Monday, 1 December 2008
Technology-enhanced learning in the Teaching and Learning Research Project
Personalisation of learning involves using the responsive and adaptive capabilities of advanced digital technologies
It's all about inclusion – about improving the reach of education and lifelong learning to groups and individuals not well served traditionally. It promotes flexibility and productivity.
What's more important for managers and strategists, it enables institutions to achieve higher quality and more effective learning in affordable and acceptable ways.
The TLRP (http://www.tlrp.org) felt it important that their technology-enhanced learning (note not e-learning) projects were interdisciplinary.
They were intended to support the co-evolution of the understanding of learning & technology – avoiding the problems of communicating between groups who don't normally talk to one another.
The research found that the introduction of innovative technology into learning settings can lead to changed activities – but can also lead to a change in the technology itself. Both the activity and the technology are adapted to serve the needs of teaching and learning. While technology may change the activity to better meet the learning outcome the technology itself must be adapted to meet the needs of learners. In some contexts, technology has been seen as the leading influence in this context, but learning design and activity is just as important if not more so.
The question is: is this appropriation or transformation?
Short thoughts (as LoudTwitter isn't currently doing its job..)
- I have 3 online courses at critical points - two near the end, one halfway through - but is there ever a non-critical point? !
- Anyone have any interesting examples of digital taylorism (including workplace surveillance)?
Labels: e-learning, elearning, learning technologies, personalisaton, technology-enhanced learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:49 AM
Monday, 3 November 2008
Top 10 etools for learning professionals
My Top 10 Tools list is now online at Jane Hart's Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/helenwhitehead.html
It's fascinating reading the 'final' compiled version of the top 100 tools chosen by 223 learning professionals. Delicious social bookmarking comes top by a long way. It's somewhat encouraging that several of mine are also chosen by others, but also that I have one or two that I've discovered for myself...Labels: e-learning tools, learning technologies, social bookmarking, tools
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:05 AM
Friday, 12 September 2008
ALT-C report: Audio feedback & podcasting
This is the first of a series of posts reporting on papers and happenings at the ALT-C conference held this week in Leeds.
Bob Rotheram (Leeds Met) reported on the Sounds Good pilot about giving audio feedback to students, both formative and summative feedback on coursework.The technology involved direct-to-mp3 recorders (with direct USB connectors), free Audacity audio editing software and WIMBA voice-tools. The resulting files could be delivered via email, through the VLE or via mobile devices.
Very practical tips for technical setup & for advice on how to structure audio feedback, plus other useful information is available at the Sounds Good website
The headline is -students like audio feedback!
It can save staff time but only if:
Staff type slowly but speak quickly
Staff are comfortable with the technology
Staff give lots of feedback - it's not worth it for just a few words or marks.
The Closer! educational podcasting pilot and continuing research was reported by Andrew of Sheffield Hallam. The technology involved adding the the Podcast LX module to Blackboard VLE.
Headline news:
- Students prefer to access podcasts thru VLE (rather than mobile devices)
- Staff want variety in the VLE
There was no real enthusiasm around RSS podcasts in this context, which seems to be typical of educational podcasting within institutions. Where students have access to a VLE they aren't really interested in subscription ability.
I feel this means that what is being produced aren't really podcasts but digital audio files. However, many of the same issues apply to podcasts as to this type of educational audio.
Digital audio is seen as an everywhere technology: acessible, reliable, flexible, easy to use, appropriate, an 'everywhere' technology.
Advantages of digital audio include:
- voice and presence (eg empathy, significance, emphasis)
- timeliness, currency, immediacy, authenticity
- constructionism (student design and generation)
- formative intervention
- media seeding further learning activity – ie challenging, provoking, motivating, and orientating
- variety & teaching “punctuation”
New and emerging technologies provide innovative opportunities for new and emerging pedagogies.
Some of the possible uses of digital audio include:
- Audio Glossary
- Professional Briefings
- Newscasting
- Field assignments
- clinical skills vodcasts
- learning stories
- audio announcements
- found audio
- peer assessed AF
- Conversatonal AF
- Broadcast AF
- Audio Scaffolding
- Tutor centred PC AF
- Audo Conversations
- Audio Summaries
- Vox pops
- Audio features
- Audio FAQs
- Global Experts Voices
- Audio Introductions.
Labels: ALTC2008, elearning, learning technologies
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:47 AM
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
eXe - for creating elearning NOTan .exe. file!
The project eXe has been brought to my attention. A New Zealand-based open source authoring application, it aims to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup. Resources authored in eXe can be exported in IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2, or IMS Common Cartridge formats or as simple self-contained web pages. Obviously an alternative to CouseLab which I looked at last week.
I'm testing out both to compare, and will report back in due course (though don't hold your breath as I'm pretty busy and will have to spread this research over some time!)Labels: e-learning, e-learning tools, elearning, elearning tools, eXe, learning technologies, tools
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:38 PM
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
E-learning Advent Calendar
I've been writing less in the blog at the moment - lots of effort is going into the ELKS "Advent of Technology" Calendar, full of people's favourite tools for teaching and learning with technologies.
You don't even have to be a member to see the calendar :)
DIRECT LINK to calendar
Today's entry (December 11th): Google and Google ScholarA good search engine has to be among the “best tools”. And can I be controversial and recommend Google Scholar too? Although it’s nothing like as good as the databases and services your institutional library undoubtedly offers, I find it’s a great place to start my literature search to get a bit of a feel for the subject and its primary exponents.
It’s surprising how many students don’t know how to use a search engine properly, or how to evaluate the results when they get them. It’s something that a group of us at ELKS have started creating guidelines for. Hopefully the guidelines can be used by any tutor for any class where students need to search the web (there’ll be a section on Wikipedia as well… but that’s a ‘whole other story’ !).
Labels: advent calendar, e-learning, elearning, Google, learning technologies
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:34 AM
Friday, 16 November 2007
Do you use Salmon's 5-stage model or E-tivities framework?
Do you use e-learning or learning technologies such as discussion forums etc. in teaching?
Have you used or adapted Salmon's 5-stage model or e-tivities framework in your teaching? Or have you used it at any time in the past few years?Gilly Salmon's 5-stage model and e-tivities framework have been used successfully to support learning in a variety of contexts, courses, disciplines, types and levels of education from schools to Masters to continuing professional development.
References
I am doing some research to find out how they have been applied in learning and teaching across the world in the last ten years. We know that teachers have used them in a variety of different ways, adapting and developing the models to suit their own purposes. As part of the background to a new book, we would like to find out about the models in practice. The general results of this research will be made available to all practitioners.
If you have any good examples of using the 5-stage model or e-tivities,
please would you take my survey?
http://www2.le.ac.uk/.../smeltsurvey
E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online
Gilly Salmon, (2004) Routledge Falmer
ISBN: 0415335442
lifelong learning, m-learning, mobile learning, online courses, online learning, online tutoring, technology, universities, wiki-tivities, wikitivities
E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning
Gilly Salmon, (2002) Routledge Falmer,
ISBN: 0749431105Labels: collaborative working, e-facilitation, e-learning, e-learning tools, e-moderating, education, elearning, learning and teaching, learning design, learning technologies
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:48 PM
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
Integrating Web 2.0 - some doubts
Here are some issues that have been mentioned to me (by academic staff) about integrating Web 2.0 technologies into institutional VLEs, and how they might be overcome.
- Institutional IT policy can be a barrier - you don't know what's available.
Fear of "what people will say"- How to cope with the student who goes "off the rails"
- Managers fear adverse comments about their services and don't see it as constructive.
- Can cause horrendous" problems in mature learners who aren't familiar with the technology.
- Students (esp. mature students) worry about "breaking" the technology.
Labels: challenges, e-learning, elearning, issues, learning design, learning futures, learning technologies, student expectations, Web 2.0
posted by Helen Whitehead 1:52 PM
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
How they do mobile learning in Japan...
This is a 2D barcode of the URL of the ELKS community.
Apparently these barcodes are all the range in Japan where people use their web-enabled mobile phones to read them and then surf to the URL. They are used, e.g., on a poster for a radio station to encourage people to listen, on the doors of public libraries to direct users to a page that shows opening hours, or on tutor's offices to direct students to a page that shows opening hours.
As 100% of students have web-enabled mobile phones and data transfer is cheap, they can be used for all sorts of learning applications from voting on which of the videos shown in the lesson they preferred, to assessment quizzes, to sending a question randomly to one of the students in the class (of course - you could just point at one!).
Thanks to Keiso Katsura for introducing me to these tools in a seminar at Leicester University yesterday.Labels: e-learning, elearning, Japan, Keiso Katsura, learning technologies, mobile learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:58 PM
Tuesday, 4 September 2007
ALT-C presentations on Tuesday
I was certainly nodding at Tim Rudd's exhortation to us to think about learning spaces for the future without being "held back" by starting from where we are now. We must not be bound by cultures and habits from existing methods of teaching and assessment - let's be innovative!
That people are hidebound was demonstrated in the last session I went to. Gill Kirkup of the OU had surveyed students on whether they wanted to use blogs, for learning or otherwise. Not surprisingly they said no - well they probably had no clear idea of how blogs might be used to support their learning. Not until they have experienced an innovative and effective course design involving relevant use of blogs will they appreciate their usefulness. In the mobile learning symposium, John Traxler discussed how difficult it was to ask people what they want - because they give the answer they think you want, they are affected by culture and assumptions and taking things for granted...
John Traxler also reminded us to think differently about the future, talking about the serendipity that gave us Teflon, post-its and SMS.
I was interested to see from Marion Miller that the JISC RSC Summer Conference in Yorkshire and Humberside had a very successful social network set up on Ning. It was interesting that competitions were held with prizes for content - a good push to get people started with contributing - if you can afford it!Labels: ALT-C2007, altc2007, beyond control, learning technologies, social networking
posted by Helen Whitehead 7:44 PM
ALT-C Day #1
I certainly picked a mixture of different topics at ALT-C today. There are so many sessions it is really difficult to choose, and as I'm changing jobs at the end of this current project I don't really know what subjects will be most appropriate! So I picked some topics that I didn't know anything about and some that I did.
Michelle Selinger's keynote confirmed a lot of my opinions - such as the fact that the age-dominated approach to learning is not appropriate for the digital generation. Her descriptions of the chasms between formal and informal learning, between school and HE and between HE in the developed and developing world really rang a bell. She went on to say that it's not a "Knowledge Society" that is needed but a "knowledgeable society" to bridge those chasms.
It was a real shame to see that Creativity was so low on the list of traits that employers want in their new employees - only 22% mentioned it in job specs in the study Michelle cited.
I wasn't so sure about her insistence on podcasts replacing lectures. I think lectures are a format that has worked well and will continue to do so. Podcasts are an addition not a replacement. Personally I tend to prefer lectures - so long as I can actually get to them. Still, Michelle did, in reply to a question, amend her comment to "don't put lectures above everything else, consider the other technological possibilities" which is fair enough!Labels: ALT-C2007, altc2007, beyond control, keynote, learning technologies, michelle selinger
posted by Helen Whitehead 7:32 PM
Friday, 3 August 2007
Join me on the Creativity in E-Learning network
Labels: creativity, e-learning, education sector, elearning, FE, HE, learning and teaching, learning technologies, social networking, universities, Web 2.0
posted by Helen Whitehead 4:06 PM
Thursday, 2 August 2007
Levels of Technology/Web/VLE Use in Teaching and Learning
1 Administrative
Syllabi, submission dates, room allocations, last-minute changes, etc.
2 Supplemental
Materials to support the traditional classroom, but not critical to the course (e.g. notes, handouts, slides, reading lists, Internet links).
3 Essential
Students require regular web access to be productive members of the class. Most materials, tasks, assessments available on website. Teachers require ICT literacy and sufficient course development time.
4 Communal
Course website used for communication purposes. Much course content generated through asynchronous discussions, real-time chats, publication of documents, audio and video-conferencing. ‘Design for e-learning’ expertise and e-moderating skills needed.
Blended courses need go no further than this.
5 Immersive
No classroom-based teaching. Courses are taught online.
(with acknowledgment to Dr Ale Armellini)Labels: learning and teaching, learning technologies, levels of transition, VLE, Web 2.0
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:51 AM
Friday, 22 June 2007
Embedding?
At a conference I attended recently, there was much discussion about what "embedding" means in the context of e-learning in Higher Education.
I was thinking maybe we should be talking about "Mbedding" because possibly the whole point is to lose the "e"... Technology should be just one of the tools which teachers use to develop, deliver and facilitate learning, no more or less important than any other. To use technology that way, however, there need to be a lot of things in place - infrastructure and support (including availability of IT experts and learning technologists), training and awareness building, piloting of technologies, and research into the pedagogical aspects of using technology (as there should be research into pedagogical aspects of all learning practices).Labels: embedding e-learning, HE, learning futures, learning technologies, universities
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:18 AM
