Dive into a strong current...

Survey of Instructional Development Models: Nieveen Model

2010-10-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

I couldn't find a decent image of the representation of this model so I tried to throw together a quick and dirty version and get it on the web in case anyone like me needed it out there:

Fostering Skill Development Outcomes (FSDO)

2010-10-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

By Alexander Romiszowski

Notes and Insights:

Knowledge is a go or no go sort of a thing. Either you have it or you don't.

Skill develops, it is a spectrum of learning, practice, and experience.

If you were to attempt to combine behaviorism and cognitivism in a skill development model then the result would be similar to the Four-Stage Performance Cycle:

Start with STIMULUS which goes to the PERFORMER who then goes through a PERCEPTION, RECALL, PLAN, (cognitive) PERFORM process which results in a RESPONSE.

How does this relate to the First Principles of Instruction:

FSDO Stages

Stage 1 acquire knowledge of what should be done (this could involve activation but it isn't explicit). This would also be part of demonstration I think.

Stage 2 executing the actions in a step-by-step manner (This is application)

Stage 3 transferring control from the eyes to other senses (Continued application)

Stage 4 automatize the skill (Continued application)

Stage 5 generalize the skill (Integrate)

Practice = apply: SKO would say use a whole task method to learn integrated coordinated activities and progressive parts method if the task is a sequence of relatively independent actions.

Productive skills align well with these principles: using problem-based learning.

Learning and Instruction Theories

2010-10-05T11:40:00.001-07:00

The TIP database has a summary of learning and teaching theories. I dug into a few to see what it had to say:

Anchored Instruction
(John Bransford & the CTGV)

This concept encourages students and teachers to pose and solve complex, realistic problems using interactive video tools. "The video materials serve as "anchors" (macro-contexts) for all subsequent learning and instruction. As explained by CTGV (1993, p52): "The design of these anchors was quite different from the design of videos that were typically used in education...our goal was to create interesting, realistic contexts that encouraged the active construction of knowledge by learners. Our anchors were stories rather than lectures and were designed to be explored by students and teachers. " The use of interactive videodisc technology makes it possible for students to easily explore the content." (TIP)

Anchored instruction is closely related to the situated learning framework (see CTGV, 1990, 1993) and also to the Cognitive Flexibility theory in its emphasis on the use of technology-based learning.
It seems to me that this is a similar approach to PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING which I feel is very effective, particularly when the learner has at least some idea or foundation for the discipline. In this case it may be referred to as CONTEXT-BASED LEARNING where the context provides an anchor for the instruction. Medical schools are a great example of this type of instruction where they present patients (context/problem) and the students work together to solve the problem. However what anchored instruction seems to add is the ability to do this through the medium of video.
Cognitive Load Theory (J. Sweller)

"Short term memory is limited in the number of elements it can contain simultaneously, Sweller builds a theory that treats schemas, or combinations of elements, as the cognitive structures that make up an individual's knowledge base. (Sweller, 1988)

The contents of long term memory are "sophisticated structures that permit us to perceive, think, and solve problems," rather than a group of rote learned facts. These structures, known as schemas, are what permit us to treat multiple elements as a single element. They are the cognitive structures that make up the knowledge base (Sweller, 1988). Schemas are acquired over a lifetime of learning, and may have other schemas contained within themselves.

The difference between an expert and a novice is that a novice hasn't acquired the schemas of an expert. Learning requires a change in the schematic structures of long term memory and is demonstrated by performance that progresses from clumsy, error-prone, slow and difficult to smooth and effortless. The change in performance occurs because as the learner becomes increasingly familiar with the material, the cognitive characteristics associated with the material are altered so that it can be handled more efficiently by working memory.

From an instructional perspective, information contained in instructional material must first be processed by working memory. For schema acquisition to occur, instruction should be designed to reduce working memory load. Cognitive load theory is concerned with techniques for reducing working memory load in order to facilitate the changes in long term memory associated with schema acquisition.

Principles:

Specific recommendations relative to the design of instructional material include:

1. Change problem solving methods to avoid means-ends approaches that impose a heavy working memory load, by using goal-free problems or worked examples. (At least early on in the learning process when there is not a lot of schema built up)

2. Eliminate the working memory load associated with having to mentally integrate several sources of information by physically integrating those sources of information.

3. Eliminate the working memory load associated with unnecessarily processing repetitive information by reducing redundancy.

4. Increase working memory capacity by using auditory as well as visual information under conditions where both sources of information are essential (i.e. non-redundant) to understanding." (Based on the idea that working memory has two "channels" a phonetic and visual channel and when both are used you are less likely to overwhelm one of the channels hence more transfer of knowledge into long-term memory)

(Non-red text taken from TIP)

Conditions of Learning
(R. Gagne)

Different types or levels of learning:

"The significance of these classifications is that each different type requires different types of instruction. Gagne identifies five major categories of learning: verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills and attitudes.

Principles:

1. Different instruction is required for different learning outcomes.

2. Events of learning operate on the learner in ways that constitute the conditions of learning.

3. The specific operations that constitute instructional events are different for each different type of learning outcome.

4. Learning hierarchies define what intellectual skills are to be learned and a sequence of instruction."

(TIP)

No comments.

Ace the Face Chase

2010-08-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

Today I reviewed my fact-learning tool with B. Wiley. I implemented his feedback and can't post it here in a table because I am HTML challenged. Anyway, here is a link to a site where you can see and download it: http://sites.google.com/site/shawncates/home/documents

Class Notes: My List

2010-07-31T21:11:00.003-07:00

15 top principles I would want to have in a fact-learning tool:

a. Analysis drives design choices
i. Openness
b. Feedback
i. Matching
ii. Timing
iii. Certitude/Confidece
c. Spacing effect (review and time lag, sequencing is involved in this, prior knowledge=being able to personalize the Leitner box)
d. Maximize A.L.T.
e. ARCS (creative, fun, engaging, usable, delivery medium)
f. Managing Cognitive Load: Contiguity effect (stimuli that occur close together in time become associated to each other), Chunking (7 +/- 2), Dual coding (visual + text versus visual + audio: visual + audio is better) - avoid split attention

Pasted from

Learner as agent

Class Notes

2010-07-31T21:11:00.001-07:00

Justin Johansen - Director of Independent Study: JustinJ at byu.edu
Make sure you get experience in these areas:
Project management
Financial management
Business management
Education law - always be dealing with accessibility issues

GET SOME CRUCIAL CONVERSATION SKILLS AND WRITING SKILLS.

Most useful classes are two assessment courses, evaluation course, basic IPT class (520).

○ Education officer at a brokerage firm. Runs strategy for education on investments.
○ Blackboard - international sales of support. Travels the world

Many organizations do not think about a lot of the following things:
○ What are learning objectives? Do you have an outcomes map?
○ Do you have learning outcomes? Are these learning outcomes well written? Do the assessments align? Do instructional activities support these?
○ What evidence will you accept that they have met the objectives?
○ What do you want them to do?
○ What advanced organizers have you used?
○ Prior knowledge?

Typically in a training experience the person who know the content and are charismatic become the trainers and they don't have instructional experience.

Jobs we end up in:
Project manager
Product manager
Training manager
Selling educational software is a good way to make a living for a Master's student.
User interface design
Instructional designer
Ed-tech software company or Ed-services (university of phoenix) and you'll put the puzzle together
Consulting (management consulting)

Have a PhD: they'll seek you out as a consultant.

Career: lifestyle is great, can pick up money consulting, online business selling outdoor gear.

Who have you worked with that trusts you to get it done. Caring and personality is huge. This is a team-leading endeavor. Need to make others successful. IF you are doing your job people will get promoted and leave or be lifelong companions.

Be really clear about the learning outcomes for the specific audience. What value do they need to get out of the course. Need to be very consumer minded.

Know what is out there and build an efficient learning process and decision flow for the learner. Gather resources and pick which ones are great and teach people how to use them. Connect people to resources.

Layers

2010-07-13T10:42:00.001-07:00

Different categories and decisions we make as we go through the design process.

Content
Instructional Strategy (constructivist, behaviorist, positivist)
Message Structure
Representation of the Message
Media-logic Structures
Control

Specialized language based on the discipline (computer vs print, vs class)
Any decision made on one layer has a cascading effect on the others. Often times constraints will impact some of these layers and therefore all the other layers.

Each decision you make collapses the total number of possible decisions that you are capable of making.

Design is full of decisions. Layers is one way to look at the major decisions that need to be made in design and how they impact each other.

Multimedia and Time Notes

2010-07-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

DUAL PROCESSING
"According to dual-processing theory, students should remember more of the verbal material when it is presented as narration than when presented as text."

I wonder also what the impact is on having two senses being involved, hearing and seeing. Is there a synergy there and what would happen if you could add a third sense. I would guess this would help even more in retaining what is being seen heard and felt or tasted?

"The design of multimedia presentations should be guided by the goal of presenting relevant information using words and pictures and by the goal of presenting words and pictures in a way that fosters active cognitive processing in the learner."

So I interpret this as saying you can't overload the student with just the information but rather need to help them engage with the material so that there is some cognitive processing.

What's All the Fuss About Instructional Time?

"...instructional time allows for understanding, prediction, and control, thus making it a concept worthy of a great deal more attention than it is usually given in education and in educational research."

"To generalize, any proposal to change instructional materials or teaching practices in the classroom that does not affect allocated time, engaged time, the rate of success, or the alignment of tile curriculum with the outcome measure that is used to assess learning is likely not to affect student achievement."

Nine Facets
Allocated time: time for instruction (e.g. scheduled time, 300 hours a year in math)
Engaged time: time students pay attention to something w/instructional goal (attention)
Time-on-task: engaged time on particular learning tasks
Academic learning time: part of allocated time in a subject-matter area in which a student is engaged successfully in the activities or with the materials to which he or she is exposed, and in which those activities and materials are related to educational outcomes (allocated time, time-on-task, success rate)
Waiting time: waiting for instructional help time
Transition time: noninstructional time before and after an actviity
Aptitude: amount of time a student needs, under optimal conditions, to reach some criterion of learning
Perseverance: amount of time a student is willing to spend on learning a task or unit of instruction
Pace: amount of content covered during some time period

Figure 1.1
Carroll defined learning through time variables: Degree of learning = f Time spent learning / Time needed to learn

Figure 1.2 Visual representation of ALT model
Learning is a direct result of minutes accrued during ALT (part of allocated time during which a student is engaged with materials and activities in which a high level of success is attained, and in which the materials and activities are related to outcomes that are valued.)

ALT can help us understand instruction and what will impact it. STRUCTURING is an example of this.

"there may not be a more sensible example of "quality instruction" than the one derived from the ALT conception of learning. For example, on entering a classroom, an observer discovers that the students are attending to academic work related to the outcomes for that subject matter, and that the work is being successfully completed, and that enough time was allocated to that subject matter to be of some value to students of that particular age. These components of ALT are what every citizen and school board member wants to see when they enter the classroom." 2nd to last paragraph

The point here is that research, evaluation, audit, consultation, and policy analysis for school improvement each require the use of different instructional time variables for their different purposes.

STRUCTURING
For example, structuring by a teacher (announcing where students should be, what they should be doing, and what they are responsible for; giving directions; providing advance organizers; and so forth) helps students understand their responsibility in a learning task, increasing their perseverance and thus their academic engaged time (the measure of perseverance). Structuring also is a safeguard against students working on the wrong task, thus increasing the likelihood that what they work on is related to the outcomes that are likely to be assessed. And structuring is likely to increase success rate by reducing confusion about the learning task. Because three of the ALT factors could be affected by appropriate structuring behavior on the part of teachers, such teachers are likely to have higher levels of ALT.

Spacing Effect Notes

2010-07-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

Frank N. Dempster
Laments lack of use of spacing effect in education (compares US vs Russian text!)

Must bridge gap that spacing effect is useful in classroom learning: done!
1. Experiment with addition with third graders 1. twice a day for 5 days or 2. once a day for 10 days. (Pyle 1913)
2. Reading a passage repeated 5 minutes, 20 minutes, and 48 hours. More recall in 48 hours.
3. Instruction, where the objective has been the learning of science and mathematical
concepts. (mostly terms, arithmetical rules)
4. Vocabulary learning.

Why has it not been applied widely?
1) Ahistorical character of research (rebuttal: been known for a long time)
2) Some failures in school-like activities (rebuttal: been shown to apply)
3) Dearth of classroom demonstrations (MOST TROUBLING)
4) Limited knowledge of classroom practice
5) Incomplete understanding of the psychological bases of the spacing effect (Has received recent documentation_

Some studies have shown that the spacing effect has boundaries:
1. Immediate recall.
2. It has been found that massed practice often is
more efficient for certain simple, isolated skills (writing the products of number pairs as rapidly as possible)
3. Evidence from traditional learning research suggests that the spacing effect may not apply to preschool age children, although it does emerge
in a robust manner by age seven (Toppino & DiGeorge,
1984).
4. Two studies have shown that the spacing effect can be eliminated if paraphrased rather than verbatim versions of the repeated materials are used (Dellarosa
& Bourne, 1985; Glover & Corkill, 1987).
5. Studies with lag lengths that were too long.

Leitner system
I'd like to try it! How many boxes are ideal or does it depend on the task and the learner?

attention (A) gain learner's attention
relevance (R) perceived value to the learner
confidence (C) helping students establish positive expectancies for success but also being moderately challenged
satisfaction (S) positive feelings about one's accomplishments and learning experiences

Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis
- When you match ISI (how much time between practices) with the retention interval (how long they need to remember it) then good things happen.

Notes on memory and forgetting

2010-07-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

We can only take in so many bits: input stream limitations.

Chunking can increase intake. (associations to other things and prior knowledge)

Review increases retention because the information becomes more integrated into the environment which memory reflects.

Memory mirrors the environment: so the frequency and recency(i.e. pattern of exposure) in the environment will be mapped to the memory. If it comes up frequently and recently then the memory will hold onto it, not forget it, and make it more accessible.

Take last 30 days, what would be the best pattern of exposure? Recency every other day 15 times each.

Every other day .5368
Pack it in up front then occasionally review .4975
Every 3 days .543
First five days then last 5 days .5137
First day then a week later then 5 days later then 5 days later then 4 then 3 then 2 then 1 after that .558

http://www.yourdiscovery.com/realsuperhumans/memory/index.shtml
Time 1:37
91300

Memory and Forgetting Notes

2010-06-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology

Fascinating chart that shows the number of intial perusals and then the time to learn them 24 hours later. 8 to 64 initial perusals cut the time in less than half 24 hours later.

"All sorts of ideas, if left to themselves, are gradually forgotten. This fact is generally known." Is this really true? Do we have some evidence for this?

Seven
"There is a clear and definite limit to the accuracy with which we can identify absolutely the magnitude of a unidimensional stimulus variable. I would propose to call this limit the span of absolute judgment, and I maintain that for unidimensional judgments this span is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of seven. We are not completely at the mercy of this limited span, however, because we have a variety of techniques for getting around it and increasing the accuracy of our judgments. The three most important of these devices are (a) to make relative rather than absolute judgments.; or, if that is not possible, (b) to increase the number of dimensions along which the stimuli can differ; or (c) to arrange the task in such a way that we make a sequence of several absolute judgments in a row."

This is interesting: ...the spacing between successive repetitions of the item affects how well the item is remembered.

Memory
They key is that there is someone on the other side. I have seen spaced reviews but really they are not as useful until the learner exercises their will to do it.

Retention and pratice: human memory mirrors, the structure that exists in the environment. I take this as if there is something reoccuring in the environment then it will be retained. Retention and practice laws are Power Laws. 80, 20. So there is a small amount of things that occur often that we remember but as occurrence decreases retention also goes way down.

Notes from Class

2010-06-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Designing:
When a student has a misunderstanding you've got to correct it. Have to provide corrective feedback. Need to be clear and timely and follow principles but feedback needs to be there regardless of whether they decide to take it into consideration or not.

Formative Feedback:
...in more than one third of the 607 cases (effect sizes), feedback interventions reduced performance.

Written feedback gives sense that it is less biased. Can control it better when you take the time to write it down.

Learn to filter research in our field. Check out the book Visible Learning

Make desicions based on decent evidence. Lots of slop published in our field. How does that go back to the idea of not trying to mirror the physics envy? Do studies meet the field's research standards? If so you can probably make good decisions if you have 4 or 5 studies that are decently conceived and carried out.

Agent psychology. There is a human on the other side with agency that greatly impacts learning because they will make the choices they'll want to.

Packaging really matters. Doubled edged: some things are packaged well but are junk so they make it out there. Some things have some good ideas and research and information but is packaged in such a way that you can never see it.

Feedback in CBI:
No single best solution but we have a flow chart that can help us which kind of feedback to use in CBI.

TED Talk Feb 2009 Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity
Creativity: show up and do your part! Then the inspiration will come. It is more than just us.

- Aren't you afraid you won't have success, after sucess aren't you afraid that you won't be able to top that last book.
- Why? What is it about creative ventures that make us question another person's emotional stability?
- Creativity and suffering are somehow linked together? Are we okay with that? How do you not let past successes haunt as being the apex of your life? Find a way to find a distance from the work you are doing and the reaction that they will create. Romans: Genius was a magical divine entity that lived in the walls of the artist and help shape their work. There is the distance between the work and the reaction. Protects you from too much success or failure. If success then you can't take all the credit. If failure then you just have a lame genius.
- Then we made the human the center of everything and they began to be called the genius. For 500 years she asserts that it is killing off our artists.
- Tom Waits musician.

Feedback Fun

2010-06-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

Computer-Based Instruction
Interesting concept of creating "adaptive" systems that can provide "tailor-made" feedback to the learner. I think that it can only go so far. Learner's thinking and reasoning differs quite a bit. I don't know that computers will ever be able to replace the feedback loop between a learner and an instructor.

For example, "Consequently, an incorrect answer may result from any of variety of factors, ranging from careless error to lack of comprehension. Depending on the cause of errors, the feedback for each of these types of responses will be utilized differently by the learner." How can a computer adapt to the point that it knows the reason for the incorrect answer and be able to tailor feedback to that. I admit for some students it could do this based on the distractors being used. I personally have seen some very helpful CBI feedback. In one case it provided information on more than one distractor and the actual answer. I learned even for some questions that I got right but I was tempted to choose another answer.

I fell asleep after page 4 of the Performance-related feedback. Tried to pick it back up after but it was difficult. I tried to find the positive and decided that the core message is good "Instruction is successful when we provide performance-related feedback" (page 7). However, there were a lot of issues with this article. I didn't get anything else out of it.

ADDIE

2010-06-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

ADDIE: a nice point of reference for people to work from and perhaps a high-level framework or scaffolding for just about any project.

It seems to me that any respectable, common-sensed individual, who is tasked with designing some kind of instruction would end up following something similar to ADDIE without having ADDIE.

For example, without knowing the specifics of ADDIE, I jotted down some steps I would take to design instruction. My result was as follows:

Define the problem and it's surrounding factors
Plan a solution while continuously evaluating based on the need.
Develop and test (i.e. evaluate) the solution to see if it meets the needs. If needed or perhaps it is better said this way: when and as many times as needed, adjust the plan and redevelop.
Help get what you developed into place and functioning properly
Continously evaluate and adjust the solution as needed

As I look at other "models" from other fields (see below) I wonder if ADDIE is really all that different. If it is not then it would be problematic for a discipline, that is already being questioned as to whether it is a real discipline, to espouse it as a central piece. Not that having a "discipline" really matters in the end but if we feel IDT is helpful and good, which we do, then it would serve others to see it as a discipline.

Construction Management
Pre-Planning, Conceptual Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Drawings (or Contract Documents), and Construction Administration

Project Management (see green diagram)

Software Development
Waterfall model (see below)

Or the SDLC.
Market research
Gathering requirements for the proposed business solution
Analyzing the problem
Devising a plan or design for the software-based solution
Implementation (coding) of the software
Testing the software
Development
Maintenance and bug fixing

I'm not saying that the above is as good or better than ADDIE but it leads to Molenda's comment:
"Anyone is free to impute whatever attributes they want to this label [ADDIE]…as they do." (Molenda, May/June 2003)

It is somewhat disturbing to me, yet somehow I am still okay with it, to read that "...ADDIE is a foundational
element of the field of IDT." http://www.indiana.edu/~idt/shortpapers/documents/IDTf_Bic.pdf

It is so high-level that it is difficult to say what it can really do or how it can help over another similar process for design. I come back to my point that it seems like each instructional designer has their own ADDIE. It may be a 10 step or 8 component process but each designer can fit those pieces into ADDIE and have a rationale discussion with others who are familiar with ADDIE and have a point of reference to work from. I think that is the main use. Not to down play that but if that really is the main use I don't know that there is great need to define it, analyze, and try to understand it in great detail...since those details are different for practically every designer.

ADDIE Dangers:
Analysis paralysis
Design - Who establishes the constraints and when do you know if you have a "good" design?
Development - Took us long enough to get here
Implement - "not created here" syndrome
Evaluate - Based on what?

A few other non-related side points:

I think you could still use ADDIE and have the following result which is an argument for the need for ADDIE.
"You could develop your instruction casually, starting, say, by drawing some diagrams of the automobile/submarine/forklift dashboard with all the dials and gauges. There's a high risk that you might discover later, however, that the diagram isn't really needed, or that it doesn't have just the right features or labels, or that it includes too much information for the learners. In short, it will cost time and effort to fix it." http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/EDTEC540/EDTEC540BB/Module3/mod03.htm

My sister always used to listen to a song by Sarah McLachlan called Adia. As I read about ADDIE the first couple of lines of the song came to mind:

Sadly these words from a song that I heard constantly coming from my sister's room came to mind after I re-read my notes:
ADDIE I do believe I've failed you.
ADDIE I know I've let you down.

Isn't that Sarah McLachlaugn or someone like that?

Keys to a Good Dissertation

2010-01-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

A dissertation should be 1) scholarly 2) significant and 3) original.

Be wary of horse-race research--pitting two methods or paradigms against each other, pulling the trigger, and seeing who wins. This is great for physics, biology and other types of research but in the sociology/educational realm positivists dont' like them because it is hard to control variables, qualitative folks don't like it because the situations aren't that clear cut to the point that you could assign a couple of factors to the study and get the information you need. Plus you miss a lot of important things from their perspective.

One important factor that you should analyze in doing research is your background--values, beliefs, theoretical grounding, etc. Then look at how that impacts your research question and the methods you will use.

Don't throw methods together udner minimal constraint.

Variables (Furlong ch 3 and 4)

2010-01-25T13:28:00.000-08:00

3 Criteria to Establish Causation
1. Antecedence (timing, Variable A happens before variable B the effect so that it is a potential impact to create the effect.)

2. Systematic covariation (i.e., contiguity) – Cause and effect has to be “joined” or physical and temporal together-ness.

3. Eliminate other possible causes (How can you say you've ruled out everything? You can't; you can just do what you can and then make a convincing argument.)

Independent Variable (IV=cause) --> Dependent variable (DV=effect)
So 1) IV precedes the DV 2) They happen close to each other in time and space 3) other possible causes are eliminated then we can say that data support IV --> DV.

If you don't have the 3rd (eliminate other possible causes) then you can merely correlate your variables.

SCIENCE IS PHILOSOPHICAL:
Concept of causation is philosophical (x causes y). You don't see the cause you measure things that indicate a cause.

Aristotle's 4 Causes
Material: substance something is made of (material exists)
Efficient: sequence of events across time (energy expended with material to put material into a for, pattern or essence)
Formal: pattern, form, or essence of something (blueprint for a chair)
Final: goal or purpose of something (know the object is for sitting)

These seem

Behaviorism and Cognitive Information Processing Notes

2009-09-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

Behaviorism:
Black box: the mind - don't go there. Look at outward behaviors and what causes them and what the results of the consequences are of the behaviors.
Feedback loop and conditioning.
Stimuli (environment antecedent) -> Organism -> Behavior (response) -> Consequences -> Affects behavior
Strength -> you can do empirical research to see if it works in a certain context. Research has showed it to work in certain areas (military, child timeouts, etc.)
Weakness -> people don't respond to stimuli the same way (intrinsic motivation)

Cognitive Information Processing:
You are like unto a computer: sensory memory (visual, auditory; very very short term); short-term memory--like computer RAM (more conceptual-to stay there needs to be rehearsed; chunking).

Learning in this means you have input that goes through the process of different types of memory until it makes it into your long-term memory.

How to get stuff from short to long-term memory? Check out the article.

Educational Philosophy Meanderings

2009-09-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

Epistemology and ontology:

My learning/teaching philosophy is definitely affected by my background in biology and in having done field research. Empirical evidence, objectivism, are inherit in some of the classes and activities. However, having been involved in learning other things and teaching I also have some roots in constructivism and situated theory. As I read through the different philosophies I inevitably would read a section and start thinking, “I like this stuff and it seems to jive with my take on learning.” And then, I would also inevitably hit some of the descriptors and think, “I am definitely not in agreement with that. For example, cognitive constructivism, “From the cognitive constructivist perspective, there is a real world that we experience...however, this world cannot be directly known, which broadens the nature of the ontology to realism. That reality exists is not denied…” (Up until now I like this) “…however, what we know of the world is only an interpretation based on our experiences.” Even that is okay but I violently disagree with the next statement, “As such, cognitive constructivism is subjective and relativist, providing for no absolute in what is right or wrong…”

Constructivism:

I picked this topic to see what it really is. I’ve heard about it a lot and kind of assumed it was a learning theory/philosophy. I was somewhat mistaken, particularly in the former. Why? Because constructivism is “not yet one theory but a multitude of approaches.” Drischoll, (200). It can be a set of values.

Looking at methods associated with constructivism can help one get a feel for it:

Discovery learning

Generative learning

Goal/problem-based learning

Collaborative learning

Approaches that are constructivist…what are their underlying assumptions?

1. Knowledge is constructed by rather than transferred to the learner

2. Embed learning in complex, realistic, and relevant environments (learn by doing; learn to deal with complexity, or the real world, by learning in complexity.

3. Provide for social negotiation as an integral part of learning (social interaction).

4. Support multiple perspectives and the use of multiple modes of representation (many perspectives and “models” gives you a better view of what is going on).

5. Encourage ownership in learning (anxiously engaged).

6. Nurture self-awareness of the knowledge construction process (metacognition).

Where is the research on constructivism- and situated-cognition type approaches?

Situated cognition: knowing and doing cannot be separated.

Knowledge as a tool. Irrelevant when divorced from context and then all to often misused when it is plugged back into context.

Community of practice…disciplines, professions, or manual trades are communities or cultures. Often students are asked to use the tools without being able to see or adopt the culture and enter the “community.”

Authentic activity.

Students create their own solution paths.

RSS

2009-09-02T19:24:00.001-07:00

RSS

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
Root-sum-square
Rock Star Supernova
or
Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary
Who knows which bolded phrase is right, both I suppose, but the top three could be just as fun!

RSS feeds are amazing little tools. However I rarely use them. I think one of the keys to using RSS feeds is to get the right ones. When I found about them I said hey these are great and I'll keep up with what's going on in the world. I subscribed to a three news feeds. The next day my reader had HUNDREDS of feeds. Lame! Going through that will take as much time as hitting the front page of a few news websites! Back to the drawing board. I am going to try TED talk since I have seen some lectures on that site that I liked. I have some classmates' blogs on there and I am going to try for ONE news RSS.

A plug for igoogle. On igoogle I have a reader app, an app for translating stuff into Spanish, a currency converter and many other fun little gadgets. Since I see that more often it is way more helpful for me to have my RSS feeds going there via my reader than logging into my reader. Try it out! http://www.google.com/ig.

Personal Learning Environment

2009-09-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

Personal learning environments are just what they say they are:

Environment: What a particular location is made up of including all the things and conditions found there.

Learning: The act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge, skill, or becoming something.

Personal: You own it, you run it, content, look and feel, who sees it what you put there etc.

PLE: A particular location that you own and control that facilitates your learning including all the things and conditions found there. Most PLEs are not isolated but are open and can be shared with those you choose or those who choose to go there. A blog, a wiki, a website, a network site, igoogle, and many other types of places could be a PLE for you. However, these are not just personal environments so for most of us the Facebook page only partially counts. These locations are centered on learning.

Criteria for deciding whether you have a PLE:

Did you stop using it when your class/project was over?
Can you look at it and answer the question, what have you learned lately?
Why did you create this environment?
Is it controlled by you or by another organization?

I have started PLEs that simply turned into assignment boards. I have started other PLEs that ultimately ended up being controlled by others. Maybe this time I'll be a little more successful.

Distance Education Thoughts

2009-04-16T23:12:00.000-07:00

From industrial education to transactional distance to Second Life! The world of distance education that we were thrown into has been a fun and stretching learning experience. I have enjoyed it and really never imagined it could be as complex as it is. And yet, I have seen just a small piece of the research, tools, principles, theories and application of all of these to attempt to help learners in a distance setting.

If I were to summarize a few key points and things I want to continue to learn about they would be:
1) What type of content and learners do best in distance education? I think distance learning requires active self-learning, students taking responsibility for the learning and outcomes. You have to do a lot more than in a normal class. I also think that more and more content areas are effectively learned in a distributed setting because of the technology advances. Despite that it seems that it is easier to create distance courses that require less collaboration (e.g. Norm’s accounting class, independent study, and other similar things have existed for quite some time and have done well).

2) Theories. There are quite a few theories out there yet I felt like the researchers constantly said that the framework for distance education research and principles was lacking due to lack of good theories that describe distance education. Some of the main theories that seem to be consistently coming up in the research were transactional distance and types of interaction (Moore and others), communities of practice and communities of inquiry, theories for technology use, conversational theory and others.

3) Practical knowledge. Being a newbie to the program I loved the hands on practical things we learned. They were also very helpful in other settings. Some of them were doing a class at a distance, creating surveys, open coding, seeing the independent study, learning about copyright, line item analysis, using some of the available tools in class (Breeze, SL, Skype, shared docs, blogs, and any mixture of this list to make it work J), and there are probably others that I am forgetting.

I feel like there is a lot to learn in distance education and I see no slowing down in the discipline. Some of the things that still boggle my mind are how to use the right amount and effectively facilitate collaboration, how to help institutions get “on board” and accept distance education as a legit learning medium (and how to reduce low-quality programs so this can happen), how to balance and use both asynchronous and synchronous tools effectively to just name a few.

Surveys- Qualtrics

2009-04-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed our class on surveys and using Qualtrics. Props to whoever said Larry Seawright could help out with some customizations, I think that was Peter. I called Larry and asked him to create a template with the MTC logo and he was all for it. Anyway, since I found out about it I have started 2 surveys and completed one. It will eventually evolve to be a survey we’ll use at work with the international MTCs (I have posted a few of the questions at the end of this post). For me the significance of this tool is fairly large since we can quickly gather information and feedback from MTC teachers and managers from all over the world.
With the advent of many free and inexpensive survey tools surveys seem to have spring up all over. If you Google surveys your first sites will deal with MySpace, Survey Monkey and advertisements for fun surveys. I think “fun surveys” that are appearing in online networks and advertising could be better leveraged for education. I think that every survey I have ever taken for school has been a post class survey. One application that comes to mind is that a professor or teacher could survey the students before the class starts to find out expectations, get to know them, and also by nature of the survey communicate some expectations of the class. Just knowing expectations would help a teacher know how to go about teaching the course a little differently or how to express their expectations. This may help change students perception of the class before they even get into it. This could be particularly helpful in a blended or distance class where there is more opportunity to cater the class to different students due to the increased on-on-one interaction. By referring to fun surveys I simply mean that the surveys don’t have to be boring. I saw one professor share with his students some comments from surveys which had me laughing my head off. “Is your mustache the source of your knowledge, if it is don’t set so difficult questions because most of us don’t have mustache.“ “He combs his mustache but not his hair.” “No grass on the busy road, no hair on the clever head.” “The world is peaceful when you stop talking.” You could tell he loved interacting with the students and had a way of connecting with them. Some interesting or even humorous questions that students could see some results to or the final summary could help a class begin to feel a small connection to the classmates and the teacher that they haven’t met yet.
How much time has the manager of training and operations dedicated to training activities this month? (¿Cuánto tiempo ha dedicado el gerente a asuntos de capacitación este mes?)
Less than 50% (menos de 50%)
50-59%
60-69%
70-79%
80+%
Si menos de 50% ¿porqué
How many hours of formal training from the manager have the teachers received this month? (¿Cuántas horas de capacitación formal han recibido los maestros de parte del gerente este mes?)
1
2
3
4
Mas que 4
For each session indicate the topic and duration. If you had less than 5 sessions (which is likely) leave the others blank. For example, if you had 2 sessions fill out the first two rows and leave the rest blank. (Para cada sesión indique el tema (o los temas) y la duración. Hay espacio para cinco sesiones pero no es necesario llenarlos todos. Por ejemplo si solo tuvo 2 sesiones llenen los primeras dos filas y dejen los otros blanco.)

Column Options
Duración
Column Options
1° session 1 hora2 horas3 horas4 horas5 horas
2° session 1 hora2 horas3 horas4 horas5 horas
3° session 1 hora2 horas3 horas4 horas5 horas
4° session 1 hora2 horas3 horas4 horas5 horas
5° u otra sesión 1 hora2 horas3 horas4 horas5 horas

Tema
Indique el tema para cada sesión

Please rate the manager in the following categories. (Por favor asigne un valor al gerente para cada categoria a continuación.)
Slider scale garphic with rating scale of 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Energía y entusiasmo
Abilidad de captar atención
Menos uso de texto en PowerPoint

Education in Second Life

2009-04-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

Previous to our class in Second Life I knew what it was but had only seen it once and that was on The Office when Dwight was flying around hilariously looking like himself, check it out http://www.hulu.com/watch/15619/the-office-dwights-second-life. Anyway, maybe because of my lack of experience it was interesting to have a class in there. Though I think there are a lot of moral implications I have no intention of getting into that here because I think if you wanted to find a virtual world that could be used for education and controlled to keep out unwanted things I think you could. Just from an education perspective I think that education in virtual worlds is a mixed bag.

In distance education I think collaboration, environment and social presence are difficult things that some people would like to improve. The avatar issue is complex but may help some of these things in an educational setting. I found a little article that described interaction in distance education. The researcher wrote a commentary on their findings aside from the paper and said that, “Verbal immediacy behaviors can lessen the psychological distance between communicators online; overall sense of social presence is linked to learning (http://www.kent.edu/rcet/Publications/upload/ISP&ADpict.pdf).”

It seems that with an avatar you could potentially increase the sense of social presence and there could be an increase in verbal immediacy. The question is if the avatar can facilitate those things better than a real life web cam call or video conference? I have little experience with avatars but I think there is something to seeing how people portray themselves which would add to the social presence aspect. I think immediacy is a tossup.

As I researched some links related to the readings I came across a blogger who focuses on the business aspect of second life. He felt the avatars and the perspectives in virtual worlds could help people have more thought out conversations.

“As it turns out meeting with someone in a virtual space to have a conversation makes things quite a bit easier from another perspective: it lets you “take a step back” from the issue, think about it logically, and then contribute with something far more sane and sober than you might have otherwise.

This theory has actually been borne out among therapists who have been using virtual spaces for PTSD and conflict resolution with great success. Being somewhere and speaking to someone is one thing, but taking a step back and seeing yourself with someone having a conversation is something different altogether http://www.calebbooker.com/.”

I suppose if someone views the virtual conversation how they will say it and thinks about it long enough to “give themselves feedback” they might adjust what they would add to the conversation. I don’t know how many people would do that but there might be something to it. Anyway, avatars aside I think in some ways we are taking a step back in technology use as we hop into second life. This may be pure ignorance of what can be done in virtual worlds but in a video conference training I can have tons of resources at my fingertips including video, audio, PowerPoint, white boards etc. When you step into a virtual world you seem to lose all that technology. That sounds a little ironic since the fact you can have a virtual space is pretty amazing but it limits the kinds of interactions you can have around content.

Test Blueprints and Instruction/Assessment Alignment

2009-04-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

I had some thoughts in my class notes from our lectures with Scott and wanted to get some of them out on the blog. Here they are:

Test blueprints help align instruction with tests. During class Scott mentioned that hardly anyone uses them. In fact it seems that he mentioned that those who mainly use test blueprints are involved in the development of state, national and professional assessments. I wondered why when it seemed like such a no brainer to align instruction with assessments. And then I looked at some sample test blueprints. It became very clear why faculty doesn’t use them. How they are done varies greatly. In most cases they probably seem unnecessarily complex and they are not the most intuitive tools to use. I doubt most faculty have the time to just figure it out and I can’t imagine a faculty member in the math department, or any other, sits there thinking, “ah man I need to get my test blueprint done.” Without support how could we expect them to do so. Also, depending on the type of blueprint you may finish one and then wonder what the next step is or how it will really translate into the actual assessment(s).

I think an interesting project would be to create a self-guided online or at least computer guided test-blueprint tool. It could walk professors through the steps of the blueprint creation and provide practical suggestions for the course instruction, assessment plan, and tests. All based on what the professor indicated were the objectives and desired outcomes.

I am sure creating such a tool would be a complex issue but I think it could be done. Having a blueprint would help the faculty be one step closer to aligning instruction and assessment. However, not only is it necessary to align assessment and instruction but there is an ever growing need to align the delivery method of instruction with the delivery of assessments. This does not seem to be addressed in the blueprints I saw nor do I think the online blueprint creation tool could ensure that. That alignment becomes not only a design issue but a resource and environment issue. I’ll leave that discussion for people much smarter than myself

The TEACH Act

2009-04-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

Before our copyright class I knew very little about the process, rights, and fair use. With that disclaimer to my ignorance it seems to me that the TEACH act restricts user rights in a distance ed context.

The second issue is that I think that it is more restrictive than the more general fair use act. Part of the benefits of distance education is that it can be very different from the learning that happens F2F yet the TEACH act seems to assume that a distance ed course should use resources like they would be used F2F.

There are also many restrictions. Here are a couple of examples:

Many things that are NOT DONE in a F2F setting are also being required such as:
*Provide accurate copyright information and promote copyright compliance
*Provide notice to students that course materials may be protected by copyright
*Perhaps this is necessary but if we don't do it F2F why require it online?

Another thing required that does not seem to be enforced at all are the following:
*Retention of the work in accessible form by students for longer than the class session; and
*Unauthorized further dissemination of the work in accessible form by such recipients to others.

*See http://www.lib.byu.edu/departs/copyright/tutorial/module2/page16.htm

It seems that one of the benefits of distance ed is that you could access previous materials that were helpful. I know that has been the case for me with some classes that have posted the class syllabus with links and references on an open site.

I agree with Clark that the TEACH act didn't help us a whole lot. In fact it may not have been all that necessary. It seems to me that the general guidelines in the fair use act covered all the uses with exception of one or two that could have been easily clarified rather than creating a new act and revising a whole section of code 110 (2).

If I knew more I may not have this view but from what I know this is how I see it.

Assessments as Instructional Tools

2009-03-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

Something that came up in class started a train of thought on assessments. Charles mentioned the use of assessments as instructional tools. We discussed the general lack of this in education and some of the complications of doing so. Despite some of the complications, with all the tools we have, this seems a little silly. An institute of higher education exists to instruct and facilitate learning. All too often a student goes to take their test and then never looks at it again (unless there is some way to get more points by looking at it afterward or if they know it will help them in some cumulative final). I can remember classes where I just wanted to take the test, see my score and be done with it. The testing center is set up perfectly to reinforce that idea; no feedback is provided, you can't look at the test after it is graded unless the professor returns it. Therefore the only learning gains from a test is the preparation. It seems this usage of assessments represents an incorrect focus in learning, meaning the assessment is geared toward the institution's and professor's benefit rather than the student and learning. Perhaps it is due to administrative ease, or to create an obstacle to cheating, or save on/ compensate for a lack of resources. Either way they rarely help a student really learn. In my opinion formal teaching has much more bang for its buck when there is a pattern of pre-teaching preparation on the part of the student, the actual instruction, and then lots of follow up. In my experience in a training setting this model is very effective. Perhaps I would even go so far as to say that the follow up is where most of the learning gains (50%) and experience happens because it involves the application of what was learned. The pre-training and training can be split various ways to make up the other 50%.

So with that said it seems that assessments in some ways should be part of the training or teaching piece rather than the follow up. This would mean that the post-assessment activities and application of what was learned would be the key follow up where most of the learning would happen. Any thoughts?

Collaborative structures that the Lord has given us.

2009-03-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

There are probably a few collaborative levels in a family. As far as immediate families I see three groups that interact distinctly enough, in certain contexts, to merit being different structures or at least substructures: 1) the entire family, 2) parents, 3) children. As far as the family as a collaborative structure I'll I really have to go off of is my own experience. There were 8 of us, 6 children, my mom, and dad. Rarely did all the kids make up their own collaborative structure because of the age spread and the different interests and circumstances but often a group of about 3 maybe 4 kids would band together and collaborate. Likewise, the parents were the heart of the collaborative structure. They would pull different or all of the kids into the "collaborative group" as needed. By design I think the "experts" in the family or those who have more experience learn just as much as the novices though the novices usually don't see it that way.

Interactions between collaborative structures:
As I think about family as a collaborative structure it seems that a very important factor is interaction between one collaborative group and another. For example, the immediate family is one structure and then you have extended family. How those two structures interact can define each other. For example, if there is unity between the two when they come together the immediate family almost feels like a subset of the extended. If there is no unity, need for each other, or ties then they become distinct groups. Also, it gets really hard to feel like the entire extended family is a collaborative structure just because of the size, much like a large class compared to a group from that class that works together.

Outside of the family I think the Lord has given us many other collaborative structures: quorums, classes, neighbors, and friends make up just a few. As I grew up I had a handful of close friends, they were from both quorums and school classes. They had a large influence on my life and I think the Lord knew that I needed those people who really were, in many ways, a collaborative structure. There were about 5 of us most of the time and because of that collaborative structure I learned things and participated in many things that I would not have otherwise. We were different enough to learn from each other yet we had mostly similar interests. Those with more aptitude and experience in a specific interest pulled the rest of the group into those areas that they maybe would not have seen or chosen to be involved in individually. Those interactions also allowed us to build faith in the principle that we are able to "act for [our]selves and not to be acted upon" in such a way that we can "do much good" (2 Ne 2:26, 2 Ne 3:24) and achieve things that were difficult.

In all cases these collaborative structures can potentially provide negative experiences that perhaps hinder faith and learning. Perhaps understanding among group members, a unity of purpose, a willingness to adapt and change, shared positive experiences and other similar factors help avoid a negative collaborative structure.

There is no way to eliminate individual structure in life. The Lord has built it in. Rich experiences come as we learn to be "with ourselves." I also see activities such as personal scripture study, personal hobbies and sitting down just to think alone as individual structure. It seems that the quest of improvement and ultimately salvation is a rich interaction between the key life components of individual structure and collaborative structure, particularly in the family.

Unaccredited Organizations

2009-03-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia has a long list of these schools. Interestingly enough, most are religious institutions.

Accreditation and Quality Control?

2009-03-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

As opposed to many other countries where the government has an educational body that takes responsibility for accreditation, the U.S. Department of Education does not accredit schools. Rather the principle of peer review is used. If I understand it right, in practice this means that accreditation groups are formed by members of the academic community that the group will then accredit. What are the pros and cons to this version of quality control?

Pros:
The peer review system could push itself to higher standards as peers will most likely ask more of the other schools than a government agency would.

The system is self-regulating and not driven by a government agency which may lack the resources and time to maintain high accreditation standards.

Academic organizations get some form of cross pollination of ideas.

Cons:
Conflict of interest, it seems that because members' schools get accredited and these same members accredit others there may be an occasionaly conflict of interest.

Peers may fail to hold a high standard because they may not want to meet that standard at their own organization.

Not as unified accreditation standards across different accreditation groups. Maybe this isn't a con.

I still like the peer reviewed system but is that the best quality control for higher education? What about industries getting involved in accreditation since they are the secondary client receiveing those students educated at schools into their companies and organizations. Also, what student quality control is taken into account for accreditation. I don't think that student ratings count as student quality control and it seems that students may be a good source for quality control data. What about an international accreditation body so that the peer group is expanded and includes more ideas and different standards. Do we do this at all in any way?

Applying CoI to Interaction

2009-03-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

I had this blog entry sitting in my drafts forever. Since I have been working on my research proposal I have learned some interesting things about communities of practice. Somehow when we discussed it in class I missed the fact that a community of inquiry (CoI) is a type of community of practice (CoP). It seemed to me that interaction would be the heart of these communities. I draw this conclusion assuming that the power of any kind of CoP is the social capital that comes from the shared tacit and book knowledge of the group. That knowledge is best shared with the community via members of the CoP hence the interaction becomes key. I thought it very interesting when I ran across a visual representation of Moore's interactions overlaid on the CoI model that represents this idea. You can find this article by Swan at http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/books/pdf/interactions.pdf.

Forming a CoI also seems very difficult, unless perhaps you look at it through the facilitation of interactions. Of course interaction along will not do it. I have two examples from work. In two different teams we had somewhat of a CoP but very different results came out of those two groups. In one we openly discusses and brainstormed about a project which lead to new ideas , capabilities and greatly shortened the learning curve. In another the CoP interacted just as much or more but for some reason we became stuck in analysis paralysis. We had interaction in both cases with similar types of people but the context of the interaction and weight placed on it was very differennt. Despite this it seems that a community of practice could go a long way in refining skills, identifying best practices, saving time by counseling together, coming up with better solutions that have been thought through more thoroughly and avoid problems/mistakes.

Something I would hope to learn more about is the idea of how one becomes a part of a CoP and the process of them going from newcomers to experienced members of the group. One idea that I found deals with the idea that a newcomer does simple, peripheral type activities within the community that still contribute to the community's purpose. They continue to increase in activity until they are experienced members. Wikipedia has a little blurp on this. It is called the legitimate peripheral participation theory that describes this process but one of its creators later abandoned or transformed his thinking on this process. I am not sure why.

Virtual Schools: Distance ed in K12

2009-03-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

After Michael Barbour's class I had the thought that we know so very little about distance education for K-12 especially grades lower than high school. However, we are quickly moving to having more and more of these distance programs. I was disappointed that more had not been done to analyze the effectiveness and effects on the students. At first I thought, man our government is irresponsible for pushing some of these programs at times and yet not funding research to find out more about them. Then I thought that perhaps the responsibility falls as much on educators and educational researchers as it does the government. Anyway, my feelings of the need for research were confirmed in this week's readings:

"Little empirical research has been performed to determine [distance education's] effectiveness in elementary and secondary settings. Questions remain about the educational needs best addressed through online learning as well as its impact on school improvement and learner outcomes. Programs of research informed by early lessons learned are needed to inform the future development of online learning. "

As I looked through the conclusions and findings of the 8 research projects that were funded I did not find much that helped answer the educational needs that would be best addressed through online learning. In fact I found that most of the articles said that there was a need for more research or that perhaps there were problems with the random samples or the implementation of the experimental design. I can understand that it could be difficult to do an experiment design in an educational settings. Educators, and parents may not want their children to be randomly assigned to different groups like lab rats if they feel they may not "make it" or that it may not give them the experience they think they should have.

Anyway, the other problem that seemed glaring to me was stated in the article:

"Research on K-12 online learning rarely has been conducted in a sustained, systematic manner. There is a pressing need for efforts to organize and systematize research on the effectiveness of K-12 online learning."

Recommendations:

What good is a critic with no better plan right? I don't think I have the answers but it seems to me that there are some great research opportunities here. If a group of experienced researchers could formulate a systematic plan with a set timeline to evaluate the effectiveness of K-12 distance learning based on what we already know and ensure that the studies will really get at what we want--effectiveness then I have to think that our government would take the responsibility to fund such an undertaking. As a tax payer I for one would want to know if these distance educational experiences are going to help our children. I'd also want to know at what point these experiences are most effective and with which content areas.

Quotes taken form http://www.ncrel.org/tech/synthesis/synthesis.pdf

Blended Learning

2009-03-03T21:00:00.001-08:00

I've been slacking on my blog but hope to dive into this a lot over the next little while and get into the blogs of all the rest of the distance ed students.

I've been thinking about what we discussed tonight and here are a couple of take home messages I pulled from the discussion:

Don't take technology and just do what you would do in a F2F setting with it. One of the things we should think more carefully about as designers and teachers is taking technology and distance ed tools and using them to figure out how its strengths and differences can transform pedagogy for the better.

Another way of putting this is--use blended learning to change pedagogy rather than enhancing what's already there. Use technology to do things we cannot do otherwise. Transform the class not just make it more productive.

I like this idea but do struggle with it a little bit. In the little experience I have this seems very difficult. I haven't seen any kind of "products" including technology, or other materials for that matter, that have changed pedagogy. What I have seen is that it can help reinforce a change in one's learning/teaching philosophy, methodology, and style or take away from that change but not actually make it. There has to be something more to make a shift like that. With that said I think there are isolated instances where the technology seemed to change the dynamic of a course which appeared as a change in pedagogy. My personal feeling on this is that the teacher using that technology has already begun to transform their pedagogy and the technology is reinforcing that change.

In addition, I will shamelessly generalize and say that the tendency of most teachers, myself included, is to use technology to improve what is already there. Because of that tendency I think we are much better off trying to figure out and look for ways to use technology to do things we cannot do otherwise despite the argument that it may not transform our pedagogy.

Findings

2009-02-09T23:10:00.000-08:00

Articles from The American Journal of Distance Education
Chaney, B. H., Eddy, J. M., Dorman, S. M., Glessner, L., Green, B. L., & Lara-Alecio, R. (2007). Development of an Instrument to Assess Student Opinions of the Quality of Distance Education Courses. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 145-164.

1) Proved that combining the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, and Dillman's four stages of pretesting to develop a distance course evaluation assessment results in a culturally sensitive valid and reliable instrument.
2) Created the SASODE http://ohi.tamu.edu/survey.html which is proven to assess student perceptions of quality distance education.

Conrad, D. L. (2008). From Community to Community of Practice: Exploring the Connection of Online Learners to Informal Learning in the Workplace. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 3-23.

1) Interest and support of the workplace in employees' learning activities is key to their success.
2) Participation in online community did not distract from or disturb learners' involvement in their workplace community.
3) Participation in online community did not significantly contribute to the sense of an enhanced workplace community with colleagues.

Flowers, J., & Cotton, S. E. (2007). Impacts of Student Categorization of Their Online Discussion Contributions. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 93-104.

1) The process of self-categorization decreased cognitive messages (p=.018) in forums but significantly increased organizational (p=.003) and social units (p=.001).
2) The decrease in cognitive messages is likely due largely to the impact of self-categorization (the researchers concluded that this is similar to the effect of heavier instructor monitoring in a synchronous environment which was said to interfere with students' "idea generation, emotional expression, and creative ideas"

Gaytan, J., & McEwen, B. C. (2007). Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 117-132.

1) Online courses are being taught by more females, majority are white, at least 50 years old and experienced faculty.
2) Considerably more females are enrolling in online courses than males. Majority are 1) white, 2) undergraduates 3) education majors. They enroll mainly because of convenience factors.
3) Strategies for maintaining online instructional quality: open communication with students, rigor, variety in instructional methods, requiring interaction.
4) Effective online assessments should include: wide variety of regular assignments, feedback based on a rubric, e-mail messages, chat room conversations, and discussion board postings.
5) Effective assessment techniques: projects, portfolios, self-assessments, peer evaluations, weekly assignments with immediate feedback, timed tests and quizzes, and asynchronous type of communication using the discussion board.
6) Only 34% of the study population responded which may skew some of the responses.

Jones, J. G. (2008). Issues and Concerns of Directors of Postsecondary Distance Learning Programs Regarding Online Methods and Technologies. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 46-56.

1) Main concerns are cost, support, vendor lock in, digital divide/technology access.
2) Interestingly noted that less attention was paid to quality or the level of the teachers and satisfaction of the instruction.

Keeler, C. G., & Horney, M. (2007). Online Course Designs: Are Special Needs Being Met? American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 61-75.

1) The list of instructional design elements of barriers or helps for students with special needs is long and sometimes contradictory.
2) 38 design elements were defined as critically important to the design of Web sites for people with disabilities.
3) These elements fall into five categories: accessibility, Web site design, technologies used, instructional methodologies, and support systems. Some of the examples are:
· Allow easy disengagement of pop-up windows.
· Provide visual text equivalents.
· Provide alternatives for moving images.
· Determine the pervasiveness of graphics per page based on the course's target population.
· Ensure required and optional materials are available in accessible formats with instructions.

Moisey, S. D., Ally, M., & Spencer, B. (2006). Factors Affecting the Development and Use of Learning Objects. American Journal of Distance Education, 20(3), 143-161.

Factors facilitating the development and/or use of learning objects:

1. Good examples of learning objects 2. Online resources (recommended Web sites containing information to assist with learning object design and development) 3. Availability of resources to assist with the evaluation of learning objects (MERLOT, Learning Object Analysis Sheet).

Barriers:
1. Defining the term learning object 2. Amount of work involved and skill deficits 3. Structure of repositories 4. Lack of learning objects in some disciplines 5. Quality of learning objects in repositories 6. Granularity of learning objects 7. Metatagging and cataloguing in repositories 8. Copyright and intellectual property.

O'Leary, P. F., & Quinlan Jr., T. J. (2007). Learner–Instructor Telephone Interaction: Effects on Satisfaction and Achievement of Online Students. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 133-143.

· In general, online course exceeded expectations (65%).
· Statistical tests yielded no evidence that the phone call had an effect on student satisfaction.
· Statistically significant effect between phone call and grade but most likely not practical (p=0476).
Factors that may affect the conclusions were timing of the phone call and number of calls.

Offir, B., Bezalel, R., & Barth, I. (2007). Introverts, Extroverts, and Achievement in a Distance Learning Environment. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 3-19.

· There is a relationship between cognitive style and achievement levels.
· Introverts attained significantly higher achievement than extroverts (85.16 vs. 80.05 mean).
· Attributed to cognitive style. Both had challenges. Extroverts had challenge with limited interaction and interaction constraints whereas introverts felt more tension.

Seo, K. K. (2007). Utilizing Peer Moderating in Online Discussions: Addressing the Controversy between Teacher Moderation and Nonmoderation. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 21-36.

· Substance rate was higher for the peer-moderated group (p<.01).
· Moderated groups had more substantive responses.
The conclusion is that student moderation elicits more meaningful interaction.

Theoretical Framework

2009-02-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

Summary:

Can an article lack a theoretical framework? I guess if you dig enough you could pin it to some kind of theory but I didn't think that was the point. It seems to me that a discipline has a set of theories to help organize and guide the knowledge that is found while doing research. One challenge that this presents is that if a theory is not explicitly mentioned in an articel unless one knows most of the theories for that discipline then it will be hard to see the theoretical framework in which a study was carried out. Either this is the case for 60% of my articles or they simply did not have a theoretical framework to guide them but rather they were finding holes or things that had not been looked at that dealt with technology or a social component of distance education and studying it. So can an article lack a theoretical framework? I would say it automatically does if the initial planning was not based on some theory.

None specifically mentioned (6)

Jung's theory on cognitive style (1)

Transactional distance (2)

Various other theories pieced together (1-2)

Theoretical Framework

2009-02-02T08:40:00.001-08:00

Post-Industrial Distance Education

2009-01-27T20:54:00.000-08:00

So I have no where else to put my notes and thoughts from one of the articles I read today so I wanted to put them up here.

Mass communication/production and independent learning VS Post-industrial approach to distance education (personalized and collaborative)

Computer mediated communication
• Asynchronous text based application
• Computer conferencing
> Collaborative
> Not replicate classroom convention

Synchronous and asynchronous discussions on computer. Synchronous is more available but he says that as more people join a computer mediated synchronous discussion it can become complex, confusing and misguided.

“There is little understanding of when real-time interaction, mediated through communications technology, is most useful to enhance learning.”

Computer conferencing is a post-industrial technology
Written word goes hand in hand with higher thinking. Computer conferencing often involves writing so could be a potentially powerful technology.
Some argue that higher order thinking is seldom possible without writing.
The challenge: interpersonal dynamics and social climate

Collaboration is more than simply exchanging information or passing on instructions. Collaborative learning necessitates critical discourse for the purpose of going beyond information exchange. Meaningful collaborative learning ‘creates “added value” and new understandings amongst the members of each group’.

That is, it is the constructive development of connected ideas and coherent knowledge-structures through group communication.

Computer conference is doomed to failure without an active moderator.
Computer conferencing is dependent upon three main moderating functions. 1) contextualizing, 2) monitoring, and 3) meta-communication.

Contextualizing: provides general organization or communication model and focus.
Writing by nature takes out contextualization, one option to overcome it is meet face to face initially

Monitoring: recognizing and prompting individual contributions.

Meta-communication: addresses agenda, relevance, overload and weaving in connections, identify themes and summarize the discussion.

If I were ever teaching a distance ed course. I think for the first few days I would have the students read through a few key things, including parts of the syllabus and then for the first day of class, instead of having class, you have a ten minute video conference meeting with each student so they can ask questions and you can set up some of the class and establish a connection so that you can have “contextualized” distance interactions for the rest of the semester. In fact I think I would try and do this more than once during the semester. The other thing I might entertain is a phone conference with all the students in the second week so that they could get to know each other along with a post on a blog or access to each other's facebook (or whatever else will achieve the objective)so they can get to know each other better.

Ideological biases and implications of computer conferencing: clash between industrial and post-industrial education due to changes in technology and goals.

Summary of Methods

2009-01-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

If I had to summarize what methods were used in my articles I would say:

1) Heavy on the qualitative data.
2) Very little quantitative data that mostly comes form Likert scale type questions.
3) Most studies used methods such as interviews, questionnaires, surveys, and analysis of student work and discussions.
4) Most of them mentioned the description research method. I don't know all the implications or ins and outs of that method but it seems to consist of the above three things.
5) Data and information was analyzed to find trends and commonalities from which conclusions were made.

Methods

2009-01-26T22:08:00.000-08:00

Chaney, B. H., Eddy, J. M., Dorman, S. M., Glessner, L., Green, B. L., & Lara-Alecio, R. (2007). Development of an Instrument to Assess Student Opinions of the Quality of Distance Education Courses. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 145-164.
Development of tool and testing based on the Standards for Educational
and Psychological Testing and Dillman’s 4 stages of pre-testing.
Stage 1: Professional review of survey and statistical analysis of survey items
Stage 2: Test survey for reations on 10 distance ed. students
Stage 3: Pilot study and construct validity evaluation
Stage 4: Outside review by 3 people

Conrad, D. L. (2008). From Community to Community of Practice: Exploring the Connection of Online Learners to Informal Learning in the Workplace. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 3-23.
• Based on qualitative research methods
o Interviews
o Questionnaire
• Likert-type scales
• Rating questions

Flowers, J., & Cotton, S. E. (2007). Impacts of Student Categorization of Their Online Discussion Contributions. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 93-104.
• Qualitative Analysis
• Students given discussion review (“Reflective Activity Form”) where they counted their week 1 total number of messages, social messages, and off-topic messages. They also rated their messages and classified quality as high, fair, or poor.
• Wk 4, students engaged in a post-treatment discussion on a new topic.
• A questionnaire was administered in Week 5.

Gaytan, J., & McEwen, B. C. (2007). Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 117-132.
• Descriptive research method.
• Goal: to investigate the perceptions held by students and faculty regarding online instructional and assessment techniques.
• Data collected using a questionnaire survey instrument (Gay, Mills, and Airasian 2006) administered to faculty and students.
• Likert scale type questions.

Jones, J. G. (2008). Issues and Concerns of Directors of Postsecondary Distance Learning Programs Regarding Online Methods and Technologies. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 46-56.
• Qualitative Data
• Online questionnaire consisting of twenty items that contained both demographic information and items that examined technology utilization for the distributed/distance learning programs.
• Average of 4-7 interviews of 45 minutes each were carried out with the 27 directors who finished the study.
• Interviews were based on 5 set questions which were after being initially asked were then discussed in more detail.
• Patterns and themes from coded data were derived from a method developed by Glaser and Strauss

Keeler, C. G., & Horney, M. (2007). Online Course Designs: Are Special Needs Being Met? American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 61-75.
Descriptive method including statistics.
(1) identifying design elements
applicable to special-needs populations:
• Paired elements cited by the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (2000), early versions of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (World Wide Web Consortium 2006), other legal documents, guidelines for internet accessibility, and research literature with elements in the Instrument of Instructional Design Elements of High School Online Courses (IODE)
(2) reporting the frequencies
of those elements in contemporary practice.
• Frequency statistics were derived from a study performed in 2003 (Keeler 2003a) of a random sample of twenty-two online high school courses, sixty-six lessons, and 183 assessments from five online high schools. rural and disadvantaged schools, and others focus on servicing students

Moisey, S. D., Ally, M., & Spencer, B. (2006). Factors Affecting the Development and Use of Learning Objects. American Journal of Distance Education, 20(3), 143-161.
• Students designed and used learning objects. Challenges and other information was gathered via an online conference discussion and an essay written at the end of the semester. Researchers analyzed this data using manual and open coding techniques to identify common themes among individual postings, in the case of the conference postings and excerpted paragraphs, for the essays.

O"Leary, P. F., & Quinlan Jr., T. J. (2007). Learner–Instructor Telephone Interaction: Effects on Satisfaction and Achievement of Online Students. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 133-143.
• Satisfaction of phone call was measured using the expectancy disconfirmation paradigm via a questionnaire based on disconfirmation principles and the service quality (SERVQUAL) methodology.

Offir, B., Bezalel, R., & Barth, I. (2007). Introverts, Extroverts, and Achievement in a Distance Learning Environment. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 3-19.
• Mixed method research approach (qualitative and quantitative)
• Students without significant differences provided data from different colleges via questionnaires and in-depth interviews.
• These questions related to factors that characterize learning via the videoconference medium

Seo, K. K. (2007). Utilizing Peer Moderating in Online Discussions: Addressing the Controversy between Teacher Moderation and Nonmoderation. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 21-36.
• Comparison study between moderated and non-moderated discussion groups.
• Groups of students were required to participate in online discussions for four weeks. They were asked to post at least one message per week.
• Eight students volunteered to serve as trained moderators. Each moderator was randomly assigned to a group.
• Spontaneous moderating was avoided by monitoring the discussions.

Making Sense of The Transactional Distance Theory

2009-01-24T21:10:00.000-08:00

This week I attempted to truly strive to understand what the transactional theory is all about. I don't know that I have succeeded but here is a summary.

Goal of transactional distance is to define the distance education field in pedagogical terms.
The first thing the theory states is that distance education has its own identity! The character of the identity is the "meat" of the theory and consists of 3 main components:
1) Structure of the teaching-learning program (defines rigidity and flexibility and thus the ability to respond to individual learner's needs and preferences)
2) Dialog (rather than interaction due to positive connotation): communication between teacher and learner (determined by course structure since it exists within that structure
3) Autonomy of learners (role of learner=self-management)
Transaction=interplay of different components therefore in DE it is the interplay of teachers and learners in environments that have special characteristic of their being spatially separate form one another.

Amount of dialog and structure defines learner autonomy and determines the transactional distance. The equation looks like this Structure/Dialog=Transactional Distance. So if structure is high and therefore dialogue low then the transactional distance is high and vice versa.
And to add in autonomy if the transactional distance is lower than learners can get by with less autonomy and the converse is true. Higher transactional distance = learner need to exercise higher autonomy.

The three components also help us understand the "interactive" pieces of distance learning:

Interaction: There are 3 types, learner to content, to instructor or to other learner(s)
Organize courses/learning to have all three types of interaction. One common pitfall is using only one medium of communication and therefore there is a focus on one interaction. Design for all three.

So as of this week I have learned about the industrial theory, the transactional theory and the teaching-learning conversation theory. All of which in my mind define different aspects of the distance education field. As far as the macro/micro-ness of these theories Moore sees it this way:

Teaching/Learning Conversations

2009-01-21T21:20:00.000-08:00

Is God the ultimate distance education course designer?

He seems to be invested in some of the principles:
* Personal relations
* Study pleasure (scripture stories, doctrines, the need to pick and piece together parts to get the whole picture)
* Empathy (atonement, having "descended below all things" the instructor can have a relationship of understanding of feelings of learners)
* "Feelings of empathy and belonging promote students' motivation to learn and influence the learning favorably." Holmberg, 70

* Prescriptive Components for Good Distance Education
* Promotes and guides argument and dialogue (have to have a structure in text) (example present a question and provide the point and counterpoint-opposition in all things)
* Reflection in writing or recording (prayer)
* Clear, colloquial language-use pronouns and talk informally (instructor to learner put down on text; moderate information density) plenty of this in the scriptures
* Explicit advice (commandments)
* Personal involvement with study matter (This is MY work and MY glory-I think he is pretty personally involved)
* Dialogue, but NOT IDLE CHATTER (Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question—unto what were ye aordained?)
* Problem-oriented (Lost manuscript, Nephi vs Laman and Lemuel, David and Goliath, Ammon and scattered sheep, Peter walking on water and then losing it, etc)

The above was an interesting thought process to go through but as I come to the end I think, perhaps, there is just so much stuff in the spiritual realm that you could find examples of hundreds of different educational principles being applied???

The Resolution of the Peters/Holmberg Fued? Doubt it.

2009-01-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

Perhaps in discussing distance education theories in a distance education class we have the tendency to try to see the distance education application. The Holmberg discussion made me wonder, "How many of the proven f2f learning principles can be applied to distance education? Does a different set of principles rule the distance learning world?"

Holmberg said,
"I assume that if a course consistently represents a communication process that is felt to have the character of a conversation, then the students will be more motivated and more successful than if it has an impersonal textbook character."

This "conversational style" is a major component of the teaching-learning conversations theory. In distance education the materials/interaction(text, phone, internet, assignments and comments) should be designed to create a conversational character and environment.

The Mitchell/Peters argument. The argument against the above is that this is just a principle of good education and/or it does not apply to all contexts and subjects where a strict objectivity is needed, further he states, that rather than a conversation, "intellectual pleasure" can come form picking apart a dense, seemingly inaccessible text.

Who is right? My answer is yes! Here is how I see the merging of these two ideas.

1) Holmberg is talking about distance education, though the principle he is supporting is an important part of effective education in general. Perhaps, he is assuming that the "conversational style" that occurs so readily and naturally in the f2f settings needs to be prescribed in distance courses because it is so hard to get at in the distance learning world whereas it is a natural by-product of most other educational settings.

So if conversational things are built into everything in a course then you will get the same benefits of the learning by collaboration, counseling, and talking, as you would in a f2f setting. Can everything in a course be 100% conversational? I don't think Holmberg thinks so but it is lacking in the distance education so you need to put as much in there as possible to help students deal with the complicated academic components (which in Holmberg's world would be very few). The "conversational style" helps make up for not having your peers and teachers there to discuss things in understandable terms and explain them. While those things that Peters feel are necessary (like objectivity and dense content) in the academic world will exist because you general can't avoid them, even if your goal is to make things conversational, when you are presenting content for most subjects.

So is this a distance learning theory? I would say yes and no. No because it is just a part of good education but yes because it is a specific application of a good educational principle in an educational setting where it is not often seen or easily achieved.

Article Contexts

2009-01-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

Chaney, B. H., Eddy, J. M., Dorman, S. M., Glessner, L., Green, B. L., & Lara-Alecio, R. (2007). Development of an Instrument to Assess Student Opinions of the Quality of Distance Education Courses. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 145-164.
• Survey review by panel consisting of nine professionals
• Interview of 10 students in or were in a health distance education class
• 601 university students enrolled in a distance education course(s) (Spring 2006)

Conrad, D. L. (2008). From Community to Community of Practice: Exploring the Connection of Online Learners to Informal Learning in the Workplace. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 3-23.
• 10 (7 male, 3 female) full-time employed adult online learners in postsecondary distance learning programs across Canada in the middle of their class
• 6 workplace colleagues of the students
• Initial questionnaire with 10 students, phone interview with 7 of the participants, questionnaire for the 6 work colleagues

Flowers, J., & Cotton, S. E. (2007). Impacts of Student Categorization of Their Online Discussion Contributions. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 93-104.
• 20 US university students participating in a five week online course within a noncohort master’s program in Career and Technical Education.
• Esed Blackboard (mainly the asynchronous threaded discussion)
• All forums were one week in duration
• During Week 3, students were asked to fill out a discussion review
(“Reflective Activity Form”)

Gaytan, J., & McEwen, B. C. (2007). Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 117-132.
• The population included 85
university faculty and 1,963 university students, with response rates of 34% (29 of 85) for faculty and 17% (332 of 1963) for students
• Online surveys, administered through the Blackboard and WebCT course management systems, were used to gather data

Keeler, C. G., & Horney, M. (2007). Online Course Designs: Are Special Needs Being Met? American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 61-75.
• Secondary-level online course students in classes using a “virtual classroom model”
• Special needs (physical and cognitive, no emotional) students
• Twenty-two sample courses were chosen from varying schools (with different accreditation bodies)
• The courses included at least four from each major
subject area (English, mathematics, science, social studies, and “other”)
and about four from each of the 5 online high schools

Kelsey, K. D. (2008). A Review of: Teaching and Learning With Virtual Teams. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 63-65.
• 4 sections of a book were reviewed
• First two sections each had 4 chapters last two each had two chapters
• Mostly empirical data from various authors were cited and explained

Moisey, S. D., Ally, M., & Spencer, B. (2006). Factors Affecting the Development and Use of Learning Objects. American Journal of Distance Education, 20(3), 143-161.
• The study involved twenty-seven graduate students enrolled in the Masters
of Distance Education (MDE) program at Athabasca University
• All were senior-level students, having completed at least four previous courses in the program
• Spanned a little over a two-month period

O"Leary, P. F., & Quinlan Jr., T. J. (2007). Learner–Instructor Telephone Interaction: Effects on Satisfaction and Achievement of Online Students. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 133-143.
• Questionnaire was administered to selected students in the Iowa Community College Online Consortium at the beginning and end of the spring 2005 semester
• Students surveyed in the first two weeks and again at the end of the semester
• Sixteen instructors, representing five colleges, volunteered to participate in the study, they had a total of 348 students registered, 229 participated
• 66 students received a phone call the others were part of the control group; the rest did not end up participating

Offir, B., Bezalel, R., & Barth, I. (2007). Introverts, Extroverts, and Achievement in a Distance Learning Environment. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 3-19.
• Seventy-seven Israeli students participated in the study, 34 women and 43 men, who studied at least one DL course via videoconferencing.
• Data was collected from all but fifty-one of the students were interviewed
• The students were from a university geographically farther than 100 miles from the lecturer

Seo, K. K. (2007). Utilizing Peer Moderating in Online Discussions: Addressing the Controversy between Teacher Moderation and Nonmoderation. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 21-36.
• 174 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory chemistry course at a Western university.
• First-year students (49%), second-year students (36%), and upper-level undergraduates (15%). Approximately 61% of the participants were in the 18–20 age range and 33% were in the 21–23 age range.
• Approximately 58% of the students were female.
• 166 participants divided in half and then into groups of 10-11 students

Scroll down to see the table with my articles please--still trying to figure out how to post a table in blogger?

2009-01-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

Researchers Ponder the Yonder

2009-01-12T22:18:00.000-08:00

Articles from The American Journal of Distance Education

style='margin-left:.45in;border-collapse:collapse;border:none;mso-border-alt:
solid black .5pt;mso-border-themecolor:text1;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt:
0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>

Article

Questions

Chaney lang=ES-CL style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-ansi-language:ES-CL'>, B. H., Eddy, J. M., Dorman,
S. M., Glessner, L., Green, B.
L., & Lara-Alecio, R. (2007). style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Development of
an Instrument to Assess Student Opinions of the Quality of Distance Education
Courses. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3),
145-164.

Can we develop a culturally sensitive instrument to assess the quality
of distance education courses? Can this be done evaluating student attitudes,
opinions, and perceptions of distance education? What do we learn when we
test this instrument? Does it provide reliable measures?

Conrad,
D. L. (2008). From Community to Community of Practice: Exploring the
Connection of Online Learners to Informal Learning in the Workplace. American
Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 3-23.

If you participate in a learning community does that affect your
relationship to your workplace environment and colleagues?

Does a learning community of online peers contribute to community in
the workplace?

What is the most valuable exchange among colleagues? What do learners
report about participation in a learning community? Is there evidence that
this transfers over in the workplace?

Flowers,
J., & Cotton, S. E. (2007). Impacts of Student Categorization of Their
Online Discussion Contributions. American Journal of Distance Education,
21(2), 93-104.

The purpose of this study was to determine the
effects of having online graduate students engage in a self-categorization of
their individual

asynchronous discussion
contributions.

Is there an increase in discussion quantity after
self-categorization?

The hypothesis was that after self-categorization that cognitive
dialogue would increase, in number and percent, be
more complex by showing a more inference and analysis and have a higher
percentage of “deep-level processing.”

Gaytan style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>, J., &
McEwen, B. C. (2007). Effective Online Instructional and Assessment
Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3),
117-132.

Which instructional and assessment strategies are most effective in
the online learning environment? What strategies can faculty and students use
to maintain instructional quality in the online environment? How does using a
variety of methods facilitate quality in the online environment? What is the
importance of feedback?

Keeler,
C. G., & Horney, M. (2007). Online Course Designs: Are Special Needs
Being Met? American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2),
61-75.

This article addresses the intersections between online education and
special education in terms of instructional design. The relevant elements of
online instructional design, which require particular attention when teaching
students with special needs, are examined. The overall finding is that
contemporary courses generally include design elements necessary to meet the
basic needs of students with disabilities. The authors recommend design
methods focusing on either universal design principles or a specified target
population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kelsey,
K. D. (2008). A Review of: Teaching and Learning With Virtual Teams. American
Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 63-65.

What has been researched and what empirical data is
there on 1) e-learning in virtual teams. 2) Strategies for effective teaching
and learning in virtual teams. 3) Using international collaboration. to form
teams and 4) teams and their use of technology. style='mso-spacerun:yes'>

Moisey style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>, S. D., Ally,
M., & Spencer, B. (2006). Factors Affecting the Development and Use of
Learning Objects. American Journal of Distance Education, 20(3),
143-161.

What skills and information are required to develop
and use learning objects successfully? What barriers affect developing and
using learning objects in instructional materials? What factors facilitate
the use and development of learning objects?

O"Leary lang=ES-CL style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-ansi-language:ES-CL'>, P. F., & Quinlan class=SpellE>Jr., T. J. (2007). Learner–Instructor Telephone
Interaction: Effects on Satisfaction and Achievement of Online Students. American
Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 133-143.

How does telephone distance learning impact the
satisfaction and achievement of online students?

How will one call from the instructor in the first
two weeks of the class affect student grades? Will the grades improve if you
received a call? Are students expectations meet in online courses?

Offir style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>, B., class=SpellE>Bezalel, R., & Barth, I. (2007). Introverts,
Extroverts, and Achievement in a Distance Learning Environment. American
Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 3-19.

How does cognitive style (based on Jung’s theory)
relate to achievement levels? What can this relationship teach educators
about which students require more support in a distance learning setting?

Seo style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>, K. K.
(2007). Utilizing Peer Moderating in Online Discussions: Addressing the
Controversy between Teacher Moderation and Nonmoderation.
American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 21-36.

How does peer moderation affect meaningful
interactions in online discussions?

H1: A peer-moderated online discussion forum will
contain more posts responding to previous comments than a non-moderated forum.

H2: A peer-moderated online discussion forum will contain
more substantive responses enriching the conversation than a non-moderated
forum.

Can you share that with the other kids please?

2008-11-05T17:54:00.000-08:00

"The Nine Events of Instruction"

Slide share and diigo and other sharing tools are kind of interesting and I am still trying to wrapt my head around them...what drives their creation (need, $$$, hobby?) and use and what is the market for these tools. I checked out slide share. and ran across some interesting presentations:

Robert Gagne's nine events of instruction are said to be linked to the learning process and they are:

a. Gain Attention
b. Inform Learner of Objectives
c. Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning
d. Present Stimulus Material
e. Provide Learner Guidance
f. Elicit Performance
g. Provide Feedback
h. Assess Performance
i. Enhance Retention and Transfer

So I don't know how much I agree with these but they seem intuitive and hard to argue against. I wonder if there are other models that have been tested and compared. It seems to me to be very simliar to explaining the what, how, where, and when to do something giving demos, practicing, evaluating and re-practicing and what you do as an instructor to make these things effective. The ancient prophet king, Benjamin, said, "And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you—that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may awalk guiltless before God—I would that ye should bimpart of your substance to the cpoor, every man according to that which he hath, such as dfeeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants (Mosiah 4:26)." Surely we can share Gospel oriented slide shows with others and be involved in commenting and encouraging/sharing those slide shows that will help people understand the Church and gospel and clear up the mountains of confusion in the world.

http://www.cahlan.com/
In using Diigo to highlight and annotate Chalan's blog I ran into a bunch of errors and it was not as user friendly as I would have hoped. However, if I were doing some continuos research or working on a long term project I could see how helpful this tool would be.

As far as analytics...people are making a load of money off of them. I tried to get some web amalytics set up for my blog and I could not do it. For a while I was looking into blogging as a means to drive web traffic and get advertisements to make a little money. Particularly with http://myparkinsonsinformation.com/. Web analytics were crucial to get business and advertisers. I wonder if the Church uses any web analytics to identify the type of people checking out Mormon.org and help improve and cater to them.

Podcast Question

2008-10-17T19:07:00.001-07:00

Can I put a podcast onto my blog? Or what is the best way to stick a video that I have produced on my page or a screencast? Does anyone know?

Podcasts and the Gospel

2008-10-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw when I typed the search "podcast mormon" into google. I found some funny stuff and some really useful things. They have podcasted the whole entire "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith" manual. I also found a funny deseret news blog that poked some fun at conference critics and member's responses to them. I think web presence is an important part of sharing the gospel and podcasts, vidoe and screencasts are definitely an important part of that in today's culture. We are used to short entertaining or informative web communications and we shouldn't shy away from that stuff as Church members but use it to share with others how we feel about the Savior.

Podcast 'o' rama

2008-10-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

Ninja videos are great. I haven't got my own podcast out there yet but I am working on it (I need to get a hold of a microphone or do it at work where my computer has a microphone). My first introduction to podcasts was the grammar girl on itunes podcasts. Someone I respect at work, who writes very well, recommendeded the grammar girl podcast to me and up until then I had never, ever used podcasts (I know I am in the behind-the-times technology club for my age group) but I dove in and found out how convenient and easy they are. I see a lot of educational applications. For instance, if I were an English teacher I think some of my assignments would be to create podcasts for the topic and have the students watch each other's and give comments on each others. Other learning experiences might revolve around watching certain podcasts and summarizing them to other students and the class. Then there are some classic uses that any podcast could be used for: distance learning, lecture capture, repeat lecture listening, acommodating student needs. There are many others that Shawn Wheeler has outlined in some of his web pages and podcasts. They are great resources if the content is reliable. If it isn't then that can be used as an educational tool also.

As a side note, I was amazed at how much anti-mormon stuff was out there in the audio video material.

It reminded me of a few things that Elder Ballard shared in this last general conference.

“The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught.

“For God doth not walk in crooked paths, . . . neither doth he vary from that which he hath said, therefore his paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round.

“Remember . . . that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men” (D&C 3:1–3).

God has spoken through His prophet and announced to the world that “the Standard of Truth has been erected” and that “no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.” That is undeniably and indisputably true. We have seen it for ourselves, in decade after decade, from the time of the Prophet Joseph Smith to the time of President Thomas S. Monson. Persecutions have raged. Calumny and lies and misrepresentation have attempted to defame. But in every decade from the time of the Restoration forward, the truth of God has gone “forth boldly, nobly, and independent.”

...There is still much to be done before the Great Jehovah can announce that the work is done. While we praise and honor those faithful Saints who have brought us to this point of public prominence, we cannot afford, my brothers and sisters, to be comfortable or content.

We are all needed to finish the work that was begun by those pioneering Saints over 175 years ago and carried out through the subsequent decades by faithful Saints of every generation. We need to believe as they believed. We need to work as they worked. We need to serve as they served. And we need to overcome as they overcame.

Of course, our challenges are different today, but they are no less demanding. Instead of angry mobs, we face those who constantly try to defame. Instead of extreme exposure and hardship, we face alcohol and drug abuse, pornography, all kinds of filth, sleaze, greed, dishonesty, and spiritual apathy. Instead of families being uprooted and torn from their homes, we see the institution of the family, including the divine institution of marriage, under attack as groups and individuals seek to define away the prominent and divine role of the family in society.

This is not to suggest that our challenges today are more severe than the challenges faced by those who have gone before us. They are just different. The Lord isn’t asking us to load up a handcart; He’s asking us to fortify our faith. He isn’t asking us to walk across a continent; He’s asking us to walk across the street to visit our neighbor. He isn’t asking us to give all of our worldly possessions to build a temple; He’s asking us to give of our means and our time despite the pressures of modern living to continue to build temples and then to attend regularly the temples already built. He isn’t asking us to die a martyr’s death; He’s asking us to live a disciple’s life...Our testimonies must run deep, with spiritual roots firmly embedded in the rock of revelation. And we must continue to move the work forward as a covenanted, consecrated people, with faith in every footstep, “till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”

Upcoming topics for my next post:
Sharing my own podcast, or screencast. Interesting ways that people are using one of these tools to share the gospel.

Educational Bookmarking (part two of bookmarking)

2008-10-16T20:05:00.000-07:00

I know, I know I have tons of stuff on bookmarking...What can I say I laid it on thick with the bookmarking stuff since that is my topic for the book!

Let's say I am a student of biology. I cannot reference website material because only primary, peer-reviewed sources are allowed. But I can collect a set of bookmarks (click on the link to see a small collection of sweet educational vidoes) that act as quick references to help me learn material, view videos, track latest discoveries and stay plugged into the reviews of the latest publications and scientific news.

Likewise a facilitator or teacher could build up relevant bookmarks that can be used easily in class or outside of it as reference pages and teaching resources. I could see it being extremely convenient for lesson preparation and finding those awesome resources out there. Students could network with the teacher to find good material that is reliable and reviewed by the teacher.

The article I found written by Kyle James said:

"For Higher Education marketing I don’t know how much value del.icio.us holds, but for managing anyone, including Higher Education administers, online destinations and resources it can be invaluable. The community aspect of viewing and bookmarking with others can be a noninvasive, quick, and productive way to share resources with others to increase productivity."

The point is also made that the network is only as good as the people's bookmarks in them. So if each person's bookmarks are useful and well thought out I think it can be a powerful educational network of websites. There is a lot out there and if it can be organized and quickly accessed it becomes more useful.

One educational user of del.icio.us said "For the longest time I wasn’t adding users to my “network”, and now, everytime I find someone in higher ed web development with a delicious feed, I add it. Lots of great links, all the time."

I tend to be of the thought that if the tool is useful and helps us let's use it but technology in education should be plug and play because who knows what it will be like in a few years.

Bookmarking in Plain English

2008-10-15T14:29:00.001-07:00

Here is a good link to a bookmark explanation.
http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english

Sharing

2008-10-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

Does web sharing have a Moore's law equivalent?

- Sharing will probably continue to increase http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10409.
- Sharing is a spectrum of superficial to personal information.
- I think shallow, easy things to share will continue to increase.
- Maybe there's some hypothesis between the depth of information and cost of sharing.

Web 2.0 is about web contribution and sharing. More sharing gives hope for some good things to happen whereas it gives a lot of other people heartburn. If sharing becomes a new frontier that is good for us as educators and for sharing the gospel.

http://delicious.com/catessr

2008-10-08T20:31:00.001-07:00

Bookmarks

2008-10-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

Overview
A bookmark in its simplest form is a saved URL. It can be tagged, put in a favorites list, or added to a list in your browser. When you start using a social bookmarking systems it is a little different.

Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a way to gather, organize, search, share, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet.
People save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. This is usually done using a service like delicious. With services like delicious bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. You can access bookmarks through different channels: tags, chronologically, folders, search engine, etc.

Tags seem to be the trend and most commonly used organization method for large amounts of social bookmarks.

Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.

Examples
Wikipedia lists the following as social bookmark sites:

Balatarin (Iranian site)
BookmarkSync (private bookmarking, created to give you your bookmarks at any cpu)
CiteULike (for sharing scientific references)
Connotea (similar to CiteULike; for scientists, researchers, and clinicians)
Delicious
Digg (voting on the bookmarked links sets this one apart)
Diigo (users can highlight parts of a webpage and attach sticky notes to highlights or to a whole page and these notes can be kept private, or shared)
Faves (content is supposedly a little more 'rateable' than delicious)
Furl
GiveALink.org
IBM Lotus Connections
Linkwad (for Mozilla lovers)
Ma.gnolia
My Web (Yahoo's version)
Mister Wong (German startup that is big in Europe; similar to delicious)
Mixx (more of a social network with bookmarking as the social object, I think)
Newsvine (more like a social news network)
oneview (German and English started in 1998)
Propeller.com (used to be netscape.com)
Reddit (bookmarks appear based on # of votes)
Simpy
SiteBar (available in more than 20 languages)
StumbleUpon
Windows Live Favorites (part of the Windows live application suite)

Many of these sites have specialties. As I searched some you could tell they had more bookmarks for media based sites. Others focused on politics and other on academic realms. Surely there would be a place for religous bookmark group...particularly one centered around things that could help people and answer their questions and that help get the type of content out on the web that is on mormon.org. How would you get that to spread to a circle of people that is not already LDS?

Social Network Ruminations (part 2)

2008-10-04T20:57:00.001-07:00

Despite what I have seen and my personal opinions I still think a social network could be used effectively as an educational tool if you had the right dynamic and attitude between the learners and instructors. Perhaps a few uses could be:

Online classroom: Applications could help enhance the classroom experience
Educators network: A social network for educators could help them collaborate and stay connected
Continue learning outside of the classroom: Parents could also get involved and be on or see the network and stay linked into what their kids are learning and see how they can help them, support them, etc.
Research: I think studying, analyzing and experimenting on and with social networks can teach us a lot about people, technology, and learning
Resource for students and the professor: Imagine a professor who uses a social network rather than blackboard or other online educational collaboration tools. If that is a popular social network that students use to connect with their friends that increases the exposure of the student to the content, links, assignments, and other class related items. It does make things more convenient for the student but I don’t know if it would increase learning outcomes.
International connections: A social network could help you have a field trip more often. Or for language learning you could have a more immersion setting despite the language by linking in students that speak those countries.

Personally it is day 4 of having a Facebook account. I must be honest right now it seems less suited to be a formal educational tool than a blog or a wiki. Using it as a resource for certain assignments or discussions might be the most feasibly. I have a hard time thinking that K-12 children would use it for anything more than what we call it…a social network. As I looked at some of the social networks I didn’t since a whole lot of “education” going on. It was more like disjointed conversations or things about people’s personal lives (http://olympicpeninsula.ning.com/; http://suecrawte.ning.com/). Though one I found has some useful information (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7036945291) but even in that case the things that would be most helpful are dead ends; I guess there are not enough people plugged in to make it worthwhile. I would love to see some research, experiments and tests to see what it takes to successfully use a social network in education.

Social Network Ruminations (part 1)

2008-10-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

I joined my first social network about 4 years ago. I created a login added the friend who invited me to Hi5 (I only joined becuase he was in South America) and never logged in again. I thought they were uselss. Being a nature lover who pushed against anything that kept me indoors longer than I already had to be I refused to love social networks and fought against them..."What will our society be like if all our sociality and interaction was online (which I ignorantly thought was happening with the social network craze," I thought. "It'll disconnect us. They are just a waste of time and our lives."

I slowly began to change my thinking as I saw all my friends keeping in touch. Then we did a winter tubing event...we invited over 1500 people in 5 minutes. Lots of old friends came and I loved it. Friends started to sign up to do business networking and I started to see it as a business tool. I still didn't sign up until this assignment came and then I sold out to the social network craze. Within minutes I connected with old friends I had not seen for over 10 years. I am realizing that social networks generally don't help you meet a lot of new people (they could though if that were the goal I guess) but connect with people I already know.

My next step is to find out how these web 2.0 hodge podges can be used for educational purposes and if that is an effective use.

The following links are things I'm checking out. My first intimation that a social network could be used for education came from this link.
http://www.infinitethinking.org/2008/01/social-networking-in-education.html

"'Social Networks' are really just collections of Web 2.0 technologies combined in a way that help to build online communities."

I can picture an ongoing discussion among learners from different countries as a gynormous tutor session. Informal learning could be huge. The information that one could tap into if they found the right contacts in the social networks could speed up collaborative learning and informal learning. For example, if you learn a lot from having a conversation with 3 people, imagine it being 50 people but you speed up the dialog from what it would be in a live discussion. I think that has power. Anyway, I have not wrapped my head completely around this but will post more on it as I discover more.

I still need to look into how social network applications and data portability could affect education.

I think I will start here: http://socialnetworksined.wikispaces.com/. It is a list of social networks used in education.

2008-09-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

Social objects can be defined pretty broadly. They can be anything that creates a socialty among people and helps them gather together to tak, debate, collaborate, or just plain hang out. That group of people that becomes a society around an object may be a specific, narrowly defined group of people or it may be wide open for anyone. All of these "objects" have nodes or things for people to grab onto and congregate around which enables them to become social objects. So can educational content be a social object. Of course it can. Can it be a succesful social object; an object that perhaps you could build a social network around? That is hard to say but my first thought is that the type of content would define your network and limit the people who would be interested in joining it. I think the social aspect would be more narrowly defined. However, I almost might disagree with myself and say that a social object could be very successful even if you cannot build a large network around it. The objective of creating an educational social object might be to create understanding, establish a base of people who are discussing certain things. In that case it might be very successful despite the size of the network.

Can assessments or assignments be social objects? Why or why not?

The object is the reason people connect with each other rather than connecting elsewhere. So I could see a community of scientists, for example, let's say you have a set of assessments that help you understand whether you are forming a good set experiments and logic for a scientific hypothesis. I could see the science community connecting with each other because of that set of assessments. I have to admit though that it is hard for me to see Assessments acting as social objects that can be used as a means to build a social network.

The same with assignments. If the content of the assignment is open to people and particularly interesting people may congregate around that...like one of the blogs we have created. Or perhaps assignments could be forced social objects. If a set of students are required to gather around certain online assignments and connect through and because of them they have become social objects.

Both assessments and assignments, since they are a type of educational content, could become social objects.

Lets's look at what some people call the five key principles of building social networks using social objects:

1. You should be able to define the social object your service is built around.
2. Define your verbs that your users perform on the objects.
3. How can people share the objects?
4. Turn invitations into gifts.
5. Charge the publishers, not the spectators.

It is hard for me to see assessmentes or assignments in this role.

I have used blackboard...I think it could be spiced up with social objects...

If you've ever taken a class that used a learning management system (LMS) like Blackboard, how compatible does the idea of social objects appear to be with the notion of a learning management system?

The food at a party in a lot of ways is a metaphor for social objects. One implication is that when the food is gone the people are gone. Or when the food tastes bad it can ruin the party. In education when the content runs out or no longer helps us think, learn and collaborate it has run its course as an educational social object and should be left...We got what we needed out of it so let's not beat a dead horse. Tests are sometimes like this. You learn how to think, how to assess and how to solve problems and then test time comes and instead of testing you on what you got out of the content the test is based on the content itself which no longer serves a useful purpose.

Wikication

2008-09-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2005/12/wiki-wiki-teaching-art-of-using-wiki.html
http://campustechnology.com/articles/40629/

What can wikis be used for in education?...anything that is paper in a classroom, could be converted to a wiki. Group projects, class collaboration and problem based learning can be facilitated by wikis.

In one article I read the students used a wiki and worked in groups to solve problems. They also posted pages for test reviews that were well done. These are younger children but they understand and grasp how to use these tools very well.

I think that in general wikis, blogs, etc. are plug and play. We should ask what are our needs in learning and education? Then we look at all the tools out there, whether it be a wiki or blog etc. and evaluate whether it is a good solution or not. What needs are there for web pages focused on certain topics and have the capalility to vote on content, to be edited, searched, and tagged? Whatever needs we may have for a tool with those specifications a viable solution could be a wiki. Will that be the case in 5 years, perhaps not.

I can imagine very easily a social issue that needs to be analyzed using knowledge of a discipline, say creative energy sources and biology. The problem could be posted on a wiki with some structure to the site and then the students would research, dig, learn, write and check the work of each other.

By no means should we force the use of technology just for technology's sake in education.

Wiki-collaboration

2008-09-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

Dynamic collaboration in an open wiki's biggest weakness in my mind is that at any one moment they may contain inaccurate information. While I believe that these errors for the most part would be corrected fairly quickly if anything in a wiki is being cited in a paper or presentation you cannot guarantee the information in the wiki at any moment. Maybe that is not a bad thing but the way I see it it compromises its fidelity a little bit.

It seems that the biggest strength is the ability for virtually anyone to contribute to the wiki and improve it. Many more perspectives can be represented and biases can be limited. Information can be added as it changes or evolves which gives the opposite of what I mentioned above, the ability at any moment to get correct, up-to-date information.

Overall the positives outweigh the negatives and the negatives found in "closed-content," print materials seem to be much greater that in open content where many experts, and people are contributing.

I made a few improvements to the Wikipedia article on the Missionary Training Center by adding some information on the international MTCs, specifically the Brazil MTC. I also changed the total capacity because it was too high. We'll see if anyone changes it back.

Informal Learning

2008-09-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED MY BLOG...Here are the posts from before...

http://agelesslearner.com/intros/informal.html

As I dug around for something on blogs I ran into the idea of informal learning which seems to be receiving some buzz in training/educational circles. The main idea is that most of our learning is informal...which I take to mean that we just learn more as we do and experience things; as we explore and dig around and research. That learning may be unexpected or intentional.

Blogs, wikis, internet media, and free content have probably increased the effectiveness of informal learning in a big way. 50 years ago informal learning may not have occupied such a big piece of the learning pie; I can't prove that though it seems intuitive that the internet has provided opportuinities to learners where previously they were scarce of non-existent. While I don't think we should play down the importance of formal training and learning it seems to me that high quality blogs, written by subject matter experts and experienced individuals, could enhance informal learning, particularly intentional informal learning. Do the organizations that we belong to understand the power of informal learning and the tools that can be used to facilitate it? What if job development was not found in training meetings, or educational conferences? It could be better found, in some instances, in some free time for employees/students and an insatiable attitude of learning.

Why this class?

2008-09-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

Right now I am sitting in Argentina...It is a beautiful place with wonderful people. I am staying in the building you see to the left. As I sit here it is pretty obvious to me why I took this class. There are 16 different locations in 16 different countries that speak 4 different languages and our job is to work and support them. Our biggest challenge...maintaing clear, consistent personal contact and communication. I hope that we can find some tools that will enable us to collaborate, not only on a two way basis, us between them, but also in a way that allows them to connect with each other. The use of new media does not seem to be a fad that will come and go like a shooting star but I think its use will continue to grow and remain. Most of my friends have been using it for business, networking, and staying in touch. Others use it to share their feelings about the Gospel and their faith. I need to do a little more of all of that. Plus in a way blogs, wikis and other media can be wonderful records for family and for ourselves. Anyway, to say a little about myself. I have been married for almost four years to a wonderful, beautiful woman named Nadia. She is from San Diego. We have a 7 month year old explosion of fun and energy named Emerson. I served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chile and my love for Latin America, Chile and the Gospel have been important parts of my life ever since. If I can be where I want I'll head for the mountains without regard to the season. Other than that, I love reading, learning, volleyball, soccer and of course my family! That is me and why I am in the class.