February 18, 2012

#Change11 #CCK11 Online education on the move. What are the changes?

What would future education look like? Michael has posted this video more than a year ago. Has digital technology changed the way Higher Education, in particular lectures are conducted? May be not, for the majority!

In this recent post on A Tech-Happy Professor Reboots After Hearing His Teaching Advice Isn’t Working (as referred to Michael’s advice) the new message from Michael is to first focus on the intangible factor, the bond between professor and student. I would fully agree on the importance of the bonding in formal education, where teaching and learning has been built around knowledge acquisition and transfer, from professors to students. This is often the case in formal “education” where certain values are attached to the teacher student relationship.

Also there has always been an emphasis on the building of relationship between teacher and students, to facilitate the learning process in those environments.

At this digital age of learning, what sort of bonding would be desirable especially in Higher Education? Is effective learning dependent on such bonds? As teacher and student’s role has gradually blurred, it could be argued that students would be expecting differently when learning online.

May be in a typical face-to-face classroom environment, the bonding could still be very important, but how about mass lecture?

Or where graduate students are learning over global networks, with the professor supporting the student merely as a mentor, rather than a “teacher”. Would the bonding be different altogether from those in novice learners where close guidance and intervention are required? I just wonder if such bonding would be dependent on the learning context and learning capability of the learners. So, for more autonomous and capable learners, they would focus on the learning based on self directed learning, rather than the bonding that is necessary. Rather, these learners might consider the professors and peers as part of the support to their learning, as I have shared in my ideal conception of learner-centered learning, together with peer-to-peer learning.

Higher education is going to digital. There are huge implications when most higher education courses in institutions have become online. The MITx is a big move that would test the uncharted water, using a global digital landscape. It could be interesting to learn how the course would be delivered by MITx as mentioned by Tony here.

“It has a number of interactive components, such as student discussions (but without an instructor) and automated feedback and testing.” So, where is the instructor? Would the instruction be automated? Yes the assessment and feedback could all be automated, and so there may not need to be any human to human interaction. Rather, that would be a human (learner) interacting with the artifacts, videos (recordings from instructors) or the assessment tools or networks. Would there be any bonding between instructor(s) and students? May be a “one way bond, as the instructor might never know who the students are, and these students are just a code, a number or a record on the system and a node in the network or community.” We may even have robots teachers, teaching in K-12, or even in Vocational Education and Training, and Higher Education.

So is bonding between professor and students still important in online education and learning?

Are we having an online education revolution? I suppose not yet. Why?

The five parts of the Education Harvest as shared by Michael Karnjanaprakorn include

1. Gadgets and Blended Learning

2. Social Learning and Collaboration

3. Open Resources and Classrooms

4. Adaptive, personalized learning

5. Creative certification

These are all changing. As I have shared in my previous posts, we may just be having a pendulum swing from one to the other, and then back, to formal education, with more centralized control and formal systems in place, due to the governance and requirements for certification.

Who would decide on these education changes? And how would such changes be made?

Here is the conversation on Future of Our Universities.

Posted in Connectivism, Education, Learning, Networks, technology, Web2.0
Tagged #Change11, CCK12, Education, future, Learning
4 Comments

December 21, 2011

#Change11 From Digital Pedagogy to Netagogy

What is Digital Pedagogy? (Marquis, J.)

The Queensland Department of Education and Training has a very concise definition given for digital pedagogy: “Digital pedagogies establish a way of learning and working in a digital world.”

3 changes from traditional pedagogy to digital are:

– Select and Combine

– Distributed Authority

– Social Media Objects

Tensions:

– Lack of

* Understanding

* Funding

– Curriculum Requirements

Solution:

– Natively Digital Media

– Flexible Standards

– Global Connectedness

Digital pedagogy surely has a huge potential, and as Marquis has highlighted in his post, the solution lies with adapting the use of media to suit the education and learning framework within an institution, especially by the use of digital media readily available, like YouTube, Flickr, and the use of flexible standards which focus on learners’ needs, whilst also meeting the curriculum requirements.

In this respect, I think Jim Groom and Alan Levine (Cogdog) are adopting this Digital Pedagogy in the course of DS106 in an open manner.

Relating to the tensions and challenges based on learning with digital pedagogy, these are also emerging issues due to wicked problems.

So, what might overcome some of these emergent issues?

How about Netagogy?

What is Netagogy?

Netagogy is the study of netwok and internet-based learning.

The notion is an expansion and interpretation of Connectivism, heutagogy and andragogy. It is the process of engaging learners with the structure of learning experience in personal, social, international networks, and internet.

Netagogy places emphasis on learning how to learn, with multiple loop learning, personal, social, global and nebulous learning opportunities, a multi-purpose and non-linear complex and emergent process. A multi-learner interaction coupled with self-directed Netagogy requires that educational and learning initiatives include the innovative and improvement practice of network and internet-based learning and technological skills, as well as learning experience on the multi-faceted perspectives and interpretations on various subject domains in the networks and internet. These could include Connectivism, Networked Learning, Social Media Learning, PLE/N(PLENK), Virtual Learning Environment, LMS, Web 2.0, Information and Communication Technology, Mobile Learning and Digital/Online Learning based on a Pedagogy of Abundance.

This Netagogy helps to develop the capability and capacity of both individuals and networks in personal and social learning with affordances: communicating, engaging, interacting, cooperating and collaborating with others, leading changes necessary for transformational learning under a network and internet based learning ecology.

Here are the aims of Strategic Learning Policy (source: Virtual Learning Environment):

Accept the continued value of traditional educational paradigms in guiding early use of VLEs and explore new possibilities as instructors gain experience and experiment with other new ICTs, such as wireless.

Rethink teaching practices embedded in university cultures and rules that make innovation in online learning difficult.

Enable new forms of content and communication media to support new educational patterns and paradigms, such as group work and multitasking.

Diffuse e-learning innovation by motivating grassroots take-up of new electronic media, as e-learning policies cannot be imposed top-down.

Offer ample training and support to encourage better management of information and communication as a university becomes more dependent on ICTs.

Complement e-learning with appropriate face-to-face contact.

Provide sufficient resources to support effective innovation not only in the classroom, but also in the offices, libraries, households and dormitories of students and teachers.

Do not expect an overnight revolution, as much time is needed for teachers and students to understand how to utilize e-learning capabilities fully.

Identify, target and support key likely benefits of e-learning, such as saving teachers’ time, supporting individual and group student working and opening new ways to reconfigure the geography and timing of class activities.

Netagogy would then be used as a holistic pedagogy, integrating and embracing the different, and overlapping pedagogy – a pedagogy relating to Information and Communication technology, a pedagogy of abundance, digital pedagogy, and pedagogy in transnational education – transnational pedagogy.

Postscript: Wonderful videos here related to digital pedagogy and literacies.