Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Tim Hunt發表於
Number of replies: 43
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http://www.transformingassessment.com/moodle/calendar/view.php?view=day&cal_d=5&cal_m=11&cal_y=2014

I have no way of knowing if it will acutally be interesting, but it certainly looks like it should be:

Presenter: Brant Knutzen, University of Hong Kong 

Have you ever designed a great forum discussion activity, but your students didn't engage and your hopes for group collaboration and knowledge construction were dashed?

This seminar will demonstrate several new tools to help you achieve 100% participation in your online discussions, the foundation for effective collaboration and communicative learning. The Participation Forum is a customized module which sets up "semi-private" group discussion areas and then automatically awards points for participation. The Participation Map is a learning analytic tool which generates a visual display of student interactivity in the forum discussion as well as providing group and forum-level statistics that quantify activity. The Participation Glossary is a customised module which automatically awards points for each new term that a student contributes, and also supports peer ratings.

The first half hour of the seminar will review the pedagogy and instructional design of the tools, and the remaining half hour will offer all attendees the chance to try them out in a hands-on workshop environment. These new teaching tools have been developed and tested on all Moodle 2 versions, and are currently in production use at the University of Hong Kong on Moodle ver 2.6.1+. 

The start time will be 07:00 UST/GMT (duration 1 hour approx).

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

timely.

Was chatting with a colleague other day about moodle/web 1/web 2....left me thinking about static/interactive functionality -specifically in ref to forums.....bla bla bla..........

Anyway....if I don't get to see this on time (Tues)...it says it will be made public thereafter.....will take a look-sounds very interesting and will post my thoughts here...be good if others might do so too.

Cheers,

Dawn

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於
... help you achieve 100% participation in your online discussions, the foundation for effective collaboration and communicative learning.

The pedagogy and instructional design aspects should be interesting as there are some clear challenges.

100% participation is arguably hardly the foundation for effective collaboration and communicative learning. Individuals may have different styles of collaboration and communication and not everyone is necessarily the most effective by active participation in a forum. The moodle.org forums are but one example that effectiveness doesn't require 100% participation.

Awarding points for participation is likely to increase the quantity but not the quality. One's effective engagement begins with an opportunity to respond or imitate others' effective engagement. Insofar as the instructor is supposed to instruct what should be learned, we may expect the instructor to make substantial forum contributions that learners can imitate, but this rarely happens. Still, even highly engaged instructors cannot guarantee quality participation from every participant as there are many other factors that affect the overall.

It can thus be argued that from pedagogical and instructional design perspectives, achieving 100% participation in online discussion just for the purpose of participation is not necessarily an important learning objective.

These challenges do not necessarily diminish the prospective (or proved) usefulness of the presented tools. But they may suggest that their usefulness lies elsewhere.

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Thanks for sharing Tim,

It looks interesting and here may be some useful tools for teachers/mediators/facilitators to keep track and maybe get overviews of what's happening in their forum discussions.

On the quality of learning, I'm with Itamar - quantity doesn't equal quality and high-stakes grading on discussions may even do some harm.

I think a more productive question should be how to go beyond the well-worn "one forum post and two comments" formula. How do we get meaningful, engaging discussions going that draw learners in to wrestle with complex issues, share their thoughts and views, take risks, and especially engage with each others' thoughts and ideas in constructive and critical ways, rather than the all too common "pathological politeness" we tend to get from novice learners, even at graduate levels?

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於
I think a more productive question should be how to go beyond the well-worn "one forum post and two comments" formula.

Is this a more productive question?

It brings to mind the question "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" aka "Gettier Problem" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem). Not so much for the philosophical problem, but rather for what it can teach us about the value of really good "one forum post and two comments". "Is Justified Treu Belief Knowledge?" is a 1963 3-page paper that shook the foundations of an established concept of konwledge credited to Plato (~ 400 BCE). It triggerred much discussion and followups which many career works failed to acheive. And it has been said to be Gettier's one and only important contribution throughout his academic career.

This suggests that the problem is often not in the formula but in how the formula is used.

How do we get meaningful, engaging discussions going that draw learners in to wrestle with complex issues, share their thoughts and views, take risks, and especially engage with each others' thoughts and ideas in constructive and critical ways, rather than the all too common "pathological politeness" we tend to get from novice learners, even at graduate levels?

There is a trivial answer to this question. The instructor/facilitator/learner has to wrestle with the same in the same context of the other target learners. Even then meaningful engagement will be only marginal. One reason for the latter is that the all too common "pathological politeness", as you put it, is merely another name for the mean of the common "bell curve" or normal distribution of pretty much evertything we do. How many Sheldon Cooper can there be?

微笑

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Dualistic views of epistemology (i.e. objective knowledge that exists apart from people, culture, etc.) were challenged by Vygotsky et al. (1978, 2012), who claimed that, from a materialist psychology view, knowledge is a dialectical social construct.

And remember, Moodle is founded on sociocultural principles ;)

References

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (2012). Thought and Language. MIT Press.

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於

Yes, well, neither Vygotsky's view of knowledge nor Moodle's foundations nor your reference to both actually address the issues I raise in my comment. Should this be attributed to the fact that your replay was posted at 1:53 AM? (we are in the same time zone aren't we?) 微笑

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Hi Itamar,

Re: "we are in the same time zone aren't we?" -- I'm in GMT -5 (near Toronto).

Re: "neither Vygotsky's view of knowledge nor Moodle's foundations nor your reference to both actually address the issues I raise in my comment." -- Actually, they do but not in a direct, explicit way. Sorry for the vague response.

To summarise the dualistic vs. dialectic distinction: Socrates, Plato (in particular), Aristotle, etc. all the way to Descartes, et al, believed in the idea of objective knowledge apart from our physical world, the idea of knowledge that is "higher-order" than the things that it describes. In Plato's republic he describes the idea of the chair being of the highest order and "most pure" version of "chair", i.e. the concept of chair. All physical chairs are incomplete, imperfect copies. Likewise, according to Descartes, consciousness, the thing that we use to think and reason with (the voice inside our heads), is ourselves - the "real" us, and that our bodies are merely vessels that transport us and obey our will and commands, like a ghost inside a machine. In other words, there's a conscious me and a physical me, AKA the Cartesian dualism, "I think therefore I am." In this view of epistemology knowledge is objective, exists outside of ourselves, and the "truths" of knowledge are transmitted, whole and intact, from one person to another.

Marx and other materialist philosophers reject this idea. They claim that the concept of "chair" is simply a categorisation (categories are abstract generalisations) that we've constructed (invented) in order to group all the objects in our (subjective) experiences. Chairs also fall into larger, more general categories such as furniture and some chairs fall into sub-categories such as things made of wood or things made of metal and plastic. Different cultures may categorise their experiences of the world differently, which is what gives rise to different languages, languages are social constructs that reflect the cultures they emerge from. The emergence of culture and language is dialectical, one reciprocally building upon the other, and culture and language are emergent, complex, adaptive systems.

In this sense, all knowledge is constructed socially, hence social constructivism. There is no objective knowledge, only culture and the experiences we choose to categorise and share. In order to acquire knowledge, we need to categorise our experiences, develop abstract generalisations of them and represent them as signs/symbols, to the degree that we can use those signs/symbols with other people in our culture (family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, enemies, etc.) to share our experiences, thoughts, opinions, views, and intentions for the purposes of cooperation and collaboration in service of our lives.

So, in online learning, discussion forums and/or webinars are seen as one of the vital, core activities for the construction of knowledge. Are one post and two comments enough to sufficiently generate and develop useful, shareable abstract generalisations?

For a very brief summary of the materialist concept of why we've developed languages, see the Vygotskian Intelligence Hypothesis (Moll & Tomasello, 2000).

I hope this clarifies my previous post.

Reference

Moll, H., Tomasello, M. (2000). Cooperation and human cognition: the Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Published online. Retrieved from: http://email.eva.mpg.de/~tomas/pdf/Moll_PhilosTransact_07.pdf

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於 

Re: "neither Vygotsky's view of knowledge nor Moodle's foundations nor your reference to both actually address the issues I raise in my comment." --Actually, they do but not in a direct, explicit way. Sorry for the 
vague response.

No they don't, and it's my bad as I clearly did not make a clear point in the original reply, so let me try to clarify it here.

The first point was your statement that we may need to go beyond what you identified as 

the well-worn "one forum post and two comments" formula.

My challenge was that one's one forum post and two comments may be far more constructive than another's one hundred posts and many more comments. The Gettier anecdote was merely to illustrate this point, in the sense that Gettier triggered a lot more discussion and production (research papers) with his tiny paper, than did many others who wrote and published many more and much longer papers and books.

Come to think of it, maybe your statement meant something entirely different. Maybe you wanted to ask how can we go beyond the all too familiar result of one forum post and two comments whenever we try to have students engage in a discussion activity. For me this would be a result rather than a formula, albeit the result of an extensively used formula "add a forum activity and tell the students to engage". And this is actually better related to the second question you raise and the second point I made in my reply.

The formula "add a forum activity and tell the students to engage" has never been particularly useful but it is still being used extensively for all sorts of reasons, mainly wrong reasons. This discussion thread has started with a proposal for an enhancement to this old formula, in the form of auto grading as an incentive which should generate more participation. I've challenged that proposal by suggesting while such incentive would likely generate more posts but would not necessarily generate useful posts for the learners.

Hopefully it is now clearer that the issues I raised about the views of use of forums do not depend on which view of knowledge one holds.

微笑

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於
To summarise the dualistic vs. dialectic distinction: Socrates, Plato (in particular), Aristotle, etc. all the way to Descartes, et al, ...

Consider a bit more elaborated classification that can be more interesting as it may reveal some important considerations.

A. "Radical" objectivist
Concepts, ideas, principles (knowledge) are objective in the sense that they exist in some incorporeal realm, independently of us. They exist whether or not we exist and can not be changed by us.
B. Material objectivist
Concepts, ideas, principles (knowledge) are objective in the sense that they are fixed by nature and cannot be changed by us, but they exist only as embodiments and material essences of material things.
C. Constructivist
Concepts, ideas, principles (knowledge) are subjective (as opposed to objective) in the sense that they are dependent on one's drives, desires and wants which are under one's control and can be changed. From this follows that one makes one's own knowledge.
D. "Radical" skeptic
A natural extension of the Constructivist view according to which since there is no objective knowledge and anything goes, there is no knowledge at all.


The views of all the thinkers you mention are far more complex than lending themselves easily to this or that category. But generally speaking, Socrates and Plato can be classified as radical objectivists. Aristotle and Marx are rather material objectivists as they maintained that things have objective natures. Descartes was an objectivist, like most scientists, but his view cannot easily fit into the radical or the material categories. As  a side note, the notion "I think therefore I am" does not mean "there's a conscious me and a physical me". It is rather an argument to prove logically his incorporeal existence and the conclusion is drawn before proving the existence of the material substance.

More importantly, if you depict social constructivism as subjective construction of knowledge, you can easily fall into relativism and radical skepticism and the nihilism of knowledge, which might not very interesting. The social is rather redundant here as it is not particularly reserved for constructivism. You can be social objectivist just the same. The difference would be only that you would be collaborating in studies of objective knowledge.

Are one post and two comments enough to sufficiently generate and develop useful, shareable abstract generalizations? They could be, as illustrated by the Gettier anecdote, so this is clearly not the right question, and at any rate, it is hardly related to the classification of knowledge either in your terms or in mine.

微笑

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Colin Matheson發表於

Hi Imar and Matt,

I have been following this interesting discussion and thought I might as well jump in. I really feel it is important to separate philosophical definitions of knowledge from pedagogical definitions of learning. Philosophy treats knowledge in terms of what can be known, what can be true. Pedagogy is usually concerned with how do we best transmit what is known to learners. Of course even as I say that the philosophical question arises: Can you transmit knowledge? Is knowledge a thing that in two separate brains has the same character or is each person's brain's representation of the same fact actually a unique entity. However, I guess my take is that philosophical conversations of knowledge are only useful to an educational setting IF they can inform instruction (which is really only possible if there is educational research about the effectiveness of different educational methods which rely on different philosophies of knowledge).

So I feel there is fairly strong evidence that knowledge is tied to the context in which it is learned. This leads one to believe that the social constructivist theory of learning is correct. However it really doesn't matter if the theory is correct so much as it matters that if I want learners to understand math in such a way as to apply it in their lives I will need to have them learn math in a way that applies to their lives. If I want learners to write in order to effectively communicate their ideas to others, then I must teach them to write by having them communicate their ideas to other. There could be other more philosophically/logically-sound theories of knowledge but what is their role in informing instruction?

Perhaps there is no such thing as true knowledge, but that really isn't the question most educators are grappling with. The question for educators is: we have some desired knowledge (whether or not this knowledge can truly be proven to exist, or is in fact a falsehood, or was implanted by an evil trickster, etc.) and skills that our learners need, how do we get them to learn and demonstrate that knowledge and those skills.

In that context the 1 post/2 replies does not result in effective learning for many students and so diving into how to structure forums more effectively is always a worthy task.

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In reply to Colin Matheson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於

Let's take the term 'philosophy' and all its cognates out of this discussion then.

Let's examine what you say you ought to do.

... if I want learners to understand math in such a way as to apply it in their lives I will need to have them learn math in a way that applies to their lives.
If you want learners to apply math in their lives, you need to have them apply math in their lives. Why do you need to talk about understanding as if it has some general notion that applies to everyone, especially when you reject any sense of objectivity? Context goes all the way down to the personal level. Can you really know if and how I understand something, or are you just judging my "understanding" by whether I was able to demonstrate the execution of one or more specific tasks according to a certain set of criteria? If the latter, then tell me what I need to do and how I should assess my performance, demonstrate to me how you do it, and be around to offer help if I need any. 


If I want learners to write in order to effectively communicate their ideas to others, then I must teach them to write by having them communicate their ideas to other.

Yet another example of the same. Since you reject objecitivity, 'effectively communicate' is meaningless and hence useless as a learning directive until you put it in a well defined context and give a detailed operational definition of the communication that needs to be demonstrated, when it is effective and when it is not. The details should be sufficient to allow the average learner to self assess the effectiveness of his/her communication. For instance, you can say that if one gets 4 likes on a forum post, that's effective communication. Now the learner can do all kinds of things in order to get those 4 likes, well beyond your prescribed textbook or class notes. That may include bribing classmates. Are you ok with that? Maybe not, but it may be something you need to account for if you want learners to understand effective communication in such a way as to apply it in their lives.

微笑

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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I do believe that the main concern of educators and learning and teaching theory and practice is HOW learners acquire knowledge and how best to support it. In that sense, I'm in agreement with Colin.

A common thread running through the seminars and presentations that I find myself nodding along to seems to be that the technological solutions and activity rubrics as they're commonly presented to us, e.g. flipped classrooms, clickers, and threaded discussion forums, are not in and of themselves the solutions at all. They're merely the platforms and tools that can help us to implement pedagogical solutions.

Let's take one-post-and-two-comments in online discussion forums as an example. How would that look in a face-to-face classroom? If the teacher says to the class, "We're going to discuss X. Say one thing and then comment on what two of your classmates have said." How effective would that be? Where's the purpose? Why are they making statements, asking questions, and commenting? How do technology or activity rubrics tell learners (and teachers!) why they're doing what they've been asked to do?

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Colin Matheson發表於

I agree with you Matt that too often the adoption of tech by teachers isn't accompanied with a rethinking of teaching methods. I always saw tech as a lever in which to effect change in my class (e.g. allowing more diverse assessments, more student choice, increasing the complexity of the tasks I asked students to do) all in the hopes of shaking up the box of behaviors that is stereotypically "school" and trying to mix it with the box of behaviors typically called "the real world".

I am definitely convinced by situated learning and social constructivism. I have seen students in advanced math doing multiple polynomial factoring, but then in science class unable to plot points on a graph. Some people argue that is due to the breadth vs depth approach to covering material so that even thought the students learned how to plot points in math at a younger age, the coverage was very superficial and they didn't reuse the skill regularly in later math classes. I do believe there is some truth to classes focusing on discrete bits of knowledge instead of trying to achieve a general, multifacted "understanding" (literacy/numeracy) in which students could reason within the discipline being taught. However in order to achieve that holy grail of understanding, the context of the learning must be one in which learners are expected to reason within the discipline. This is where an online forum can shine. Having students reason in a public space where they can engage with others reasoning. There is a lot of movement in math education around number talks, and having students write to explain how they solved a problem. Of course how do we get students to actually engage in critically thinking about a topic and to engage with the thinking of their peers? As Itamar points out, we can just see a set of outcomes and we assume it is due to understanding and meaningful engagement. We really don't know and hence the 1 post/2 replies formula (or the 4 likes formula, or the 250 words formula).

I am a big believer in the maxim that a brain is what it does. Brains take stimulus and output responses. As we learn we make certain output pathways more strongly favored and others are weakened. When presented with a new stimulus it is difficult for us to use another well defined pathway. We do have some ability to generalize our response with new stimuli, but I think that we overestimate that ability. So really all we can say when we have students successfully perform an online discussion task in class is that the students have learned how to participate in an online discussion in out class. 深思的

Itamar as you point out the best teacher should:

"tell me what I need to do and how I should assess my performance, demonstrate to me how you do it, and be around to offer help if I need any."

However, that simple formula seems to get very complicated, how do you assess a complex task like the ability to apply numerical reasoning to new situations? You don't, you assess several discrete attempts at reasoning and hope that those point to a general ability. Also when you do the assessment you are looking for reasoning so you might ask a student to show their work or explain their thinking. You are also looking for a correct answer. All of these could be false positives of understanding of false negatives of a lack of understanding. Also how do you demonstrate/model internal tasks like reasoning in complex situations? Finally how do you help a stuck student? Usually teachers just slowly do each step of the problem and say "Do you understand?" and watch as the student nods his/her head. And then the problem is practically done. Students are very good learners about what behaviors get them through school successfully 大笑 (whether or not that is actually the aim of school)

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In reply to Colin Matheson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Re: "This is where an online forum can shine. Having students reason in a public space where they can engage with others reasoning."

I think online forums take away as much as they give. Yes, they have some beneficial effects, e.g. it's easier for less assertive learners to make themselves heard and contribute to discussions, as well as giving more time to learners to think, reflect and process their peers' contributions, and that writing out our thoughts, ideas, and opinions can be more reflective and well considered/thought through (not in everyone's case!).

On the other hand, asynchronous formats like threaded discussion forums lack the immediacy and rapid to-and-fro that I've observed in genuine knowledge construction in face-to-face settings, e.g. pair and group work on tasks and problems. In my view, forums are better for the more final, already well-formed stages of knowledge construction rather than the initial stages where learners seem to need an immediacy and intensity of bouncing ideas back and forth, voicing ideas that aren't yet well-formed, hearing themselves say it (private or self-speech but in the presence of their peers), maybe hearing snippets of their peers' private/self-speech and responding/reacting to that, etc. It may be that knowledge construction via asynchronous formats is just too much hard work, e.g. formulating your thoughts into written sentences, re-engaging with peers after periods of time away from the discussion, and the lack of other more intuitive and affective cues from our interlocutors/conversation partners, to be effective in many cases. WHEN and FOR WHAT are forums effective and when and for what are they not?

Adding to this, I doubt that video conferencing is as effective for promoting knowledge co-creation either. Like telephone conversations, they tend to be more transactional with a lot less private/self-speech. I also wonder if seeing our interlocutor/conversation partner on a video screen, e.g. on Skype, but never being able to make eye contact with them, because we're either looking at their face OR at the webcam, has a distracting/disconcerting effect on us.

BTW, here's an example of what I mean by knowledge co-creation by learners in pairs and groups in one of Eric Mazur's classes at Harvard: (running time 8:12).



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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

hopefully wedged my post in between Matt and Itamar here.  A number of things then both.

1.  Do you ever get the feeling both-that whatever is posted on these forums at moodle.org some others always seem to be closed to others' ideas....you know the jack russell type to-ing and fro-ing?  I do..and well, sometimes it is hard to engage with that when it all sounds uninformed.

2. I mean, Matt nice link to the chap's lecture...but there is nothing new there...honestly, really-when did you last give a lecture to a large audience of students?  I mean we all know about walking up and down the aisles-and how to engage students in lecture theatres via paired/group inquiry-stepping forward/back-meddling -providing provocations and letting them lead the learning and so on....and as constraining as it can be...we have our own pedagogy-a voice-to motivate and engage 'with' students..as well as techy tools....and so on

3. Itamar...I fail to see how you can call that an LO-honestly!  And what you refer to as measuring outcomes well I think you will need a thousand questions in a quiz for that LO....never mind an ILO-there is a difference, in that....the students demo your intentional learning outcomes as well as the peripheral LOs....

4. I am sorry to sound rude-but oh please....if we are going to discuss such stuff-please can it at least be realistic?        

5. Forums for online learning and teaching...surely we are attempting that here........I want to learn and teach here....not observe discourse entrenched with 'I am right-you got me wrong-one-up-manship goings on'.....I mean.....how ironic we are talking about forums for engagement in online L&T as practitioners and yet we have what I can only call tittle tattle among the lads......oh come on........

6. For me Forums have a lot of catching up to do now that we have Twitter-it is that simple for me  at the moment....but I am open to challenge and change-if anyone can be realistic about the pragmatics here

Cheers,

Dawn

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In reply to dawn alderson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於
3. Itamar...I fail to see how you can call that an LO-honestly!  And what you refer to as measuring outcomes well I think you will need a thousand questions in a quiz for that LO....never mind an ILO-there is a difference, in that....the students demo your intentional learning outcomes as well as the peripheral LOs....

Dawn, I call that LO only because it appears in a course syllabus as LO. And we are likely to find more such statements as LOs in course syllabi, than anything else. As should be clear from my post I wouldn't have something like that as LO in my courses. And yes, for what I refer to as measuring outcomes I do have thousands of questions in the question bank by way of variation and the quizzes are composed of random subsets to the effect that each student has a unique set of questions in each quiz. And this requires a lot of work on my part. But then I can assign weekly quizzes and then a final exam from the same question bank so that the final assessment will have exactly the same type of problems in the same structure and the same tools as what has been practiced weekly. I don't think that the distinction between intentional and peripheral is useful in any way, neither for me nor for my students. In a well structured course there should be no more than 3-4 problem types which the student would learn to solve and would be expected to solve in the final proctored assessment. The description of the problem types and solving strategies is effectively the description of the learning outcomes. Anything else is irrelevant and shouldn't be part of the learning outcomes and assessment although it may be part of the course for enrichment of experience for those 3 students who have extra time. Any mapping of practical learning outcomes to postulated cognitive faculties according to this or that taxonomy is gratuitous. It is not likely to have any effect on the actual performance of the learners.

微笑

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Itamar, thank you for that explanation.

Scuse me I am eating a juicy carrot here!

Right-got you.

One thing....what does this mean please-you have lost me and now I have an itch about it 微笑

RE:

Any mapping of practical learning outcomes to postulated cognitive faculties according to this or that taxonomy is gratuitous. It is not likely to have any effect on the actual performance of the learners.

D

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於

Matt, what you find yourself nodding along to, that "technological solutions and activity rubrics are merely the platforms and tools that can help us to implement pedagogical solutions", only makes your position inconsistent and thus untenable, and from there all the difficulties arise.

The technological platform is an integral part of every context (or situation) of what we do. It conditions the context to such extent that for all practical purposes different platforms constitute different contexts even in apparently similar problem domains. There is no more point in asking how one-post-and-two-comments in online discussion forums would look in a face-to-face classroom, than in asking how light would look in dark. It would not. It cannot. Online and offline discussions are distinct contexts, each one make use of things that do not come into play in the other. And while some aspects of the end result may seem similar in some abstract level, the particulars remain different in important aspects which depend on the particular ways in which they are constructed. Moving between different contexts of an apparently similar problem domain is not a trivial task but rather a problem domain of itself.

The crux of this matter is that the hidden false premise you share with many other educators, namely that the technology is just a tool, is probably the main cause for assessment misalignment which results in poor learners performance and baffled educators.

The hidden premise and its effects are evident in a talk titled "Memorizing or Understanding: Are we teaching the right thing?" that was given by Eric Mazur at Queen's University in 2011. In the talk Dr. Mazur describes his bafflement over his premed students' success in solving problems when given in the textbook conceptual and terminological framework, and failure in solving the same (in his view) problems when given in a completely different conceptual and terminological framework that was not covered in the textbook or in class. He proceeds to make a couple of problematic distinctions. First, he distinguishes between the textbook description and the other description, as conventional vs. conceptual. But of course, neither framework is more or less conventional or conceptual than the other. These are different languages which depict the presumed same physical reality in different terms and concepts. Then Dr. Mazur tries to explain the learners' performance by the distinction that appears in the title of the talk, namely, memorizing vs. understanding. And the explanation is that the students were successful in solving the "conventional" problems because they memorized the textbook strategies for solving such problems, but unsuccessful in solving the "conceptual" problems because they did not understand the concepts. Of course, an unbiased reader who is well-versed in the common learning taxonomies would immediately object that acquiring a strategy for problem solving is hardly memorization and should rather be characterized as the higher cognitive faculty of application. So the distinction doesn't work from the outset. And then not instructing the problems in the other conceptual framework but expecting the students to somehow master it, is hardly a problem with the students' understanding (whatever understanding is). It is as absurd as saying that a non-French speaker who wishes to buy a baguette doesn't understand what he wants to buy just because the storekeeper in the French village looked at him in puzzlement when he requested one in English.

Dr. Mazur also describes how he added to the course, instruction in problem solving in the other framework (in the form of PI) and how performance in the assessment improved as a result. Dr. Mazur then concludes: "So better understanding leads to better problem solving!". But he is mislead by his own faulty distinctions. The conclusion should rather be: "Aligned instruction and assessment results in aligned performance!".

So, with respect to the false premise, you are in a highly distinguished company. But the premise is still false and it only generates confusion and bafflement where there shouldn't be.

Here is the talk: http://www.queensu.ca/ctl/resources/videos/mazur.html. Highly entertaining. Enjoy!

微笑

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Hi Itamar,

i appreciate your arguments in your last post and I agree with you on much of them. However, I think you addressed unjustly literal interpretations of my comments. I at no point claimed that face-to-face and online learning situations are the same (the forum/discussion example) and later I argued that the medium may have a profound effect on how learners interact with each other and how they construct their understandings.

I've also expressed my interest in situated cognition which should go some way to show that I am aware of the effects of context on learning.

I believe your last post is what they might call a straw-man argument: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman (I love this website!)

Essentially, my point is that it isn't the tools that make the important difference in learning outcomes, it's how those tools are used. The comparison between face-to-face and online forums was meant as an illustration of how unproductive one-post-and-two-comments is in any context. And yet teachers continue to use it.

BTW, Eric Mazur has 10 years' worth of data from a variety of academic institutions that show his approach and methods are highly effective (Crouch & Mazur, 2001). The principles of peer instruction have also been implemented in other areas of discipline including philosophy (other end of the spectrum?). This is an example of one of the few educational interventions that has been repeated by other researchers, in other contexts and settings, under different conditions, and has still returned comparable outcomes (A rarity in psychological research and especially rare in educational research). The learning gains appear to be almost on a par with Piagetian programmes in K-12 education, one of the most effective approaches devised and measured so far.

Reference

Crouch, C. H.,  Mazur, E. (2001). Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results, 69 (9). American Journal of Physics Teachers.

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Itamar Tzadok發表於

Well, I argue that the "tool" makes the important difference in learning outcomes.

Here is another illustration of this point.

Consider the following learning outcome (an actual LO from an actual course given this term):

recognize and define musical concepts and elements in Western music

This LO is likely to generate a serious misalignment because it doesn't specify 'how' (the "tool" by means of which) it should be demonstrated for evaluation. Is it going to be by multiple-choice one-answer type questions? Or by short answer type questions? These are two different technologies which involve different strategies and require different forms of practice and preparation. If the instructor does not commit to the how, students may find themselves doing multiple-choice quizzes during the course and short-answer questions in the final exam. And this will inevitably affect the learners' performance. And even if the instructor commits to one question type throughout, students may be asked to answer the questions online during the course but with pen&paper in the final exam. And this too will inevitably affect the learners' performance. Note that there is no issue here with how we use the online quiz or the pen&paper one, but rather with instructing with one tool and assessing with another where the tools make an important difference.

The problem with Mazur's premed students' performance was not the lack of PI but the lack of aligned instruction and assessment. While PI may have further advantages, adding a proper textbook for the other conceptual and terminological framework could have eliminated the misalignment and thereby solved the performance issue just as well.

微笑

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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From what I've seen and read of Mazur's principles and practices, I don't think he's addressed constructive alignment (Biggs, 2011) at all. I haven't heard him say much explicitly about assessment practices except some examples he's given where learners had very similar final exams to the kinds of "word problems" they were doing in class.

Dan Meyer gives an (overly long) talk on problems with word problems in K-12 math education here: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2014/why-students-hate-word-problems/ (running time: 1:02:33).

He does, however, talk extensively about word problems. And this, he claims, exposes some of the problems with lecture-based education models. The most famous word problems being those where interviewers asked Ivy League graduates to (erroneously) explain their understanding of things like how the seasons work:

(running time: 1:49)

When reframed in this way, questions aimed at eliciting understandings of math, physics, biology, and other disciplines expose the lack of processing sense-making that occurs in traditional lecture formats, which Mazur claims is why learners have problems in generalising concepts and making them available for use (in their minds) in other contexts. In this instance, Biggs' SOLO Taxonomy http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/solo-taxonomy/ is probably a more appropriate than Bloom's.

I indirectly mentioned this in a recent article I posted on my blog:

"However, it's more complicated than that. The learner also has to have a sufficient grasp of the language and linguistic reasoning concepts that we use to reason our way through and make sense of mathematical concepts and ideas. Children can only manage the complex, logical reasoning required for areas of mathematics when they've acquired the linguistic skills to manage and direct their thinking in this way. In this respect, language is the tool that we use to think with." (Bury, 2014).

References

Biggs, J. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Buckingham: Open University Press/McGraw Hill.

Bury, M. D. (2014). A limitation of direct instruction and what we can do about it. Retrieved from: http://blog.matbury.com/2014/09/08/a-limitation-of-direct-instruction-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Matt, hi (sending a big hug 微笑

Now, I must say, I love it that you find some amazing stuff to support your points...and I did laugh at that last vid.  And, I give on  scale of 1-10 a big 9 for that blog entry....really nice points....I understand and actually agree on many points there.  Thank you for sharing that.

Now do remember  9 on my scale is far away from vomit....so you have really done well there (LOLs).

Seriously, I enjoyed reading your work.

thanks again.

Dawn 

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Colin Matheson發表於
I am going to write my post in three threads 微笑

Hi Matt,

I was a science teacher for a while and saw that Harvard video in my teaching credential class on teaching science. It is a classic example of a few key points in learning (especially in science). I also am a huge Dan Meyer fan. (though I have a general problem with teaching math)

1. Observation of a phenomenon is not enough to generate understanding (so don't just show students a demo of a flashlight shining on the earth and assume they understand how that applies to seasons)

2. Previously held misconceptions can block new learning. If you heard informally some false information about the seasons, or if your "common-sense" internal reasoning is actually wrong, you have to first unlearn the wrong information before you can effectively learn the right information.

3. You can learn something and actually pass a class with that knowledge, but let time pass and the information may not be retrievable. This is especially true if the method to retrieve the information-verbal informal interview-is different than the method previously used to retrieve the information-written test.

4. Education is not a general process. You can be a highly skilled graduate in one subject and know next to nothing about another subject.

However, there is no way of knowing if these students had been taught in a more student centered/peer discussion way if they would have all been able to answer the question correctly. I think they would have if at least because they would have had to talk about science more during school and so would be better able to talk about it years later.

Also discussions seem to be a better way of combating misconceptions. Perhaps because there is a social component, perhaps because there is a linguistic component. Perhaps because there is a competitive aspect.


Hi Dawn,

I think this discussion is actually showing effective forum use in action. If I were teaching a class about online learning I would hope for a discussion just like this. The fact that we are engaging in this discussion voluntarily means that we have internalized the importance of thinking about our practice. I wonder what in our education produced that? Perhaps it is also the nature of an effective community. You mention twitter and I have tried to read and engage in discussions of this nature on twitter and they have all been much less satisfying to me than Moodle.org forums.


Hi Itamar,

I cautiously agree with you that the tool can influence the ability to measure the learning objectives. I agree because I have already mentioned my support of Situated Learning (young apprentice tailors can do math better when the problems deal with lengths of cloth).  However, lets take a generic learning objecting:

Students will understand how DNA codes for proteins.

Otherwise I could say:
Students will be able to type 1 paragraph and answer 5-10 multiple choice questions in an online LMS about how DNA codes for proteins.

Adding the method of assessment doesn't seem to really change much. I am probably being too simplistic in my interpretation of your argument, so help me understand your perspective.

Thinking about your argument made me realize that if I were to write a perfectly true learning objective for general education science classes it would read like this:

Students will regularly choose to informally research new scientific concepts and discuss these concepts and their impact on their lives in casual conversation for at least 10 years after completing this course.

I think this is a great goal and if I told a class of 15 year old students this was the goal it would be more honest than saying I want them to learn about how DNA codes for proteins. Some general knowledge that DNA codes for proteins might help them understand new breakthroughs in science, and help them make better decisions about cloning and GMOs, but knowledge of the mechanism behind the process is fairly useless to most students (except in that it helps them understand the complexity of living organisms and the slow but powerful process in which science uncovers that complexity). It would also mean I really should hold off assessing my success as an educator until ten years post graduation and then there would be many other variables muddying the waters. So how do we assess complex, long term learning objectives?
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In reply to Colin Matheson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Hi Colin,

Re: your points:

1. Observation of a phenomenon is not enough to generate understanding (so don't just show students a demo of a flashlight shining on the earth and assume they understand how that applies to seasons)

Yes, learning must be purposeful and learners must be able to relate it to their own experiences and their own world views. I think this is also a point you're getting at in your article.

2. Previously held misconceptions can block new learning. If you heard informally some false information about the seasons, or if your "common-sense" internal reasoning is actually wrong, you have to first unlearn the wrong information before you can effectively learn the right information.

Yes, related to point #1, Vygotsky noted how we still talk about the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, what he calls a spontaneous concept, vs. what we learn in school, i.e. that the earth is a rotating sphere and the sun is stationary in relation to us, a scientific concept (Vygotsky meant scientific in the sense of academic). However, as this example shows, we can't "unlearn" spontaneous concepts and replace them with scientific concepts so easily. How many of our spontaneous concepts actually get changed by our education systems, i.e. in school classrooms by being told by our teachers, and how many are changed by our families, friends, and colleagues as we live and grow in "educated communities"? If a child's education isn't effective, then it's pretty much left up to their families, friends, and colleagues to help them to understand their worlds in "scientific" ways. If a child's host community doesn't have scientific concepts, then the effects of education are likely to be dissonant and limited in many cases.

3. You can learn something and actually pass a class with that knowledge, but let time pass and the information may not be retrievable. This is especially true if the method to retrieve the information-verbal informal interview-is different than the method previously used to retrieve the information-written test.

Yes, and that information may not be retrievable in situations outside of that discipline, e.g. maths, which supports your argument that teaching maths as abstract, generalised concepts that can (theoretically) applied to other contexts usually leads to knowledge never being applied anywhere except where it's taught and tested. In other words, learning an abstract formula or concept doesn't tell you anything about when, how, why, and on what you should use it.

4. Education is not a general process. You can be a highly skilled graduate in one subject and know next to nothing about another subject.

Yes, and even in the same subject. Learners/Workers can be clueless about how to use the abstract, generalised concepts that they've learned in their own areas of discipline - a frequent complaint from researchers and employers about recent graduates. This is one of the core concerns of situated cognition, beautifully described by John Seely-Brown et al. here: http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Courses_Folder/ED%20261%20Papers/Situated%20Cognition.pdf

I think Itamar has been getting at these ideas too but from a different perspective. I feel that we mostly agree on what we're saying but are expressing it differently.


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In reply to Colin Matheson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Hello Colin,

Well, yes I agree with you on a number of things there.

In respect of learning outcomes I suppose how broad or narrow they are depends on what is being taught/learned.  So, the word generic is not appropriate-agreed. Assessment of wide-open learning outcomes is not going to be the same as narrow ILOs, for example-so again no formulas there either.

Matt-well I have commented already in terms of my understanding about what you are suggesting.

OK-forums and Twitter.

Here we go.  微笑

My evolving ideas about Twitter for L&T in lectures, and this is my view based on experience of engaging with data, with colleagues on a current project-is that there appears to be an overarching acceptance of sponteneity....across communication, use of language and thought/ideas generated.  Now, that type of thinking appears to me, and we are in the early days of analysis-that such spontaneous activity can provide a platform for reflective activity....so taking a risk always requires second-round thinking.

With forums....we are not comparing like-with- like because the reflection takes place at the same time as planning and preparing a response...thinking it through...this is a different way of learning....due to a different way of communicating, using language to present thoughts/ideas.

Twitter-is also used on a personal level...outside the lecture theatre...so students are enculturated by the way in which it works and therefore...maybe more confident to tweet than enter forums.........I don't know.....just my thinking at the moment-tis evolving.....but the notion of sponteneity...mmmmmmmm

So, I don't have a solid argument for the use of Twitter .....................yet! 吐舌頭   

D

      



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In reply to dawn alderson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Colin Fraser發表於
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Interesting conversation, but a couple of things strike me, but first an analogy: We hand out drivers licenses here, after a test on road rules, then a compulsory 12 month learning period, then a three year probationary period, but still, people kill themselves and others in a multitude of ways that, when analysed, are most frequently by far, the results of one driver making a fundamental mistake. This would imply that knowledge does not confer understanding or competence. 

It is rather heretical of me to suggest this, but when I think of Vygotsky et al, I cannot help but wonder if we have taken the knowledge, incompetently applied it by leaving out understanding. In doing so, we are not helping kids learn anything, rather we are preventing kids from developing the skills they really need. For example, "Scaffolding" is often a term that implies "spoon feeding".  Universities likely "scaffold" very differently than private schools, which could be why the number of Public School graduate drop outs from Uni are some 20% higher than from state schools - as a recent survey in Britain found. 

We too often rely upon the perceptions of others to "guide" our teaching. But this can also be a trap, which leads to a dead end. Dawn refers above to Plato's Republic. In Book 7 Plato suggests that if someone is sharp in Maths they can be sharp in other subjects. If someone is not sharp in maths, then they will not be that sharp in other subjects. However, he also contends that if someone practices maths, and becomes sharp in maths, then they can be made sharper in other subjects. 2.5 thousand years later and we are still teaching maths in essentially the same way as Plato did. What mystifies me is that I have been unable to find any evidence to support Plato's assertions.   

@Dawn, that powerpoint of yours, would you object if I was to use it in a demonstration I am giving soon?  

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Hi Colin,

Re: your comments about knowledge, understanding, skills, and scaffolding, when I use those words/terms, I have in mind very specific meanings and definitions.

For me, knowledge is what is finally achieved once a learner has acquired the necessary skills, made sense of the information, observations, and experience, and understood a concept. It is the ultimate outcome of learning and testable through learners being not only able to demonstrate their new knowledge, skills, and abilities, but to be able to articulate them and share them with others too, i.e. to master the theory and practice of a concept.

Similarly, scaffolding, a term first explicitly coined by Jerome Bruner but implicit in Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD), is giving only the help and guidance a learner needs according to her/his specific needs in order to perform a task or solve a problem that they could not perform or solve without that help. In its weak form, instructional scaffolding may be a teacher looking at her/his lesson plan and subject matter and trying to predict what issues a particular learner or group of learners might have and preparing some extra support in advance, just in case. However, the strong form would be the teacher listening carefully and attentively to an individual learner or group of learners while they perform a task or solve a problem and only intervening minimally when s/he thinks that the learners are stuck and cannot proceed any further without help. An intervention may just be asking a learner to articulate the problem so that they can hear themselves saying it and then, "as if by magic", they find the solution, or as much as further guidance questioning and bringing aspects of the problem to the learner's attention. Note that the learner is always the one doing the task or solving the problem and the teacher rarely, if ever, explains, tells, or instructs.

This is not what I'd call spoon-feeding although I have seen teachers spoon-feed learners and call what they were doing "scaffolding."

This is my understanding of the terms.

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Colin Fraser發表於
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Then Matt, I would think that you and I would have similar understandings, unfortunately, too many others, including a lot of non-teachers, feel that "teaching" is spoon feeding. What is often missed is that the element of striving is more important that the knowledge, as the striving, and sometimes failing, is critical to the development of resilience, self-confidence, and ultimately, a deeper understanding of the material learned. 

Colin M quoted above: 

4. Education is not a general process. You can be a highly skilled graduate in one subject and know next to nothing about another subject.

An aside: The US Air Force flew FA117 Stealth planes for a while, then the wings started falling off. Investigations revealed that teams of highly skilled aircraft maintenance fitters and engineers were take from planes they knew, placed to work on new aircraft but had no training in that platform. This was labelled as "an assumption of expertise", the fitters worked well on their previous planes but new planes were unknown to them. What I am seeing is this same thing happening again and again, particularly with technology and teachers, technology and administrators, the assumption being that if they know Word, Excel, PowerPoint, they must be computer experts and able to make decisions about what technologies are required in schools. The result is that "one-size-fits-all" and "magic bullet" approaches are made, fail badly, cost millions of dollars and everyone stand around congratulating themselves on a job well done - the reality is too horrid to contemplate. Real learning outcomes for students are ignored, or downgraded, or are just not met, but that is irrelevant as the system seems to work well - until someone actually measures it against real outcomes, then it is the fault of "lazy teachers".  

For me, there is a large part of an ongoing issue, some teachers seem to have lost the idea that teaching is the other side of the coin from learning. I suggest teachers should always be learning, and the good ones do, constantly. To learn, they need to listen to their students, which is not always easy. That might be, I suspect, where many of our current problems are lying. We are not always listening.   




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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Colin Fraser發表於
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Then Matt, I would think that you and I would have similar understandings, unfortunately, too many others, including a lot of non-teachers, feel that "teaching" is spoon feeding. What is often missed is that the element of striving is more important that the knowledge, as the striving, and sometimes failing, is critical to the development of resilience, self-confidence, and ultimately, a deeper understanding of the material learned. 

Colin M quoted above: 

4. Education is not a general process. You can be a highly skilled graduate in one subject and know next to nothing about another subject.

An aside: The US Air Force flew FA117 Stealth planes for a while, then the wings started falling off. Investigations revealed that teams of highly skilled aircraft maintenance fitters and engineers were take from planes they knew, placed to work on new aircraft but had no training in that platform. This was labelled as "an assumption of expertise", the fitters worked well on their previous planes but new planes were unknown to them. What I am seeing is this same thing happening again and again, particularly with technology and teachers, technology and administrators, the assumption being that if they know Word, Excel, PowerPoint, they must be computer experts and able to make decisions about what technologies are required in schools. The result is that "one-size-fits-all" and "magic bullet" approaches are made, fail badly, cost millions of dollars and everyone stand around congratulating themselves on a job well done - the reality is too horrid to contemplate. Real learning outcomes for students are ignored, or downgraded, or are just not met, but that is irrelevant as the system seems to work well - until someone actually measures it against real outcomes, then it is the fault of "lazy teachers".  

For me, there is a large part of an ongoing issue, some teachers seem to have lost the idea that teaching is the other side of the coin from learning. I suggest teachers should always be learning, and the good ones do, constantly. To learn, they need to listen to their students, which is not always easy. That might be, I suspect, where many of our current problems are lying. We are not always listening.   




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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Colin, hi

1. I have checked your take on Plato-yes, it seems about right to me 是  you are accurate 大笑

2. The slides: of course you can use them-that is the reason they are out there-for anyone to use them-take some ownership and if you like build on them-return the presentation back here eh-that would be a lovely way to construct what we know-what we think-what we might re-consider...glad you can find a use for them-my pleasure!

warm wishes

Dawn 

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In reply to Colin Matheson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Hi Colin,

Thanks for joining in 微笑

Re: "So I feel there is fairly strong evidence that knowledge is tied to the context in which it is learned." -- Do you mean situated cognition? This speaks to the problems highlighted by some educators and teachers who puzzle over why their learners can demonstrate understanding of a concept in one context but are at a complete loss with the same concept in another.

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Derek Chirnside發表於

Tim, thanks for this heads up.  I have signed up.

I'm not entirely sure I like the description of the points based model, but I am really interested.  I remember working with 15 year old boys 20 years ago and the competitiveness I could generate on a Friday afternoon with games to learn symbols, equations etc was scary.  The challenge was to get depth.

-Derek

EDIT: Darn it!!  right in the middle of out Guy Fawkes night fun.


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Wednesday tis the 5th, thanks DC.

Better day as it goes.....will sign up.  Be good if other ladies might do so too..... 眨眼

Looks like discussion has started here already eh......I want to wait and see the goods before I comment ha ha 吐舌頭

As I said, sounds interesting.

D

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Derek Chirnside發表於


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Matt Bury發表於
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Thanks for posting this Derek,

I didn't get to join the webinar but it's just as good to see the recording. I found myself nodding in agreement all the way through and now I'm going to install and try out his plugins.

I think this is a great example of using technology (the 3 plugins) to support teacher mediated collaborative online learning environments. It's pedagogically well-informed, practical, and Brant is a great presenter.

I think this video's a "keeper" for teacher PD sessions.

Quick links:

Thanks again to Tim and Derek! 微笑

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Back from Hongkers-need to do the jetlag-then watch out Matt et al! 微笑

Really interesting discussions here....DC thanks for posting the Vid. 

D

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In reply to dawn alderson

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Hello all,

My apologies, I have struggled a bit to attend to some of the very fine detail in this thread because there is so much rich and valuable discussion, and I wanted to get my head around everyone's ideas...the reality is that I simply cannot engage with each point in depth-time being the problem really.  Nevertheless, you 'all' have managed to get me thinking in my own little world-about related stuff from my past readings (refs can be posted if you want them) and my experiences... so here goes...forgive me for tangents the story does have a narrative of sorts:   

Epistemology

What is it possible to know about something?

Realism=external world exists independently of our representations of it

Relativism= any external world is inaccessible to us in principle and practice

Social Constructionism= culture not biology that shapes human life and the human mind that gives meaning to action via interpretation (Bruner, 1990)

Looking back, Plato.  Four scripts

1. Protagoras

2. Republic

3. Phaedrus

4. Gorgias

David Hume in Treatise of Human Nature suggests we can't logically derive statements about how peeps ought to behave from statements about how the world is arranged, we can't derive ought from is. But in the every day-we do!

In Gorgias, Plato theorises about how humans ought to behave; to what is real, and what can be known.  So, his theory...(Theory of forms)...theory of ideas/knowing can be summed up by Stephen Dedalus in Ulysees...'Horseness is the  whatness of all horses'.  Plato then argued that forms and ideas are more real than every day stuff.....like ummmm trees or cats say-that take their names from them. So, forms of things more real than the things themselves.

Thus, forms of things including abstractions...justice, mathematics, morality etc were considered by Plato to be  more real than your regular stuff...moral truths are the most real things of all.  For example in the Republic book Seven, the cave represents a distrust of the senses.....the charioteer in Phaedrus represents a paradox across the tripartite elements of the soul....in terms of one's conflict with reason...and we see this in Marlowe's Faust.....the Hero?  Faust follows his own heart at all costs-steps over people at all costs....to sell his soul to the devil. Marlowe raises the question of what order is to be followed....what do we do-if self-understanding is to be frowned upon.  Thus, the duality paradigm e.g.in the works of D.H.Lawrence and others that emerged across literary movements thereafter .......good/bad......lion/lamb........love/hate appeared to reflect the conflict between the social I and the subjective I.  Essentially, such a theme examines the construction of identities.

And, the shipowner in Plato's Republic book Six......focuses on the paradox of democracy..........decisions are made by people with no knowledge....open to error. Similarly it was German idealism/political ideology -mirrored across the German literary movement, including works such as Geertz (Verta) and Schiller's The Robbers that preceded; and therefore was a part of the build up to Nazi Germany (19th Century) that we can link with Plato's theory here, in that the question arises about the reason as to why Hitler lost WW2? Was it by attacking Soviet Union? (for no reason at all!). The link then is in the notion of dictator/democracy are both open to errors due to a lack of definite knowledge.

Aristotle

Questioned whether Education should be more concerned with intellectual or moral virtue. In other words what ought to be the driving principle that informs education systems?  A focus on pragmatics, or Virtue, or Higher thought? So it goes, because there can never be any agreement about how to achieve one or t'other in practice....such questions appear to remain unanswered, or perhaps the answer is all three.  But, let us not forget that for Aristotle the main branches of Ed were considered to be reading and writing; gymnastics; music and drawing......so no LMSs forum in the mix!

Bakhtin and Vygotsky

Arguably linked by focusing on the relationship between culture and identity, which underpins an epistemological stance about how we come to know. Both examined human expression, with Vygotsky placing emphasis on historical development. So, humans considered as social and cultural inhabitants of their worlds-who collectively construct knowledge, which contrasts with any existence of a rational plan that encompasses such happenings, meaning the development of identities and agency is specific to practices e.g. shared language, shared cultures, practices and activities 'situated' in historically contingent, socially enacted and culturally constructed worlds (Holland et al, 1998).

We can therefore never be 100% objective, but the endeavour of seeking some sort of objective stance is reliant on the tools we use to seek it out. The purpose of such tools might be to enable us to consider what is happening in our mind (subjective stance) and what is happening out there, and how the two fudge.  So, one tool is that of reflective activity, to ask more questions....to change our states and not block conversation-to re-think about things; to think about things in different ways, and this requires a genuine emotional response not a trained response.  What I mean is expressive activity that can enable us to view our own subjectivity in order to maybe learn something about objectivity.  What a task-given the constraint that is inherent in the compression of time.  

In sum, learning theories, philosophies and related educational implications informed from the past for education are numerous, and can be considered for online learning engagement as outlined in Moodle's philosophy and pedagogy docs.  Back on topic in view of the video about using forums for assessment appears to suggest to me that moodle philosophy and pedagogy underpin the presentation. In addition, the video also refers to constructive alignment, a practice well utilised across face to face learning and teaching also.

I have put together some slides which outline, in a very simplistic way, the bare bones for related concepts and educational implications, related with this thread, about using Moodle for learning and teaching (including the use of forums) . Will  paste a url link-once I have converted them, soon.

Cheers,

Dawn

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由Derek Chirnside發表於

Too many words in this thread for me to read in detail.  Interesting to skim read.  I'm a lot more pragmatic than some of you guys.

However, be that as it may, this short blog post from George Siemens caught my eye today:

http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2014/10/28/what-ive-learned-in-my-first-week-of-a-dual-layer-mooc-dalmooc/

Some quotes it is point 8 are of interest to me:

6. We need to get better at on-boarding learners to engage in digital distributed spaces. My comments above reflect real experiences of learners who are finding the course format confusing. It's not sufficient to say "well, what you really need is a world-view shift”. As designers, we have to support and guide that transition. We are not doing that well enough. Even though early Hangouts that we did in the course emphasized learner autonomy and the importance of developing a personal digital identity that is under the control of the individual learner, this message is understood through practice not to proclamation. It's a challenging proposition: a learner understands the design intentions of the course by engaging in the activities but these activities are confusing because they do not understand the design intentions.

7. Technology glitches are tough. We are using a number of new tools in DALMOOC, including Carolyn Rose's Bazaar and Quick Helper, a visual syllabus, Prosolo, assignment bank, and so on. We've had some glitches with most of those, as can be expected in a new tool being scaled to a large number of users. Learners may forgive a glitch or two. But each additional glitch or tool creates additional stress. A few learners have said "I feel like a guinea pig” and "I feel like I'm just beta testing software” and "I feel like a rat in a maze”. We need some tolerance for failure during experimentation. There is a line though where even the most committed learners feel overwhelmed.

8. Learners use discussion forums for different reasons. I've generally used them for discussion. Learners in edX use them for a range of reasons including quick search/help, venting, and as a way of orienting to the course. Unfortunately, I haven't seen much in MOOC forums about social relationship formation. MOOC providers have done a bad job of building learner profiles. I can't get to know my peers in edX or Coursera. This is an issue. Distributed social media improves this, but the social connectedness in edX forums is almost non-existent.


Plus this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_USqtBQxqJE#

-Derek


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

Hey,

am enrolled on this course, been dipping in, mostly playing catch up with the videos.  Great idea, and it is evident a lot of planning has gone into the course with the aim of applying theory for practice wherever possible.  Couple of theories I am talking about include social learning and distributed learning/cog...Perkins and Pea-type stuff.

Anyway, I notice there is a lot about data analytics defined as: dealing with big data-quant style....numerous tools to work with nice large numbers, pretty graphs and visuals and so on.....all about a numbers-style way of analysis...fair enough.  Bit disappointed that the qual-side of things is not there-at all! As far as I can see in the syllabus-and yes there is a syllabus for the 9 weeks, and there is also a visual syllabus-which is nifty.

For example week 4 looked at social network analysis so Twitter FB....and the three step nutshell process involved calculation of betweeness and degree of centrality; linguistic properties and RA.....however taking this back to forward feed for improving practice.....pragmatics-I have no idea-could tell you easily from qual data analysis...but hey ho-horses for courses.....scuse pun.

George is pretty clear about looking closer at assessment in the future,  but that is not the focus of this MOOC.      

Glasgow Caledonian Uni have the online survey (predominantly quant-from my scan at the questions) , with the main research question: How individuals self-regulate their learning in MOOCs? 

Consequently, I have an itch about accessing some data for some qual analysis.......thinking about that at the mo..prob send an email when I get time....I would like to look at  a number of things surrounding interactivity, levels of engagement (surface/deep) and learning states as defined by the learners....but hey ho I have probably just given away some good ideas there! 微笑

Nice that the Dalmooc provides both a non-linear and linear pathway....but it was stated non-linear as in contrast to an LMS-I disagree that using an LMS has to be linear-that is down to pedagogy and skill of the teacher.

One thing I definitely agree with is in the aim of the course seeking to support learners 'to own their own identity'.....have their own learner space to make decisions....especially the notion of ambiguous learning spaces....non-linear formats....and on.

D    


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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Interesting webinar about the use of Forums

由dawn alderson發表於

OK.

Wide awake now.

I shall begin with a small tale.

I have seen on numerous occasions across classrooms, across the UK headteachers entering the room only to rev-up the pupils/children....to an amazing crescendo!  Then turn on heels and walk out!!!!!! Teacher left to sort out the aftermath....

So, Tim H. Be good know, learn about what you thought of the vid. Of course, if you have time.

Cheers,

Dawn 滿意

 

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