The Best Learning I’ve Ever Experienced

A key event in my personal learning/PLN was hearing Will Richardson speak at OTA back in February 2009. In his keynote, he talked a bit about blogging and connecting with others. Most of what he was talking about was in the context of students and being in my 2nd year of teaching I was VERY impressionable. I thought a lot about myself during that presentation and how I could impact my students in ways that would be meaningful, while using emergent technology. I left the conference with some validation on the things I was beginning and thinking about starting in my classes and on fire for technology integration. One quote which impacted me was, “Kids will never be knowledge navigators if we never allow them to navigate knowledge.” I took that to heart and started to put students in my class into the position of being required to use technology tools to navigate, locate, and synthesize knowledge. We started a class wiki, which blossomed into what I had hoped would become an online Open Source Textbook for high school physics (bear in mind every single page except the front page was student-created). However, I left the public education classroom before my students got very much on the site.

That was a seminal point in my educational technology journey. Currently, in that same journey, I am pursuing the PhD in Education with an educational technology focus. So, PLEASE, attend conferences! You just never know where a conference session will end up! I have presented at that conference a few times over the last 5 years and I consider OTA (now OTA-Encyclomedia) my ‘home’ conference. While it doesn’t typically draw ‘research’ presentations, it offers a ton of sessions in which people are successfully engaging students using new technologies.

At about that same time, I had recently discovered twitter and was beginning to meet many new people in the Oklahoma Education Community, specifically those who were early twitter adopters. Those connections led to job opportunities at the state level and some great friendships with people from all aspects of education and educational technology. Also, through those connections, I have been invited to speak at small district-level conferences. However, the learning goes far beyond the ‘exposure’ I got to others. I was trying new things in my classes, reflecting about it on my blog, and sharing experiences and learning from others through comments on blog posts and twitter interactions. This was even beyond the boundaries of Oklahoma. I have met people from all over the country (and some in other countries) through twitter and not met them face to face until attending the annual conference for the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE).

That said, the most important aspect of getting involved in a PLN, e.g. twitter, was the ability I had to connect with people who were trying the same things I was, or who had already tried it. I could learn from them and they learned from me. Twitter, as a PLN, made the education world MUCH smaller for me. The best part about it was this was free and I could personalize it to fit my needs and interests. It was (and still continues to be) an ‘a la carte’ professional development experience for me. Joining twitter for the express purpose of using it as a PLN was probably the best thing I have ever done as far as professional development goes, certainly in my first several years of teaching. I would highly recommend it. I have blogged about twitter previously here.

For those of you who are going into public education, you will have plenty of opportunities for professional development. Generally, there is enough built-in PD so that you do not even have to go to outside PD and you get your required hours. However, I can attest that the most meaningful development I have gotten over the last 8 years has been through conference, online communities, and informal learning that occurs when teachers collaborate together. I would advise anyone to get involved in some kind of community which interests you. Start a blog and reflect on what you do, start following some hashtags on twitter (e.g. #oklaed, #edtech, and/or #edchat), check with people you know who innovate. Don’t ask the teachers who are in their 30th time of teaching the exact same lesson, the exact same way. They likely won’t have much to share. Find the people who are trying new things. Those who are making mistakes. Those who fail at trying  something. (this is very different from people who constantly fail!) These are the people who will have experience to share which will be valuable.

What Makes a Good Conference Presenter

Good presenters - 

Know who they are as a presenters

Plan the goals and outcomes 

Know the audience

Anticipate questions

Visualize presentation and attendees

Assess themselves 

Practice

Is the presentation for you? Or for the audience? Consider that question when making the planning. Should your presentation tool fit you? Or the audience? 

Keynote by Dr. Vincent Tinto at the 2013 Transformative Learning Conference

Transformative Learning Conference - 2013

Mobilizing and Assessing Student Transformative Learning - Threshold of Change

Introduction to the conference - Transformative Experience - in a few words by students: engaged, impactful, uncomfortable, one student said they understood what a transformative learning looked like after they were finished studying abroad and came back to Oklahoma.
There is a delegation here from Thailand. When asked why they were here replied, “We want to learn something new.” I hope that’s why we are all here. The question is, what are students learning and how are they learning it? In fact, how do we know they are learning it?

Dr. Vincent Tinto - Keynote - Transforming the Learning Experiences of Academically Underprepared Students

There is educational inequality in the US.

Very few students who start even just one level below college, finish a gateway course. So if we keep seeing this problem, why are we still doing what we are doing?

**If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.**

FYI, nobody rises to low expectations. Student quote: “My favorite teachers were always the ‘ass-kickers’.”

What we need to do is provide contextualized support. They need support for the class in which they are working, i.e. bridge, supplemental instruction, embedded faculty support, etc. This all sounds like good pedagogy. Differentiated instruction. The students who need help get help. They engage with the information multiple times, they form study groups.

Learning Communities - overlapping classes in which students are taught the same information in both classes where the context of one supports the context of the other. Co-curricular and co-teaching.

Accelerated learning. Instead of being placed in lower courses, students at a lower level are placed in “normal” courses and they get up to level by also enrolling in a supplemental study course. Contextualized support. This begs the question of assessment.

Power pedagogy is a must in transformative learning. This can look like project-based learning, cooperative learning, collaborative learning, learning communities, and/or service learning. There’s a difference between group work and cooperative group work.

Expanded engagement in learning - when students talk to each other about the class, they learn more. Just getting involved with students more in the class is increasing their learning.” - anecdotal, I’d love to see research on this. Learning together is better and students’ sense of self is transformed. “If you are constantly having to think, re-think, and even re-re-think in light of other’s feedback, then you know something like you are not dumb.” Constructivism. Student learn to make their own meaning of the knowledge.

Transformative learning is purposeful. IT IS NOT AN ACCIDENT. It must be the result of intentional, structured, and proactive actions that are systematic and coordinated in application. Since this isn’t happening for students at home, it has to happen in the classroom. In the same way that we cannot leave student success to chance, we cannot leave good pedagogy, assessment, development theory, etc. to chance. Our faculty must be trained. They must be required. However, we must eat the elephant one bite at a time. We can’t this overnight. We must take this in pieces.

So why do learning communities not work? Faculty are the problem. They have to collaborate. Look for courses that share characteristics. Learn in groups in ways that allow them to apply what they are learning. The communities scale up best within a major and/or best early in the career.

How do you best implement this learning strategy in online settings? The success of students from high income to low income is a large disparity. The intent of MOOCs should not be just an electronic lecture class. Consider which courses should be online. The best predictor of student success in online learning is how quickly faculty give feedback.

How do we apply the same concepts to academic advising? Focusing on student learning and activities. We often talk about extra-curricular and the “process” of college. So students are learning outside the classroom, as well. They are just learning through their experience.

Service learning. What could this look like? Do we have anything that could incorporate service learning into our classes?

Prepare, Discover, Analyze, Share

I had the opportunity to share an online pedagogy training with our faculty at SNU. We did a little discussion of ADA and how can offer equal opportunities for learning to our students with disabilities. We also talked about our online template. We use Moodle as our LMS and when I begin working with a professor to develop a course, I set up a new course for them from a template. While we hope that instructors can make a course their own, we do want to have some similarity between all of our courses. If students know exactly where to look for resources (assignment lists, etc.), we reduce their cognitive load and free them to learn content, instead of trying to learn where components of a course can be found. Our online courses are only 6 weeks long, so they have a small window in which to learn where resources within the course are located.

Our main focus of the training, however, was the PDAS model. While we do not expect every course to have each of these four components in every single week of a course, we do hope to balance these strategies throughout their courses.

Prepare is the part of a course in which students are "instructed" on the concepts or information to be learned. Usually, this would look like students reading from texts, watching videos, reading journal articles or websites, or some kind of similar activity. The key to this component is that professors tell students where to get the information. This is instructor-centered learning. As a side note, I personally think this should be minimalized in a course. I'm a constructivist and I think students learn best when they have to go find information.

Discover is the antithesis of the previous strategy. In discover, students construct their own knowledge. They are tasked with finding the information on their own. They have to go and "do" something. This particular strategy could take many forms, e.g. experiment (science), argumentative essay (english), find patterns of behavior in a culture (social studies), etc. The bottom line is that students begin to find their own knowledge and evaluate that knowledge for parts of it they find relevant.

It is hard to talk about either of the first two without bringing in the third component: Analyze. This is the part of the learning process in which students actually do something with the information they have learned in the first two steps. After all, if you learn something and do not do something with that knowledge, what's the point? In analyze, students might compare and contrast two stories they have read. They could read a piece of literature and create a modern version of the work (video?). They might analyze a piece of literature through the cultural lens through which it was written (literature and social studies connection). I have always enjoyed looking at the historical context of science and thinking about why advances where made. There might even be a fine arts connection to be had here in this step (pointillism and atomic theory?)

Finally, students need to Share. How can you have any kind of class without some kind of buy-in to a social theory of learning? Students need to interact with others. This becomes even more important when you consider that by simply taking an online class, they area at a disadvantage in the social aspect of learning. This means that we, as designers/instructors, must be purposeful in creating opportunities for students to share their knowledge with others. This accomplishes two things: the "sharer" learns more by being forced to communicate their learning, either in writing or in the spoken word. The "sharee" learns more by being exposed to other's worldview, perspective, and ideas of what is important within a particular knowledge domain.

This model of learning is not new to most of you, I would imagine. You probably have components of this in your classes, whether online or face-to-face. I'm learning this as I begin to deepen my understanding of classroom models and learning theories: In education, as in Physics, there is not yet a Grand Unified Theory. No single learning theory works for every single learner. We must use components from many different theories to enable students to be successful in our domain.

As teachers, we must be able to offer students opportunities to learn, based on their particular learning style. There may be learning theories that work better for differently structured domains or even from one "class" in a school to another, i.e. this year's sophomores, juniors, seniors, etc. This idea is why every teacher should be a learner (yes, SNU School of ED, I also think we need to be lifelong-learners). I didn't really understand this when I was in school. When I finished my undergraduate work, I thought, "I've arrived." However, continuing my learning beyond that has shown me just how much I don't know. That, I believe, is where true learning begins.

Social Media in the Classroom

Today is the second of what I hope will be many days of work at SNU. Friday was the official first day, but that was time spent in Human Resources with a little bit of running around and meeting with the Director of Online Learning. She got me a broad overview of the grant and it's purpose; so at least I have a vague idea of the direction we are moving.

I'll be spending some time today in faculty workshop. I'm going to be doing some PD with faculty about using Social Media in the classroom. Seems like pretty standard fare if you've been reading my blog for very long. However, it occurred to me that the powers that be want me to teach the faculty something new. These are the people who were my teachers, mentors, & professors (and continue to be so). It just struck me as odd.

I'm going to organize my thoughts here a little bit.

A few of the biggest things I like about Social Media in the classroom is that it can bring new perspectives in (through non-class members sharing), it expands the boundaries of the classroom (again, engaging people outside the classroom in conversation), and it can extend the amount of time students spend learning your content (by continuing the conversation outside the 50 minutes see your face each day). I'll spend a bit of time talking about a few of the tools available and how to integrate those.

As I write this, I'm thinking specifically about faculty who are late adopters (or non-adopters) and I can see them looking at me with skepticism. What in the world is that about? These people know me. Many (dare I say most) of them, I have a pretty good relationship. In fact, that was what I stressed in my interview. I already have significant amounts of currency in my relationship accounts with many of these folks. So what am I worried about? I know there are going to be some who don't "buy it" who are not (and maybe never will) drink the technology Kool-Aid.

Facebook - It's a great way to extend the time you can interact with students. According to TechCrunch, 85% of them are using the site already. That statistic is from 2005, so I would imagine the number is much higher. You can create a group for each class. You could post materials and put reminders there about assignments, due dates, or even just a word of encouragement. The great thing about it is that you don't have to friend your students. As the teacher (or the student) you post on the group wall and it shows up in the news feed of everyone else. It's like seeing all of your students outside of class and talking to them about class.

Twitter - Twitter could function similar to Facebook in that it uses status updates to carry on a conversation about class/content. However, there are no groups. But there are hashtags. If you create hashtag for your class and have your students tweet using that hashtag. For instance, if you wanted to see what conversation is happening right now about Education, you could look here. If you are on twitter, the "Discover" button at the top is a hashtag search. If you have never heard of a hashtag, it is analogous to a keyword search. If you have ever searched for an article in a database using a keyword, you already understand how to use hashtags. They are simply searches for keywords in the conversation that is happening on twitter. It's simply a way for you to focus on what a particular subject of conversation. If you aren't sure what a hashtag might look like for your classes, I teach an Earth's Natural Disasters Class. It starts next week, so it's a winter class. My hashtag could be #ENDwint12. I could then have students use that hashtag everytime they tweeted anything related to class and I could easily search for it.

This strategy is especially useful for things like reminders, changes, canellations, etc. You can also use it as what is called a "backchannel". This idea is akin to passing notes in class, but you are able to see it. It gives students the option to ask questions, make comments, etc. without interrupting what's going on. These are very useful during formal presentations, but could also be utilized in the classroom.

Twitter has a 140 character limit. Imagine asking students to synthesize an entire semester's worth of learning in your class into a single tweet? You might be surprised at the results.

Google+ - I could probably share for an entire hour about each of these tools, but Google+ probably has the most functionality. It has components of both Facebook and Twitter. The great thing about this one, is that since SNU is a Google Campus, all students and faculty are already on Google+. They need only click their name at the top right hand corner of the page (when logged into email) and then click "Join Google+" and set up their profile.

In Google+, you have what are called "circles". This would be very similar to a group on Facebook. You add people to circles. They have no idea how you have your circles arranged. They only see that you have said something. You simply choose which circles you send your update to. If I had a Physical Geography circle, I could add students. When I write an update on Google+, I simply choose my Physical Geography circle as the group to with which the update is shared. Like all update services, you can share links, photos, or places.

One other really great thing about Google+ is the Hangouts function. You create a hangout and it becomes a virtual space for you to interact via webcam and voice with people who come to your hangout. Think of it as office hours without students having to actually walk into your office. This is fantastic for you if you teach online. You can still interact with students even without them being at your physical location.

This is my starting point for what I'm going to talk about this afternoon. What have you been doing with Social Media in your classroom? I'm certainly open to ideas to share!