eLearning journal

Evaluation Report - at long last

2011-02-13T07:29:00.000-08:00

Finished !!! Many thanks to Bronwyn for being so patient with me and apologies to the rest of the class for lagging so far behind.

Here is a summary of my evaluation report.

Executive summary

The purpose of this evaluation was to assess the effectiveness of the processes and resources that support new academic staff in using Otago Polytechnic’s (OPs) eLearning technologies (such as Moodle, Elluminate and eXe) for blended and distance delivery. This involved gathering information from several sources using a summative, “multiple methods” evaluation design. Eight new staff completed an online questionnaire indicating their use of technology prior to starting at OP, and the eLearning tools they were required to use once they commenced teaching at OP. In their first six months all the participants were required to learn how to use Moodle and most also had to use Elluminate. Most new staff relied on informal supports to learn how to use these technologies, including colleagues, Moodle champions, EDC staff and online Staff Moodle Resources. However, more than half of the participants were not aware of the range of support systems and resources available, and considered that they were not adequately prepared and supported to use OPs eLearning technologies. Five school managers were interviewed to find out about the processes in their school for introducing new staff to eLearning and eLearning technologies. No schools involved in this project had any formal procedures concerning technology support for new staff, and new staff were either directed to EDC staff, the school Moodle champion, technical support advisor within the school, or to colleagues. Recommendations from this evaluation include ensuring that information about support processes and resources is readily accessible to all staff, especially those who work closely with new staff; establishing a formal Induction process to ensure better initial support for new staff; and the need to continue to seek feedback on the effectiveness of the support processes and resources to ensure they are aligned with staff needs and effective practice.

EeL4EP: Discussing Needs Assessment

2010-09-08T18:21:00.000-07:00

In last weeks elluminate session we has a very useful discussion with Rachel Byars from Otago Polytechnic describing the needs analysis she carried out for her evaluation project for this course last year.

Her evaluation focussed on the suitability of eLearning options in teaching hotel management; her plan and project can be found here in the course guidebook. Rachel reinforced the benefits of thorough planning, asking the right questions, and using a mixed methods approach (triangulation) to gain a wider perspective. It was really valuable to hear how she had planned and carried out her evaluation, the discoveries she made, and how the outcomes have contributed to her teaching practice.

Thank you Rachel for sharing this with us.

EeL4EP: Evaluate this! OIL Module 6

2010-08-23T04:40:00.000-07:00

For our second evaluation activity, Mareena and I evaluated OIL module 6: ‘Searching for Information’. In this module, students are taken through a step-by-step process showing how to analyse a topic and develop a search strategy to find relevant information, identify the principle resources for information used in academic study, and use search techniques to effectively find information. I know several of our staff at Otago Polytechnic direct their students to the OIL modules, and Module 6 is often used as a preparation exercise before going to the library for a hands-on with library staff. Then they have the online module to refer back to for reference.

The first thing I thought we needed to do was to put together a quick framework that we could evaluate this resource against. This included presentation (layout, readability etc), organization of content (logical sequence, chunking, navigation, links work, etc), resources and activities (information relevant and current, activities are appropriate and engage users, etc), support and help for users (clear guidelines/instructions provided, etc), and overall effectiveness of the module.

Our evaluation findings have already been posted to Mareena's blog, but I'll add them here for completeness.

Overall we agreed it was an effective learning object with a thoughtful design, easy to use interface, and useful resources.

The aims of lessons were clearly outlined at the very beginning of the module. The site allowed optimum readability with sufficient white space. There weren’t any long scrolling pages. The format was uncluttered and colour and fonts were used effectively and consistently. The writing style was clear and easy to understand. At the end of each lesson there were interactive quizzes to complete that provided instant feedback. This sequence was repeated for all lessons.

Lessons were organized in non threatening way with small chunks of information followed by graphic demos and animations which made the comprehension easier. Specific terminologies appeared in purple with a definition when the mouse hovered over the word/phrases. In addition there was also a glossary page at the end of the module.

The navigation menu appeared on the left hand side on each page offering a choice for the learners to complete the lessons at his/her discretion without following a linear order. There were graphical navigation buttons at the end of each page which allowed the learners to go back and forth from the lessons. There was also a handy print option available for selected pages or the whole module.

Issues / concerns:

We found some of the instructions were not very clear. For example, it was suggested there was a 'Help' for each search tool but it wasn't clear whether this was to be found in the module itself or in a real library search.

Some demos took a long time to download and Mareena lost interest and navigated away from the page, possibly because she was using a dial up connection. I’m on broadband and had no difficulty doing any of the activities or viewing any demos. We wondered if this problem was picked up during initial evaluations of the modules. If these modules were intended to be accessible to a wide range of learners then it needed to avoid slow downloads.

Lack of visual and audio technologies were obvious in the site. Highlighted terminologies with definition could have been much better if sound was attached to them. The option of listening to instructions could have been appealing to auditory learners. Catering for a variety of learning styles would help the learners to engage in the lessons. Incorporating different media types such as sound is something to consider in the future.

The module was very big and it would take a couple of hours to work through it. At the last elluminate session Alex commented that the learning units they develop take no more than 20 minutes to work through, in line with users attention spans.

Some sections are very specific to Otago University library services. The searching skills gained in this module should easily transfer to searching any library, but for novice learners it could be quite confusing. All the modules can be edited and republished (guidelines are provided in the Springboard module), so if this resource was to be used extensively in a particular setting it could be worthwhile customizing these with examples from your own library, although Bronwyn suggested this would require a bit of technical know-how to accomplish.

EeL4EP: A case study

2010-08-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

One of our first tasks in the evaluation course gave us an opportunity to have a look at a case study and get a taste of what evaluation is all about. I hooked up with Mareena for this exercise.

We looked at the Engineering Mechanics case study.

Here's the questions and responses.

What are the key issues?

Is eLearning appropriate for these students? Do they have the required abilities and skills? What support and training would students need to access and use eLearning resources.

He has limited time for developing interactive online resources but has found an online resource that looks useful. Does this resource provide knowledge and/or skills that will be useful for the job?

How can the problem be solved? What strategies can be used?

Need to assess students’ knowledge and use of computers; a questionnaire would be a good tool for this.

It would be useful to trial the eLearning resource with students; this could be done by observing the students using the resource and providing a follow-up interview or questionnaire.

Get feedback on the usefulness of the eLearning resource from teaching staff and from industry representatives; discussion group, individual interview or questionnaire.

How can the evaluation process assist in finding a solution? What type of evaluation is appropriate in this situation?

A well planned and carefully designed formative evaluation should provide information relevant to the specific issues being evaluated. In this example, the evaluation is being used to inform recommendations about the usefulness of eLearning in the course and the effectiveness of the eLearning resource in question.

The evaluation process involves clearly identifying the rationale, purpose and context of an evaluation. This information will then influence the type of evaluation and the choice of methods and instruments that will be used to collect data. Analysis of the data will provide information that can be used to make recommendations. A formal report detailing the evaluation process used and the final recommendations can then be prepared.

The type of evaluation used would be a ‘needs analysis’ to determine whether eLearning is appropriate for teaching and learning in this specific course. A thorough evaluation would help to inform teaching staff of the usefulness and effectiveness of eLearning as well as identifying what additional support students and staff might need, and ensure time and effort is not wasted on implementing and developing resources that may not be useful.

EeL4EP: An overview of evaluation of eLearning

2010-08-09T04:15:00.000-07:00

What is evaluation and why is it important?

Evaluation as described in the 'evaluation of eLearning' course, involves critically examining an online programme/course or some aspect of the teaching and learning in order to be able to make an informed judgement about its quality and success. Evaluation is an important component of all stages of instructional design and an essential part of monitoring and improving eLearning practice.

How do you evaluate? What is the evaluation process?

It is important to design and plan your evaluation carefully in order to get information that is useful. Planning should balance the most appropriate ways of gathering information with the time, resources and cost involved in carrying out the evaluation.

Evaluation can be carried out to trial a significant change or new innovative approach or resource prior to introducing it into a programme (needs assessment), during the development and delivery of the course (formative evaluation), and at the completion of a programme/course to determine if the learning outcomes have been met (summative evaluation). In my experience, formative evaluation often occurs in a fairly informal manner based on a teachers perceptions and reflections about how good something will be or has been in the classroom. A more formal evaluation is often carried out at the end of a course, using online or paper-based survey tools, to get feedback from students on student satisfaction, the quality and effectiveness of the learning activities, and the performance of the teacher. This information is used to improve the course in the future and for a teacher's performance review.

The first part of the evaluation process involves identifying the specific purpose and context of the evaluation: What am I evaluating and why? What are the key issues to be considered? What type of evaluation is needed? Who should be involved or consulted as part of the evaluation (stakeholders)?

Next, decide on the methods and instruments for collecting relevant data. A "multiple methods" approach involves using a range of different methods of sampling in order to gather information from many different perspectives (known as triangulation). Methods could include observations, questionnaires, checklists and focus groups. You would need to ensure that this phase is reasonably easy to manage with tools/methods that are simple to administer and organise.

Once the data has been collected, it is analyzed and interpreted, and used to make recommendations relevant to the purpose of the evaluation. A formal report detailing the evaluation process and the final recommendations can then be prepared.

Here's a link to Bronwyn's slide presentation about why evaluation is so important (20 mins). I love the chicken hat!

Why is evaluation so important

Tags: evaluation

Professional Development: what I'm up to this semester

2010-08-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

With my hours reduced this semester at work I'm relishing the opportunity to take a couple of papers as part of my ongoing professional development.

One of these is called Natural World Ko Te Tai Ao, a paper in the Certificate in Mata a Ao Maori offered at Otago Polytechnic, which explores the different views that Maori and non-Maori have in relation to the natural world.

The other papers are part of the Graduate Certificate in Applied eLearning from Manukau Institute of Technology; one of these is Evaluation of eLearning for Effective Practice with Bronwyn Hegarty and a second paper is on a Special Topic which is yet to be decided.

No doubt this is all going to keep me very busy.

Image: Busy days ahead, 'Emoticon Tale' by somegeekintn

Designing eLearning: short video

2010-07-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

A short video from Gilly Salmon about designing for online learning:

Facilitating an online environment has its own set of characteristics and challenges.
When designing online learning, it's more important to drive it from the learning challenge rather than the technology perspective.
You also need to design for student activity rather than delivery of content.
Unlike a classroom setting, all the materials need to be prepared and structured in advance.

Technology resources for teachers

2009-08-31T19:48:00.000-07:00

Have you been wondering about online surveys, bookmarking, blogging, or podcasting but not really sure where to begin. Here are two websites that provide easy to follow video guides that will be really useful if you are thinking about using more web technologies in your teaching.

Web2practice from JISC Netskills:
So far they have developed five guides explaining technologies like RSS, microblogging (twitter), podcasting and social media. Each guide consists of a short animated video explaining the key concepts, with a useful accompanying short written guide covering potential uses, risks and how to get started.

Teacher training videos from Russell Stannard (principal lecturer in Multimedia/ICT at the University of Westminster):
On this website you will find an extensive set of easy to follow training videos introducing YouTube, iTunes, online surveys (Survey Monkey), delicious, wikis, audacity, camtasia, blogging, and podcasting to name a few. Each title includes a number of short 1-3 minute video clips that you can watch in sequence or view just the parts you are interested in. Russell Stannard has a special interest in english language teaching and a separate collection of videos under that title.

Adding RSS feeds into Moodle

2009-07-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a good way for sharing web resources and reference material with your students using the RSS feeds tools available in Moodle. For example, you can collect bookmarks for your course in delicious (tagged with a name specific to your course) and then set up a feed into your Moodle course that automatically updates as you add more bookmarks.

Here's how to do it:

In your Moodle course click the Turn editing on button.
Find the Blocks editor and add a new 'Remote RSS feeds' block.
Click on the editing tool (hand tool) to configure the Feeds block.
Click on the 'Manage all my feeds' tab.
Find the RSS Feed logo on the website (that's the small orange square shown at the start of this post, labelled RSS or RSS Feed). Right click on the logo and select Copy Link Location or Copy Shortcut. Paste into the space provided to Add a news feed URL. Click the Add button. This feed will now come up in the Feed block on this page.
Click on the Configure this block tab.
The feed should now be available to select (there may be several feeds shown here depending on how they have been configured in other courses), select your feed/s with a tick. Choose how you want to configure the feed, for example give it a title, provide each links description, and display a link to the original site. Click the Save changes button.
This feed will now be displayed and updated automatically in your course.

HTML for beginners

2009-07-21T00:25:00.000-07:00

In tonights social media class Leigh said:

Have you been caught without your WYSIWYG editor yet? You know, when you're leaving a comment on someones blog, or trying to add a description to a photo and the text input box doesn't have the button for creating a link, making bold, or making italic.

Wondering about WYSIWYG? This is the editing toolbar where "what you see is what you get", (aha now the picture makes sense!). If the editor is lacking a few of the essentials you can still add links, formatting etc if you know a bit about html.

So we did a Google search for "what is the HTML for a link?" and W3 gave us all the details on how to do links and more.

Here's some info from W3:

HTML is a language for describing web pages:

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is not a programming language, it is a markup language
A markup language is a set of markup tags

HTML uses markup tags to describe web pages:

HTML markup tags are usually called HTML tags
HTML tags are keywords surrounded by angle brackets like <> but with no spaces between brackets and text
HTML tags normally come in pairs like <> and < /b >The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
Start and end tags are also called opening tags and closing tags.

Angle brackets and key letters are just about all you need. We practiced links, bolding and italics by commenting on the social media blog, and turns out it's not as hard as it looks.
eg (but with no spaces between brackets and text)
< href="url">Link text< /a >
<>Italic text< /i >
<>Bold text< /b >
< scr="image url .jpg">

Delicious and social bookmarking

2009-06-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

First, a quick check on wikipedia for delicious and social bookmarking.

What is Delicious?

"Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy). A combined view of everyone's bookmarks with a given tag is available; for instance, the URL "http://delicious.com/tag/wiki" displays all of the most recent links tagged "wiki". Its collective nature makes it possible to view bookmarks added by similar-minded users." (Wikipedia, June 2009)

What is social bookmarking?

"Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, "the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content".^[1] (Wikipedia June 2009)

Here's a YouTube video showing how to use delicious in the classroom.

Goggle calendar

2009-06-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

So what is a google calendar?

Wikipedia has this to say about Google Calendars:

"Google Calendar is a free time-management web application offered by Google. It became available on April 13, 2006 and is currently in beta stages. While users are not required to have a Gmail account, they are required to have a free Google Account in order to use the software.

Google Calendar allows multiple calendars to be created and shown in the same view. They can also be easily shared, either read-only or with full control, and either with specified people only or with everyone. For example, make one shared calendar for each sports team or club, and a separate calendar for private events. Events from both show up side-by-side on the same calendar, in different colors."

That sounds handy! Here are the steps to set up your own Google calendar.

Log into Google.
Click the blue link on your google page to Calendar (up at the top).
Enter a few events to your calendar.
In the left navigation area under My Calendars, click the drop-down menu that is next to your name and then change the colour.
Click the same drop-down menu and select Calendar Settings. Change the name, NZ timezone etc. Don't copy the embed code yet. Instead click the link that says Customise colour, size and other options.
Adjust settings to a width of 400 pixels (not 800 so that it fits in your blog) and other settings to your liking.
Copy the embed code and paste as a new post in your blog.

Mistakes made by new bloggers

2009-06-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

If you are new to blogging or even not so new, Sue Waters (The Edublogger) provides some helpful technical pointers in her Top 5 mistakes made by new bloggers, with information about:

1. Copying and pasting text written in word into a blog post
2. Using copyright images in blog posts
3. Uploading images from digital cameras without resizing
4. Forgetting to link
5. Copying and pasting other bloggers posts

It's well worth a look, read through the comments as well for other bloggers feedback and extra hints.

A word about The Edublogger. It is "dedicated to helping educational bloggers with emerging technologies in education, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium. It’s purpose is to share tips, tricks, ideas and provide help to the educational blogging community".

There's lots of useful information on this blog, see the Posts by Topic section down the right. If this sounds like it might be useful to you, then why not subscribe to it.

(Image: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3102/2627669442_ce269e9fb4.jpg, by jenny downing)

Enviroschools funding to be cut

2009-06-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

I am very disappointed to hear that the National Government has decided to cut funding for the highly successful Enviroschools programme. This programme supports schools to “integrate environmental education into the whole of school life” with the aim of creating “innovative and motivated young people, who instinctively think and act sustainably”. My family has been involved with Enviroschools for several years in Southland and Otago and have seen the positive benefits it has on children, parents and the wider community.

Today we are dealing with huge environmental problems created by our lack of understanding and sheer ignorance in the past, so it seems incredibly short-sighted of the Government to step away and undermine a successful programme that helps to instil environmental awareness and sustainable values in our children, with benefits that extend into the future as they become the adults of tomorrow. So, you have to wonder what the Governments motives are for taking this action to cut funding.

Amongst those who are worried about the Government’s decision are Nick Holmes and Guy Ryan (my nephew), who put together this great video ... “Enviroschools isn't just a kit, it's a part of lives and communities, and to show the importance of education for sustainability”. Nice work!

Twitter feed

2009-06-21T04:15:00.000-07:00

Chris from Tuesday evenings social media class asked about setting up a twitter feed to her blog. Had wondered how to do that myself so followed the steps that Leigh suggested and there it is over on the right.

To get your own twitter feed:

click on the "Get Widget" button (seen at the bottom of my twitter feed)
fill in your twitter username in the right-side column and it will display your tweets in the central box
select the background colour
the Auto Scroll is disabled as a default setting so click on the tick if you want your tweets to scroll through automatically on your blog
click on the "Get Widget" button
copy the embed code in the pop-up box
go back to your blog and click "Customize" in the top right
click "Add a Gadget" in the layout boxes and select the HTML/Javascript gadget
paste your twitter widget code in the Content box and Save

Wondering what a widget is?
I looked up wikipedia and it can mean a number of things in computing. A simple definition from Widgetbox (where the twitter widget comes from) is

Web widgets are mini, portable-applications that can be added to any web page

There seems to be some overlap in the terms widget and gadget if you look up gadget on wikipedia. Is there any difference between these terms or are they referring to the same thing, at least for the general masses?

Follow on to using Camstudio to make a screen recording

2009-06-18T04:02:00.000-07:00

So here's the follow-on video of How to make a video using Camstudio, it shows how to add the title and credits to a video recording using Windows movie maker. I'm thinking that screen recordings could be useful for showing staff how to use Moodle or other applications. In addition screen recordings could be used for showing off-campus students how to access their online courses and other features of their course.

Open Windows movie maker.
From left options 1, import video.
From left options 2, add titles.
Option 3, save to my computer.
Name movie and set location to save.
Click show more choices and select other settings, then select 'High quality video large'. Then click next. The movie will open when finished compressing.

Here's the video showing how to use Windows movie maker:

Both Camstudio and Windows movie maker seem relatively easy to use. The biggest difficulty I found was trying to record in a shared office with people coming and going, telephones ringing etc. Most staff here at Otago Polytechnic have shared offices and several have mentioned this as a problem when using Audacity. I wonder whether we should have a room provided on campus that could be booked for recording purposes, or do we already have this?

Snowed in

2009-06-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

With heavy snow overnight, Dunedin turned into a winter wonderland. With schools closed and hill roads treacherous, we had the day at home. Thought I'd turn my photos from today into a Flickr slideshow to share.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

This is how I embedded the Flickr slideshow on my blog using flickrSLiDR to create the embed code:

Create a Flickr account if you don't already have one and upload some photos. Organise your photos into a Set.
Open your Set and copy the URL.
Open flickrSliDR and paste your Set URL into the URL space.
Add the width and height. I used 500 x 400. Click on the Create slideshow! button. This creates the embed Code.
Copy and paste the code into your blog.

What is Technorati?

2009-06-09T00:41:00.000-07:00

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google and Yahoo!. As of June 2008, Technorati indexes 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.^{[2]
Wikipedia June 2009

To use Technorati, open it and 'search the blogosphere ...' with your search terms.}

What is Wikispaces?

2009-06-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

Information about wikispaces and how wikis work can be found at:

Wikispaces

Wikipedia

YouTube:

Here is my wikispace

Once you have a wiki account and have created a new wiki, follow these guidelines from wikispaces to get started:

Getting Started

Click on the edit button above to put your own content on this page.
To invite new members, click on Manage Wiki and Invite People.
To change your wiki's colors or theme, click on Manage Wiki and Look and Feel.
To set who can view and edit your wiki, click on Manage Wiki and Permissions

Need Help?

Click on the help link above to learn more about how to use your wiki.

Here is a link to the workshop wiki

How to make a video using Camstudio

2009-06-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

Download and install Camstudio.
Open Camstudio, open region and select fixed region, set to 640 x 480.
Open Options and set to record from microphone and autopan.
In options, click audio options and click the volume button, then advance microphone button and tick the 1MIC boost option (windows only).
Click the record button. Position the mouse over recording area and click again to record.
The recording region will track your mouse (move your mouse slowly and deliberately).
Click stop. Name the file and save (wait while it will be compressing in the background). When finished the movie will open.

Open Windows movie maker.
From left options 1, import video.
From left options 2, add titles.
Option 3, save to my computer.
Name movie and set location to save.
Click show more choices and select other settings, then select 'High quality video large'. Then click next. The movie will open when finished compressing.

This video is now ready for publishing online ie YouTube.

The video below shows how to set up Camstudio for recording. In my excitement I forgot to mention that once you have all the settings, hit the red record button and place the recording frame where you want to begin recording from (it's not recording yet), then left click and it will start recording.

I've now added the follow on video showing how to use Windows movie maker in this posting.

Embedding YouTube playlists

2009-06-02T00:26:00.000-07:00

Sign in to YouTube.
Find a video you like, then click the link beneath the video that says Playlist.
Select an existing playlist, or Add New Playlist and complete the details. Save Playlist info.
Find similar videos and add to playlist to create a collection of videos.
View your Channel by clicking your Username at the top right of the YouTube website.
Find the box in the lower left that has the option to Embed this Channel. Copy the html code that is there and paste it into your blog.
The easiest way to embed a playlist is to create a custom player. Go to your YouTube account by clicking the link in the top right that says Account.
Click "Custom Video Players", then "Create Custom Player". Select a color and format for your player, and then choose what is going to play in it—you can choose a playlist, your own uploaded content, or your favorites—and then click the "Generate Code" button.
Copy and paste the code into your blog entry or web page

How to create a Google map

2009-06-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

Sign in to google maps.
Open the link to My Maps.
Click on Create New Map.
Add in title for your map and description. Click Save.
Search for a map by adding a street name into the search box and then zoom in to find the exact location to add the placemark.
Pick up the blue placemark and drop it on the location. A title and description box appears.
Click on Link in the right hand corner and the embed html will appear, but don't use this.
Click on the tab to 'Customize and preview embedded map' and zoom in to show the best view of your map. Check that the map size is under 450 (medium view) for the best view.
Copy the embed text and paste into blog.

View Community Learning Centre in a larger map

Composting: good for the garden and good for the soul

2009-05-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I joined a dozen hardy souls braving the heavy rain and wind for a workshop on composting presented by Michelle of Organic by Design. I'm familiar with Bokashi composting and worm farms but was keen to find out more about hot composting.

Hot composting relies on heat to speed up the break-down of organic matter and destroy any pathogens and weed seeds; the temperature needs to reach 65-68 degrees celcius. Building a hot compost heap requires a bit of organisation. Firstly you need enough material on hand and a big enough area to build a heap about 1.5 cubic metres in size, and then some old carpet or heavy sacks to lay over the top once its built. Garden and grass clippings, manures, seaweed, hay, paper/cardboard (noncoloured) and food wastes (except fats or meat) can be added.

Here we are building the compost heap.

Starting with a base of branches and twigs you add alternating layers of green/moist material to brown/dry material ensuring there is a combination of coarse to fine material for aeration, and dampening the layers as you go. Adding an activator of beneficial microorganisms to the layers also helps, for example EM. Cover to insulate. Avoid saturating the heap with water so cover with a tarpaulin during heavy rainfall. The compost heap needs turning twice over the first week or so and takes about 3-6 months to mature, which is much faster than traditional cold composting which can take up to a year to mature.

If you were wondering about Bokashi composting I've been using this system for almost a year now, turning kitchen waste and food scraps into fermented material that is ready to be dug into the soil after a matter of weeks. My collection bucket sits in the corner of kitchen with no smell. In the evening I add the collected food scraps from the day along with a tablespoon of Compost-Zing powder (this contains the beneficial microorganisms that ferment the wastes). Pop the lid on tight and that's it. Once the bucket is full you set it aside for 1 - 2 weeks and then dig it into your soil. Easy, fast and good for the environment.

About me

2009-05-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

I live in a small coastal community near Dunedin with my husband and two beautiful children. Dunedin is a small city located in the South Island of New Zealand. We have a small lifestyle block with a patch of native bush and several sheep. There's always lots to do; currently we are extending the house, developing a vegetable garden and trying to get rid of the gorse.

I work part-time at Otago Polytechnic in the Educational Development Centre and support staff in developing online learning programmes and resources. Prior to this I taught bioscience (human anatomy and physiology) and environmental science to tertiary students in foundation and undergraduate health science programmes and technician training courses.

Academic background:
Grad. Cert. in Applied eLearning, Manukau Institute of Technology (currently completing)
PG Cert. Tertiary Teaching, University of Otago (2006)
Dip Grad, Education, University of Otago (1993)
BSc (Hons), First Class, Physiology, University of Otago (1987)

Professional experience:
Educational Developer, Educational Development Centre, Otago Polytechnic (2008 - current)
Course Advisor/Writer/Editor (contract), Flexible Delivery Projects, Otago Polytechnic (2006 - 2008)
Senior Lecturer, Otago Polytechnic, School of Natural Resources and Science (2000 - 2005)

Programme Manager: National Diploma in Science (2004 – 2005)
Teaching experience: Bioscience, Environmental Science for National Diploma in Science (NDS) and Bridging Health students (Biology Units Level 4–6; Core Health Units Level 4)

Lecturer, Otago Polytechnic, Applied Science and Technology Department (1991 - 2000)

Teaching experience: Biology, Anatomy and Physiology for various student groups (NDS, Health Sciences, Sport’s Studies)

Lecturer, Otago Polytechnic, Nursing and Midwifery Department (1988 - 1991)

Teaching experience: Anatomy and Physiology for Nursing students

Never too old to twitter

2009-05-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

Well done to Ivy Bean who at well over 100 (103 or 104 depending on which source you read) may be the oldest person on Twitter according to this story in the British tabloid newspaper, The Sun.
While her tweets about daily activities at Hillside Manor care home in Bradford where she lives, may not be that exciting she has amassed a huge number of followers since her first tweet on May 14 (over 11,800 already). Apparently she switched to Twitter after getting bored with Facebook and her enthusiasm for technology has inspired other residents at the care home to have a go. It just goes to show you're never too old to try something new!
You can see what Ivy is up to at twitter.com/IvyBean104

About me

2009-05-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

Programme Manager: National Diploma in Science (2004 – 2005)
Teaching experience: Bioscience, Environmental Science for National Diploma in Science (NDS) and Bridging Health students (Biology Units Level 4–6; Core Health Units Level 4)

Lecturer, Otago Polytechnic, Applied Science and Technology Department (1991 - 2000)

Teaching experience: Biology, Anatomy and Physiology for various student groups (NDS, Health Sciences, Sport’s Studies)

Lecturer, Otago Polytechnic, Nursing and Midwifery Department (1988 - 1991)

Teaching experience: Anatomy and Physiology for Nursing students

First twitterings

2009-05-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

Have started tweeting? or maybe twittering? not sure of the correct terminology yet, but these are small posts (microblogs) of 140 characters or less updated on your twitter page that all your followers can view.
So how is twitter being used? You can ask a question, provide a link to something interesting, send out reminder post about a meeting/event, or simply tell everyone what you are up to.

Leigh introduced twitter at the last social media class, in the hope this might be an easier way for newbies to start interacting with others before getting going on their own blogs.

Sign up, fill in your profile details, then you can find people to follow. Clicking on someone's username takes you to their twitter page and you can see their recent posts and also who they are following; a click of a button and you can follow them.

Firefox allows you to install Twitterfox (see under the Tools menu, Get Add-ons and search for twitterfox) so tweets automatically pop up in the lower right of your screen. Clicking on the twitterfox icon (see red arrow below) shows you a list of recent updates, and you can post/reply from here.

Here's a neat example from an Auckland primary school teacher of what can happen with twitter: pirates ahoy . Sounds like a lot of fun!

Organise your life with iGoogle

2009-05-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago at the Socially Constructed Media course some participants were talking about iGoogle. It's like a one-stop page that shows your feeds and all sorts of other useful gadgets. My iGoogle homepage has links to my google reader, google docs, news sites, wikis, flickr, YouTube and lots of other stuff, all organised on one page.

It only take a few minutes to set up your own iGoogle homepage at www.igoogle.com. This YouTube video will get you started.

Podcasting

2009-04-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a video from YouTube about podcasting that Jean in the SocialMedia class found.

Although traditionally considered to be audio 'broad'casts, podcasts are essentially any internet media (audio, video etc) that you can subscribe to, like you do with Google Reader. You can use a podcatcher like iTunes to catch the podcasts onto your computer which can then be downloaded onto an iPod.

Wikis and more

2009-03-30T22:54:00.000-07:00

Back at the Social media course tonight and I have failed miserably on posting anything to this space in the last two weeks (note to self, must try to set aside some time!).
But to be fair I have been busy keeping up with the Educational Design for eLearning course and learning about Moodle (Learning Management System) and eXe (a freely available Open Source authoring application for publishing web content). There's lots of things to blog about and I plan to share all of this through this site.
This week we have looked at wiki's (collaborative webpages), starting with wikipedia the online encyclopedia. Leigh who teaches this course encouraged everyone to check out their own subject area on wikipedia and start engaging with the content by editing. Check out Otago Polytechic wikieducator site and some of the course development going on at the polytech.

At the Socially Constructed Media course

2009-03-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

At the Socially Constructed Media class on Tuesday night we embedded a YouTube video and here it is.

How online learning communities work

2007-12-20T23:35:00.000-08:00

It's nearly Christmas and New Year, and an opportunity to look back at the Facilitating eLearning Communities course that I have just completed. This represents my (still developing) understanding about online learning communities.

(photo: merry flickrmas, http://flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/69609713/)

Community and learning

A learning community is a group of people who share a common purpose and are engaged in a shared learning experience over time.

A sense of community is important because it provides the social environment that supports learning. Belonging to a learning community has the potential to promote deeper learning, support, cooperation, increase retention, and provide a greater sense of individual satisfaction and well-being (Rovai, 2002). Within the community, members can explore their ideas and understanding with others; and it is in these connections and interactions that their understanding is influenced, challenged and ultimately transformed. Rovai (2002) describes the social connections as

“… members of [online] classroom communities will have feelings of belonging and trust. They will believe that they matter to one another and to the group; that they have duties and obligations to each other and to the school; and that they possess a shared faith that members’ educational needs will be met through their commitment to shared goals.”

Communities do not automatically develop but have an increased chance of emerging with the provision of the right mix of ingredients. These ingredients centre around the members of the group (students and teacher/facilitator) and their actions and interactions with the content and each other. Both Konrad Glagowski and Derek Chirnside in the 10-minute presentations described how they structured their learning environments to support the development of a learning community. They identified the following characteristics: building up confidence in using the technology, developing social presence and an online identity, co-participation of the teacher and student, using personally-relevant learning tasks (authentic learning experiences), providing collaborative participatory learning activities, timely and constructive peer and teacher feedback, opportunities for reflection, extending beyond the online classroom, and the importance of the process as well as the end-product. This supports a constructivist view of learning, with the learner at the centre constructing their own knowledge from their individual and shared learning experiences.

Communities need some rules and guidelines, for example, about member’s roles and expected behaviours around participation, netiquette, and respect for people’s views and identity. These shouldn’t stifle the group and put people off from participating; clear, simple, relevant to the group and open for discussion and negotiation. Building up trust within a community is crucial for establishing relationships and connection among members so they feel safe to share themselves and reveal their weaknesses. Without trust, Rovai (2002) says the community

“does not engender the open and caring environment needed to promote diverse and constructive interactions that empower learners to negotiate common understandings in their quest for learning new perspectives and ideas”.

To what extent did our group form a community?

Most participants who continued to the end agreed that a learning community had formed and that their learning and understanding had been significant. I agree with this although I personally don’t feel a strong sense of connection and support, unlike others in the group. The confusion in the beginning over the multiple communication channels, privacy concerns, disagreement, and who made-up the group may have contributed to this. As we progressed on to when participants were starting to share their thoughts more openly and make connections, I was overwhelmed by the technology tools. At this time, just following the conversations, postings, and resources took up so much time there was little left for contributions or responses, as expressed in this blog post. So I guess I chose to step back and try and take it all in, from a safe place on the periphery of the group. Several people have since commented that pre-requisite knowledge of the tools would help avoid this situation, allowing participants to focus more on the topic of facilitating communities.

Social presence

Social presence is one of the important factors contributing to interaction, collaboration and creating a sense of community. It refers to the ability of learners and facilitator/s to project themselves as “real people” and their reciprocal awareness of others in an online environment (Cutler, 1995; Rovai, 2002). We exhibit social presence through expressing personal values, emotion and feelings, using salutation and closure in messages, acknowledging the messages of others and giving feedback, and making inquiries (eg requesting clarification, information or advice). The social presence of facilitators is also linked to providing learning support and assistance, and encouraging active participation (Na Ubon & Kimble, 2004).

It is not surprising that a positive cycle can develop as students begin establishing social connections: the more a participant projects their identity and shares something of themselves then the more that others will reciprocate, and the more trust and support is developed (Cutler, 1995). This effect was definitely evident in the more active participants of our course, who generally posted more frequently and received more feedback. It has also been found that having more experience of online courses contributes positively to social presence, perhaps because students have developed specialized learning skills for the online environment and have a better understanding of how they can project their identity (Hostetter & Busch, 2006). In our course those that were more experienced online communicators and more comfortable with the technology were able to develop their social presence more quickly.

Participation and interaction

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach in The Art of Building Virtual Communities summarized two models that represent the varying levels of participation found in online communities – from visiting to contributing to leading. In David Lee’s model Leaders contribute frequently and are central to “building the fire” that draws others in to participate. Members of the community who contribute regularly are described as Learners. Lurkers are generally invisible, mostly following the activities of the group and participating occasionally. People who visit from time to time to see whether it’s worthwhile joining are considered as Linkers. A similar model of participation presented by Derek Wenmoth describes Consumers as the lurkers gaining knowledge and understanding from reading and exploring others contributions. Commentors make responses to others posts, while contributors are more confident and start new threads of discussion. Commentators provide leadership, evaluating and drawing conclusions from the contributions of others to see the “bigger picture”.

While all of these members are valuable to the well-being of a community, it is clear that its survival is dependent on those who make regular contributions and provide leadership. In our course there were a core group of active participants, which I thank for their openness, curiosity, and determination, as we went on this journey of discovery. They appeared to quickly become comfortable with the technology and communicating their ideas. As they established their social presence, a positive cycle of feedback and support developed around them. There were also less active participants and Sarah provided her insights into why members may find it difficult to participate,

“I feel I have nothing to add or what I wanted to say has already been said. I may feel intimidated or lack confidence – I do not want to take a risk or expose myself. I may also be concerned with privacy issues eg I do not want my thoughts or comments to get back to colleagues or my boss … It may be that I do not know how to contribute - what buttons to press or where to put my comment … [lurkers] may learn in different ways to the people who are at the hub of the group”.

I recognize much of Sarah’s comments in myself. I also feel that my tendancy to mull things over, often left postings and comments partially completed and then abandoned as I moved onto to something else.

The role of the teacher / facilitator

In the group forum there was an energized conversation about teaching vs facilitating, with Leigh suggesting that you can’t be both a teacher with all the power and a facilitator who is more neutral with a passive presence. Many in the group expressed their beliefs that a good teacher could move between the two roles dependent on the needs of individuals or group, stepping back as a ‘guide on the side’ who encouraged and supported the learner to make their own discoveries, and stepping forward to provide expert knowledge and direction when needed. After all this time I’m still thinking about this. I teach foundation level students many of whom begin as dependent learners with little background knowledge about bioscience. To start with I am usually the teacher, who provides the knowledge and helps direct and organise their learning but as they gain some expertise I can step back and become more of a facilitator.

Online teachers/facilitators have multiple roles to fulfil, as described by Ed Hootstein’s (2002) wearing four pairs of shoes. These include being a/an:

Instructor: guiding self-directed learning, providing resources and creating relevant learning experiences
Social director: stimulating learner participation and interaction in collaborative environments
Programme manager: meeting organizational, procedural and administrative responsibilities
Technical assistant: helping learners feel comfortable with the technology

Salmon (2002) has developed a useful 5-stage model that outlines the roles (moderating and technical) that online teachers play to support interaction and learning in an online course, progressing through access and motivation, online socialization, information exchange, knowledge construction, and development.

Putting this into practice:
- be aware of barriers to getting set up with the technology, and provide support and resources to aid access
- provide an explanation as to why active participation is important along with guidelines for participating. Set realistic expectations for what participants can manage. Be open about how uncomfortable and difficult it may be.
- begin with simple and interesting activities (ice-breakers and introductions) to build up confidence and become comfortable with the learning environment, technology and interaction.

These points focus on the first two stages of Salmon’s (2002) 5-stage model which addresses the technical or social issues that may inhibit participation, and provides motivation to join in and share some information about themselves (eg their understanding, culture, issues or concerns). It’s critical to follow-up early with support and guidance if participants are struggling. For those who are already experienced, they could act as buddies at this time.

- design relevant small group interactive learning activities like these outlined here. Group activities encourage interaction with course content and each other. Working collaboratively can contribute to deeper learning and building a sense of community.
This is working through stages 3 and 4 of Salmon’s (2002) model.

Last but not least, online facilitators need to be positive, proactive, patient and persistent (these four P’s are essential qualities according to Hywel Thomas here):
positive: to build rapport, generate enthusiasm, maintain interest and help when the going gets tough;
proactive: to make things happen, be a catalyst (if necessary) to help learners get going on a course, to recognise when action needs to be taken and take it
patient: to understand the needs of each learner as well as the group and to adapt to their timeframes as far as possible
persistent: to keep at things, stop learners from drifting away, and deal with any technical or other problems

Online communication tools

“High quality interaction, full participation and reflection do not happen simply by providing the technology. Hence the need to design online activities carefully, to reduce barriers and enhance the potential of the technology” (Salmon, 2002).

Online technology provides the communication framework of the learning environment. The tools must fit the purpose, that is, to enable and support the desired learning experiences, and be relatively simple and user-friendly. For any of these tools you have to be aware of possible glitches and providing time and support for participants to become familiar and comfortable with using them. Those I see as particularly useful for teaching bioscience include a course blog, wiki for group work (eg projects and case studies), and ElluminateLive for tutorials and group work (eg brainstorming, problems, discussion). I’d like to continue my exploration of SecondLife because I think it may offer some interesting opportunities to actually get inside the body.

Blogs provide an opportunity for students to share information, reveal their understanding, and reflect on experiences. Receiving feedback from others contributes to their growing understanding and a network of interactions can form through reading and commenting on each others blogs. While I would encourage colleagues and students to consider using these I don’t think that it is necessary for bioscience students to have individual blogs, but I see the value of a course blog that they could contribute to.

I think wikis have a lot to offer in providing a space for students to work together. As part of our course I developed two wikis: my wiki project called Group Activities in Bioscience and a wikispace called BiosciTeach wiki for Facilitating a Discussion assessment. Once I finally got under way they were both relatively easy to set up and add information to. I’ve invited colleagues to collaborate on these but they need a bit more encouragement, so that’s a focus for next year. I confess to not really following what others had completed in their wikis (and hence not offering any contributions) so I might have a look back through them.

I really like the opportunities provided by the computer conferencing tool Elluminate, which provides real time communication with voice and IM options, as well as a whiteboard and web links. With the ability to use powerpoint presentations, real-time discussion and small group work, I think this would be very useful for bioscience tutorials and encouraging social interaction. Apart from the odd time went it went down, it was used very effectively for the 10-minute presentations and subsequent discussions. And here’s a post on how I used it with colleagues for a discussion on Encouraging Social Interactions.

Phew, that’s my review for now. I'm going to go back through and catch up on some of the other material from this course that I overlooked along the way. A big thank you to Bronwyn and Leigh and all the other participants who have given so much. It was a hard road but well worth it!

References:

Cutler, R. H. (1995). Distributed presence and community in cyberspace, Interpersonal Communication and Technology: A Journal for the 21st Century, 1 (2). Available at: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/optek/1995/n2/cutler.txt
Hostetter, C. & Busch, M. (2006). Measuring Up Online: The Relationship between
Social Presence and Student Learning Satisfaction, Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6 (2), pp. 1 – 12. Available at: http://www.iupui.edu/~josotl/VOL_6/NO_2/V6N2HostetterFinal.pdf
Na Ubon, A. & Kimble, C. (2004). Exploring Social Presence in Asynchronous Text-Based Online Learning Communities. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education 2004, Samos Island, Greece, July 2004, pp.292-297. Available at: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/research/icicte.pdf
Rovai, A.P. (2002). Building Sense of Community at a Distance. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 3 (1). Available at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/79/152
Salmon, G. (2002). Five-step model of teaching and learning online. Available at: http://www.atimod.com/e-tivities/5stage.shtml

Assessment 4: Reflection on facilitation of an online discussion

2007-12-08T02:28:00.000-08:00

This is the summary and my reflections of the discussion of Otago Polytechnic bioscience educators using the online conferencing tool Elluminate, for the purpose of exploring strategies that encourage social interactions in online learning courses. Although only 3 out of the 7 invited members came to the meeting, we had a really valuable discussion.

Summary of session

Introduction activities
Pull up a chair and get to know each other and the features of Elluminate. Here we are sitting around the table (looking much skinnier than usual!).

What do we mean by social interactions and how does it benefit students in online learning courses?
The video of geese and slide below that summarized my understanding of social interaction were used to prompt discussion about participants thoughts about social interaction. Participants brought up learner isolation, the potential for misinterpretation without body language and voice, the benefits for students of working together, and their experiences of students supporting each other.

What are the strategies participants use to encourage interactions and the difficulties or concerns they have about them?
Strategies were listed on the whiteboard as they were described and discussed. There was also discussion about how to cope with non-participating students as well as dominating students, and how to handle inappropriate or annoying behaviour eg doodling / drawings / words appearing on the whiteboard.

After using Elluminate and looking at a wiki what did they think about using these for getting students working together?
A group brainstorming activity and overview of a wiki project stimulated discussion about the ways they could use these with their own students.

Concluding discussion
Participants felt they needed to pay attention to social interaction in their online courses. They commented that this session had been a useful way to experience and learn about these technologies, and they were very interested in having follow-up discussions. And I even managed to get in a big plug for the Facilitating eLearning Communities course.

Observations and reflections

What went well?

Despite both the technology and topic being relatively new to most of the group, I felt the meeting was very successful, and that participants had a positive experience in using Elluminate and participating in the activities and discussion.

Joining the Elluminate meeting was relatively problem-free. The participants took the opportunity to join the meeting from an on-campus computer suite with a support person available to help them set up (thanks once again Bronwyn for your help with this). The computer suites aren’t automatically configured for Elluminate, nor do staff have headsets, which Bronwyn kindly provided.
I’m sure that knowing each other well helped participants feel more comfortable but the introduction and ice-breaker activities along with the small size of the group aided the process of interacting online. During the meeting, the questions, images and activities worked well to prompt discussion around participants’ experiences and reflections from their own teaching.

Reflections:
- Providing adequate support as people take their first steps is really important. I would check they have the right equipment, and organise on-campus introduction sessions if possible, or use telephone / email support for off-campus students.
- Exploring and playing with Elluminate at the start was a useful strategy for providing some fun and an opportunity for participants to start engaging with the technology and interacting with each other.
- It took more thought and time to plan this online meeting (wiki, resources, powerpoint presentation, activities) than I had expected. I’m not sure whether this is usual for this type of online learning experience or because it was my first time facilitating an Elluminate meeting.
- Having meetings with colleagues online is a really good way to practice and gain confidence facilitating and using Elluminate (learn-by-doing).

What didn’t go so well?

It was a little discouraging that less than half the invited participants made it to the session, but timing appeared to be an issue here (Friday afternoon and busy with end-of-year work).
I also asked the participants to review some resources prior to the meeting; this included a video, article and wiki page, which would have taken about 15 minutes of their time. Only one participant accessed all the resources, one didn’t view the video as their dial-up download was so slow and another (with broadband access) didn’t review any of the resources at all.
During the first part of the session I found it particularly difficult to follow the text messages while listening, talking, and watching the whiteboard, and consequently missed some questions and comments from participants.

Reflections:
- From my experience of online learning I would want all my students to use Broadband but there are areas that still can’t access it and it may also be financially restrictive. Elluminate works well on dial-up but you need to be aware that access to some resources may be limited if students don’t have Broadband.
- Not looking at the resources at all is somewhat disappointing as I believe you ultimately gain more from a discussion when you are prepared, but this also happens in f2f classrooms as well. Apart from being very clear about expectations it comes down to participants being motivated enough to do the preparation.
- I would think that following all the channels of communication gets easier as you become more proficient with using Elluminate. I noticed however with missing some of the text chat, it provided an opportunity for other participants to respond or bring it into the audio discussion. If it was a larger group it would definitely be beneficial to have another person assisting with the session.

Facilitation strategies

Engaging participants, questioning, and modeling were reasonably effective facilitation strategies I used.

Engaging the participants:
- Providing a few easy-to-digest resources on a wiki to get their attention and motivate them to join in. These didn’t get everyone’s attention but timing of the meeting might have been an issue here with end-of-year marking etc
- Providing support and assistance to get set-up and during the session.
- Creating a comfortable learning environment (informal and relaxed) with guidance to use the tools.
- Using simple activities that encourage them to join in.

Effective questioning:
- This was used to prompt and maintain discussion.
- Asking open-ended questions encouraged participants to give an explanation rather than yes/no.
- Directing questions to participants drew them into the discussion.
- Providing space after a participant had contributed allowed others to respond.
- Useful for clarifying meaning when needed

Modeling behaviour and activities that promote social interaction and are useful for teaching bioscience.

These strategies are supported by De Schutter et al (2004) who reviewed the roles of facilitators in synchronous audio-conferences, in relation to participant access and motivation, online socialization, information exchange, and knowledge construction. These are the first four stages of Salmon’s (2002) 5-stage model of teaching and learning online. They described facilitating in a synchronous context as a “daunting task” with “little time for reflection and deliberation” during the meeting as compared to asynchronous discussions. It requires the moderator to “support both process and content, guide interaction through meaningful feedback and deft questioning strategies, and provide additional cues and information as needed.” Although I didn’t find it daunting, I definitely agree that you have to be tuned into the discussion and closely following proceedings to know when to contribute your perspective, ask questions, seek clarification, keep quiet or move on to the next topic. Clearly, effective facilitation requires planning and practice.

I feel rather pleased with how our discussion went having achieved a high degree of interactivity and participation to reach stage 3 /4 of Salmon’s (2002) model, that of information exchange and knowledge construction, although I wonder how much more challenging it would have been with an unfamiliar group. If you are considering using Elluminate then it may be worthwhile reading the paper by Murphy and Ciszewska-Carr (2007) as it provides handy insights into the experiences of teachers who have just started using it.

References:
De Schutter, A. Fahrni, P. & Rudolph, J. (2004). Best Practices in Online Conference Moderation. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5 (1).
Available at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/164/245

Murphy, E. and Ciszewska-Carr, J. (2007). Instructors' experiences of web based synchronous communication using two way audio and direct messaging. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), 68-86.
Available at: http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet23/murphy.html

Salmon, G. (2002). Five-step model of teaching and learning online.
Available at: http://www.atimod.com/e-tivities/5stage.shtml

Assessment 3: Planning for facilitating a discussion

2007-12-08T02:09:00.000-08:00

This is the facilitation plan completed prior to the online discussion using Elluminate. The facilitation and reflection follows in the next post.

Time and Date of facilitation exercise: Friday 30 Nov, 1 pm (1 hour session)

Reasons for the meeting
The purpose of this meeting is to discuss ways that we can encourage social interactions in online learning courses.
Social interactions refer to the “people” interactions that take place between students and instructors. The most important features of this are social presence (degree of awareness of other people) and collaboration (working together for a purpose), which produces a feeling of connection and being part of a learning community, and leads to a deeper learning experience.

Medium to be used
One hour discussion using the online conferencing tool Elluminate. Elluminate provides real time communication with voice and IM options, as well as a whiteboard and web links. With the ability to use powerpoint presentations, real-time discussion and small group work, Elluminate offers a very useful tool for bioscience teaching and encouraging social interaction. It is hoped that using it in this session may encourage other participants to consider using it in their own teaching if they don’t already.
Participants will be invited to the meeting by e-mail, with instructions for joining the Elluminate session and required equipment (headset with microphone). There will also be a link to the BiosciTeach wiki which has resources and guidelines for the meeting, and a place to summarize the discussion and give facilitator feedback after the meeting.
Participants will be informed that should Elluminate fail (as can happen) there will be a message put up on the wiki page, and the meeting will be rescheduled.

Description of the group
Hope to have 5 – 6 participants, aged 25 – 50 years
Profile of group:

Bioscience educators from Otago Polytechnic
Teaching experiences range from foundation through to post-graduate students
Varying levels of experience with online / flexible teaching
Learning styles unknown but aware of providing an environment that takes into account individual preferences, eg resources provided prior to meeting, Elluminate offers opportunity to engage visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles, feedback wiki after meeting
Some participants know each other very well, while others are relatively unknown
Don’t think this group has ever met face-to-face or online together

As this is the first online meeting of this group, there will be an emphasis on encouraging group formation so that participants feel comfortable to engage in discussions and share experiences, information and ideas (stage 3 of Gilly Salmons 5-stage model).

Stage 1:Access and motivation: support to get on to Elluminate, instructions and resources provided, contact for help; motivation to join and participate by providing invitation and resources prior to the meeting
Stage 2: Socialisation: introductions, introduction to the features of Elluminate and an icebreaker activity
Stage 3: Information exchange: discussion of topic

Planned facilitation of the meeting
For this meeting my role as a facilitator is firstly to invite participation using a personal invite stating the purpose for the meeting and a link to the resources (wiki) that will be discussed. As well as an opportunity to meet up with other lecturers teaching bioscience at Otago Polytechnic, hopefully the chosen topic will be of some interest to participants with more courses using online and blended delivery, and will motivate them to join the discussion. During the session I will use activities that encourage socialization and interaction (modeling), with questions and prompts to initiate and maintain discussion, and at the end summarize the main points of discussion.

Welcome: welcome page on whiteboard with image that suggests a meeting (eg chairs arranged in a circle)

Introductions: who we are and who/what we teach; get participants to add names/pictures to image provided; introduce elluminate features and invite participants to explore

Icebreaker: each participant provides a 3-word statement that tells us a bit more about themselves; elaborate further with discussion

Facilitation of discussion will be focused around these questions:

1. Benefits for learners of being in a group? (Video of geese)
Discussion around peer support and encouragement, communication, interaction, sense of community.
2. How are you a “social director” eg what strategies do you use to encourage interactions? Participants share the strategies they use. Discussion around strategies and any difficulties or concerns they have about them. List strategies on the whiteboard as they are discussed.
3. What other interactive activities can we use?
Group activities to show potential use of Elluminate: small group brainstorming activity and discussion activities in break-out rooms (questions and interpretation of image).
Introduce and discuss uses of wiki. Discuss whether Elluminate and wiki might be useful tools for encouraging student interaction in bioscience courses.

Summary: overview the main points from discussion

Closing message:
Thank you to participants. A summary will be posted on the wiki, where they can add further thoughts regarding this discussion. Email me with any feedback on the usefulness of the session and my facilitation.

Second Life

2007-11-04T17:17:00.001-08:00

I finally had a go at Second Life this weekend inspired by this youTube video.

My SL name is Tulip Debruyere and I've spent some time on Orientation Island working out the basics of dressing, moving, flying and searching etc. No problems so far, actually it was somewhat easier than I had expected ... but early days yet! Here I am on the Island.

Looking inside Facebook

2007-10-30T04:42:00.001-07:00

We’ve just had the opportunity to look inside Facebook (a phenomenally successful social networking site), thanks to Ellen our 19-year old guide. She began using it as an easy way to keep in contact with overseas friends. And the emphasis does seem to be on easy and fun, for this age group anyway, a bit like sitting in the pub catching up with your mates. You create your online identify with personal details and other interesting / quirky features, like your strippers name and quick contacts, for instance, friends may choose to lick, kiss or poke you!, as well as sharing what’s going on with your life, your photos, etc. And the user has control over who can access their site and what information they share.

But there seems to be a darker side to all this fun. Over the past month social networking sites have been in the media with stories of cyber bullying, gangs using them to recruit members, police surfing them for information about crimes, identity theft, and the ease of misrepresenting oneself for dubious purposes. There’s also the concern with Facebook owning all the information posted (does this include original art work or your own photos?), and how they may then use this information.

All this negative stuff aside, how might Facebook be used for education purposes? The following excerpts from Educause Learning Initiative (May, 2007) hint at its potential.

The current concerns …

that the actions and activities on the site may lack substance. Keeping in touch with a circle of friends and colleagues is fine, but if Facebook enables trite, superficial interaction, there is little educational value.

But there are possibilities it may develop into something more significant …

The interesting question is whether expanded access and a growing number of functions will lead users into more substantive activities on the site. Facebook may become a channel for dialogue and a destination for people interested in learning about or sharing information on current issues.

It could be used as a campus marketing and communication tool …

a campus can advertise jobs, a campus election, or other activities to students at that institution or perhaps also at nearby institutions.

And to forge more meaningful relationships between campus students and teachers in an informal social setting …

a central part of the college years is “learning to be”—experimenting with different personas, engaging with a variety of groups, and developing a set of core values. By allowing users a range of tools to negotiate and inhabit online networks, Facebook and sites like it can be an important part of this developmental process.

From this very brief introduction to Facebook I couldn’t see any immediate use for it in my teaching (or personal life), so I haven’t signed up. But people probably said that about blogs and youTube, so who knows, it might be worth keeping an eye on it.

Community flavour to formal courses

2007-10-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

In the last 10-minute talk Derek Chirnside described features of a constructivist, learner-centred, collaborative online course that he teaches. Here are some of the points that were discussed.

Blogs and journals encourage participants to reflect on the course content and their learning experiences, and interact with each other through sharing their stories and problems. Weekly postings and collaboration are a requirement of the course.

Learning experiences revolve around authentic (personally relevant) activities and projects.

While some parts of the course are open and public (for example the student blogs), there are closed environments and opportunities for private discussion between the course participants and individually with the lecturer. This stimulated quite a lot of discussion around the necessity for closed places in health courses where participants can safely share their experiences in private.

As the course progresses, students begin making connections beyond the course and become part of a wider learning community.

I was very interested in the strategies Derek used to encourage and support participation and interaction. He was realistic with participants about the challenges ahead in the course, was clear about course expectations and requirements, provided an environment that allowed participants to build up confidence, identified and supported at-risk students, used teaching activities that required contribution / peer feedback / collaboration (for example, sharing stories and problems), provided teacher feedback that invited more discussion and helped to connect people / ideas / examples, and linked participation to assessment.

I’m beginning to appreciate the complexity of online learning communities and achieving the optimal mix of challenge, participation, connection, independence, and support. And the roles that facilitators and participants play in bringing this all together to meet the needs of each particular group of learners and individuals within a group. This discussion certainly provided some useful insights and practical advice towards this.

The best and worst bits

2007-10-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

I haven’t left the course but have spent the last couple of weeks engrossed in exploring a number of web tools and playing with them. I’ve found that there seems to be two parts to this course, firstly there’s setting up and learning about the web tools themselves and then secondly, considering how they can be used to communicate, share and collaborate, in developing and maintaining a community.

So far my priority has mostly been on the first part. I have set up rss and google reader, have iGoogle as my homepage, have got del.icio.us and tags for bookmarking, explored flickr and uploaded some photos, used skype for chatting, explored youTube, worked on google docs, used gliffy and bubbl.us to make concept maps, tried out audacity, and taken a peek around myspace and bebo, and most recently have been looking at how to podcast, set-up slideshows and videos. This is a huge achievement given where I began!

I have to say though that even getting this far, nearly didn’t happen. Earlier on I was floundering around in cyberspace, completely directionless and disorientated; it would have been easy to give up. I knew I needed to fill in some basic gaps in my understanding of these tools, but I wasn’t sure how to do this. And then by chance, I found some resources that gave me the structure and guidance I needed:

Learning 2.0 program: 23 things, a course for librarians. I liked the course blog format, introductory podcasts, resources and discovery exercises, all with an emphasis on having a play and some fun.

Workshops and Resources wiki from University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre, with lots of really useful background information, advice and examples of using the web tools.

These both helped enormously and have kept me fairly busy over the last couple of weeks.

The best bits so far

the knowledge gained about these tools and my confidence in using the web has grown substantially
having the opportunity to hear from expert speakers in the 10 minute talk series
following everyone’s progress in their blogs and email forum

The worst bits

the earlier times of complete confusion
getting around to blogging (I have never managed to keep any kind of journal before! I’ve got some posts partly written, but it’s easy to lose the moment and find yourself engrossed in something else)
and leading on from the last one, not being a more active online participant in general, being here but mostly invisible (my online personality definitely doesn’t match my real-life personality and I’m not sure why, maybe it’s a confidence thing)

A roller-coaster ride

2007-09-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I felt quite down and demotivated, overwhelmed by the technological mountain before me, what with blogs, wikis, del.icio.us, rss, tags, flickr, slideshare, twitter and a whole heap of other mysterious words. I felt quite inadequate; I simply wouldn’t be able get up to speed with all these web-based technologies. Not only was I struggling as an online learner (having difficulties managing my time, focusing on a particular task without zipping off here and there following pathways of interesting links, or even making some contribution to others in the group … needless-to-say I’m still struggling with all of these but working on it), but even worse, would I ever be able to make it as a good online teacher. Fairly depressing stuff!

But then I tuned into Nancy White’s talk about how much we learn by looking over someone else’s shoulders (here’s her website). I recognized immediately that this is how I have learned most of my (somewhat limited) computer skills, watching someone else, it’s like they turn the key and open the door a little for you to then venture inside yourself and try it out. In this course I’ve been looking over people’s shoulders to see how they set up and use their blogs, and how Elluminate and some of these other tools can be used (I like Elluminate, it’s immediately applicable to my teaching area (bioscience), although I’ve found I can listen and watch the slide screen but not follow the text at the same time!). And it’s been really useful, I’ve picked up a lot but to be honest, it’s a slow and difficult process when you are not an overly confident computer/web-user and doing it all online rather than having that person sitting next to you. But this will be the challenging reality for many online learners that don’t have any f2f, so it’s good to be aware of it and to consider how I can help students to feel comfortable and able to move beyond the technology.

There were several things that really struck me from Nancy’s talk:

Her chatty style mixing information and personal stories, her sense of humor, and ease of responding to the written text and questions; I felt like we were in the same room, I could almost see her waving her hands about as she excitedly spoke.

Much to my relief she told us that online facilitators don’t need to know all the techno stuff but it’s helpful to have a geeky friend who does (that’s Leigh, Bron and Terry I think). She said a wonderful line “it’s OK to be unknowing and comfortable in your unknowingness”. It was great to hear that, I don’t need to know everything about all the techno tools and words that keep popping up, just enough to see whether a particular tool will be useful in my teaching context and then using it well. So I’ll just focus on a few things (and keep a list of others to catch up with later on).

And it was even better when Nancy referred to the power of the newbie or new ”bee” buzzing around carrying new ideas to other people. What a confidence booster! Later that week I excitedly showed my husband some of the communication tools I am becoming familiar with (google groups, blogs, wikis) and he began wondering how he might be able to use this in environmental management at a national level. I really was buzzing!

And lastly from Nancy some tips on what makes a good facilitator: they are self aware, they practice and get feedback so they can identify their strengths and weaknesses, and they know how to ask good questions. This was great stuff.

So where am I now? I forged ahead and changed my web browser to Leigh’s suggestion which seemed to upset some of my other applications, although I hope that’s all sorted now. And I set-up my RSS feeder (I really liked the YouTube video (RSS in plain English by Leelefever) that described what it was, this video was really simple and effective). Then back down to reality with the number of posts appearing on the reader after a number of days away distracted by work and family commitments, and finding myself unsure what to do with my Gary Larson cartoon for our Bb exercise when I discovered it and the link to it breached copyright (which is why it hasn’t appeared anywhere), and then missing the talk last week because I thought it was on a different day (thank goodness they are recorded). I know I still have a long way to go but what a ride so far!

Creating learning experiences

2007-08-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Just as you set up the normal classroom and use a variety of teaching practices to create an environment that supports and encourages student learning, so too should you apply this to the online environment, says Konrad Glagowski, in his recent talk to us about ‘classrooms as third places’. The theme of his talk was about creating a place that allows an online learning community to emerge; not building it for the students but building it with them.

Using the four key attributes of a great place (uses and activities, comfort and image, sociability, and access and linkages), Konrad described the teacher’s role in helping to set-up “the kind of environment where learning experiences can take shape”. He does this by providing opportunities for creative and expressive writing that is personally relevant and beyond the normal coursework; allows students to customize, define and build their own web space and online presence (individual student blogs); promotes dialogue by using a readerly and participatory voice aligned with instructional scaffolding / conversations; actively encourages interactions and the formation of networks; and provides a visual representation of the community so that the members, content and interactions can be seen and easily accessed.

His experience involves online learning as an extension of his normal classroom teaching where he sees the students daily, so that the two overlap and build on each other. Even so, he takes considerable time (about a month) establishing the community before they then start on course-related work; is this related to his young students (13, 14 yrs) or does it actually take more time than we realize to lay good foundations? Personally I like the idea of taking time and allowing everyone to become comfortable with the environment, technology, and the process of revealing one’s thoughts. I particularly liked his visual representation of the community (eg a building with named windows that link to each student’s blog). I think this representation can help to create a feeling of ‘a group’ with everyone having a place in that group. It’s good to be reminded that very simple things can have a big impact!

In his blog, Konrad talks more about the five stages of creating learning experiences that have emerged from his own teaching.
1. Discover: student looks for a topic of interest from a course theme and begins exploring
2. Define: student narrows and defines their research topic and how they will approach it
3. Immerse: student becomes immersed in topic: blogs, reads, creates, and becomes part of online learning communities/networks
4. Build: begins to build their own knowledge that is evident on their blog
5. Contribute: creation of unique and individual artifacts to the field they are researching

Constructivism in action! This framework along with his talk reinforce important characteristics of online learning that have become increasingly evident since beginning this course: personally-relevant learning (authenticity), having an online identity, ownership of material, co-participation of the teacher and student, social learning networks (collaborative learning), transparent learning and the importance of the process rather than just the product.

I’m still considering the extent to which blogs and the processes described here could be used in a meaningful way in my teaching context, in that it adds value to the students learning. I can see that a project investigating a topic related to the body would provide the type of in-depth exploration Konrad describes with his students, but I’m also weary that for many beginner-level tertiary students, simply managing the large amount of content in the bioscience course in an online learning environment is challenging enough already.

I would certainly like to create more opportunity for interaction and social learning in the online environment, perhaps using student blogs as learning diaries where they have a place to share relevant knowledge / experiences / links, explore a topic of interest in more detail if they wish, make comments on topical issues (I think this incidental learning is really important), begin to have relevant conversations, and to reflect on their own learning. Maybe this is how it starts out in the first half of the course, progressing to using it for a project in the second half of the course. It certainly has given me lots to think about.

eLearning 2.0: into the future, or here and now

2007-08-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

After visiting Stephen Downes website to find out more about eLearning 2.0 (or Web 2.0 as it is also known), it seems to be the future of online learning. In his ‘Trends and Impacts’ video he describes how eLearning has developed from an online learning environment that delivers content largely supporting traditional classroom-based learning, to the new age of eLearning 2.0 defined by ‘immersive learning’ (learning by doing) and ‘connected learning’ (conversation and interaction via computer-based learning networks; social networking). In this type of online learning, the learner essentially has a ‘personal learning centre’ where they create their own learning by using and mixing content and materials from the web and other sources according to their own needs and interests.

And here comes the “blog”, which two weeks ago I had barely even uttered the word, to now when my head seems to be bursting with stuff about and on blogs. A blog can be this ‘personal learning centre’, used to create and showcase a learner’s work. He says about blogging, it “is very different from traditionally assigned learning content. It is much less formal. It is written from a personal point of view, in a personal voice. Students' blog posts are often about something from their own range of interests, rather than on a course topic or assigned project. More importantly, what happens when students blog, and read reach others' blogs, is that a network of interactions forms-much like a social network.”

In the recent Distance Learning article, Stephen Downes describes how eLearning 2.0 could be applied to an online course. His essential requirements for the course: “the learners choose their own technology - whether blogs, discussion boards, audio feeds, or whatever ...” and “the content is not imposed on them, but is rather, self-selected”. I’m wondering how could a teacher manage all this flexibility, how could standards be maintained, how could students possibly manage to cover all the (typically huge) course prescription?

And he admits this isn’t going to be easy in a tertiary education setting, as there’s too much predefined content and classes, and thinks “the best that can be done is to mitigate the disadvantages. Basically, what this means is throwing a lot of stuff out there and letting people craft their own course out of it”. This sounds even worse than the previous statements!

However his description of what could work is better: content area for course material but with as little design imposed on it as possible (I’m not sure about that, some structure and guidance is surely needed), course blog or similar which would be a focal point for resources and discussion, online synchronous chat like Elluminate, course community for social connections perhaps by discussion list or student blogs. Hang on, this all sounds familiar, isn’t this what we are experiencing in the facilitating eLearning course. Aha, the proof (of how good eLearning 2.0 is) will be in the learning!

The first week and learning styles

2007-08-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

The course has started with communication happening through a course blog, our own blog, the google email group, Elluminate and Bb. Of these I am only familiar with Bb. It was all a little confusing to begin with, much like any new student to an unfamiliar course and environment feels. It’s true to say that I’m in the ‘dark ages’ about computer technology, having only mastered the basics of word documents, spreadsheets, the web etc, so I’m beginning to get a sense of a big new world out there, which is both scary and exciting at the same time. This is also the first course I have taken where I have not had the opportunity for any f2f sessions with any of the other participants at the start, so I’m finding it a little strange not having any faces to fit to people’s comments.

An initial online ice-breaker activity had us introducing ourselves to the group. While I gained a ‘feel’ for the group and identified areas of commonality it didn’t spark much social conversation. I think at this time many of us were preoccupied with trying to sort out the various ways of communicating. I think icebreaker activities are important; they set the tone that ‘we want to know you and start working together’. Lots of examples can be found here at the index of icebreakers.

Learning styles (ILS questionnaire and descriptions available here)

My learning styles result showed I have a moderate preference for sensing (7) and visual (5) dimensions while the other dimensions were fairly balanced (1). Sensing learners like fact, details, well-established methods, practical work, and learning with real-world connections, and this fits well with my science background and teaching the fundamentals of environmental science and bioscience. I’m surprised the visual learning didn’t score higher as this is very strong for me, and used extensively in my teaching with lots of pictures, flow diagrams, concept maps, and demonstrations. And also I would have thought that the reflective dimension would have scored higher because I definitely prefer to sit back and think through things before I rush into anything (in learning and life in general).

The foundation level students I work with usually determine their own learning styles at the start of the course and guidance is provided on how they can best use this to help themselves learn more effectively. Because they are often just entering tertiary study for the first time it can take a while for this to develop. Also those students who are more intuitive do struggle with the emphasis on facts, detail and difficult terminology that is typical of science-based courses.

The blog begins

2007-08-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

I will be using this web log to document my experiences and learning about online facilitation and communities. Already there has been so much to think about and we've only just begun. I'll post my thoughts shortly but for now some inspirational thoughts from this week:
'conversations are the stem cells of learning'
'teaching, blogging, learning'