Forum .LRN Q&A: e-learning input JOIN Conference, Sept. 13th/14th 2004, Cologne (Germany)
- a normal teacher/trainer to easily create content structured in learning objects and learning modules, not text only (something to move around drag & drop or do other actions, so that the learning experience is “not all the same style” and is encouraging for the student)
- teachers/trainers to take a look at the content but also have the comments of their pears, especially if the content worked in a similar environment before:
“In what environment was this used before”/ “What kind of questions did you ask to the students?”/ “What kind of answers did they give?”/ “What was the overall experience/success of the learning unit?”etc.
- A self testing environment for the student: something that gives them the correct answer, has to retype the correct input directly afterwards and (hopefully) gives the correct answer the next time.
- The teacher/trainer role to be divided in writing material and tutoring as the individuals have different strengthes
- an offline part of the training process, e.g. “printout this simulation scenario, go to your group rooms and perform the simulation, come back in 120 min. and type in your findings in the attached survey” (start in online modus – change to offline modus – structured input online modus afterwards – results)
The participants mostly believe in a bottom-up approach for the content. Content is created on the teacher/trainer level and gets recognized to be good in a later stage (, then gets improved) and then used on a general level. In a later stage it gets updated.
Two other topics that are important are (a) license agreements for content (fair deal) and a system solution to deal with this (b) the MUST to be SCORM compliant for the private sector,as this the only way for them to ensure that their expensive trainings can be also used in the future.
Thanks very much for the report, and I think I recognize the line of questioning.
I'm trying to go one step further, away from a course replacement model to something more interactive and community-oriented -- at least as I understand it. I've gotten there, I think, by respecting the difference between administrators who would like to substitute capital for labor, and not incidentally, weaken, deskill, and depoliticize the faculty in the process, and strengthening the academic seminar, which I am taking to be the heart (at least for the social sciences and the humanities that concern me) of the university.
Moreover, I am trying to give them good reasons to invest in learning how to use Dotlrn and the means to do so so that they will seize it as their own, or "own" it, and so guide how the technology is being used.
As you will see by the comments on the use of the survey and the discussion of formative evaluations below, I want to get as far away from the "message in the marketable bottle" as I can and towards something that students and faculty alike, and together, will find immediately rewarding and useful.
I add this because I think Dotlrn's marketing advantage does not lie in making and marketing "learning objects" and so competing head on with Blackboard. I think Dotlrn's advantage is, or would be, much more warm and fuzzy, closer to Moodle's look and feel, in its respect for group spaces and communications functions that strengthen learning communities.
OK, so here's my solicitation, and I'd love to hear some comments on it and/or see how others are soliciting users:
"I believe the technology can help the seminar by:
1) Removing routine administrative tasks to the platform, such as providing online access to texts, presenting the course syllabus and other basic information, and notifying students of new information in the manner of the bulletin board. What I would help you to do is figure out how to do this in a way that would cost you limited time but yield time and energy savings. We may find that putting texts online costs too much time and energy and so skip to the next step and this is fine: we will subject all of this to a cost/benefit analysis and do only what makes sense.
2) Intensifying the seminar, by helping students and faculty prepare for it through the use of study questions presented a day or two before the class and offering a survey which students may respond to and which faculty and students might review beforehand and direct the seminar accordingly.
For example, you might post a survey question asking about student prior knowledge of a topic and so be able to begin the class by determining what students know, what they might be unsure of, and with a brief discussion of the survey results at the start of the class, where you might direct the discussion next. You would not be burdened with “correcting” dozens of answers, but instead, have only to survey them briefly and discuss them with students: by design, these would be “formative” evaluations designed to help you improve student learning and not “summative” evaluations for a grade.
Similarly, after the class you might ask about "the muddiest point" and so benefit from timely feedback. When set up carefully, these activities should take little time (5-10 minutes responding, 5-10 minutes discussing) and yield considerable benefit. You would save time by identify what people know and so be free to spend more time on what they don't know. Here, too, we subject everything to a cost/benefit analysis: we would help you find a way to design good questions, post them effortlessly, and evaluate them to your, and your students, satisfaction.
3) Extending the seminar, by designing group activities between classes that may also be reported online -- the online Referat. Here, a literature review or guided discussion of contentious issues on the forum could be designed to give students an opportunity to deepen their learning, practice making presentations, and reviewing each other's work such that they arrive in the next class ready to discuss the question "ok, so what did you learn from each other?".
This approach is far different from course or instructor replacement models. Our goal here is to strengthen the seminar and improve learning. We do this by helping you do what you already do well even better, and we do so by strengthening communications and the learning community. Experience has shown that the routine posting of study questions, for example, can help “fine tune” the syllabus, clarify teaching and learning goals, provide timely feedback, create opportunities for remedy, demonstrate instructor commitment, increase learning and learner satisfaction, reduce student attrition, increase course completion rates, etc. There is a rich research literature supporting these claims, and I’ve assembled some it on my website at: http://home.arcor.de/civici01a/programming/elearning_principles.htm.
The implementation model I am designing is incremental and associated with the research seminar. This means, you need not do more than one small exercise in a given week, take care to evaluate it even if briefly, and do so as part of our research operation. If you are interested, I could assign one of our "learning designers" to meet with you, work out most of the details, and so leave you with an executive function: forming study questions, reviewing results, and discussing them with your students: we would do most of the rest of the work. You would then have a supportive “sounding board” for your work and access to ongoing research and support. We will be compiling and eventually publishing a "Handbook for E-learning" that translates the results of these experiments into a workbook form such that you might survey tried and tested techniques and appropriate them for your own purposes. If you prefer, I would work with you directly.
Finally, I should add that my strategy here is not to replace the seminar by robots, but to empower the faculty by helping them understand the technology and what it can do to the point that they “own” it and so may take a more active role in future e-learning design and resource allocation."
