space to talk

“Learning has more to do with making connections between ideas and concepts than simply focusing on the information itself. …(T)here often remains a crucial need for physical human contact and interaction as a means of fully appreciating the value of these connections.” Sanders, 2006, p. 3.

Learning is a personal journey, undertaken for a myriad of reasons.  But whatever the reason, it can help to compare notes with others on the path.  Despite the amazing amount of online help and instructions provided with computer software, sometimes it’s just easier to communicate with someone who is heading in the same general direction as you.

 

(...yes, we've all been there.)

Developing a social, mutually-beneficial network amongst learners fosters engagement and motivation, and developing ideas through cooperation and debate can benefit and inspire groups as well as individuals (Bitzer, 2001).  This underlines the role of educators as social facilitators, as demonstrated in Bailey and Card’s 2009 study of the teaching practices of experienced online tutors, which I addressed in a previous blog.

Tutors also may be necessary to alert students to holes in arguments and when they go off-track, although cooperative learning may bring in sources of information and points of view the tutor had been unaware of and needs to take into account when formalising conclusions made from the lesson/project (Bitzer, 2001).

Promoting various websites for educational gatherings doesn’t have to result in a wild party involving the police.  Educational establishments may offer specific programs such as the Blackboard suite in the form of wikis, discussion forums and webinars.  This opens up the arenas necessary for distance learners, who may feel stifled without a chance to airing ideas and compare strategies with their colleagues.  Savin-Baden (2006) espoused the concept of dialogic spaces as spaces for criticality and argument, where learning occurs through insights gained via discussion.  Importantly, dialogic spaces do not have to be reserved for oral communication alone.  Online learning in the form of (for example) discussion boards gives a new dimension to the concept of dialogic space, and although learners may initially be disinclined to participate (Sanders, 2006), having learning direction in the form of topics or discussion questions set by the tutor may provide the necessary spark for learners new to the online learning environment.

Despite arguments against soliloquy as a dialogic space (Savin-Baden, 2006), I have found that writing a blog provides a way of working out ideas and coming to conclusions I might not have otherwise come to, “thinking aloud” on a keyboard.  Promoting blogging also allows for networking between learners, for example via comments. 

Writing a blog open to the rest of the online community does, however, require a degree of confidence: after discussing blogging with friends and colleagues, I have found that there can be a reluctance to “make traceable meanings using digital technologies” (Gillen and Barton, p. 9) in a medium they are uncomfortable working within, ie the online realm.  When creating this blog, I was initially reluctant to put my ideas out into the public forum until someone pointed out that it was unlikely anyone other than my classmates would read it  This shyness stemmed not so much from my grammar as from my exploration of ideas.  A Foundation literacy tutor also needs to be aware that learners might be shy of exposing their perceived lack of literacy online, and might prefer to keep their work out of the public eye, perhaps even keeping what they create between themselves and the tutor rather than have anyone else in the class see it.  Email might be better used here.  Having said that, Foundation learners may make up for a lack of grammar and spelling with creative flair and determination and go on to develop some amazing blogs and/or websites.  This illustrates how the tutor’s choice of media is dependent on the learners.

Being human and a member of a social species provides us opportunity for conflict as well as cooperation.  According to instructors surveyed by Bailey and Card, tutors have an important role to play in fostering instructor-student relationships, and I would add that promoting student-student relationships is just as important, perhaps even more so.  Interacting online does, as one tutor acknowledged, require participants from both sides to take care with wording (Bailey and Card, 2001, p. 154).  The lack of body language and voice cues raises a further consideration: for Foundation-level literacy learners communicating via digital means with other learners and tutors, spelling and phrasing may compound misunderstandings.  For those who cannot meet in person or in a webconference, having an “emergency phone” for such times might help students verbally clarify perceived insults and better enable resolution of real insults.  Tutors here may need to play a role in resolving these disputes, if not in person then online, perhaps as a moderator in a discussion forum.  Another option is to assign a student representative or team leader, although this may require an unwelcome degree of responsibility for the chosen leader.

Students new to online learning may be more mindful of the weaknesses than the strengths of the digital medium.  A sense of disconnection between learner and others in the course may dismay some students, who prefer face-to-face learning with its immediacy and all the accompanying nuances of expression (Sanders, 2006).  After recently participating in an online conference, I agree that the medium is incredibly convenient and economical – especially when you are talking to people on other islands! – but the poor broadband connection in New Zealand combined with a lack of visual cues left me with a sense of being removed from direct participation. The technology is, obviously, still evolving, and these issues may soon be a thing of the past.  With more people going online and more opportunities for picking up computer skills online, such as at the BBC’s Webwise website or within the community, such as at a library, the issues may shift from purely digital literacy to narrower fields, such as online identity security.

Regardless of topic, the focus needs to remain on the material and the people relating to it rather than take a technological determinist stance. As Sanders (2006) advises, “just because a tool exists, it does not mean that an educational need or use for that tool exists.”  But with new technologies and social media outlets in constant flux, which ones should educators and learners spend their energies on? This leads on to another question, one that Helen Sharkey is going to tackle.



Gillen, J., and Barton, D. (2009, 12-13 March, 2009). Digital literacies. Paper presented at the meeting of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme-Technology Enhanced Learning, Lancaster University.

Savin-Baden, M. (2008). Learning spaces: creating opportunities for knowledge creation in academic life. Maidenhead: McGraw Hill

All of us

"Maybe one day we'll look back on this period of the internet as our caveman era"

 Technology can be baffling and difficult to navigate, but we have the resources of billions – those who came before and those around us now.  For those lucky ones who have kids or grandkids, you’ve got someone to set your brand spanking new DVD v.2.0 player with all the bells and whistles and a remote control designed by NASA to record Big Fat Gypsy Weddings for you.  For the rest of us, we might go online and Google “How do I programme my DVD Megamaxxx v.2.0 player to record Big Fat Gypsy Weddings?”  Hopefully Google will direct us to a useful site.

First, we need to formulate the questions.  Chances are that someone will come along soon to answer them.  Chances are that there will be someone else out there with questions you or I can answer for them.  We live in an ever-widening society with a deep pool of overlapping strengths and knowledge that can be transmitted symbolically down and across generations and cultures.  Our complex systems of flexibility and cooperation open up routes closed to other creatures.

As humans, we’re apes who have taken a blueprint of community (hierarchy and cooperation) to dizzying heights.  Society is synergistic: the combined strengths of societal units can amount to more than the sum of their individual parts.  Society as an evolutionarily stable strategy isn’t endemic to humans, but includes examples of insects, birds and other mammals such as dolphins and elephants.  But with our linguistic capabilities that are not limited to living entities, we have overcome certain temporal limitations. Yes, we’ve done some pretty horrific things with our societal tinkerings (anyone for World War III or another round of us-versus-them genocide?), but looking at it positively, we can see that we have the chance to work together to lift our social networks up by the bootstraps to new heights. (Clippinger, n.d.)

This increasingly deepening understanding of human organisation underlines the importance of community at every level.  Some of us are happy working out problems on our own, but at some point we are likely to require information from another person, be it through a pamphlet, a colleague, a chat over the fence with the next door neighbour or a radio emergency broadcast.  Students require a large amount of social support, whether it comes from a tutor, a book or a fellow student, but despite the strengths of distance learning (eg student-centredness and flexibility), the lack of a face-to-face social setting can stifle confidence, reduce motivation and raise dropout rates (reviewed in Galusha, n.d.).

Digital literacy is, as Gillen and Barton (2009) stress, socially situated, especially given the collaborative aspect of Web 2.0 technologies (An and Williams, 2010). Many learners may not acquire the basic tools necessary to take advantage of this increasingly social medium from formal schooling situations, however.  While some students may be confident enough in developing their own digital literacy outside of a formal educational setting, enough to overcome obstacles such as low motivation, alienation and lack of feedback, what about those who fall behind in the technology from issues such as technological anxiety or economic stress? (Galusha, n.d.; Saadé and Kira, 2009; Winterwood, 2010.)  How can we, as members of a vast tribe, contact and support others we may never meet in the flesh via technology?

So here is one question, as posed by yours truly in the 169.005 paper:

“How can learners develop social support networks for distance learning of LLN?”

I’ll look at answers to this question in an upcoming blog.

Lost in Cyberspace, part the second: Invaders from the Net Dimension

“At least we keep trying to get better--we don't go around turning people into machines.” - Will Robinson

So what are the basics of navigating the net when we’re just setting out into the big new digital universe? It can be difficult enough finding and evaluating information when you are a proficient internet user, but what about those who have just gone online?  How hard must it be for those who have LLN needs? What do you do when a window suddenly pops up telling you that you have to download a new program? How do you know you aren't going to encounter some scary creature from another dimension?  When you’re learning a new language in the form of written communication or numeracy, compounding worries about wiping your harddrive with fears of not understanding the lesson thanks to internet issues leads to impaired learning and perceptions of computers being harder than they actually are (Saadé and Kira, 2009).  So what can we as tutors do to simplify things for learners?

Way back in 2000, Hacker dissected an American report on developing multimedia standards for Foundation-level adult learners (Cyberstep Project-Working Paper, 1999) for some help. She extracted four key principles from the paper that still apply today:
- Provide multiple ways to access and work with information, focusing on contextual learning
- Provide multiple methods to navigate within and between the learning material
- Encourage learners to formulate, test and refine explicit hypotheses
- Engage learners in self-reflection and provide a way for learners to track their progress (Hacker, 2000)

The last two points work across a range of learner abilities, but the first two points need to be examined more carefully.  Contextual learning is definitely a big plus-factor in my book, but how many ways are actually needed?  As discussed in my second post, “Lost in Cyberspace I”, providing multiple anything can lead to a single headache.  I would suggest that multiple methods are useful (and authentic), but should be introduced gradually as familiarity with the learning environment is established.  Creating a learner/internet interface that is at the right level of difficulty – just challenging enough – is necessary to maintain learner involvement.  Learners who have been challenged by mainstream learning environments enough to have already dropped out can lose confidence if too much is asked of them again.  Keeping learners’ websites simple might build up key skills before they move on to harder tasks. 

Keeping websites simple does raise the issue of authenticity.  Look at some public information websites – how simple would they be for a range of your learners?  Can they access bus timetables or work out what they have to pay for their rates?  God help them if they want to do their tax online using the Inland Revenue’s website , which, as an IR representative tried to tell me was “simple and easy to use”.





Not.

Unfortunately, as Saadé and Kira (2009) point out, “the more ‘easy to use’ the interface is designed the less effective the features become” (p. 11), and so many of the websites/computer programs we use have a lot of bells and whistles attached.  The IRD website looks user-friendly until you try to use it.  Compare the IRD website to the Air New Zealand website, which also wants your money but will take it in a more efficient manner .  Which one is easier to use?  Now try looking at both websites from the perspective of one or another of your LLN learners.

Looking at things more optimistically, however, as Saadé and Kira do in the next breath, we can see that with the advances in technology it is possible to compensate for this limitation by creating a number of learner interfaces, perhaps as parts of the same website, each designed for a different learner level.  As learners become more skilled at each level, they can move onto the next, exploring and building on their knowledge, in the process overcoming their technophobia. 

Creating spaces where learners can proceed according to their own confidence levels and understandings of the tactics involved in using the computer programs follows key principles of androgagy and constructivism: allowing learners to follow their own learning pathways to reach their goals, and building up a personalised understanding on previous experience. Developing or recommending websites that fit with a student’s level and personal goals/background personalises the internet for learners. That flexibility of web design is one are where the internet really shines – something we as tutors can capitalise on. We don’t need to be machines, or even give in to technological determinism: demonstrating how the internet can be made relevant to people as individuals might be the key to engaging and motivating learners.

the intensity of distance

Thinker: As seen at Steve's DGL blog

Abstract philosophies are one thing, but implementing them in real situations can allow a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and help us build on or overcome our own strengths and weaknesses as tutors.  In their 2009 study, Bailey and Card first isolated principles for effective online teaching from the literature, then tested how these principles were implemented in real life by interviewing a range of award-winning college instructors about online teaching practices.  After analysing these interviews under the lenses of andragogy, constructivism and transformational learning, the authors identified eight key pedagogical practices to keep in mind when designing courses, and suggested ways of encouraging tutor development to prevent burnout.

The eight practices were:

1. Fostering relationships to overcome the isolation experienced by many distance learners.  Instructors require empathy as well as passion, and in one example provided by a professor regarding potentially problematic emails, he took the view that “it’s like, wow, so what can I do here to help this person out a little bit?” (Bailey and Card, p. 154)
2. Engagement using tools such as email, discussion boards, and online group projects.  As an aside, one interesting benefit mentioned in the article stems from the nature of fragmented conversations: rather than saying “I don’t know” when asked a tricky question, the instructor has the opportunity to find an answer (possibly by Googling the question on the spot). 
3. Timelines – marking papers quickly to keep up with the flow, and tutor and learners appropriately setting aside time for classes.  The time involvement can, as will be discussed presently, lead to burnout.
4. Communication – much more than responding to emails and providing feedback on assignments.  To someone like me, who has all the tact of a muddy gumboot, this is one of the trickiest aspects of online teaching, both as learner and tutor.  Emoticons can never completely make up for the lack of vocal tone and body language to give the nuances of intention.  In this multicultural world we need to be prepared to give someone the benefit of the doubt rather than be insulted over what might seem superficially like a slight, and we especially need to be open-minded in written communications.  Keeping mindful of tone and wording when we compose our missives is one solution offered by a participant.
5. Organisation of information on websites and links, or students can get so, so lost… (No, I haven’t finished with this topic in my blogs, not by a long shot!)  One participant stressed that adult learners “want to know what’s expected of them (…) They don’t want any big surprises” (Bailey and Card, p. 154).  Rather than paraphrasing Radiohead, this interviewee’s statement reflects Knowles’ four andragogical competencies of self-directed learning, learning need assessment, creation of learning goals, and outcome evaluation (1992, cited by Bailey and Card, 2009).
6. Technology – my bogeyman – comes next, and the authors cleverly suggest mentoring of novice tutors by those with more experience.  Constructivism and the authors hint that a wide range of technologies should be implemented to give a range of experience for different learners.  Once basic competence and the confidence to innovate are covered in the course, however, I would keep in mind An and Williams’ (2010) warning that implementing too many new technologies (especially if they perform the same function) can be detrimental to student motivation.
7. Flexibility and adaptability as well as vast stores of patience for when (for eg) the website crashes.
8. High expectations of course goals, learning objectives clearly established, and above all, making sure students are aware of these expectations, which links us back to practice number 5.  Adult learners are self-directed and in need of clear goals, so this is another way of keeping up motivation.

One strength of this study's findings came in the form of a strong recommendation for institutional and peer-based tutor support.  With higher rates of burnout, this raises the issue of just how intense distance learning can get for tutors, with issues of depersonalisation.  Although the actual time involved was about the same, the fragmentary nature of online interaction gave an impression of a higher time commitment.  As one interviewee phrased it, “you have to be willing to get on to that site every single day, at a minimum, probably twice a day ideally” (Bailey and Card, p. 154). 

One participant suggested a support group for mentoring, and brainstorming with other teachers has been invaluable for when I needed to develop and share ideas or resolve problems.  Institutional support should also be present to formally develop tutors’ technological as well as pedagogical skills, but in our pragmatic world is not something to be counted on.  To enhance development of pedagogy through discussion in our far-flung teaching communities of practice (for example assessing the worth of socio-constructivism in different learning settings), perhaps social networking for tutors will become an increasingly useful tool.  Is there any reason why andragogy’s flexibility for self direction, and constructivism and transformative learning principles of creating relationships and engaging people in tasks cannot be used for both learning websites (as Bailey and Card argue effectively in their discussion) as well as online tutor networks?

Lost in Cyberspace, part the first: Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

When was the last time you learned a new computer program? Did anyone teach you?  I recall one time I was learning a particular program when I had two different teachers.  They had different routes to get to the same endpoint, which surprised them.  Luckily for them, they learned something while trying to teach me, and so did I – when you get two different people telling you two different things at the same time, bafflement ensues.

An and Williams (2010) make two valid and valuable points: Do NOT introduce too many technologies new to students in one semester, and Do NOT use multiple technologies that do the same thing.  I would refine these, by adding that within the one technology you shouldn’t teach too many routes at an early stage.  Stick to one, if possible.

Microsoft, to take an everyday example for many people setting out into the dark reaches of cyberspace, has multiple ways of achieving a goal.  Think about when you edit a Word document – how many ways do you have of deleting a phrase you just wrote?  You can backspace, delete, use the right-click or Edit drop-down menu, to give a few ways.  Heck, just a simple ctrl + z will undo that to which you gave brief digital existence. Heck, don’t get me started on Dragon Naturally Speaking used in conjunction with MSWord…

All this will give your average entry-level user palpitations. For people who haven’t used a computer before, it can be a scary thing just turning the beast on, and the last thing you need is leaping around shouting at you: “right click and click paste – no, left click, I meant, no, wait, you’ve already used that when I impatiently grabbed the keyboard off you and pressed alt + e, so let’s try using some new keyboard shortcuts – can you see the control button?”

Beginner learners may have only just learned what a keyboard is, but many have texted enough to be thinking “WTF?” when subjected to this onslaught of information.  If you’re lucky, they’ll be back for another lesson.  If, however, they are never seen again, well, I just hope they haven’t gone home, burned their computer and gone to live in a cave.

Make sure that if two tutors are involved, they’re both on the same page with respect to target language/skills.  (And yes, I’ve been guilty of neglecting to do that.)  When teaching computing I’ve found it best to start with the basics of opening, saving and retrieving a document, then using simple editing functions from the drop-down menu along the top.  Once a learner is confident – and confidence is the key here – in their grasp of the basics, and has a good idea of how not to lose their shiny new document that they’ve worked so hard over (because for a beginner it is VERY hard work), then you can try introducing variations on the theme.  At some point, possibly a long way down the road.  As always, it depends on the learner and what they’re happy doing.  Move at their pace, not where you think they should be at.  It’s very dispiriting for a learner to pick up the impression from the tutor that they’re slow.  Much better to feel confident enough in the classes to know that support is available, and the real measure of success is measured in achievable, authentic goals, such as writing an email to a daughter or printing off an invitation. 

As an ongoing learner pulling in resources from all around her and trying to learn as fast as possible, I’m still in the process of figuring out various programs (this blogging website, to give a fresh example).  I’ve got one way, and for now I’m sticking with it. I haven’t destroyed the internet yet by pressing the wrong button, which is nice.  I know I’ve got a long way to go.  But by remembering not to overload myself with the dreaded Too Much Information, I have high hopes of not crashing into some black hole of befuddlement.

An, Y., and Williams, K. (2010). Teaching with web 2.0 technologies: Benefits, barriers and lessons learned. Retrieved August 6, 2011, from http://itdl.org/Journal/Mar_10/article04.htm

teaching English/learning digitalese

I had been worrying about actually making the leap into online teaching for a while, when I suddenly realised that with a little help from my friends and learners (to expand on the old Beatles number), I've been using online tools for ESOL longer than I've been worrying!  There's probably a moral in there somewhere.  Mostly what I've used has been email, such as for essay edits, but more recently I’ve been given a push into trying Facebook to encourage language learning. 

Email necessarily involves elements of technoliteracy as well as reading and writing skills, but it also requires knowledge of critical literacy and understanding of point of view - why are you writing this email?  Who is the email targeted towards?  Is it necessarily formal, or is a "Hi there" sufficient greeting?  Another social facet is the "netiquette" involved with email, for example not writing in all caps, the email equivalent of shouting (Tschabitscher, n.d.).  Email provides us with a range of educational directions to explore beyond reading and writing.

Although many literacy students I'm now encountering through Literacy Aotearoa aren't so inclined towards academic essays, email (for those so inclined) is useful for coordinating meetings and giving a small dose of new learning/review every day, provided by an authentic online situation.  But in my experience email creates an asynchronous form of conversation.  Two ways suggested by Karrer for partially overcoming this are with Twitter, although Karrer admits that Twitter lacks the depth needed for discussion, and online chat, such as Facebook.  I haven't yet tried Twitter, but from using Facebook (in this instance with ex-ESOL students and current friends from Taiwan) I discovered that the chat function gave us a very useful platform for real-time interaction, while also including other literacy functions found in email, including cultural literacy (“netiquette” as well as jokes and euphemisms) and critical literacy (“is this advice valid?  Who is giving it?”).

With a little English practice in the form of a few chat messages with a native speaker every day or two, one learner reported a gain in confidence when studying for his final exams.  The messages weren’t always in real time, so that reduced the authenticity and flow of the conversation, but the shortness of the chat messages allowed for a more relaxed approach. It was also less stressful for the learner than writing longer emails.

Working with ESOL learners has been beneficial to me.  They are often from highly digitally-literate backgrounds, and in the spirit of role-sharing, happy to share their experiences and expertise with their tutor.  It was the encouragement of students and coworkers that got me using Facebook in the first place!



http://www.facebook.com/

Karrer, T. (2011). Emerging asynchronous conversation models: eLearning technology. Retrieved August 4, 2011, from http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html.

Tschabitscher, H. (n.d.)  Email etiquette: 26 rules to follow. Retrieved August 4, 2011, from http://email.about.com/od/emailnetiquette/tp/core_netiquette.htm