Reflections

This reflection has incubated for long enough.  No excuses however.  I have packaged my reflection as a poster and would love to hear from you.  You can review this poster and a sample of what my students did on this link : http://dmcsharmila.edu.glogster.com/reflection-on-poster-assignments/

Do use the scroll bar on each graphic element that has text displayed.  You can then read more or all of the text

I have enjoyed using Glogster and would highly recommend it as an online tool for students.

Until the next glog..blog..

Adapt to changes not to gadgets…

"The school system is in need of overhaul, but as mentioned above, the overhaul is needed because society has changed, not because learners have iPods" or iPhones or iPads… 

I agree with Siemen's critique.  Students that are users of technology are not necessarily the best of learners.  A digital native who is content to use technology for communication and entertainment is not necessarily keen on using it demonstrate learning!  While they would be happy to use their smart phones to record fun moments, using it record an interview would be a challenge!  Again, not all 18 year olds are digital natives and hence learning of the technology overpowers the actual lesson being learnt.  This makes the whole experience stressful.

What then is the best way to deal with digital natives?  A question that I ask myself is what is the objective of this learning opportunity for students?  Is it to demonstrate the mastery of technology or present a solution to a real world problem?  Does the learning opportunity have the right mix?  Is it skewed either way?  If it is then it needs to be fixed.  A critical examination of the lesson plan/assessment and the rubric with a peer helps to refine the objectives of the task and the evaluation. 

A good understanding of abilities of students is important - are they all at the same level?  How can the "expert" students be used?  I have also learnt that setting students a series of tasks that simulate solution to a real world problem or a having a shadow case study helps to a great extent. I have also found that it is important to scaffold skills and allow students to learn incrementally.  This makes students more confident in their skills before they attempt a "real project" .

Does a teacher have to be a digital native?  Not necessary, I would say.  A good teacher attempting to create an authentic learning experience reflecting the practices of the real world need not have mastery of the technology being used.  Personally, I have never been involved in a virtual learning experience or in creating a wiki, but that should not stop me from having my students use them.  I would focus on creating a framework for my students to research, learn, create, communicate and reflect using the latest tools that they have.  A teacher's role is to guide them through the process of learning.  In most cases student enjoy demonstrating what they have learnt without being taught!  Students enjoy "showing off" their knowledge to peers and to their teacher.  This develops a passion for learning which is critical in adapting to changes and becoming life long learners.

Student Engagement in their project

The project assigned to students studying Quality Management was to conduct a study of quality culture of an organization and the application of quality tools in solving problems.  This project required students to work in groups to develop the poster and do an individual presentation on the topic assigned.  They were required to define and analyse a quality problem for a specific organization and recommend an solution plan.   Students were given one month to complete this assignment.

This project was kicked off with a discussion of requirements followed by a short workshop on the use of Glogster.  Students had just completed a poster for a different course which I reviewed and that gave me an insight into their abilities.  There are some great advantages to reviewing what your students do for their other courses - gives a teacher a good insight into competencies of students in various areas and understand if students transfer their skills easily.

Most of the students were engaged from the word go.  They were looking at doing their best on this assignment to improve their grades!  Their initial reaction to preparing a poster was "This is easy".  However as they worked their way through the project they appreciated the need to create a mock of the content as a text document and have it reviewed by me.  This was done two weeks in the assignment.  Again most groups were good about having their work reviewed and incorporated changes into their project based on the feedback, which worked to their advantage.

One of the features of an online poster is the ability to incorporate hyperlinks and videos.  Having to incorporate these had students doing some good internet based research. 

There was a session held to discuss the rubric of the poster and requirements of the presents.  These regular meetings required students to keep in touch me with and not go away to work on their projects on their own which does not always meet requirements.  It also helped them modularize their tasks and assign responsibilities to members of a group.

The project culminated with students conducting presentations individually on their study.  They also did a short survey on the use of Glogster, giving me some feedback on the use of Glogster.

This was one project where all the pieces fell in place without too much trouble! 

Student Engagement: Lessons from Gamification

Rick Raymer's article on Gamification has got me reflecting.  As a teacher, it really gladdens my heart when a student says "I enjoyed doing this assignment".  For this to happen, students should be completely engaged in the assignment and find it a rewarding experience.  In this case, Grades are only an outcome; the true reward is the process of doing the assignment itself. 

Alas, a complement like this is not commonplace, particularly with elearning assignments.  Students are usually intimidated and stressed by a requirement to use technology.   "Why do I need to produce a digital poster?  Can't I just use a paperboard?'',   "Why do I need to use google docs, I will email the document to my partner and he can edit it".  I could go on.

Considering that I do set goals and objectives, provide feedback, encourage incremental learning of new skills and scaffold skills through the assessment, I found the concepts of peer motivation, rewarding of effort and presenting an elevator pitch of the e-learning assessment very interesting.

Peer motivation can be a great tool in getting the reluctant students to engage better.  Identifying a few technology champions and using them to showcase their enthusiasm, help and motivate peers would help to increase engagement in general. I would like to try to use more of this in my assignments.

Rewarding the effort and not the success is a good idea.  I find that students are more likely to experiment with technology and buy into e-learning if they don't have to create a perfect product.  Informal evaluation and feedback to students during the project helps to improve the quality of their product and builds their confidence and engagement.  From a student's perspective, receiving feedback and improving their project, helps to create a feeling of ownership and pride, increasing engagement. Doing this takes up a lot of time for a teacher but the efforts are worth it.  Digital tools naturally help with this task, with their ability to allow for comments, feedbacks and posts.

Elevator pitch of an e-learning assignment - This I must confess, I have never tried.  All my assessments begin with a set of detailed requirements with milestones and deliverables - very linear.  This can be a bit daunting to some students.  So perhaps a two minute pitch with a simple demo of the product and processes would help to market the assignment.  A new concept - selling an assignment to student, but perhaps that is the trend with digital citizens.  I'm certainly willing to give this one a try.

Mobile Learning

This post is about my reflections on various readings on designing mobile learning.  The research paper by Herrington, Herrington and Mantei is very informative and captures the essence of designing m-learning activities.  What captured my interest was the summary of procedural elements of projects.  The various examples are almost a checklist of a project guide to students - clearly delineating what must be done by the teacher and the students.  I wish I had something like this when I started creating m-learning projects.  

Using this as a guideline, I would now look at mobile learning project as a cluster of assignments that enable students to go through stages of preparation, execution, reflection and dissemination.  The first two stages of mobile learning are no different to other learning activities.  I can now see the extending the learning by adding reflection and dissemination and mediation could very well turn a traditional learning activity to a m-learning.  Depending on the depth of content, each phase of the project could be one assignment.

What is important in this process as also highlighted by the research is working with a community of practice.  This is so important in fostering the adaption of innovation into teaching and learning. Samples of student work in mobile learning from within the same community would motivate and encourage students to taken on the challenge of demonstrating their learning in different ways.  

Indeed, a holistic approach to mobile learning. 

Posters - Literature Review

Why do posters make good assessments of learning? From my personal experience of using it in two courses now, I found posters had some benefits such as:

• Encourages students to be creative in presenting material in a limited space.   
• Is a hands-on way of learning.  Students can see their work unfold and often begin to self-critique rather than wait for feedback from the instructor
• Forces them to be focused on the theme of the poster because it requires them to be succinct
• Motivates them to work in smaller segments of the poster which is critical when it is group.  This makes the task more manageable
• Helps to distil ideas and present them in a visually appealing way.  Creating a mock helps to ensure there is a flow to the elements
• Lends itself to peer and anonymous evaluation.  

Online posters or interactive posters can incorporate other elements making them more relevant to higher education

• Video clips from interviews conducted by the students during the course of data gathering 
• Links to other relevant websites or research
• Append data files to support data analysis

These factors help to make the assessment robust and complete

Posters have some challenges too.  

• Content elements of the poster needs to be well defined, without which the poster can become a trivial activity.  Instructor needs to legwork before setting up the assignment
• When using posters in the context of higher education, anonymity of business/people should be discussed and maintained if deemed necessary.  This is particularly the case when conducting studies relating to quality problems, management studies etc. 
• Rubrics need to well designed to balance content, creativity and presentation which can be challenging

 Some of these facts are further evidenced in articles found on these links.  

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/resources/methods.html

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/38093/1/c38093.pdf

http://www.merga.net.au/documents/MTED_1_Zevenbergen.pdf

http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/docs/case-studies/using-poster-assessment-to-facilitate-learning-and-skill-development.pdf?sfvrsn=6

  

Implementation Plan

The context for this implementation is creating interesting and challenging assessments for students.  As all good teachers do, the quest is to create an assessment that ensure learning continues to happen when students work on it - an assessment for learning and not of.  To enable this, a good practise that I like to adapt is designing feedback points to ensure that they are on the right track and.  Working on small chunks of the assessment at a time makes it less daunting for students - a modular approach from my days as a programmer!

Having used posters as an assessment once - quite sceptically, I was quite satisfied with the way it panned out. It required students to summarise their research/case study, to be succinct in their choice of words, use visuals to highlight findings and more important be creative.  A natural extension of this format would be to use an online poster for an assessment in a course in Quality Management.  Students would develop a poster with a supporting summary document to identify a quality problem in an organisation, examine the impact, analyse cause and effects and suggest a solution.  With a bit of preliminary research, I decided to use Glogstere  a popular tool with educators.  It seems very easy to use and I was impressed with the body of work done mostly by school students.  Although, I have not seen too many examples of its use in tertiary education, it seems to have the potential.

I'd like to follow up with a literary review of posters as learning/assessment tools in general and the potential of graphical and interactive blogs as emerging technology tools.  A short survey or a focus group meeting with students is part of the plan to obtain their feedback and incorporate it into my evaluation.

That's the plan.

Education without Boundaries

Jan 2018

Course GE 480 - Entrepreneurship

Course Objective: Develop a business plan for a global venture

Students: From Dubai, Shanghai, Singapore, Vellore and San Jose

Online tools to be used: Various

Virtual Platform: SecondLife

My first assessment involving students from locations all over the world! Finally for me academia was catching up with the real world. Students from more than one location, collaborating to create a business plan for a global venture. A first one for me! This assessment would offer students the experience of working with members from different cultures, work ethics and expectations. Of course they would work in different time zones as well!

To manage this project successfully students would be required to brainstorm over virtual media, manage collaborative efforts and documents, conduct market research for different markets, develop products and services to that would meet requirements of customers from all over the world. Not an easy task. I have conceived that students would use various digital tools like the online video conferencing facilities for conducting meetings, micro-blogging tools for market research, online project management tools to track the progress of their project and document management sites for collaboration. Reviewing the profiles of students enrolled in my course I could see that they could do this in a heartbeat. What I am really excited and anxious is about simulating the business in a virtual world.

In SecondLife, students could set up their business, make and sell their products, test responses from customers, train their employees on product features, experiment with look and feel of stores, test their marketing strategies. The list is endless. A whole digital platform to enact the business plan before going out into the real world. What a hype could be created. Users in the virtual world would learn about the business model and feedback into the real world!

How would this work out? Would students take to the idea? What would my role be? Would they get so cocooned in a virtual world that they would be unable to cope with the harsh realities of the real world? How would they deal with criticisms from strangers in a virtual world. I have no answers because this is uncharted territory for me. But hey, what is an entrepreneurship course without a few risks? I am good to go..

My Personal Learning Network

I'm a bit word weary now and hope this picture speaks for me.

One of the tools that I like to use is a mind map or a brainstorming tool. Helps me figure out my stormy mind. Creating this has brought out the fact that I do not use webinars as effectively as I should. So during this upcoming PD week at work, I will attend one.

Now there is a plan..

A bad day for teachers and students is when YouTube doesn’t work.

But for different reasons of course!

On a more serious note, in the last three years, I have created a virtual life of myself, the teacher. A life that began for the purpose of connecting with old friends, making new ones and stalking family on Facebook has grown to be a part of my profession live as well. I have begun using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google, avatars and timelines regularly in courses that I teach. And the experience has only added to my own growth as an educator.

The most obvious benefit is becoming familiar with social media tools that are widely used by businesses in the UAE/world today. As an educator, I believe that I need to embrace these tools to ensure that students can be a part of such emerging trends. Mostly I have used these to help students understand advertising and viral marketing, technology based solution for businesses, use of social media in customer service, use of collaborative tools etc. While the opportunity to get students to appreciate their application in the classroom has lots of potential, there are a few mundane challenges and questions that come up.

First of all there is the learning curve accompanying the learning of a new skill, which is probably the easiest of challenges. There is the always an element of doubt about how students would take to such learning. Is it culturally acceptable to use these in the class room? How do you deal with situations when the wrong ad or the wrong image or inappropriate language surfaces on a page? How does one monitor participation in a collaborative learning activity. How can you ensure that the content is learnt just as much as the tool? What is a good rubric to assess such learning? Where are the best practices?

I could go on... What is necessary is a community of practice which would lighten the load of one teacher’s learning and create a body of resources through collaborative efforts.

After all as educators if we do not take the initiative or have the curiosity and imagination to innovate how can we impart these skills to our students?