Archive for the ‘teaching’ Category

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Introducing the Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers

Saturday, September 22nd, 2012

We’ve now implemented Desire2Learn (D2L) as our LMS at Deakin University, and have been delivering all our units (courses) in the system since Trimester 3, 2011. There was an investment in developing a professional development program for academic staff to assist in the transition to the new system that had a focus on learning about D2L and the migration of course material. Attention was also paid to learning design and how the D2L tool set and functions might be used to best support the curriculum.  I also thought that a Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers (like the Moodle Tool Guide developed by Joyce Seitzinger in 2010) would be useful in helping academic staff decide which tool to use for a particular learning activity and to consider what level of thinking is used (for a tool & activity) according to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. 

I started work on this guide in 2011, and when Joyce stared working at Deakin Uni during the year, I was happy to work together with her to finish this version. We’ve chosen the most used D2L tools and mapped them in a matrix to give advice about how useful they are for specific learning activities and using colours indicated how well they fit to that task. We presented the new Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers at the recent inaugural Desire2Learn Asia-Pac Teaching and Learning conference and hope that people find it useful. You can download an A3 Poster version (pdf) below. 

D2L ToolGuideforTeachers
Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers Sep2012

We have also created a Deakin version of the Desire2Learn Tool Guide that contains references to the Deakin Graduate Learning Outcomes and 12 Aspects of Cloud Learning that we see as important in supporting 21st Century Learning and developing work-ready graduates. We have released under a creative commons license that is non-commercial, share alike with attribution. It is intended that this might become part of the suite of professional development tools available to support online learning and teaching using Desire2Learn. Looking forward to your feedback. 

PS. Joyce’s original guide has been translated into over a dozen languages and has also been adapted for a different LMS – see the BlackBoard Tool Guide for Tutors & the BlackBoard 9.1 Tool Guide. 

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using video for learning and more flipping in the classroom

Monday, April 30th, 2012

I’ve been thinking about the use of video in teaching and learning and how we might use video to help in assessment. There’s been much written about using video resources (eg. Khan Academy) and the flipped classroom (or reverse instruction) where students watch first and then come to class to discuss the material. I’m pleased to see more discussion around the ability to watch a video and then add comments at specific points in the timeline of the video rather than just have the video as a discreet object. This is very useful and I believe has the potential for powerful learning as it allows for personal, peer and teacher feedback on a student’s own work. The flip is to have student assess themselves…

Video capture
Photo credit: psicologiaclinica

A tweet by Jenny Luca pointing to her blog post on using Vialogues (video & dialogues) indicated to me that more & more people are recognising the usefulness in education of being able to comment on video. The service suggests users to start a meaningful conversation and to, Create, Invite, Interact and Share. Jenny focused on using the video as a screencast and explanatory learning resource and I think this is a great way for student to interact with a resource and comment with questions, their understanding, or need for further enquiry. 

I’m also interested in how students might reflect on their own performance, say as a beginning teacher, nurse, psychologist, doctor, counsellor etc. A friend of mine has been working with a technology at RMIT called the Media Annotation Tool that allows for students to comment on an uploaded video (of themselves or for particular task) and then receive peer feedback on their comments/reflection before the teacher provides some feedback.  Megan Colasante has written a paper about this project, Using video annotation to reflect on and evaluate physical education pre-service teaching practice. I believe this tool has promise and hope development continues. 

There could be some remarkable power in a reflection when you have to watch your own performance (say against that of an expert) and then receive constructive feedback on your comments and performance – this should lead to engaged and meaningful learning. 

There are other tools that do similar things such as Voicethread (uses still rather than video) and the new TedEd Website features video lessons that can be ‘flipped’ and give teachers the opportunity to create lessons with reflective questions built in, but not the capacity to annotate the video. With video becoming more ubiquitous as students are now able to easily capture learning and practice moments via a smart device. I also understand that it may not always be suitable to annotate/comment after the fact, as it might be necessary to assess something while it’s happening live and not to have to watch a performance twice. While there are some professional video recording and coding applications available, I’m looking forward to further educational developments in this space. Of course there’s many other ways to use video for learning, but the idea of comments and annotations at specific points and events in a performance is very useful. The bonus would be the capacity of multiple comment tracks and maybe even some control over their visibility. 

In the meantime I’ll also be investigating the usefulness of point of view (POV) glasses for this sort of application.

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what is learning anyway? – there are/have been, some theories.

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

I’ve been following Donald Clark’s blog series on learning theorists and found it enlightening and useful. On March 17th he began a blog marathon of 50 blogs on learning theorists over 50 days. He ‘presents fifty major shapers and movers in learning, theorists, practitioners and those directly relevant to e-learning.’ He started with the Greeks and is just over halfway through his list and about to begin discussing major influencers in the field of e-learning before finishing with some posts on the area of training. 

N n+1
Photo by Jan Tik

What I’ve particularly liked is the outline that has been used for each learning theorist.  They include an:

  • Overview of the individual
  • Specific theory and ideas on learning
  • Relevance to learning
  • Implications for E-learning
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography

Where appropriate the author has also provided evidence that highlights the flaws in a particular theory and how it has been proved incorrect.

Any pre-service teacher or learning professional involved at any level, would do well to spend some time absorbing these overviews to help provide a context to what we understand what good teaching and learning might be. Thanks Donald…

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the storm before the calm (has passed)

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

The last few weeks have been the storm before the calm. My university has chosen D2L to replace our Blackboard LMS (WebCT Vista) and we’ve been busy implementing for Trimester 2. As usual lots to sort out, configuration, training, educational development, meetings, negotiations, hand holding, requesting, testing and trialling. This week we went live with a limited number of units/subjects and for my Faculty this means around 100 staff and nearly 4,000 students – we’re all set for when teaching starts next week. There’ll be some evaluation of the processes and how it’s all gone once things have settled down and teaching’s well underway. All good and exciting work, but it’s been a wild ride that’s been a storm at times, and now I’m ready for some calm.

Storm in Colorado
Storms in Colorado (photo credit Jerry W. Lewis)

So, for some calm I’m heading over to Denver, Colorado on Friday where I’ll be attending the Fusion 2011 Desire2Learn users conference. I’m looking forward to it as it will be the first D2L conference I’ve attended, I’ve never been to Denver before, and the weather’s going to be much warmer than I’ve been experiencing lately (and I hope it’s calmer than the photo I found to illustrate this post).

I’m also looking forward to meeting other D2L users and having an opportunity to share our stories while doing some networking. The D2L staff will also have my attention as we get to know each other and establish our partnership as client and vendor. Amongst other things, I’ll be learning as much as I can about the ePortfolio tool and how others are using D2L for blended learning.  I’ll also be giving a presentation with a colleague in which we will provide two perspectives (learning systems and an academic) of the implementation process so far. I’ll be sharing some insights via twitter of course (@colwar) and intend to supplement them here with some blog posts.

Now to pack my bags – I hope there’s some good company & movies on the plane.

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re-imagining assessment – can it be a reusable resource?

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

It was via a recent tweet by my friend @rellypops that I was introduced to a wonderful collection of resources that got me thinking about student assessment and how we might begin to provide other forms of evaluation that provide more scope for creativity and engagement than the ubiquitous essay.

Narelle’s tweet led me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Connections site that invites its “staff to offer their personal perspectives on works of art in the Museum’s vast collection. Their voices range from the authoritative to the highly subjective, and touch upon any number of themes and concepts.”

MMA Connections Hands

What I like about this project of a potential 100 episodes, is that each person brings a knowledge and passion to the subject they are covering. They have selected specific art works from the museum that focus on, or reference a theme, such as Hands, City, Water, Light, Maps, etc. I think this is a great resource and models a nice format that could be used by students to use in assessments such as reports. To take a problem, issue, or topic and to research around that, collecting relevant information in text with illustrative and supporting images, and then creating a story that links the parts to create a snapshot that is greater than the whole. This type of project outcome can quickly become a useful collection to share with other students and a resource to add to an ePortfolio. Are we able to rethink assessment so that it is conceptualised as a potential resource, something of value that is reusable?

Not that everyone has the capacity to develop a website such as this with it production values, but there are a number of other ways to create such a multimedia collection. You could do this as a narrated PowerPoint (such as Pecha Kucha style), or online using Voicethread, or an image sequence in QuickTime with an audio track that is saved as video, or a even with screen capture software such as Camtasia. I’m sure there would be many more… Can you suggest other ways?

Of course this isn’t to dismiss the fact that these could also be done in ‘analogue’ by creating a book or folio by hand. I’m just cognisant of the benefit of a digital format and that is can be shared with many. Is anyone already doing and happy to share their story?

I’d love to hear about your ideas about thinking differently about assessment, particularly in higher education.

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So what’s the problem with lecture recordings?

Monday, April 18th, 2011

There has been some recent commentary about the value of recording lectures at university and elsewhere (see Mark Smithers’ blog and comments). To set up and automate such a system involve high infrastructure costs, and questions being asked about the return on investment with regard to use & reuse of recordings. Just how

At my university there is a significant usage of recorded lectures, and students demand access to them. Staff are stressed over whether the recordings have worked and are of good quality. Some staff even fear that they will receive bad student evaluations if the system fails and students complain over not having access to recorded lectures to supposedly review their study.

Microphone

Photo credit: Ben McLeod

I don’t want to go into the pros and cons of recorded lectures or of the systems that support them. What I wanted to write about was the process we’ve just begun of reviewing our current lecture recording system. We undertook a logic mapping workshop with relevant stakeholders from across the university and spent some time working through strengths, problems, solutions and benefits (sort of like SWOT but different).

One of the outcomes of this process was to suggest that we may need to think differently about our idea of what a lecture is. The technology has been constraining the paradigm of what we understand the lecture to be. Originally developed to be able to record the delivery of an oration and maybe also capture a series of powerpoint slide or some video, the software was modelled on the idea of one teacher talking to an audience (of students). Blended and flexible learning paradigms are showing us that the traditional oration (while appropriate in some circumstances) needs to be adjusted to support new ways of teaching and learning.

I’ve been encouraged that we will be developing a proposal and framework that understands that we may need to record more than just a stand & deliver lecture. We’ll be seeking to be able to record interactive lectures, short ad-hoc talks & presentations (with or without video). The aim then, is to also be a catalyst to help teachers come to understand different models for getting a message across.

As Stephen Downes recently argued in a debate, ‘The Lecture Must Stand’, it just needs to be adapted appropriate to the need.

 

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