Friday, November 6, 2020

Under construction (Topic 3)

What is knowledge? A social construction? That the Earth (approximately) is a globe and that E = mc2  are in my not so humble opinion non-negotiable facts, at least until science finds facts that proves them false. Other areas of human knowledge may be, at least for the moment, more open to new results, debate, interpretation and contextualization.


The Earth is a globe, Photo: NASA (1)


One such field is learning. I saw brain researcher Dr. Lara Boyd in a TEDx talk explain that the also the adult human brain is subject to reconstruction as a result of learning and that is promising.(2)

Your brain is still reconstructing itself to handle new knowledge


The topic for this and next week is Learning in communities – networked collaborative learning. A promising tool for learning is a PLN, Personal Learning Network.(3)(4)(5)


PLN, Personal Learning Network

Your PLN can consist of different resources. Other learners, experts, texts, images, movies databases some locally available others spread around the world and accessible through different means of communications.

 

Your PLN contains different sorts of resources spread over the world.

 

Sometimes we use the words community and network as synonyms but there is a reason to keep them separated. Then we reserve the word community for a more structured and permanent constellation and network for a more ad hoc constellation around your personal goals. A community can be part of your network.

Keep the words community and network separated


Connectivism

Connectivism is a way to explain how people learn (6). It explains learning as creating connections between nodes.

Learning as connecting nodes.


Nodes can according to Siemens be be

  • ·      content (data or information)
  • ·      interaction (tentative connection forming)
  • ·      static nodes (stable knowledge structure)
  • ·      dynamic nodes (continually changing based on new information and data)
  • ·      self-updating nodes (nodes which are tightly linked to their original information source, resulting in a high level of currency
  • ·      emotive elements (emotions that influence the prospect of connection and hub formations).”

Frustrating!

Collaborative on-line learning can be frustrating. According to Capdeferro and Romero (7) the most common sources of frustration are “Commitment imbalance, unshared goals, communication difficulties and negotiation problems”. My experience from my student years back in late seventies and early eighties is that she same applies to ordinary on campus non-digital group work. and by about the same reasons. As one student pointed out “Some people just want to pass courses while some others only want to be the best one.” I think it would be interesting to compare between two courses one on campus and another on-line with the same content, teachers and comparable student groups.

 

Does grading make group work more effective?

Brindley, Walti, and Blaschke (8) has studied if students became more active in group work if they got graded and found no correlation. They point out some other strategies that instructors should focus on:

1.     Facilitate learner readiness for group work and provide scaffolding to build skills.

2.     Establish a healthy balance between structure (clarity of task) and learner autonomy (flexibility of task).

3.     Nurture the establishment of learner relationships and sense of community.

4.     Monitor group activities actively and closely.

5.     Make the group task relevant for the learner.

6.     Choose tasks that are best performed by a group.

7.     Provide sufficient time.

Maybe the studied student population may have impacted the results. Students in Master of Distance Education may be (or become) more motivated for on-line group work than average students.

How to act as an instructor in an asynchronous forum?

Mazsolini and Maddison (9) studied student – teacher interactions in an asynchronous forum. Should the instructors take a prominent role, be more a guide or keep a very low profile. They found weak or no correlation between the students learning activities and the instructor behaviour, but students considered the more active instructors more enthusiastic and expert.

A methodological problem is that the study uses length of threads as an indicator of more or deeper learning. I have been using asynchronous BBS, USENET, mailing-lists, forums and Facebook-groups since early eighties. I consider long threads often correlated to bad network behavior like trolling, bikeshedding(10), not reading the thread before answering, ad hominem-arguments and polarized discussions wich doesn’t converge.

Resources

1.     Earth - Apollo 11 [Internet]. [citerad 06 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a11_h_44_6552.html

2.     After watching this, your brain will not be the same | Lara Boyd | TEDxVancouver [Internet]. [citerad 02 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNHBMFCzznE

3.     ONL202 Topic 3 Learning in communities [Internet]. [citerad 04 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://padlet.com/alacre/5monn8ds0wrtwck4

4.     PLNs Theory and Practice [Internet]. 2019 [citerad 02 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8mJX5n3IEg&feature=youtu.be

5.     PLNs Theory and Practice part 2 [Internet]. 2019 [citerad 02 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqSBTr9DPH8&feature=youtu.be

6.     Siemens G. Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation. 01 januari 2005;

7.     View of Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences? | The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning [Internet]. [citerad 02 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1127/2129

8.     View of Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment | The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning [Internet]. [citerad 02 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/675/1271

9.     Mazzolini M, Maddison S. Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor intervention on student participation in online discussion forums. Comput Educ. 01 april 2003;40(3):237–53.

10.   Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? [Internet]. [citerad 06 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: http://bikeshed.com/

 





6 comments:

  1. Hi, Urban. Very interesting blog post. I like how you link the development of human brain with learning in communities. It gets me thinking, too, that our brain is constantly developing and that communities and networks can help us enhance ourselves (from biological view point). I was also thinking about learning in communities from evolutionary view point. Wonder whether there are other points that support community learning.

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  2. Hi Urban,

    It's interesting... I just read Andi's post (whose comment you published earlier today), essentially questioning what (if anything) it is about the virtual learning environment that somehow alters the issue of asymmetrical participation. And I could ask the same question about the question of whether to formally assess or not.

    Knowing my students (environmental studies and life sciences at NUS), I seriously can't imagine them delivering the kind of awesome work that they consistently do for their group projects if these assessments weren't graded and worth substantial portions of their final marks.

    What do you think ?

    Thanks,

    Joanna

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    Replies
    1. Why do people make stuff?

      Why create music, paint, write, make computer programs, do research, take photos, do woodworking, knit, decorate your house or create a garden?

      Money, titles, academic marks or medals could be part of the answer but people tend to do much of that without being payed or rewarded - or if they get some pay they probably could get lots more by doing other stuff.

      Maybe the work in it self is satisfying enough? Maybe it has to do with belonging to a "tribe". Sometimes it is a hunt for "likes". What about curiosity?

      Why write poems when crime-novels sell better?

      I think I have some interesting sources about this but unfortunately I left them at my office. I'l try to write something on that subject.

      Delete
  3. You raise many interesting questions in this post, especially about the motivating factor of grades. Many educators question grading today and see it as a barrier to deeper learning and that grading puts the focus on competition and individualism rather than fostering the teamwork and collaboration so highly valued by so many employers today. An interesting initiative I found recently is called Teachers going gradeless https://www.teachersgoinggradeless.com.
    An extremely important alternative motivator is students producing work that is publicly shared or will be used by a wider community.

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  4. Somehow I agree that students' motivating factor is graded assignment. Or at least that is what I am seeing especially during students' consult about their assignment, many of them are focusing on their assignment as it contribute to 70% of their total marks. Meanwhile with the tutorial discussion they are often noticed to be restless... passive or I should say the tutorial session was almost becoming a mini lecture. Yes it may not be applicable for all but I think for most. Perhaps Asian students are more assignment driven.

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  5. Great post with nice visualizations. The 7 points for the instructors are specially useful. One thought is that a connection itself might not be enough to support learning. The link should be strong to build trust. Strengthening the connections between students is quite difficult but of great relevance to support a collaborative learning. The activities provided in the ONL course naturally supported this network construction and may pass unoticed to us. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. =)

    ReplyDelete