff" which is good for practical reasons (we are actual employees, not semester-by-semester adjuncts), but "staff" suggests that what we do has some administrative function. And in fact, we're teachers. We teach in a limited way, a week at a time, one particular assignment, and only the writing aspects, but it's still teaching. We function as visiting faculty. As faculty, we would not be thought weird if we said we'd like to do research. But "staff" doing research? Absurd! 

I've worked in writing centers since about 1991, when they were becoming widespread, and I think there was a decision made back then, for whatever reason, that writing centers were not going to be part of the faculty but part of the administration. (Probably this was about funding!)  Libraries, notice, went the other way-- librarians are often considered part of the faculty, get tenure, etc.  I wish I knew more about this. It does seem like more than just the whole administration-octopus evolution, that pretty soon 90% of the university will be "administration," and there'll be more administrators in a department than teachers.... but rather some decision that if the program can't be assigned to an academic discipline, it's "administration." A lot of writing centers are in the "Writing Program", and some are under that big administrative "Student advising" section. The one I taught at when I started was under the Liberal Arts dean, though we worked with all students.

I should ask the WCenter list about this-- is WC administration or faculty?

Alicia

"Public" Web 2.0 and "Owned."

It seems like all the Web 2.0 things break down to public-- like Reddit, say-- or "self-owned" like a blog or FB page or email. That is, it's MINE and I'm communicating with the world, but in a public setting, it's a public forum and I participate but don't "own" it.

Twitter is "public," while Facebook is "owned." Youtube is public, but Pinterest is "owned." Hmm. Does that make a difference when we choose media for classroom learning?

And my FB page isn't "private," rather it's "private property." I'm still interacting outside myself, but I'm in control.

I don't get the COI survey

I always feel like I'm missing something, and now I'm missing what's so important about this CoI survey. It seems like just like the evaluation form students fill out every semester at the end of the class. But I have to be missing something because the literature treats it like this seminal document that changed everything.

First, I don't like the Likert Scale. In the clinical trial I'm in, I have to fill out about 5 surveys a month with that scale, and it NEVER feels accurate in the sense of really telling my experience. And this survey really brought that home to me. It's like there's some invented student who "agreed or strongly agreed" with each of those statements, and the response is directed towards that student's experience. I know you're supposed to feel like you're allowed not to agree, but "agreeing" to all those will create what's supposed to be the optimum experience of this class. And it's a very limited experience--very traditional. The instructor isn't really part of the class, but just the one who "responds" and "gives feedback." The only outcome of "discussion and brainstorming," apparently, is that the student is exposed to "different points of view". Gee. How advanced.

 It just feels like if a student described this as his/her experience of a class, it wouldn't sound like a particularly good class. It doesn't sound like an optimum experience. I'm not sure at all why this is a big deal and everyone is using this survey. There's no "community" being described there. There's no joy or conflict or even learning described there. It's kind of like the bare minimum -- "Yeah, we're allowed to express our points of view (about what?) and we tolerate others doing so! Booya!" I mean, really, if that's all class discussion does... if it doesn't -create- new knowledge-- if it's just about "expressing our points of view," then it might be okay for a first-year class where students still have to learn that other people think differently. Diversity training. But really. Where's the indicator of new learning? Of new skills of thinking? Of knowledge created by the class learning the material in the class?

So why is this a big deal? I don't get it. We have to use it in just about every discussion in the class, and it's constantly being referenced in other papers, and there's a website devoted to it, and there was just a 10-year- retrospective article about how it changed everything. Huh? Maybe it's because it's 10 years old and I've seen things based on this, but I just don't get it. What's transformative? Remember the Mina Shaughnessy book about errors and expectations? The Lebov book about Black English? THOSE were transformative-- they changed the way everyone looked at how we learn and teach. This is just an evaluation. So? But see, I've been missing the point about a lot of things, so maybe this survey is something more than just an evaluation of an adequate class.

I'll study it again. This is probably my inadequacy of never being able to see both the forest and the trees at the same time. I can't switch focus! So when I look at the actual statements, I can't see the overall purpose.

Involvement investment

One technique I'm seeing (esp in Koohang) is that a small investment helps involve students. I was looking at the D2L front page, where it's mostly blank except for a tiny tab at the top-- My classes. It really does look like bad design-- what that huge expanse of blank? Why not just open to a list of the classes as Tycho does?

Then I thought maybe this is part of that technique of leading us to activity. So that could be why we can't see our class unless we first click on the tab-- that's the little bit of effort that causes us to make a small investment so that we feel more  active. It can't be an enormous task, but something that does involve "doing"-- it's not passive. And anything passive (like watching a video) should end with some requirement of activity (like respond to a prompt, or list what you just saw) so that there's an active component. I'm seeing that this is incredibly important-- it makes all the difference, really, small as the investment action might be. The design should require action, and only then will the students "stick" with the learning. That's made a big difference for me in my ideas of how to design. Of course we expect this big activity (taking tests, writing a paper), but we can't have the classroom be all reading and watching video and then suddenly huge assignments. At every step the students should be invited to do something. More fun that way too!

But the D2L opening page could still have something instead of all that blank. Maybe put the tab in the MIDDLE of the page for more visual interest.

Non-traditional assignments

I teach writing and work in a writing center, so I am, of course, quite comfortable with what a colleague dismissively calls "alphabet soup." (He means words and sentences. Groan.) I might argue that "writing" is more important than ever in some ways-- it still amazes me that young people would rather text than talk on the phone, but I'd rather email than talk on the phone, and I'd probably text if I didn't have really clumsy thumbs and lamentably good touch-typing (ALL fingers) habits. There's something about the distance afforded by that alphabet soup, the a-synchronicity of it, the postponement of interaction, that makes it perpetually appealing.

Anyway, in my advising work, I'm placed in different online classrooms every week to help the students with their writing assignments. What this affords me is a quite broad view of how online courses are being conducted in different disciplines and across different levels. (I'm mostly in the undergraduate courses, and mostly upper-level these days.) And something I've been noticing is that a couple years ago, there was a marked tendency to offer students a choice of assignments, one choice being traditional (usually a research paper), and one being non-traditional (usually something more visual-- a Powerpoint, a video, a recording of the student doing a speech). In my own classes, word came down from the department that we too were supposed to offer students the choice between the usual discussion forum posts and "a PowerPoint presentation or Youtube video answering the prompt."

It was a resounding failure. In my own classes, no one went to the trouble of creating a Powerpoint to answer a discussion forum prompt. And while two did choose to make videos instead of the final paper-- thinking it would be easier-- ended up with unimpressive products which didn't fulfill any of the research and analysis part of the "researched analysis project" project. So while they probably enjoyed the 45 minutes they spent on their films, they didn't like the grades they got and complained. I sympathized, but really, it's hard to look at a 20-page research paper with 15 sources and then at a 6-minute video of nature photographs set to a emo soundtrack with 35 words of captioning and think they deserve the same grade.

This year I've noticed that none of those courses that two years ago offered alternatives to writing a paper are still doing it. The end project of all the classes is back to being some arrangement of alphabet soup. (Of course, I'm a writing advisor, so I'm not placed in courses where there's no writing project.)

Why? I'm glad of it really. I think it's certainly possible for students to do effective jobs with other media, but they probably haven't been taught those skills academically. And the resources it takes to, say, do a documentary film about the failure of the bondrating agencies in the 2008 bank crisis simply aren't available to most students the way the library and their word-processor are-- it's not just easier to write a research paper. It's -possible--, achievable, to students. The same level of video products simply is not, no matter how many free apps are out there.

That's one of the problems-- it's easy to do these alternatives badly, and hard to do them well. And no one's really teaching the students to do these things.  Powerpoint's been around forever-- I remember my now-grown kids doing Powerpoints in grade school-- and it's useful enough. I use it occasionally in my other job (I do writing workshops around the country), but not all that much because of the lighting (you turn the lights down, and workshoppers can't read their own work) and because of the tendency to read off the darned slides rather than actually teaching.  But there's this assumption that Powerpoint is so intuitive that students will just pick it up and do it well, like they do with Tumblr or Pinterest. And I don't think it works that way, and anyway, the medium is NOT the message-- there still has to be content. Research. Ideas.

One problem is that there is no purpose being defined usually, and no audience, so there's no real way of getting an idea of what is needed, what will be sufficient, what level of information is needed, how deep the analysis. "Do a video about a problem and solution" tends to get really basic topics like "how to train your dog to beg." Just the tradition of the research paper is enough to steer students away from thinking they can get away with that in text.

I'm not sold on the idea that other-media assignments can be assigned and assessed on the same plane as a research paper. But I think the first step is deciding that the alternative assignment must be as well-thought out and useful as the research paper is. It's not enough that it's a video or a Powerpoint-- it has to be that because this is the best way to present this material. And also, all the academic standards still have to be established and met. If this is a research project, the alternative assignment must require the same level of research. If it's supposed to be analytical, there must be some development and logic involved.

Over and over, we keep making this mistake-- treating alternatives as just tricks, gimmicks, assuming multimedia is good simply for multimedia's stake. Like a talking dog-- just worthwhile in and of itself.  But it's not. It's a medium. It's just pixels on screen unless something intervenes and makes it more meaningful. The content, the organization, the focus, the research, all still have to be there. After all, the point of research paper assignments, even writing assignments, isn't to teach students how to type. And the purpose of alternative-media assignments shouldn't be just to teach them how to Youtube.

We're simultaneously trivializing and deifying "the alternative"-- showing it too much fear and not enough respect.

I think I might deal with this in my constructivist assignment.

Digital generation.

Tapscott, Don. (1998). Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw Hill. 

That's so early! So much has changed so fast since 1998.

My husband and I joke that we're from the "mechanical generation," where Newton's laws still applied, no action without a reaction, etc.  And you could, without much effort, figure out what action caused the reaction, because they were similar-- the piston turns the axle which turns the wheel. Simple. The gasoline burns and the energy makes the piston turn. Etc.

I was just in Wells (UK) where in the cathedral there's the oldest still-working clock in Europe. (Very cute--

That's 14th Century. The little knights you see above the face? When the quarter hour strikes, they came out and clash their swords. 

Anyway, even I can figure out how the clock works, with the weights in the casement under the face gradually shifting and all that. Very mechanical. Everything's got a cause that can be determined.

But the electronic generation-- my kids don't have that need to have a cause that fits the effects. I want to know why my MP-3 player makes me press four buttons (not one of them saying "start"-- you know, they're "menu" and "select" and anyway, none of the names are on the MP-3 player... I have to look up the manual online to see what they are!) in a certain order to get the song I want. They don't mind. They just give in and do it the way they're told. Or they push buttons until something happens. "Everything doesn't have to make sense, Mom!" my younger son said the other day. "That's such a Boomer thing."

Cough.

But this might account for the deficit I've seen the last decade in students who have an automatic understanding of cause and effect. Maybe now that's something they really have to be taught.

(Then again, this is a very good reason for all children to learn how to cook-- that'll teach 'em cause and effect.)

Anyway, in DE, we're dealing with the electronics, where cause doesn't necessarily lead logically to effect. (You know, the old "control alt delete" thing? That's how you get a computer to reset? Because there's no reset button?)

It means that we can't fix our cars ourselves anymore. (Not that I ever did, but my brother did.) What does it mean for the classroom? We have about 100 times more access and apps to help learning. Are we changed cognitively? Have we gained and/or lost? What?

Cognitive loss-gain

My dad was for many years a math education professor at Virginia Tech, and he taught me how to use a slide rule and all that, and frankly, I was really glad when the calculator was invented! (I never did really "get" the slide rule.) My parents ran right out and bought that first Texas Instrument calculator sold to consumers. I remember it was $125. And you know it could probably add and subtract. <G>

Anyway, I remember saying to him how there has to be some cognitive loss that comes because children don't have to really learn arithmetic (I know it's still taught, but let's face it-- as soon as they're allowed, kids will be resorting like the rest of us to calculators). And he said he remembered when computerized cash registers came in, the ones that tell you how much change is due, and that he was sure something would be lost cognitively when no one learned to count backwards to make change. (You remember-- $10 given for a $5.52 bill... you counted out the four dollar bills to get down to $6, and then the change to get down to .52.) But he then shrugged and said, "Didn't seem to matter. The cashiers learned some new process instead. The specific process might not matter as much as the whole forging new neural pathways activity."

"Something's lost but something's gained," I guess.

But are there losses? Are there things we used to learn from doing that we don't learn because we don't have to do that anymore? (As I said, I think every child should have to learn to cook. Lots of cognitive skills there that won't happen if we all just put things in the microwave. :)

But is there room in the human brain for all those old lessons AND how to program our cell phone?

Alicia

Flow-- does this relate to cognitivism?

Or is it some more or less physiological/behaviorist response?

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi: optimum flow occurs when: alienation gives way to involvement, enjoyment replaces boredom, helplessness turns into a feeling of control, and psychic energy works to reinforce the sense of self, instead of being lost in the service of external goals. (Czikszentmihalyi, 1990, p.69) 

Czikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

 

 It's so complicated now that we know that we have endocrine and hormonal responses to outside events, and those chemicals might make it more or less likely that we'll learn. For example, what do we learn best under stress? Survival stuff?

My son just went through a lot of Army training (he's just been commissioned), and the theory seemed to be that they had to train these young people to accept and use stress. Agreed, many American youngsters are not really trained in that as there's so much intervention involved in keeping them from being stressed (at least in my household--  I am something of a helicopter-style parent, I will admit). But the Army, which does train great numbers of young people, obviously thinks that stress is a good promoter of certain learnings. 

I bet you can learn "instinct stuff" (like shooting back, or turning into a skid when you drive on ice) better under stress. But I can't imagine learning anything I have to THINK about under stress.

Are there hormonal/chemical changes that make it easier or harder to learn? I suppose that's the chemistry behind Ritalin and Adderall and those ADD drugs.

I just know I've never been any good at learning on deadline. I'm pretty good though at producing on deadline-- writing a paper that's due tomorrow, I mean. I don't do that anymore because I don't like the anxiety, but I can write fast when I need to.

But I don't know if that is "learning." I can't retain any information when I read fast, for example.

Alicia

Theories still useful but maybe proved false?

I don't know if these would constitute "proved false," as a good Marxist would say, "Marx's actual plan has never been put into effect-- USSR and China did it wrong."
And a psychoanalyst would probably say, "Freudian theory works great! You should try it!"

But I think probably Marxist theory and Freudian theory aren't really considered all that viable now. But they're still really useful in analysis, I think. For example, this week I happen to be scoring Advanced Placement exams, the literature ones-- just another of my odd little jobs. And the passage the students were analyzing (it's from a DH Lawrence novel) just cries out for a Marxist critique AND/OR a Freudian critique. That is, even if Marx's proletarian paradise isn't on its way anytime soon, his critique of the dangers of privileging capital over labor is, if anything, MORE apropos these days (what with investment bankers getting a billion dollars bonus and producing nothing tangible). And it very much works to help explain the disruption facing Lawrence's characters at the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

And as for Freud, well, the theory of the unconscious certainly does help explain why, as one student pointed out, the dessicated intellectual author-standin character spends such energy asserting "mastery" over the sturdy, studly, sweaty working class characters. "Methinks," the student opined, "when he scorns that blacksmith, he doth protest too much!"

Pure Freud. (Well, Shakespeare first, but that's one place Freud got the evidence for his theory.)

We know that dark forces within us can make us behave irrationally. Freud's reasons about why (primal horde, Oedipus complex, all that) might be a bit outre, but does anyone deny the power of the unconscious?

So maybe a theory in itself, even if flawed, can be a cognitive tool.

Behaviorism vs. Cognitive

More theorizing about theory! Observations from reading Harasim--
Learning theories of any kind seem to be mostly about -change. That is, the theory is an explanation of why beings (animals and plants too sometimes) change their behavior when they learn something.

Behaviorism is concerned with change in behavior.  You can observe that. Tell a student, "You'll get a good grade if you study this material and take the quiz," and you can see that the student puts down the phone and takes the quiz. Behavior changed, and we can make assumptions about why.

But cognitivism is concerned with changes in cognition-- how we think. So we observe how students improve, say, in their ability to remember a poem after they hear it set to music. (I can still SING but not recite Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" 45 years after Sister Evarista taught us to sing it to a tune she'd written.) And we can make assumptions about why music helps people memorize.

The change either way is due to some intervention from the outside, whether it's a stimulus or just access (like a library) or an assignment.

Can it be an "intervention" from the inside, like something inside me makes me want to change? Like I break my ankle and I want to learn about bones?

No Theoretician here

I'm still struggling with the concept of a learning theory. I'm pretty good on practice-- I teach and observe and see what works-- which is an essential forerunner of theory-- has to be some evidence to base the theory on. But I can't ever seem to come up with a theory that explains the evidence.

I have figured out that a theory is only a theory until it's accepted as a "law", like the "theory of gravity" became the law of gravity.

I'm not sure, but I think the theory of behaviorism is probably pretty close to a law now, it's so widely accepted. We might argue that it's limited or that what stimulus will cause what behavior might be unpredictable, but I doubt anyone argues that living things respond to stimulus. Even plants seek the sun and nutrient-rich soil.


I just get more and more confused. Below, a def of "constructivism", but it's called "a philosophy!"

I think a theory has to explain something. "This is why this works," not "this is how to do it."

Gravity isn't just "Throw a ball up and it'll fall back to you." It's "this happens because of a thing of mass creates a force that pulls things towards it."

The evidence is, obviously, true-- provably true. When in  my class, the playwriting group spent hours debating a topic for their play, but then I stopped them and gave them a very specific situation to write about, they immediately started collaborating and produced a 1-act play in an hour. That's true.
The theory would explain it, but it would be arguable, like "Putting restrictions on students helps them focus" maybe? My theory of "limitation is liberation?"
Theories have to be something less than proved, right?
And there could be other explanations for the students hopping to it when I limited their options, like they finally realized I was seriously annoyed and decided to buckle down so I wouldn't fail them.

I wonder if a theory should be so specific. But my limitation theory could apply to other situations, not just that playwriting-- that was just the "evidence" that led me to theorize. 

----
Source for Constructivist assignment

 From Asynchronous Learning Networks Magazine Volume 1, Issue 1 - March 1997 ISSN 1092-7131. http://www.aln.org/alnweb/magazine/maga_issue1.htm.

"Definition: Constructivism is an educational philosophy which holds that learners ultimately construct their own knowledge that then resides within them, so that each person's knowledge is as unique as they are. Among its key precepts are:

• situated or anchored learning, which presumes that most learning is context-dependent, so that cognitive experiences situated in authentic activities such as project-based learning;
• cognitive apprenticeships, or case-based learning environments result in richer and more meaningful learning experiences;
• social negotiation of knowledge, a process by which learners form and test their constructs in a dialogue with other individuals and with the larger society [15]. collaboration as a principal focus of learning activities so that negotiation and testing of knowledge can occur.

Constructivist philosophy is often contrasted with 'objectivist' philosophy and practice as embodied by instructional designers, especially ISD (Instructional Systems Design) practitioners, many of whom see constructivism either as nothing new or as not truly related to instruction [16], [17].
Relevance: Constructivism is one of the hot topics in educational philosophy right now. It potentially has profound implications for how current `traditional' instruction is structured, since it fits with several highly touted educational trends, for example:

• the transition of the teacher's role from "sage on the stage" (fount/transmitter of knowledge) to "guide on the side" (facilitator, coach);
• teaching "higher order" skills such as problem-solving, reasoning, and reflection (for example, see also generative learning);
• enabling learners to learn how to learn;
• more open-ended evaluation of learning outcomes;
• and, of course, cooperative and collaborative learning skills.

Relationship to ALN: ALNs can effectively support constructivism because of their emphasis on access to resources (which learners can use for knowledge construction) and to the extent that collaboration is used as a means of community formation (in which learners can also build knowledge and test it through social negotiation). ALNs are not inherently constructivist; whether or not an ALN is constructivist depends on how the course is designed.

References on Constructivism

College of Education, University of Denver, Constructivism Site [Online]. Accessed 2/14/02: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/
~mryder/itc_data/constructivism.html.

This Website contains many links to websites that, in total, provide a substantial introduction to the field of constructivism.

Links Dealing with Constructivism … [Online]. Accessed 5/11/01:http://members.it.tripod.de/~Knowing/
Costructivism-links.htm.

Contains a number of links to online resources (mainly published papers) dealing with constructivism.

Piaget's Developmental Theory: Cognitive Constructivism [Onine]. Accessed 2/26/02: http://pdts.uh.edu/~srmehall/theory/cognitive.html.Quoting from the Website:

Jean Piaget is a Swiss psychologist who began to study human development in the 1920s. His proposed a development theory has been widely discussed in both psychology and education fields. To learn, Piaget stressed the holistic approach. A child constructs understanding through many channels: reading, listening, exploring and experiencing his or her environment.

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Approximate Age	Stage	Major Developments
Birth to 2 years	Sensorimotor	Infants use sensory and motor capabilities to explore and gain understanding of their environments.
2 to 7 years	Preoperational	Children begin to use symbols. They respond to objects and events according to how they appear to be.
7 to 11 years	Concrete operations	Children begin to think logically.
11 years and beyond	Formal operations	They begin to think about thinking. Thought is systematic and abstract.

A child will develop through each of these stages until he or she can reason logically. The learner is advanced through three mechanisms.

1. Assimilation - fitting a new experience into an existing mental structure (schema)
2. Accommodation - revising an existing schema because of a new experience
3. Equilibrium - seeking cognitive stability through assimilation and accommodation

President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology: Panel on Educational Technology [Online] (1997). Accessed 5/17/01:hhttp://www.ostp.gov/PCAST/k-12ed.html.

This report contains an excellent introduction to constructivism, with a focus on constructivism in an IT environment. Quoting from the book:In recent years, however, many researchers have begun to focus on the potential of technology to support certain fundamental changes in the pedagogic models underlying our traditional approach to the educational enterprise. Within this "constructivist" paradigm:

• Greater attention is given to the acquisition of higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills, with less emphasis on the assimilation of a large body of isolated facts.
• Basic skills are learned not in isolation, but in the course of undertaking (often on a collaborative basis) higher-level "real-world" tasks whose execution requires the integration of a number of such skills.
• Information resources are made available to be accessed by the student at that point in time when they actually become useful in executing the particular task at hand.
• Fewer topics may be covered than is the case within the typical traditional curriculum, but these topics are often explored in greater depth.
• The student assumes a central role as the active architect of his or her own knowledge and skills, rather than passively absorbing information proffered by the teacher."

Piaget's theory outlined here:
http://otec.uoregon.edu/learning_theory.htm

Teaching presence

I keep thinking about the Garrison article and the idea of "teacher presence." I very much believe that can make the difference between a student just getting information and a student LEARNING. However, I'm wondering if I'm being self-serving as I'm a teacher and want to think I'm invaluable. And I'm seeing certain instructional (DE) models that rather proudly do away with the teacher (I'm think of the "Western Governor University" model) and just use "canned" pods for the information and "mentors" for the student (not the courses). But maybe I'm just being defensive. I don't want my job to disappear! But also, I think that in the urge of universities to "institutionalize" courses and save money, they might think that DE courses can be mostly "self-taught."

I just don't think students pay tuition at the level they do to "self-teach." It's almost as if they're paying primarily for credit. If they pass this set of tests, they get their 3 hours of credit. But that's not really taking a class, is it? If the interaction is so minimal?

(BTW, I was told that the "pods" at that Western Governors were written, wait for it, by Pearson Ed. AKA the octopusBorg.)

Behaviorist teaching instruments -- Most important idea for me in Mod 1

In Module 1, I of course resonated to the cognitivist theory-- it is after all the basis for most of our educational tradition! But I found myself weirdly intrigued by the idea of how behaviorism can guide some practices in certain types of online classes, like MOOCs.

Before I forget-- the text book starts with describing the behaviorist learning theory, and I started thinking about how different types of learning tools can be useful for different learning tasks. Specifically, I was remembering the quiz I took recently in another class, which was multiple choice, and automatically scored. I've created quizzes like that in my writing courses, and the purpose is to test the student's understanding of factual material-- no interpretation, really, no analysis, just the facts, ma'am.

The behaviorism comes in with the little "reward" after I click on the answer. Right away-- no delay for grading-- "Correct!" pops up. (Okay, I did get one question wrong, and there was a BUZZ! An ugly buzz. Clearly a "negative stimulus. I didn't want to hear that buzz again. I wanted to hear the happy "correct" chirp.) And as soon as I finished all the questions, I got the grade (passing, fortunately). It's the perfect learning tool for the era of instant gratification.

I found myself absurdly pleased with my grade. I realized that part of the instructions for the quiz helped prepare me for that result. The instructions told me that I could take the quiz as much as I needed, but as soon as I scored 80%, that would be a "pass" and I would move on to the next quiz, the next level. I was prepped to want at least an 80%, and I was so proud when I got better than that and got to "move on to the next level."

This is a way to engender a sense of competition when there's no one to compete with, when I'm alone with my laptop. As soon as I know what "pass" is, I feel fired up to do better than that. There is no rival here, but I get the pleasure of "winning" anyway.

Again, though, this type of behaviorist learning tool is appropriate for certain tasks-- learning facts-- and not others!

Alicia