Dr. Graham said yesterday something that stuck with me. We were talking about online high schools and how students seem to want to state that they do not learn very much. Dr. Graham made the point that:
Technology has the capacity to represent large amounts of content, which in turn can let people do what they are best at: teaching. Teachers are overburdened with presenting content that they are not able to spend adequate time mentoring, encouraging, inspiring, and motivating students.
A new paradigm needs to be developed. We need to leverage technology more fully to enable teachers to do what they have been called to do: teach.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Blended: Online or F2F
It's not online. It's not face-to-face. It's blended.
What are the strengths that are unique to face-to-face classes?
- Personal interaction
- Instructor immediacy
- Dynamic conversational structure (real-time)
What are the strengths that are unique to online classes?
- Large amounts of content
- Free of time and geographical constraints
How can you leverage these unique strengths to create a powerful blended learning format?
What are the strengths that are unique to face-to-face classes?
- Personal interaction
- Instructor immediacy
- Dynamic conversational structure (real-time)
What are the strengths that are unique to online classes?
- Large amounts of content
- Free of time and geographical constraints
How can you leverage these unique strengths to create a powerful blended learning format?
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
IP&T 664 3-16-10 : Great Class Notes
Before you figure out how to say something (representation layer) you need to decide what to say (message layer). The "what" comes from the content layer. The content needs to be broken down into messages that then need to be packaged into message "structures". It is the message structure that ends up being "represented".
One things an instructor does is draw attention to something. How does an instructor decide what to point to? What is given the attention needs to be important and needs to be a part of something bigger that is trying to be conveyed.
Strategy is necessary to determine how the message is going to represented. Strategy determines what the student is going to do with the messages from the content.
The instructional designer needs to think in terms of manipulating the learning process to achieve some instructional objective.
The message is always conditioned by the strategy. The strategy will constrain the message and focus the student on it.
We should spend some time in the abstract, ambiguous, and messy until the main ideas of the design surface. This is one of the principle playgrounds of inspiration for the designer.
It is imperative to understand the subject matter in a deep, personal way before attempting to teach it to someone else. You cannot teach beyond what you know and have experienced. This is a process and it takes time.
Instruction needs to be adaptive and responsive to the individual.
The strategy is the decision of what to emphasize and what to summarize.
How can I create and use the principle of disequilibrium to create interest and inquiry in students?
If you are going to use a strategy, when are you going to do it and how are you going to do it?
How do I help a student "mine more understanding" from the content?
What is going through a student's mind as he or she receives instruction?
*** It is helpful to write a narrative of what I would like to go through the mind of the people I teach.
*** Instruction is a conversation with students.
One things an instructor does is draw attention to something. How does an instructor decide what to point to? What is given the attention needs to be important and needs to be a part of something bigger that is trying to be conveyed.
Strategy is necessary to determine how the message is going to represented. Strategy determines what the student is going to do with the messages from the content.
The instructional designer needs to think in terms of manipulating the learning process to achieve some instructional objective.
The message is always conditioned by the strategy. The strategy will constrain the message and focus the student on it.
We should spend some time in the abstract, ambiguous, and messy until the main ideas of the design surface. This is one of the principle playgrounds of inspiration for the designer.
It is imperative to understand the subject matter in a deep, personal way before attempting to teach it to someone else. You cannot teach beyond what you know and have experienced. This is a process and it takes time.
Instruction needs to be adaptive and responsive to the individual.
The strategy is the decision of what to emphasize and what to summarize.
How can I create and use the principle of disequilibrium to create interest and inquiry in students?
If you are going to use a strategy, when are you going to do it and how are you going to do it?
How do I help a student "mine more understanding" from the content?
What is going through a student's mind as he or she receives instruction?
*** It is helpful to write a narrative of what I would like to go through the mind of the people I teach.
*** Instruction is a conversation with students.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Learning Tools
I realized yesterday that there are some fundamental questions that I as a teacher must answer before I teach:
1. What will my students come away with from my class?
2. How will I know what they come away with from my class?
As I thought about these questions, I realized that I also needed to answer a third question:
3. What will my students bring to my class?
As I thought about how to answer these questions, I began to wonder exactly what it was that students would either be bringing or taking away from my class. I then had this idea that
knowledge, like language, is a tool.
This idea is really important. If knowledge is a tool, then in order to assess what students are bringing and taking away from my class, I need to understand the way that the students use their tools. I also need to know what tools they already have. Also, in order to teach the use of a tool
I must give students the opportunity to showcase and utilize their 'tools'.
So when I plan any lesson, I should create opportunities for student experience in which they are able to use their 'tools' to do something. In the doing, the students will show me what they have and how they use it. This is quite different from administering static standardized tests. I do not want to test specific tools,
I want to know from the students about as many of their tools as possible.
I want to understand what their favorite tools are and what their favorite uses are. Then I want to understand why.
I believe that understanding the things I have discussed will help me to better understand my students, which will enable me to design my instruction to more effectively meet their needs, capacities, and 'tools'.
1. What will my students come away with from my class?
2. How will I know what they come away with from my class?
As I thought about these questions, I realized that I also needed to answer a third question:
3. What will my students bring to my class?
As I thought about how to answer these questions, I began to wonder exactly what it was that students would either be bringing or taking away from my class. I then had this idea that
knowledge, like language, is a tool.
This idea is really important. If knowledge is a tool, then in order to assess what students are bringing and taking away from my class, I need to understand the way that the students use their tools. I also need to know what tools they already have. Also, in order to teach the use of a tool
I must give students the opportunity to showcase and utilize their 'tools'.
So when I plan any lesson, I should create opportunities for student experience in which they are able to use their 'tools' to do something. In the doing, the students will show me what they have and how they use it. This is quite different from administering static standardized tests. I do not want to test specific tools,
I want to know from the students about as many of their tools as possible.
I want to understand what their favorite tools are and what their favorite uses are. Then I want to understand why.
I believe that understanding the things I have discussed will help me to better understand my students, which will enable me to design my instruction to more effectively meet their needs, capacities, and 'tools'.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Qualatiative to Quantitative
I have been thinking a lot about my IPT 550 assignment to do a quantitative research project. Most of the data I have collected over the last two semesters from my teaching projects has been qualitative in nature. It just hit me now that this is what I should do:
1. Complete my literature review to understand the principles of measurement and correlation of my research questions.
2. Organize my qualitative data.
3. Operationalize the data (translate the data from qual to quant data) using reasons and principles from the literature review to justify the way I operationalize the data.
4. Explain in my methods section the following:
A. Qual data collection instruments and rationale
B. Qual data organization and rationale
C. Operationalization procedure and rationale
D. Quant data organization and rationale
If I can do this effectively, then my quantitative analysis of my data will naturally flow from the organization of my original qualitative data and will be performed based on the principles of operationalization that I have explained in the methods section of my write up.
Even though this sounds plausible, I still believe that there will be something missing from the results of the quantitative analysis that is inherently destroyed in the process of operationalizing the qualitative data. Still, we'll see what I get...Perhaps the findings of this assignment will be more a measure of the influence of operationalization than that of correlation between the variables I am observing. Interesting...
1. Complete my literature review to understand the principles of measurement and correlation of my research questions.
2. Organize my qualitative data.
3. Operationalize the data (translate the data from qual to quant data) using reasons and principles from the literature review to justify the way I operationalize the data.
4. Explain in my methods section the following:
A. Qual data collection instruments and rationale
B. Qual data organization and rationale
C. Operationalization procedure and rationale
D. Quant data organization and rationale
If I can do this effectively, then my quantitative analysis of my data will naturally flow from the organization of my original qualitative data and will be performed based on the principles of operationalization that I have explained in the methods section of my write up.
Even though this sounds plausible, I still believe that there will be something missing from the results of the quantitative analysis that is inherently destroyed in the process of operationalizing the qualitative data. Still, we'll see what I get...Perhaps the findings of this assignment will be more a measure of the influence of operationalization than that of correlation between the variables I am observing. Interesting...
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Complexity Theory
I had an interesting conversation with Nicky Burgoyne and she gave me some things to research regarding:
Complexity theory
Idea of emergence
James Gleick – Chaos Theory
Brent Davis – Blog on complexity theory
I think this is going to be good.
Complexity theory
Idea of emergence
James Gleick – Chaos Theory
Brent Davis – Blog on complexity theory
I think this is going to be good.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Assessing Learning
What do you assess in order to determine whether or not a student is learning?
What do you assess in order to determine if a student's rate of learning is increasing or decreasing (changing)?
The first question is a fundamental question asked by educational evaluators. It leads to simple metrics, generally speaking, that indicate student performance against a standard or group of standards.While this is an important measurement of student comprehension, it does not provide any information about whether or not the student is learning to learn. If students do not learn to learn, then their capacity to progress through higher levels of education and their desire to become life-long learners will be impacted.
The second question is intriguing because it assumes a second order assessment of student performance. In terms of metaphor, the first question is a first-order measure akin to position, and the second question is a second-order measure akin to velocity. What is the rate of change in a student's capacity to learn? How does this "velocity" change in learning capacity manifest itself in class? What can we look at to determine, even intuitively, that there is a change in "learning velocity"? Whatever the answer is, it will be fundamentally different from the considerations in the first question.
I propose that there is a correlation between a student's interest and engagement in course content and his or her "learning velocity". This is my own assumption. Taking this as a true assumption, then one can assess changes in a student's interest and engagement and gain insight into the ways in which a student's learning capacity is evolving. I am not sure what or how strong the correlation between these two concepts are. I only make this assumption based upon informal observations from my own experience and the experience of others. I intend to strengthen the support for this assumption as I conduct a pilot study research project this semester.
In my research project, I am going to video tape and analyze my courses that I teach, looking for indicators of interest and engagement in the course. I will cross reference this data against course grades and informal student ratings of their own performance. I hypothesize that correlations will begin to take shape as more of this data comes available. We will see what happens.
What do you assess in order to determine if a student's rate of learning is increasing or decreasing (changing)?
The first question is a fundamental question asked by educational evaluators. It leads to simple metrics, generally speaking, that indicate student performance against a standard or group of standards.While this is an important measurement of student comprehension, it does not provide any information about whether or not the student is learning to learn. If students do not learn to learn, then their capacity to progress through higher levels of education and their desire to become life-long learners will be impacted.
The second question is intriguing because it assumes a second order assessment of student performance. In terms of metaphor, the first question is a first-order measure akin to position, and the second question is a second-order measure akin to velocity. What is the rate of change in a student's capacity to learn? How does this "velocity" change in learning capacity manifest itself in class? What can we look at to determine, even intuitively, that there is a change in "learning velocity"? Whatever the answer is, it will be fundamentally different from the considerations in the first question.
I propose that there is a correlation between a student's interest and engagement in course content and his or her "learning velocity". This is my own assumption. Taking this as a true assumption, then one can assess changes in a student's interest and engagement and gain insight into the ways in which a student's learning capacity is evolving. I am not sure what or how strong the correlation between these two concepts are. I only make this assumption based upon informal observations from my own experience and the experience of others. I intend to strengthen the support for this assumption as I conduct a pilot study research project this semester.
In my research project, I am going to video tape and analyze my courses that I teach, looking for indicators of interest and engagement in the course. I will cross reference this data against course grades and informal student ratings of their own performance. I hypothesize that correlations will begin to take shape as more of this data comes available. We will see what happens.
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