My Personal Participation in Online Communities

     I am not heavily involved in many online communities.  I am a member of a few, and active in probably one, but I am more on the receptive end of things than anything.  I Tried My Space back when, but it was little too much for the kids in my opinion.  From there I got connected in Facebook, which really serves as my primary online community.
     I keep a minimal amount of friends and it is typically restricted to people I know in real life.  I do also maintain a Facebook page for professional purposes, and I have made that page much easier to find.  One serves for my personal connections with friends and family and allows me to post pictures privately with them.  The other is where I friend my coworkers, Bosses, and professional associates.  I don't really post much there, but it satisfies the need.  I am on Twitter, but my use of that is in its infancy, and I am mostly a consumer at this point.  As I have said many times, I am also on edmodo.com, which is a FB like site designed for educational use.  So far I am only really connected to four people, they were all on my ISD team in EDUC 633, but who knows where that will go as I research it further.
     I am also a member of some professional groups online, but much like Twitter these memberships are mostly new and mostly as a consumer of information.  I would like for my role in these to change at some point, but I honestly find it difficult to devote the time to be overly active in these communities with all the things I have going on in my analog life.
     My family is a mixed bag when it comes to communities.  My wife has no interest.  I made her a FB page and it sat dormant for a year before I finally took it down.  My youngest is, well, too young to really be communicating with others on the Internet, but we have allowed some monitored usage of restrictive social games where characters can interact, but only in the context of a game.  Such sites do not have chat or ways for others to identify her or communicate with her, and I emphasize that she is always monitored if she is using such things.  My oldest uses message boards to talk with others kids about games she is playing, but doesn't have a web presence so to speak.
     Overall I am really the online person in the house, but I assume this will change once my daughters get a little older.

My thoughts on the adoption of technology in schools

     This week I was asked to reflect upon the nature of technology adoption in schools. The initial ideas that came to mind were thoughts about being able to authentically integrate technology so that it was part of the curriculum and not just an addition to it, or the level of faculty support and training that is provided, or the level of buy-in from the school leadership, but that isn’t where I ended up. Don’t get me wrong, those are all great points, but they leave one stark reality in the dust. In a world where school budgets are determined at the last possible second and monies are reduced by millions every year the big issue is the ability to plan for the long term.

    Our schools as a whole are a great example. We know that the majority of schools systems in existence are physically and pedagogically designed around an industrialized teacher centered model. While some educators have tried to implement alternate models, the old inefficient model still remains. The integration of technology on a large scale will suffer much the same fate if long term commitments are not made up front.

     These commitments need to allocate long term money to technology programs within the school systems that will not face cuts or compromises. Leadership must buy into the programs; teachers must be educated on the technology and how to integrate it into the curriculum without creating an extraneous load on the students. Students need to be supplied with new and relevant information that does not come from antiquated text books containing facts that are already out of date, and parents need to be brought into the loop as well.

     The problem that exists is that we live in a world that revolves around immediate results. If we can’t test it with a bubble sheet then we probably won’t spend our money on it when it comes to education. The educational needs of our children have evolved and society, though quick to adapt technology on a personal or business level, is unwilling or unable to revolutionize the educational system in much the same way. Until we as a society are ready to recognize the need for change and drastically alter our philosophical perspective of knowledge and education, and make a long term commitment to funding and supporting the integration of technology as the medium, I fear that all of our efforts in the field will only serve as window dressing.

Transition time

     Just an administrative note to mark the end of my postings for EDUC 633 and the beginning point for my postings for EDUC 630.

     I have some final work to hand in for EDUC 633, but it has been a phenominal experience.  I truly feel like I have gained some insights on instructional design that I did not previously have.  I am not a classroom teacher so EDUC 630 is actually a bit more intimidating to me.  The idea of integrating technology into the classroom is a good one, I simply do not have a venue in which to incorporate the ideas yet.  I am sure it will all work out.  I hope you enjoy this next 8 weeks of postings for EDUC 630.

Best practices for Online Faculty

     While the world of distance education is booming and coming into its own there is no lack of research being done in the major areas regarding learners and courses, but there seems to be a significantly smaller amount of research being conducted regarding the faculty who deliver online courses.  Specifically I wanted to read a variety of articles that related to different aspects of online faculty, but one concept in particular caught my attention.

     

     Zappala (2007) discussed the transformation of distance education and how it has evolved from a very behaviorist teacher centered concept to a more social constructivist learner centered model.  This evolution is good and has done much to advance the educational experience of adult learners in distance education programs.  How have these changes affected the faculty who facilitate these courses?

       

     In the article Zappala (2007) applies the same concepts of andragogy being applied to distance learners and turns it around on distance faculty.  Why would the faculty, who learn the same way adult learners do, not need to apply the same principles of social constructivism and transformative learning?  He argues that distance faculty are often isolated from their peers and their students while in need of the same levels of interaction and authentic experience.  There does not appear to be enough research to declare a best practice in dealing with the circumstances, but most researchers believe that faculty must be afforded a collaborative experience with their peers and a transformative interaction with their students if they are going to be satisfied and successful as online faculty members.

    

     As I read through the article I was struck by the lack of any solid answers to the issue and the lack of research being done in the area.  It would seem that all the best practices in the world will not mean anything for the rest of distance education if the faculty who are called to teach are not in a position to do so.  Too often the mistake is made of over emphasizing one particular component of a problem and I am afraid that this is the case in modern day distance education.  While many of the issues for learners and course delivery are being solved, the faculty are being left in the dust.

   

References

Land, T. (2004). Distant Learning Leaders: What You Don't Know Could Hurt    You!. In J. Nall & R. Robson (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2004 (pp. 107-112). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from  

http://www.editlib.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/p/11325.

Miller, G., Stokes, D. & Williamson, L. (2009). Reconstructing Distance Education Training in the State of Utah: Connecting the Literature on Best Methods to the Development. In I. Gibson et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2009 (pp. 466-474). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/p/30639.

Zappala, A. (2007). Social Constructivism and Transformative Learning Theories in the development of Online Instructors: Best Andragogical Practices. In C. Montgomerie & J. Seale (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2007 (pp.2487-2493). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/p/25721.

Authentic Assessment

     According to Drummond (2005) the primary challenge regarding online education is that the assessments we are using were based on an older learning goals.  His recommendation is that in the new learning paradigm we must integrate learning and assessment if we are to be effective in our goals.  The concept of reading a passage, hearing a lecture, and then taking a multiple choice test are mostly things of the past.  Drummond champions the concept that learning must be real to the learner.  The learner must see value in the lesson that can be used towards their everyday lives.  This in turn requires that assessment have the same goals, that is, to authentically assess the student’s learning in a manner that is relevant and at the same time informative.   Integrated assessment not only allows the learner to see value in the applicability of the material, but it allows for more immediate corrective feedback, which the learner can then turn around and use to improve in the very course they are in.

     Isreal, Moshirina, and Anderson (2008) believe that one answer to the solution can be found in the use of wikis in online learning environments.  They claim that wikis offer authentic assessment possibilities through their flexibility of application.  The specific example given is for case based assessments for pre-service teachers, but could be applied to any complex assessment issue.  The use of wiki allows the user to enter different aspects of a case from interviews, to evaluations, past records, to conversations or meetings that have been recorded.  The learner is allowed to use higher order thinking to directly apply their learning to a situation that has bearing on what they wanted to use the information for in the first place.  This method also allows for errors to be corrected before they are exacted upon real students and parents.

     Based on the information I have read and my own experiences with education both face to face and in an online environment there exists a legitimate need to incorporate authentic assessment methods into online learning programs.  I cannot count the number of times I have heard classmates complain about getting graded assignments back two weeks after they were submitted.  In a 16 week face to face environment where you are receiving at least weekly feedback based on your interaction in the class, this may be acceptable, but in an online environment where classes average five to eight weeks it is too long.  Learners are not able to incorporate the feedback into their future learning and the point of assessment is lost as anything other than a tool to know where the learner was.  There is much to be done, but research done by people like McLoughlin & Luca (2006) is making great strides in pinpointing a best practices approach to assessment in an online environment. 

References

Drummond, C. (2005). Using Instructional Design Techniques to Create an Authentic Online Assessment Model for an Introductory Computer Science Course. Journal of Interactive Instruction Development, 17(3), 20-32. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Israel, M., Moshirnia, A. & Anderson, S. (2008). Case-Based Authentic Assessment Applications within Wikis. In J. Luca & E. Weippl (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2008 (pp. 2608-2617). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/p/28727.

McLoughlin, C. & Luca, J. (2006). Best Practice in Online Assessment: Principles, Processes and Outcomes. In E. Pearson & P. Bohman (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2006 (pp. 2375-2382). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/p/23341.