Those visual cues

Am really glad I was available on Saturday morning to take part in the Elluminate class faciliated by co-students Sharon and Carole who did a fabulous job, and guest Nancy directing us from her home in Seattle. I appreciated the way that the phone was ringing and the dog was barking in the house, all contributing to the sense that our facilitator is part of the real world.

There were a number of themes that emerged as the session progressed. Nancy indicated quite early on that she was deliberately underprepared; that she would go with the direction that her learners/participants led. I loved that, because we all wanted the opportunity to 'have a look at' the way the program works from a faciliator perspective without having to be a facilitator first in order to see how to use the program as a facilitator ... does that make sense?

We discussed the idea of 'failing safely'... am already aware of the need for safety within an online environment (any learning environment) but had never identified quite so concretely "safe from what?" In a f2f classroom, of course, the faciliator monitors carefully to make sure the participants are safe from mockery, from 'losing face' (I have a lot of students for whom this is a very real fear... a valid fear from their cultural perspectives), are safe from exclusion and from feeling abandoned and isolated... left behind. Of course we do that. The idea of 'failing safely' was not one that made it onto my list, but now it has...that 'failing' can be a strategy from which valuable learning can take place.

 

Now I want to know how... and of course loved the softly inclusive responsiveness of Nancy, Carole and Sharon's faciliation; will try to do the same. However, I have some questions.

1. Their 'negotiated curriculum' style was lovely, but not bounded at all by the requirements of a curriculum. So, have been thinking about how we might negotiate the expectatioin of one with the ideal of the other
2. Signals: in a f2f classroom we read the various cues of our learners, and we get quite sensitive to them. We know that if the students tell us that that they understand that does not necessarily mean that they do; we read body language, facial expressions, we concept check, we get students talking together in pairs or small groups and we monitor monitor monitor. So, an online class shouldn't be any different in principle, but a number of those cues are not there. Can we put the responsibility back onto the learners to let us know if they're not with us... (am not convinced that's a reasonable expectation). Nancy got us providing our perspectives on the whiteboard and working together, she had us drawing pictures, and reflecting on the learning that was taking place. (It is this that I mean when I say that f2f pedagogy and online pedagogy are not the same... or... they are in principle, but they're not when it comes to the practicalities and we faciliators must adjust to what is available to us in this new environment).
3. Play: my husband saw our doodles on Nancy's whiteboard and he said "You guys are just playing!", which was really cute, but we were and it was fun, and I learned so much! What a primal concept - playing to learn... all mammals do that!
4. Faciliator summaries and meaning making: How much, if at all? I like that the facilitator summarises, and provides a road map of the themes. There was concern expressed in the session that this might inhibit the meaning making for students who need to express their own meanings . Good point, but summarising is still a crucial in my mind... for capturing the essence of the content and as a strategy for helping students keep up. We need to summarise, but I might get the students to do it too, perhaps to invite them to contribute to my summary in some way. Maybe to make a resource from which study material can be gleaned for an assessment? Does anyone have ideas about this?

Social faciliation

Thanks to Terry Neal for her report on the significant effort and administration that went into the SLENZ project. What a commitment.
Two things that I picked up on, one of which I'd like to note here as of some interest (to me at least). Terry mentioned that one of the things they did in Second Life, (amongst others) was to have a social event... a party! Social disconnection within an online learning community is a factor I see discussed quite frequently. 
Good idea... and Terry noted that it was economical in so many ways (which made me chuckle quietly). I was wondering how you (would) manage the inevitable social needs of your learning communities... and to what extent do considerations of the social needs of your learners impact on your responsiveness to them individually, while maintaining the balance between your need for your professional and private space, and facilitating a sense of family and camaraderie amongst your participants.

Reflections on the idea of Online Communities

On Friday (30 July 2010) I attended a little in-house staff professional development... the topic: Online student interaction and communities.

We listened to phd candidate Elaine Khoo share her insights from research on online communities that contributed to her phd thesis. Would like to share a little of that here; found it so relevant, so logical, so serendipitous in timing, so synergistic with what other commentators are saying in this week's lesson...

Elaine's enquiry was how to go beyond the mechanics of the technology to enable learners to be comfortable to engage with each other, with the content, with the faciliator... to be comfortable to participate. Her leading question was "What kind of pedagogical strategies need to be put in place to encourage participation?"

She shared five principles of online faciliation:

1. Affordances and constraints: An elearning environment has limitations and constraints as well as offering benefits and affordances. There are things that can be achieved very well, and teaching practices that cannot easily be transferred. That's a fact of life - we should get used to it  I like to use metaphor, so hang in there with me: recent reflection at an mLearning day here how the stereotypical archtype that is the tertiary educator is dragged bouncing and sliding along the road compelled unwillingly  by the overwhelming powerful digital and information explosion toward change in methodology and pedagogy.  For many of you this may seem a no-brainer, and you're choosing to embrace it, but in reality there are many many teachers who can't or won't adjust or adapt, and each such teacher has good and valid reasons for resisting. They are right in many ways, there are definitely constraints. Let's be realistic.
2. Safety: A safe and inviting environment encourages participation. We need to be very aware of the need to foster trust and respect. (My question is what mechanisms and strategies might do this?)
3. Authenticity: there needs to be real-world contexts for the learning to be meaningful. (Again, I'd like to see ideas around this).
4. Goals: Different types of interaction are fostered by goals.
5. Learning communities: Students value the concept of learning communities. A faciliator is responsible to take on a number of roles for the growth of his or her learners... the faciliator needs to foster intellectual, social, and emotional development, have managerial and technical skills, as well as sound pedagogical underpinning. Not a trivial list!

Reference:
Khoo, E. G. L. (2010) Developing an Online Learning Community: A strategy for improving lecturer and student learning experiences. Available at: http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz//handle/10289/3961

Hunters or gatherers - or does it matter?

Last week I took part as a student in my first ever online class (via Illuminate). ..really good to experience an environment like that as a learner, before needing to manage it as a faciliator for oneself.

My reference in the title to a hunter or gatherer is about personalities. The online facilitator must maintain a number of balls in the air at once. Would this mean that this style of delivery might be more suited to personalities who are natural multi-taskers, and that a focused personality (a very useful skill to have indeed in certain situations) might not manage as adroitly as Sarah does? Keeping tabs with who is entering the classroom at various times, as well as maintaining the thread of the lesson, back-tracking to fill-in a late comer, technical trouble-shooting for participants finding their way around, delivering the content of the lesson, and keeping up with student input on the screen. Whew!

What are you?... a hunter or a gatherer, and how does that impact on the way you manage your synchronous e-classroom environment? 
What does this mean for teacher training? (Putting myself on the line here to suggest that teacher trainees need an apprenticeship with an experienced mentor to learn to teach online)

Tacit protocols... Turn-taking and timing: Was wondering about different ways that a faciliator might manage turn-taking. In such an environment it's easy to imagine that some participants might not get an equal opportunity to participate, especially if they come from a more circumspect culture where timing between utterances is longer than we might be comfortable with here, or think is reasonable considering the contraints of a timetable. Do these protocols need to be discussed openly in a class... how much direction as a facilitator do you employ to maintain even participation?
Ideas about this anybody?

Taking your hands off the wheel

Your conversation has inspired me to reflect ... and feel that I'd like to repeat those reflections here at a higher level so that as the years go by I can keep them in front of me... (I've just read through some of my old postings... gosh I was naive... but it's a good record too of where I've come from).

Online facilitation (to an extent) requires us to let go, to give more autonomy to our learners, even to be prepared to negotiate the curriculum with them. However! we are (still) trained as teachers to be in control, for our learners to be on task, key performance indicators, expected outcomes, proficiency, assessment, yadda yadda... yet then in an online environment our role is to stand back and let our learners do the learning. I wonder if... (and forgive me if I come across as cynical) this letting go of control is difficult for many teachers. ... Add this to (as Kim Mc observed), that the need to be technologically prepared is (paradoxically) so significant that it's simply too big and we aren't paid enough.

Commitment

The volume of text input, the different places to go to find information about what to do, signing in here or setting up an account there, elluminate classroom sessions - everything we need is there and it's good, really. But the commitment on the behalf of the student to get organised, to persist, to find the answers... I do think it's worth it and I'm not complaining; it has just that it has made me think about what it must be like for my learners... daunting and intimidating perhaps, and lonely.

I ask myself how much of an assumption on the digital literacy of our students is it reasonable to make?

Facilitating online course

Having experimented with elearning in my classroom for a few years now, with mixed success, am keen to extend my horizons. (From a professional developer's point of view as well I'm interested in what it is about elearning that prevents so many of my colleagues from considering it as part of their practice... although not sure if this very environment would tell me that; also, how learners experience [my] digital faciliation - and such a course as this is ideal ... will be blogging.)

Looking forward to the insights of the faciliators and other participants on digital faciliation. In this newly revived blog I'll be reflecting on my ideas and progress (or lack thereof) as the course progresses.

(Heads up: I have a tendancy to be blunt in a blog or forum environment. Please don't be bothered by that. )

Where am I now...?

Goodness me! I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted. This really isn't good enough, particularly as I've had so much to think about in my new role here at the University of Waikato.

New role: Have joined the Student Learning team, and my new title is e-learning coordinator. My duties, as with all the student learning tutors is to provide learning support to individuals who consult... and there's a lot to say about that... maybe later, but as well as that I am part of the "Independent Learning Team"; actually, I'm the one who mostly does the work for this team... and they provide me with guidance and opinions... it works very well.

So, this year I've been responsible for developing a graphic to represent student learning. We came up with a stair graphic in a plain (university) red, and this has been scattered liberally throughout the university's various webpages - we're quite happy about that. I also prepared the student learning photoboard; all university departments have photographs of the staff displayed in their buildings to help visitors identify people. I wanted the staff to be happy with their photos, that took a bit of work. But it looks great. I updated (and maintain) the student learning webpages, which includes maintaining the online enrolment forms, (for workshops and consultations) and keeping the "Hot Topic" up to date with new features or products. I help my colleague with maintaining her Moodle pages (although she doesn't need me at all... she's a superuser), I'm updating the online site for our language students... it has exercises and language related resources, but had become very old-fashioned. So, I'm currently freshening that up, ... and looking for a way that I can develop a suite of pronunciation products.

Pronunciation products: I want the students to be able to listen, try and compare with a sound file on the webpage. I've seen this done ... so far the most viable way appears to be using Shockwave, but I don't think I'll be able to get my hands on Adobe "Director" ... the interface for making shockwave files... other options, are Flash, or just program it myself with php, talking to a MS Access database? Can that be done? ... so, possibly I'll keep you posted as to my progress with this!

Moodle

I have been working steadily for the past year and a bit on preparing English for Academic Purposes papers to be delivered entirely on the net... ai yi yi... what a great project, but so much work - so much to think about and prepare in the background. It's amazing to think how much face-to-face teaching involves the teacher's dynamic interaction as needed - s/he carries so much in his/her head... which in a net course has to be anticipated and catered for.

And ... how does one teach speaking on the net... considering that there may be students studying in a time zone 17 hours behind the teacher. Challenging.
We've actively taught oral presentation skills, with the use of video as example... and by breaking down each element that we want to target and inviting the students to submit the sections separately (after all, video files are very large) and we're assuming that the students a) have the technology to video themselves in the first place, b) have the ability to work with video files at all, and are capable to keeping such to less than 20MB, which is the cut off upload size specified by our moodle administrators. It will be interesting. Pedagogically, I think we're ok, but we are making some rather significant assumptions, which potentially could be marginalizing.

In another course we've introduced a little applet called nano-gong, which is a click and talk javascript plug-in - really funky! With that we're hoping to involve the students in threaded discussions... spoken rather than the usual written bulletin board forums that Learning Management Systems are so good at. What's smooth about nano-gong is that it makes an already compressed wave file, which is ideal for speaking, as we don't need high quality sound. Love it. It's still a little clunky in the application though, as we don't seem to be able to have the applet appear in the same place as the forum... working on this. But in the meantime the work around is that the students click into the applet, record their posting - save it - go back to the forum - open a discussion and upload their saved file - voila, contribution to threaded spoken dialogue. Has anyone done anything like this before?

Educational Theory

I just taught a group of delightful Korean students from Chuncheon. These students are teacher trainees, and my brief was to introduce them to principles of autonomous learning as we see it here in a Western setting. The idea was to give a short lecture on Independent learning... background, theory, practicalities etc. I wouldn't usually give a lecture but I was informed by the programme administrator that the students requested lectures for listening and note-taking practice. So... in launched I, spouting on about social constructivism and the role of the teacher, the role and responsibilities of the student. To my surprise, and I don't know why considering they are teacher trainees, they were already familiar with the educational theory, and asked me some rather probing and insightful questions about practical and pragmatic issues associated with learner autonomy as it relates to their classroom practice. I was delighted and impressed with them (especially considering that their language level was pre-intermediate level).
After that I introduced them to blogs in English. They were already very familiar with the idea; they all had mini websites using blogging software from home, so they were easily able to transfer the principles to blogging in English.
I've put their sites here in my links comments... the first 11 on the list

CALL Symposium

I have just attended a CALL Symposium put on by the UNITEC in Auckland. It was wonderful after having been working with a sense of isolation in my attempts to incorporate relevant CALL methodologies into my practice. There are other practitioners out there, I feel like we are pioneers in a way, working with technology to extend the boundaries of language learning and acquisition ... yadda yadda yadda

I learned about issues with teacher training... how to get alongside other staff to offer support. The speaker wanted to highlight that the pedagogy must never by overshadowed by the need for technological instruction. In whatever the trainees learn about the technology, they must first know the theory and pedagogy (andragogy?).

I went to a demonstration of a product called MonoConc Pro developed by NZ academic at Auckland University. This could do a number of fancy statistical calculations with the corpora, (whatever corpora is available or you happen to be using with the product) but it was its application to teaching collocations that peaked my interest. The product is for sale, and I would like to get my hands on a copy. I would also love to get my mitts on a copy of the pronunciation product that a team at AUT have been developing called Pronline. Sound pedagogy, and great interaction with the learners. They will soon be releasing a version for the web, so I'm waiting in line.

And much much more.

RSS

RSS reader
this link has interesting feeds, although it seems as if the first and second pages are not working properly, so I'll have to fix them. The third page was loading correctly last time I looked.

Back to blogs

I'm again using blogs in my writing class. They're good, but the problem I've found today (and I've had an inkling of this in past classes), is that the students want their postings to be perfect before they will allow them to be published, which means that they want me to sit with them and tell them what their errors are. I really don't want to do that.

So, for essays, I am setting up a bulletin board (private) with a personal writing area, which I can use to post feedback marked up into the students' essays. From there they can put it into their blogs. For personal writing and musings, they can type directly into their blogs.

Today's students
Brahim's Blog
www.jinsu84.blogspot.com
www.oppassi.blogspot.com
www.malotaibi.blogspot.com
www.mohand-time.blogspot.com

Professional Development Training

On Friday 28th October I offered professional development training to my colleagues on using Blogs for teaching writing (or at least for encouraging Ss to write) in their own classrooms. One of my colleagues has since introduced her class to writing with Blogs. Her URL is www.parkin-dodd-standing.blogspot.com . In discussion with me she raised an interesting point; that some of her students don't want anyone to be able to read their blogs. We'll have to look at the settings and see if it is possible to block accessibility. But, should the teacher have access? It's something that I hadn't considered before... the idea of privacy in a public forum.

Some of the other trainees who took part in the session have got blogsites at:
www.bizbiz3.blogspot.com
www.wendythink.blogspot.com
www.galespot.blogspot.com
www.mokkosu.blogspot.com

There were seven trainees in all who took part, but a number has suggested that they wouldn't mind if it was offered again as they weren't able to be there but would have liked to have been.

Other students

Some of my morning class students have come to me wanting more writing practice. Of course, in a business like this the 'cry' of so many teachers is that we do not have sufficient time to be able to meet the needs of students one-on-one. However, I have told these students that they can extend themselves in writing by using a blog, and that I will provide feedback as I can, along with the other students in my afternoon class.

Good on them for being proactive and motivated. I applaud them, and will do my best to help them with their writing to the best of my ability (within the constraints of time).
www.jasonsim81.blogspot.com
www.jhoandnorys.blogspot.com
www.mesho0o.blogspot.com

More student blog sites

With this class I first discussed the reason for keeping a journal or diary. The students were very good and came up with all or most of the reasons that I had anticipated.... namely, to preserve the memory of a time or series of events, to share your experiences with family or other interested readers, to practice writing fluency, and to watch writing progress.

I then gave them three team reading activities using excerpts from a journal that I had kept from an experience I had had overseas. We discussed what the writer had described, and compared it in a class discussion with the students' experiences.

The theme for the week was food, so I suggested that the students began their first entry on food in NZ (we are not renowned for our food specialities!) A fascinating discussion ensued, and this provided impetus for setting up a blog and writing. My instructions to the students were to go and look at other student blog sites before designing their own, but they didn't bother to look at other sites; they were too keen to set up their own and begin writing!

Here are the blog sites of this particular class.

www.fredbf.blogspot.com
www.hamiltonlife2005.blogspot.com
www.chikafavorite.blogspot.com
www.cnbenlu.blogspot.com
www.yukakonagata.blogspot.com
www.genteel0.blogspot.com
www.uvsjordan.blogspot.com
www.jeonjaeyeol.blogspot.com
www.beginsomethingwithme.blogspot.com
www.sunnys-dream.blogspot.com
www.koreagood.blogspot.com
www.gorgeouskate.blogspot.com

Ss who have now left the course.
http://www.janis-jottings.blogspot.com/
http://www.kimyw703.blogspot.com/
http://www.thanyapha.blogspot.com/
http://www.mic-student.blogspot.com/
http://www.momotutsu.blogspot.com/
www.sanaesays.blogspot.com
www.braziliankiwi.blogspot.com
www.janet-luo.blogspot.com
www.akiko-life-in-nz.blogspot.com
www.majedalsinan.blogspot.com
www.kimminah.blogspot.com
www.nana-ilets.blogspot.com
www.tsumagari.blogspot.com
www.ji-ij.blogspot.com
www.show-zone.blogspot.com
www.ohoooooh.blogspot.com
www.yujunishappy.blogspot.com
www.choco-by-the-kiwi.blogspot.com
http://www.hiperz.blogspot.com/

Making class newspapers

I have been frantically searching the web looking for a newspaper template that I might be able to use with my students in the CALL class. In my search I found the following page. This page is interesting because it sets out the Ss' task totally from go to finish. If we are eventually to be running mixed mode delivery with students doing a lot of their work from their homes or centres off site, pages like this are not unlikely.

http://www.inside.iskl.edu.my/i-bay/academics/ms/childlabour/child_labour_webquest_present.htm

Using Wikis

Recently I have introduced the class to wikis. A wiki, as most people know, is an editable website. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, which is an encyclopaedia written for everyone and anyone by anyone and everyone. Accuracy is maintained by the scrutiny of the users.

The wiki that these students have been working on is called "Living Successfully in NZ" and can be viewed at: Student Wiki

Rationale:
Collaboration. I wanted the students to develop their negotiation skills. Their brief was to come up with a document that gave advice to new visitors to NZ about living in NZ. They had to decide themselves what topics might be included, and in teams who was responsible for the different information in different parts of the wiki. You will find that although the students have written about various aspects of NZ life, they haven't yet quite mastered the language of giving advice. Much of the information is simply factual.

Writing to be read: I wanted the students to have an outlet for writing other than producing an exercise for the teacher. This document is live, and can be read by anyone who is sufficiently interested to go there and by each other. There is nothing secret about writing in this forum. Therefore there the added incentive (although very slight) to encourage the students to think about their accuracy, about what they are saying... and about what they mean, because you (the reader) are not likely to be as understanding and patient as I... their teacher.

Students' blog sites

I have just introduced another class of 13 students to the possibilty of improving their English by keeping blog diaries. What really amazed me was how they "took to it like the proverbial ducks to water". Only one of the students in the group had a blog (in Korean), yet the rest of them seemed to understand (almost instinctively) how they worked and their potential.

The students looked at a blog from a previous class, before starting their own. They saw that it is possible to store pictures with commentaries, which is what some of them did in their first entry... I don't even know how to do that! I also noticed that in some cases they were quite happy to express negative emotions. They don't get much of a chance to do this, so I'm pleased that they feel free to do so here.

Here is a list of the webpages from the class.
www.cool79.blogspot.com
www.vanessaliu.blogspot.com
www.cherrisakura.blogspot.com
www.farxiho.blogspot.com
www.specialyac.blogspot.com
www.haofengzhu.blogspot.com
www.michikowada.blogspot.com
www.tomokofeeling.blogspot.com
www.vincenthe.blogspot.com
www.ritalan.blogspot.com
www.plutoking.blogspot.com
www.loloha.blogspot.com
www.mubyaclau.blogspot.com
www.ktoony.blogspot.com

Cautious language

The ability to use cautious language when writing demonstrates that a language student is maturing in his or her ability to manipulate ideas and words with more skill. It is a mark of an inexperienced or lower level student that statements and opinions are expressed in the strongest terms. This lessens the quality and authority of their writing by opening it to challenge from the reader.

In class we analysed a piece of text for evidence of cautious language. The predominant method modifying the strength of a statement is by using modals. There are a number of other language features that can be used for this purpose as well, (such as verb clauses, adjectives/adverbs, and noun phrases). We then did some sentence exercises, which we modified some statements from informal to formal, and from inappropriately strong to more moderate.

I have frequently found that students can complete exercises correctly, but they don't always find it as easy to transfer there knowledge into their own writing, so as an exercise I asked the students to write a paragraph in which they showed that they could use the cautious language that I had taught them in class.

For each nationality I discussed in class the reasons that certain things happened. For my Chinese students I asked them to discuss the reasons why there are now less students coming to NZ to study English than there were a few years ago. For other nationalities we discussed the reasons that there are more students choosing to study English in NZ.

For those of you who might be interested to see the results of this exercise you can click on the links below and read the students ideas.

http://okhranaxp.blogspot.com
http://hehediary.blogspot.com
http://bannsuan.blogspot.com