This is a blog about the Instructional Applications of the Internet course that I keep fitfully while the course is running. I hope to have some reflections on it as we go through Spring semester, 2011.
Chip
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Yet More Mediocre Research
OK, I'm being kind, since this doesn't really rise to the level of mediocrity. I should give one caveat, though, since I'm working from a short news story not, yet, from the research report itself.
Anyway, a new study purports to show that taking a course online by watching videos of lectures ressults in slightly worse outcomes, especially for certain groups, than does live lectures. Here's the news report. It includes a link to the report, although it is not clear to me yet whether it has been peer-reviewed (by the right peers): http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Video-Lectures-May-Slightly/24963/
Why is this bad research? First, because it is asking a question that we shouldn't even be asking. We have decades of research of this sort--comparing video to "live" and similar things. The only reason that the live might have come out better is because something more than lecture took place in the live version of the course. Mor important, why does anyone ---- anywone ---- think that recording lectures and putting them online should or would be considered good online teaching? Why are lectures seen as good teaching in f2f classes? Lectures are good for a few very specific kinds of purposes that do not include being the primary teaching strategy for an entire course.
We need to change how we approach research in online learning. The issue isn't the medium that we use (lecture v. recorded lecture, for Pete's sake). The issue is what we do with the time that students spend on a course. Most notably, do they sit and watch a person talking or a person talking on their TVs? Or are they engaged in understanding concepts, practicing skills, and other important things. This research just doesn't ask a very interesting question: Mediocre teaching compared to mediocre teaching. Let's compare different teaching strategies. Let's find out which can be implemented online and which should be done best f2f. Let's start to understand how we can make the best use of classroom time as well as the things that can be done most effectively onlien. And, since Internet-based teaching is reaching down from the college and adult levels into P-12, let's look at how the strategies differ at different ages.
Anyway, a new study purports to show that taking a course online by watching videos of lectures ressults in slightly worse outcomes, especially for certain groups, than does live lectures. Here's the news report. It includes a link to the report, although it is not clear to me yet whether it has been peer-reviewed (by the right peers): http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Video-Lectures-May-Slightly/24963/
Why is this bad research? First, because it is asking a question that we shouldn't even be asking. We have decades of research of this sort--comparing video to "live" and similar things. The only reason that the live might have come out better is because something more than lecture took place in the live version of the course. Mor important, why does anyone ---- anywone ---- think that recording lectures and putting them online should or would be considered good online teaching? Why are lectures seen as good teaching in f2f classes? Lectures are good for a few very specific kinds of purposes that do not include being the primary teaching strategy for an entire course.
We need to change how we approach research in online learning. The issue isn't the medium that we use (lecture v. recorded lecture, for Pete's sake). The issue is what we do with the time that students spend on a course. Most notably, do they sit and watch a person talking or a person talking on their TVs? Or are they engaged in understanding concepts, practicing skills, and other important things. This research just doesn't ask a very interesting question: Mediocre teaching compared to mediocre teaching. Let's compare different teaching strategies. Let's find out which can be implemented online and which should be done best f2f. Let's start to understand how we can make the best use of classroom time as well as the things that can be done most effectively onlien. And, since Internet-based teaching is reaching down from the college and adult levels into P-12, let's look at how the strategies differ at different ages.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Time and the Internet
I have noticed that some of the students in the class have noted the time constraints that they might be under. I do not dispute that, and I often feel exactly the same way. I am reminded of a couple of things that I have seen/read recently, though, and I think those things may be relevant to the course.
First is a video of Clay Shirky, who writes on topics of the Internet, new media, and others. Recently, he has been talking about the "cognitive surplus," by which he means the extra free time that has been created by our prosperity and the various time-saving things it has produced. A student sent me this video from a couple of years ago:
Among the tings he talks about the issue of "where do we find the time for that."
The other thing that I am reminded of is a a small book for professors (especially in psychology but it applies to most of us) on "How to Write a Lot." The usual excuse given for not writing is that we "can't find the time." The author reminds us that it is not a matter of searching for time, it is a matter of allotting time to what we really think is important.
Hmmm, maybe not directly about this course, but still....
First is a video of Clay Shirky, who writes on topics of the Internet, new media, and others. Recently, he has been talking about the "cognitive surplus," by which he means the extra free time that has been created by our prosperity and the various time-saving things it has produced. A student sent me this video from a couple of years ago:
Among the tings he talks about the issue of "where do we find the time for that."
The other thing that I am reminded of is a a small book for professors (especially in psychology but it applies to most of us) on "How to Write a Lot." The usual excuse given for not writing is that we "can't find the time." The author reminds us that it is not a matter of searching for time, it is a matter of allotting time to what we really think is important.
Hmmm, maybe not directly about this course, but still....
Friday, June 18, 2010
New Semester, New Try at Regular Blogging!
I set up this blog because I thought it was only fair that if the students in Instructional Applications of the Internet were expected to blog regularly, then probably the professor should, too. Then, of course, I only actually used it for half the semester, at most.
Time to try again.
The idea here is to reflect on the course and comment on new ideas in using the Internet in instruction. So, let's see: This summer's course is off to a good start, I think. It is much smaller than in Spring, in two senses. First, there are half the number of students--11 rather than 22. Second, it is only five weeks long rather than 15/16 weeks. I usually have this course be a Summer II course, which is 7 or 8 weeks. I think what happened was that I wanted to do only two courses at a time, so I made Instructional Design Summer II but made this one Summer I so that it did not overlap with Learning Theories in Summer III.
Anyway, the initial reactions are probably intensified in a five week session. Yes, it seems pretty chaotic right at first. Everyone is trying to set up accounts in different places, usually learning some new technologies, and trying to figure out what to work on when. And yes it may seem overwhelming.
But all this is kind of how things work these days. We really can't spend just a few days on blogging and expect to "get it." Blogging has to take place over a period of time, and five weeks is about the minimum for that. Similarly with working together on a wiki: it is done best over a period of time. As are discussion groups and other social aspects of the course.
That's why these are all things that we try to get started quickly. Then we work on them sort of "in the background" the rest of the semester, while doing more traditional kinds of projects such as WebQuests, podcasts, websites.
Time to try again.
The idea here is to reflect on the course and comment on new ideas in using the Internet in instruction. So, let's see: This summer's course is off to a good start, I think. It is much smaller than in Spring, in two senses. First, there are half the number of students--11 rather than 22. Second, it is only five weeks long rather than 15/16 weeks. I usually have this course be a Summer II course, which is 7 or 8 weeks. I think what happened was that I wanted to do only two courses at a time, so I made Instructional Design Summer II but made this one Summer I so that it did not overlap with Learning Theories in Summer III.
Anyway, the initial reactions are probably intensified in a five week session. Yes, it seems pretty chaotic right at first. Everyone is trying to set up accounts in different places, usually learning some new technologies, and trying to figure out what to work on when. And yes it may seem overwhelming.
But all this is kind of how things work these days. We really can't spend just a few days on blogging and expect to "get it." Blogging has to take place over a period of time, and five weeks is about the minimum for that. Similarly with working together on a wiki: it is done best over a period of time. As are discussion groups and other social aspects of the course.
That's why these are all things that we try to get started quickly. Then we work on them sort of "in the background" the rest of the semester, while doing more traditional kinds of projects such as WebQuests, podcasts, websites.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Sigh
Like at least some others in the course I am having difficulty posting to my course blog regularly, not to mention the other blogs that I have going.
Anyway, I have been reading the website designs for this course, and they are mostly pretty good. At ther rate I am going, however, I probably won't finish the feedback until Monday.
As one might expect from my backgroun and interests in instructional design and related topics, I do believe in doing some design work before jumping in to build a site. For me that is especially true if your goal is to actually accomplish things with a site. If all you want to do is show off the pictures of your cats, then maybe design isn't very important, but with education and training we usually have goals in mind, and it is helpful to thing and plan about how the site will help attain them.
There is another approach to website design that can be relevant, however, which is rapid prototyping. In this approach one jumps right nto making the site, getsversion 0.1 up quickly, tries it out with people, and then goes into a loop of revisions and tryouts. This is possible nowadays on the Web because the Web is so flexible and the tools to build sites so easy. And almost everyone, even when they have planned and designed first, follow it to some extent. No one expects the design to show exactly what the final site will be. There are always changes that take place along the qay.
Anyway, I have been reading the website designs for this course, and they are mostly pretty good. At ther rate I am going, however, I probably won't finish the feedback until Monday.
As one might expect from my backgroun and interests in instructional design and related topics, I do believe in doing some design work before jumping in to build a site. For me that is especially true if your goal is to actually accomplish things with a site. If all you want to do is show off the pictures of your cats, then maybe design isn't very important, but with education and training we usually have goals in mind, and it is helpful to thing and plan about how the site will help attain them.
There is another approach to website design that can be relevant, however, which is rapid prototyping. In this approach one jumps right nto making the site, getsversion 0.1 up quickly, tries it out with people, and then goes into a loop of revisions and tryouts. This is possible nowadays on the Web because the Web is so flexible and the tools to build sites so easy. And almost everyone, even when they have planned and designed first, follow it to some extent. No one expects the design to show exactly what the final site will be. There are always changes that take place along the qay.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Catching Up?
Like others in the class, I seem to be having some difficulty keeping up with regular blogging. Note to self (and others): This doesn't mean that it isn't worth doing. Thinking about what to say and writing it is almost always useful. Saying that doesn't make it any easier, I'm afraid.
One issue that would seem to be important to the future of online learning centers on having one place to go to for everything that you do online for a course. That is the aim of a course management system, but one problem is that the available tools are increasing faster than they are incorporated into such systems. There is a lot of creative talent out there thinking of new things we can do online and new ways to do it. By the time a company like Blackboard gets around to putting something like a wiki or a blog into its CMS, there are a couple of dozen other things to think about using as well. For example, Moodle has both wikis and blogs right now, well ahead of most of the other systems, but they are poor substitutes for the software that is available in other places.
I would think that one solution to this would be to incorporate what Google calls widgets (at least I think that's Google's term; there are various words used for the same kinds of things) into a course management system. It would be nice to be able to just find individual tools an pull them in as needed. There are some moves in that direction already. KSU now has the Horizon Wimba tools available, but the are expensive and have to be installed by the system administrator. With iGoogle, if I want something like weather or quotations or whatever, all I have to do is search for widgets and try them out until I find one that does what I want. i would like to see an educational/instructional system that does that.
Alternatively, I wonder if one could turn it around. Perhaps it would be possible to have an iGoogle account that is your CMS. Then you pull in the tools you need. If people started creating educationally-oriented widgets for Google, you could build up something there that could rival the "real" CMSs. It would probably be more reliable, too. Google seems to be able to make a system that handles tens of millions of people on a wide variety of browsers in a way that Blackboard cannot.
One issue that would seem to be important to the future of online learning centers on having one place to go to for everything that you do online for a course. That is the aim of a course management system, but one problem is that the available tools are increasing faster than they are incorporated into such systems. There is a lot of creative talent out there thinking of new things we can do online and new ways to do it. By the time a company like Blackboard gets around to putting something like a wiki or a blog into its CMS, there are a couple of dozen other things to think about using as well. For example, Moodle has both wikis and blogs right now, well ahead of most of the other systems, but they are poor substitutes for the software that is available in other places.
I would think that one solution to this would be to incorporate what Google calls widgets (at least I think that's Google's term; there are various words used for the same kinds of things) into a course management system. It would be nice to be able to just find individual tools an pull them in as needed. There are some moves in that direction already. KSU now has the Horizon Wimba tools available, but the are expensive and have to be installed by the system administrator. With iGoogle, if I want something like weather or quotations or whatever, all I have to do is search for widgets and try them out until I find one that does what I want. i would like to see an educational/instructional system that does that.
Alternatively, I wonder if one could turn it around. Perhaps it would be possible to have an iGoogle account that is your CMS. Then you pull in the tools you need. If people started creating educationally-oriented widgets for Google, you could build up something there that could rival the "real" CMSs. It would probably be more reliable, too. Google seems to be able to make a system that handles tens of millions of people on a wide variety of browsers in a way that Blackboard cannot.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Pulling Things Together
It's always a struggle to pull things together at the beginning of the semester in this course. But now we have blogs going, tweets tweeting (note the difference from "twits tweeting" and the fact that I didn't say that!), discussions active, and so on. We can now kind of settle down into the routine of checking various communications every couple of days, etc.
I thought I'd reflect a little on Coruse Management Systems and related issues, since the topic has come up in the online discussions. I make a semi-big deal about not calling them "Learning Management Systems" even though that is becoming the term of choice. To me a true LMS would focus on the learning and where they were going. All systems that I know of still focus on what the instructor needs and does first.
I think that a true LMS would have very different entry points for the the learner and the instructor. In each case, it would essentially be a dashboard. For the learner, it would show where they are in the course, make suggestions about what they should be doing next (e.g. "you haven't posted in a discussion for a while, here's one that is just getting started" or "are you ready to add to this wiki yet?" or "this assignment is due in two days, here's what you can read about to prepare.") It should show grades, points, etc, mumber of postings in discussions and all of that. Ideally, it would also be organized by things like learning goals, which could be set by the instructor, the student, or a negotiation. All the "content," activities, and so one would be there to support those goals. And the student would know how well they were progressing toward them.
On the instructor side, the dashboard would show very different things. Sure, you could go in and add thigns, etc. as you can now, but once the course starts, the emphasis would be on tracking student progress, opening up resources at the right time, and so forth. Again, the issue is whether we focus on learning or on the course materials, content, etc. There is a book out about designing online courses that I have not looked at yet because I cannot get beyond my loathing for the title "Conquering the Content." I think it looks at the whole field in exactly the wrong way. But, who knows, it could be a good book once you get beyond that.
More later.
I thought I'd reflect a little on Coruse Management Systems and related issues, since the topic has come up in the online discussions. I make a semi-big deal about not calling them "Learning Management Systems" even though that is becoming the term of choice. To me a true LMS would focus on the learning and where they were going. All systems that I know of still focus on what the instructor needs and does first.
I think that a true LMS would have very different entry points for the the learner and the instructor. In each case, it would essentially be a dashboard. For the learner, it would show where they are in the course, make suggestions about what they should be doing next (e.g. "you haven't posted in a discussion for a while, here's one that is just getting started" or "are you ready to add to this wiki yet?" or "this assignment is due in two days, here's what you can read about to prepare.") It should show grades, points, etc, mumber of postings in discussions and all of that. Ideally, it would also be organized by things like learning goals, which could be set by the instructor, the student, or a negotiation. All the "content," activities, and so one would be there to support those goals. And the student would know how well they were progressing toward them.
On the instructor side, the dashboard would show very different things. Sure, you could go in and add thigns, etc. as you can now, but once the course starts, the emphasis would be on tracking student progress, opening up resources at the right time, and so forth. Again, the issue is whether we focus on learning or on the course materials, content, etc. There is a book out about designing online courses that I have not looked at yet because I cannot get beyond my loathing for the title "Conquering the Content." I think it looks at the whole field in exactly the wrong way. But, who knows, it could be a good book once you get beyond that.
More later.
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