The Jisc Effective Practice With e-Learning (good practice in designing for learning guide) makes for an interesting read. It is an attempt to distill down the findings from research into e-learning since 2003 when the Jisc e-Learning and Pedagogy research strand began.

The document seeks to provide a framework for colleagues to “reflect upon the value of e-learning” which it does well providing we maintain a critical eye as there are, I believe, some omissions and wrong emphasis in certain parts.

Firstly, I applaud the approach of putting the focus firmly on learning and the designing of planned learning experiences, not the technology itself. The language of ‘designing for learning’ with terms such as intended learning outcomes brings a greater degree of focus to the planning of an appropriate student learning experience.

However, I believe that the flaw in the document is that it approaches e-learning as something separate from good teaching and learning practice. The ‘starting point for the document is the question “What is e-learning?”, I would argue a better question would be “What supports effective learning?” and then address this from both the student and teachers ‘teacher’ (used advisedly to encompass the role of the tutor, coach, mentor, etc) perspective.

More recently, the phrase ‘learning ecology’ is being used to describe an holistic approach that sees the technology as an enabler, that is as a means of connecting and making links between information and people. We must also not forget the use of technology as a tool to support cognitive processes (modeling, etc) and as means for greater expressive and communicative power. These points are not new to the Ultralab way of thinking.

The diagram above forms part of the documents conclusions and in this there is, in my opinion, two areas that are not given sufficient attention.

First is the lack of an explicit recognition of the role of the facilitator/lecturer/teacher in the learning process itself. This is not just as the ‘instructional designer’, but as the mediator of learning. It is not sufficient to plan a programme of learning without an ongoing interaction with the learners and there is much evidence of the importance of the relationship building between the and the learner. At the heart of the HE learning experience should be the development of a critically reflective learner. Without the modeling of aspects that contribute to this such as critical reflection, challenging of assumptions, testing of ideas, discussion of analysis, etc.

An excellent discussion of some of these issues is given by Brockbank and McGill ([1998] Facilitating Reflective Learning in Higher Education, OUP) and we could also look to Laurillards
conversational model ([1993] Rethinking University Teaching) as well as other texts.

The Hefce model shows “Effective practice” as an outcome of factors that contribute to the “Learning activity”, but does not show the actions of the ‘teacher’ as part of the model. This I think is a serious omission as the values, beliefs, and teaching and learning philosophy of those teachers will heavily influence the learning experience.

Secondly I think that there is a lack of emphasis on assessment in the model presented although it was mentioned often in the document I do not think it was addressed in sufficient depth. It is a fact that the assessment process must be well thought out if it is not to end up being the tail that wags the teaching and learning dog! Unless this is addressed in terms of both the products for assessment and the purpose of the assessment, then e-learning or any other form of learning. For example, is it appropriate to have the bulk of assessment by the essay or examination, or should we be thinking about the opportunities offered by approaches such as e-portfolios and Patchwork Texts?.

So why is there not a strong emphasis on this in the Jisc report? Could it be that there is still a view that the technology really is the answer to everything and that if we get the infrastructure and processes right, then deep learning will follow as a matter of course?

It could be argued that the role of the facilitator and the need for formative and other forms of assessment is implicit throughout the report. I do not think that this is enough though as the changes that are identified as being required by the Hefce Strategy for e-Learning are a paradigm shift for HE towards an agenda of learner personalisation and choice, access through workplace learning, and making the rhetoric of life-long learning a reality.

I have been talking to Jonathan Furness about how to migrate to a different domain name and retain Google juice. Jonathan’s advice is pretty straight forward and the key points he makes are:

I have been reflecting about the online learning community projects I have been involved in over the past 5 years or so to try and identify some patterns. From my experience I could identify several features that initiatives display to greater or lesser extents. No criticism is attached to anyone group, this is just what it seems like to me……

A great deal of enthusiasm from some quarters – thankfully there risk takers and early adopters out there!

A lack of understanding that ‘culture change’ is actually at the heart of the initiatives not online learning communities. We live in a world where f2f dominates and is valued and changing this puts us in direct conflict with deeply embedded beliefs and value sets about how we learn, manage, and organize ourselves. This could take a decade or more to change.

Back of envelope implementation – no appreciation of the resource implications that are required. We readily accept the time and effort put into f2f meetings from the convenor through to the participants, but somehow online we rewrite the rules and expect the same outcomes to be achieved with a fraction of the resource allocation.

Not valuing online work – it isn’t seen so it isn’t valued! Particularly an issues for sponsors of initiatives who have little direct experience and yet exert a great deal of ill informed control.

Fragmented initiatives – organizations work in silos (nothing new about this)

A belief that because it is technologically straight forward to set things up, then it must be organizationally straight forward as well. It isn’t, see change in culture above.

I am sure there are more characteristics……

I listened to a presentation by Dr Pak Yoong using stories fro his past to illustrate his take on communities of practice. Some of what Pak said I could readily agree with when he talked about learning ‘having’ to take place when we step outside of our comfort zone. In Pak’s view this was part of a desire by us to fee comfortable again. I remember a talk by the founder of Yo Sushi (Simon Woodruff) I attended some time ago and he spoke along similar lines although learning wasn’t his theme. For Simon, moving outside his zone of comfort was an intrinsic desire to challenge himself and in dealing with the challenges he felt rewarded. So this may be a way of thinking about how we learn in that some of us seek to put ourselves into a ‘zone of challenge’ whilst others seek to move back to a state where we feel comfortable. For others, an external force is needed to provide the challenge.

Pak also speculated on the notions of ‘Blended’ experiences where face-to-face might support online by increasing the relevance of the experience through a greater level of social presence that can be carried back to the online. Although I wouldn’t disagree that this can happen, from experience I am sure that it is not a prerequisite to learning communities forming.

More interestingly for me, Pak went on to discuss the notion of ‘media switching’. This he explained as the conscious choice of a media for a specific learning purpose. For example, if the intended learning outcome is one of improving strategic decision-making, then an online multimedia simulation might be appropriate. If the intended learning outcome is about developing analytical skills it might be that this is best done through reflective discourse with others and this is effectively done using asynchronous text based conversations. In many ways there is nothing new in this, but the suggestion proposition was that as the infrastructure issues are becoming less and less important, we can start to increasingly make choices based on pedagogy rather than those dictated by the technological possibilities.

This is not the same as my understanding of the notion of ‘media redundancy’ which takes the view that individuals should have choice about the media that they want to use because this best suits their preferred learning style. It does remind me, however, of a recent question in UV about metacognition (the thinking about learning) and how getting learners to a position where through experience and understanding their own learning they can make informed choices about media and genre for specific learning purposes.

First impressions from reading the forward and executive summary of the e-learning strategy (called Harnessing Technology Transforming Learning and Children’s Services) is that it felt to me like a document that everyone could take some comfort from. But perhaps as a result of this I couldn’t say that it made me confident that in its current form it will galvanize the fragmentary and patchy use of e-learning along the lines that the forward to the document seems to describe. Where it talks of transforming teaching and learning, and engaging hard to reach learners……

“Borrowing ideas from the world of interactive games, we can motivate even reluctant learners to practice complex skills and achieve much more than they would through traditional means.” , talks of transforming teaching and learning, and engaging hard to reach learners.

One of the priorities for reform is “A collaborative approach to personalised learning activities” and this suits my own strongly held beliefs well.

And I think also very important, “A leadership and development package for organisational capability in ICT”. It seems to me that this is a recognition that the current ad hoc system of employing enthusiastic teachers or people with a very technical bent to make infrastructure decisions is pretty hopeless.

However, when the discussion in the summary starts the first priority is identified as “to improve everyone’s access to online information, transactions, and advice services” – what about improving student learning and teaching? Shouldn’t that be priority number 1?

The second priority is for me moving in the right direction “giving every student and learner a personal online learning space”. And the recognition that developing a personal identifier is important so that records can be transferred if a little timid in the reading “we will work towards…..”, however “Over time we should see the technology join up better so that this is available to learners to build on wherever they go”.

We then move onto resources “update our standards for pedagogic quality, accessibility and safety”, followed by professional development, leadership, and infrastructure.

So the concern I have is that after the forward and the listed priorities, the document starts to lose the focus on what I believe is the most important factor and that is teaching and learning. It is how the technology is used for this that will determine the impact in the classroom, and although there is talk of rewarding good practice and training for teachers – hopefully not NOF revisited. It might be implied throughout, but I wonder if this is enough.

Still, good luck to them and all of us, at least it is a start and I hope that the we can collectively pull it in the right direction.

I have just read the HEFCE strategy for e-learning document published this week. Nothing particularly stunning in it, but it could be seen as a strong endorsement of the Ultraversity model that we are working on at Ultralab/APU. The document spans a 10 year timeframe and is designed to inform Universities action planning and change management. I have taken pasted some quotes below to give a flavour of the document. Most interestingly for me is the recognition that the “focus on student learning rather than developments in technology per se”. This seems to me to be a recognition that difficult as the technological questions are to ask and answers perhaps even harder are those around people and organisations. In particular organisational change to support e-learning and the changes that are required and in teaching and learning practice of lecturers. Personalisation and choice that are at the heart of the Ultraversity model are also the key drivers for Hefce.

“aim to support the HE sector as it moves towards embedding e-learning appropriately, using technology to transform higher education into a more student-focused and flexible system, as part of lifelong learning for all who can benefit.”

“to enable institutions to meet the needs of learners and their own aspirations for development.”

“ to promote learning research, innovation and development that begin with a focus on student learning rather than on developments in technology per se, enabling students to learn through and be supported by technology.”

“to support lifelong learning by joining up our strategy with those of other sectors of education, enabling connections between academic learning and experiential learning in the workplace and other aspects of life.”

For the workshop, previous blog, we started off using SubEthaEdit for a warm up brainstorm. It worked a treat yet again, both from the point of view of an ice breaker and at getting people to work collaboratively generating a shared document.

We then used the quote below to start a discussion as it illustrates well the false assumptions that are often made about CoP. The sub text to this quote is that when Wenger and Leave were considering what to call their theory, they were careful to steer clear from the word learning. This was because they recognised that not all communities of practice had ‘learning’, or at least what might be considered desirable learning. For example (a bit of a caricature), a group of youths in an inner city school might have a very strong CoP that is based around a culture of not learning or at least learning which might be considered unproductive.

It also illustrates the belief that some form of ‘leadership’ is required to provide the challenge to reflect and learn. It might be that this is multiple leadership with individuals taking on a variety of role. Certainly in Ultraversity we have seen this in action where researchers and learning facilitators take on different roles at different times.

“You cannot assume, again, that a community of practice is reflective, like you cannot assume that people are necessarily reflective on their actions….

You need challenges, whether the challenge is the intention of a trainer who says ‘I am going to make you reflect’, I think a community of practice can take on its own learning and create reflection.”
(Interview with Etienne Wenger, June 2002)

This diagramme below provided the framework for the workshop and some more notes are included in the extended entry.

Continue reading →

I am taking a workshop with a colleague (Anne Trewern) on Tuesday with the title “Emerging trends in online learning communities – challenges of learner centred approaches to lifelong learning.” and have been thinking what we will cover.

I am certain that need to draw out the difference between formal from non-formal learning communities and I think that I also want to try and cover the challenges from the perspectives from people with different roles in these communities. For example, this could include the learning facilitator/researcher relationship in the Ultraversity online degree project, or perhaps facilitators trying to engage participants in non-formal communities in discussions around professional practice. And clearly, we will have to address some of the technological challenges as well.

Anne has just completed a great piece of research into non-formal learning communities for teachers on a programme called Information Communication Technology Professional Development that uses the NCSL Talk2learn software. We will certainly use some of this in the workshop.

I am thinking that the theme that we might develop to hold the workshop together might be that of alignment. There is certainly research evidence that points to importance of stakeholders understanding and agreeing a purpose and the problems that can ensue if this is not the case. Certainly some of the recent experience in have provided me with much food for thought!

So how do those who are tasked with leading these communities make sense of this? Indeed is leadership of these communities a helpful notion at all?