Posts tagged quality
My thoughts, as faculty, on #LectureFail
Mar 15th
The Chronicle of Higher Education asked,
Is it time for more widespread reform of college teaching?
This series explores the state of the college lecture, and how technologies point to new models of undergraduate education.
Last month, we began inviting students across the countries to fire up their Web cameras or camera-phones to send us video commentaries about whether lectures work for them.
Chronicle.com/LectureFail displays a number of student comments, including a compilation, along with several faculty responses.
As a faculty member, as I watched several of the videos, I found my beliefs and attitudes to be more in line with the students than my faculty colleagues. Personally, lectures are boring… for me… as a faculty member. I don’t like them, and pedagogically and historically, I find them to be an outmoded approach to teaching and learning. Why?
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Loading ...Incentives for Course Feedback?
Mar 4th
I work closely with end of course evaluation surveys. At one institution, I administer the online survey system through which we survey students, and for the other institution, I rely heavily and place high value on feedback from students to help me continuously improve the course. My question is, “How much is that feedback worth?” More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Learning Outcomes ARE NOT Learning Objectives
Aug 8th
The simple fact that Learning Outcomes are NOT the same as Learning Objectives is a key principle to “Developing Effective Learning Outcomes & Objectives.” As noted in that presentation outline,
The differences lie in the level of specificity each provides and the relationship of each to assessment methods and instructional activities. Failure to understand and accommodate the differences can restrict academic freedom of faculty and complicate institutional efforts to manage curriculum and assessment.
Using the course I teach – COSC 1401 Introduction to Computers – I want to briefly illustrate the difference and the relationship between a learning outcome and a learning objective. More >
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Leveraging Quality Matters Certified Courses
Aug 6th
Short version: An institution that facilitates and supports Quality Matters (QM) centered reviews of online courses could leverage those courses by licensing a QM certified course from the faculty developer on a semester-to-semester basis and distribute that QM certified course to any faculty – including or perhaps especially adjuncts – teaching the course. For me, that would be a win-win-win solution for the institution, the faculty developer and all other faculty teaching the same course.
Long version and a few issues are described below. After I explain all of this, please comment and tell me what sort of things I don’t know about QM or licensing issues etc that preclude an institution from doing this ;-) More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...What makes for effective learning & teaching?
Mar 25th
I have a very definitive view of what constitutes effective learning and teaching.
Effective learning and teaching experiences typically are:
- Active: Learners may, by design, cognitively influence the learning process.
- Collaborative: Learners are interdependent and reciprocally influence learning activities and outcomes.
- Authentic: Learners exhibit knowledge or perform a skill in a naturally occurring environment as possible.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...What’s Missing in Online Course Quality?
Apr 14th
Attending ITC eLearning 2009 Conference earlier this week, I attended multiple sessions on course quality; the sessions were offered by a diverse group using different strategies and evaluation tools: a Quality Matters lead pre-conference workshop; Lake Superior Community College’s QM-based in house rubric; Yavapia College’s experience with online standards, and Burlington Community College’s use of course development, grade distribution and student course evaluations. One thing was missing through all of the presentations, but I think that may be due to a gap in the literature or education sector rather than it being a failing of any one institution.
There are many variations of course development evaluation: an evaluation template that assesses the quality of the development of online courses. These evaluations address the question, “What features exist in the course content at the outset of the course?” More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Ramapo Islands: Quality Learning in Second Life
Jun 15th
Am home from the NMC 2008 Summer Conference, so it’s about time I knock out my first real blog post in a month or so. I had the opportunity Saturday morning to listen to Peggy Sheehy (SL: Maggie Marat) talk about her two years of Ramapo Islands experience on the Teen Grid. Her presentation provided one of the most important take-aways from the conference for me regarding virtual worlds and Second Life in particular.
Briefly, if you have the opportunity to hear Peggy speak, take it! And, if you’re going to be at NECC, you should make time for at least one of her presentations. In particular, the 3D Storyworlds presentation on immersive digital storytelling should be of particular interest; Peggy was only able to allude to that project, in very vague terms during the presentation this morning; I wish I could be there for the presentation in San Antonio. It may also be worth checking out her personal site as well: Metaversedl.com
Saturday morning, Peggy provided an overview of Second Life for the relatively uninitiated in the audience and then described how they’ve gotten through the logistical issues of starting their well known Ramapo Islands SL project on the Teen Grid. Peggy then focused on what they’ve been doing and the impact it has had on the learning environment.
I’ve written frequently regarding the notion of “quality instruction” via Second Life
while maintaining proper focus on the desired learning outcomes, develop authentic learning projects that allow learners to engage learning content through interaction with communities and/or creation of content or products in a manner not possible through a physical or standard web-based learning environment.
For me, a significant part of that, which I have also written about, is not doing in Second Life what can be done more easily or better in the physical or web-based environments. Peggy’s and the Suffern faculty’s work on Ramapo makes it very clear that whether or not something can be done “more easily or better” isn’t always obvious.
Specifically, Peggy described a Second Life project completed by learners focused on John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” Following the reading and study of the novel, students prepared for and conducted a mock trial via Second Life. Of course, given the notion of Occam’s Razor within the context of educational technology, the use of Second Life seems entirely unnecessary. The role play could be done in class without the use of any technology; and Second Life only seems to a layer of technical complexity. Peggy even alluded to that complexity when she suggested any faculty beginning a Second Life project needs to be excessively nice to tech support personnel (“start baking brownies”).
So, why engage Second Life in a traditional face-to-face environment for an activity that can be accomplished without technology?
I specifically asked Peggy if the English teacher had used the same activity in the face-to-face environment and how learner participation compared between the two environments. Peggy indicated that every learner participated in some respect, and that the student response was overwhelmingly positive from top to bottom. That contrasts starkly to learner interest for the same activity conducted without technology and Second Life. So, the answer to my question is simple – learners engage the activity with a significantly greater enthusiasm and interest when it’s presented and conducted via Second Life rather than through non-mediated interaction.
I don’t think there’s any question that the “novelty effect” has at least some impact on the situation, but given some of the comments by learners in regards to other projects at Suffern, it seems as though there’s characteristics of Second Life that have a unique effect on learner willingness and interest in the project. In short, Second Life mediates the personal, social risks many students may perceive in a traditional learning environment; even when learners are perfectly aware of which person is behind an avatar, Second Life still provides enough perceived anonymity that learners are comfortable engaging peers in a social environment. This blog entry by a Suffern teacher, in reference to a different Second Life project, clearly demonstrates the social buffer Second Life provides.
Going back to the definition of quality instruction via virtual worlds . . .
while maintaining proper focus on the desired learning outcomes, develop authentic learning projects that allow learners to engage learning content through interaction with communities and/or creation of content or products in a manner not possible through a physical or standard web-based learning environment.
The Suffern projects are demonstrating that projects in Second Life may allow learners to engage content through interaction in a manner that is not possible through a physical environment because the physical environment does not provide a social buffer and level of comfort that Second Life can and does provide.
Peggy and Ramapo’s experience with Second Life is pretty powerful. First, the Second Life experience is extending from Suffern Middle School into the High School – to allow learners to continue engaging Second Life. And, relationships via Second Life are transcending real life cliquish type social structures; here’s the short, paraphrased, condensed version of a story she told (I’m taking A LOT of liberties with the text below to communicate what Peggy shared with us during the session).
An observer in the classroom noticed one student receiving a message from a classmate.
Observer: “Who’s asking that question?”
Student: (looking over the top of the computer and pointing) “She’s sitting right over there.”
Observer: “Is she a close friend?”
Student: “Not really. We used to be, but she’s one of the popular kids now.”
Observer: “Do you talk very often.”
Student: “We never talked before, but since the Second Life project(s), we’ll say Hi if we see each other and talk on occasion.”
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Stop Quizzing Learners in Second Life!!!!
Apr 15th
Finally getting back to this post I started about two weeks ago . . .
This morning/afternoon I attended a workshop that demonstrated a variety of Teaching Tools for Second Life. I absolutely appreciated the workshop and those involved in making it happen: the host institution, the faculty moderator and the facilitator. It’s these kinds of activities that make Second Life of keen interest to educators; there’s simply not another technology that brings everyone into a common workspace like Second Life does.
With that said, as an instructional designer and technologist, I have several significant pedagogical issues with the tools that were demonstrated. Each of the tools I saw demonstrated have, in my opinion, little to no useful place in Second Life. Worse yet, I believe they may actually be counterproductive to the development of quality learning experiences in Second Life. I think this is at the core of the “quality use of Second Life” question. My opinion may be perceived as being too harsh, but I’ll explain.
I don’t want to refer to the tools specifically because I do not want to denigrate the individual tools or the individual who created them; the developer is a fantastic educator for whom I hav ea great deal of professional respect. What I do want to do is to discourage the transfer of traditional assessments and learning tools into a virtual environment which has much greater capabilities and potential.
By and large, our classrooms are much more limited than the real world; it’s not easy or in many cases possible at all for learners to perform a skill in the classroom in the same manner they would perform the same skill in a real-life situation outside of the classroom. For example, in a business entrepreneurship class, it’s not possible to have learners engage the process of actually starting a business; that requires too many actions and resources that lie beyond the capabilities of the classroom. So, we cover the concepts and processes in as much detail and in as innovative ways as possible afforded by textbooks, new media, interactive technologies, classroom activities and the online environment. We then use an assessment instrument of some sort that hopefully provides a valid and reliable estimate of how learners would actually perform if they were to in fact start a business. So, out of necessity, we resort to tools that estimate how a learner would perform in the real world – in an authentic environment once they’ve left the classroom.
The virtual environment, in contrast, creates a unique opportunity to abandon the estimates and the not-so-reasonable-facsimiles of performing real world skills in a real world, authentic environment. In the case of the business entrepreneurship class, it IS possible for learners to actually start a business within a virtual environment, Second Life in particular. They can conduct market research within an actual, living market; they can fabricate actual prototypes of a product; they can bootstrap the business or seek funding for the startup; they can have actual customers purchasing products. Given enough time, they can engage every phase of the business startup process. As an instructional designer, the transfer of classroom tools and assessments that estimate how learners will perform in the real world to the virtual environment is, at best, incongruous, and at worst, counterproductive. They do not belong.
But wait . . . many will say, “We have to have some sort of assessment?!” Right, but I argue that the manner in which we assess learners needs to change; we need to take advantage of the affordances of the new environment. BUT for now, I’ll concede that argument, for argument’s sake. Even if we MUST conduct traditional, exam-type assessment, I ask, “Why do we have to do that within the virtual environment when we already have internet-based tools that do the same thing and perhaps do it much better than any currently-available tool in the virtual space?” Any learner that can access a virtual environment can also access any web-based learning management system that is guaranteed to have an integrated assessment tool. The two environments aren’t and shouldn’t be mutually exclusive; even if we want to teach a class entirely through a virtual environment, that doesn’t mean that ALL activities have to occur within that space. In fact, it’s MUCH more efficient to use both environments; we should leverage the particular strengths of each application.
If that’s not enough, one of the other participants commented, “We need to keep this as simple as possible; many of our students are not strong computer users.” We know that’s true; even strong computer users engage a learning curve within Second Life. Even if there’s disagreement about my arguments above, should we not still leverage the assessment capabilities of LMS’ rather than developing less reliable and more clunky tools to do the same thing in Second Life? for the sake of our learners?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Learning & Assessment in Second Life – A Scenario
Dec 10th
In a July post, I wrote about Assessing Learner Performance in Second Life. Jumping there and coming back may be useful. In short however, I suggested that Second Life (or any multi-user virtual environment) makes it more critical that we evaluate the “artifacts and performance produced” by learner experience in Second Life rather than relying on traditional forms of assessment which are designed to approximate actual performance. I did not, however, begin to explain a manner by which that may be accomplished, so the question is, “How do I begin to develop more authentic assessment of learner performance in Second Life?”
The first question to ask is, “What particular task can learners perform or what products can they produce within Second Life to demonstrate they have acquired particular skills or knowledge to be learned within the course?” An example . . . I teach an “Introduction to Computers” course in a community college; IF I were to use Second Life in that environment, I could ask learners – as a class or as a small group – to collaboratively build or explore a large, room sized , walk-in model of a PC computer. That assignment would focus on learner understanding of basic hardware.
A couple of caveats to consider when initially identifying a project, and these relate back to definitions I’ve offered previously of quality instructional uses of Second Life. The “build or explore . . . the walk-in model” is a critical choice. First, if they simply explore a model which I’ve constructed, I need to be sure to include interactive elements that make engaging the content within Second Life uniquely valuable. Otherwise, learners may be able to get the same level of understanding from less intricate technologies – web or print, text or graphics – and that’s not consistent with the suggestion I’ve made that learners should engage content “in a manner not possible through a physical or standard web-based learning environment.” Second, if I require learners to build their own model, I may be introducing skill and knowledge requirements beyond the scope of the course or objective. Learners could very easily spend more time fighting with the Second Life interface than they do on-point with the content for the course; this does not “maintain proper focus on the desired learning outcomes.”
The second question to ask is, “Based upon learner performance of a task or production of content, how do I know they’ve acquired the necessary skills or knowledge required by the course?” One choice is to ask learners to complete a written assessment, perhaps an objective exam of some sort. However, if I have the opportunity to measure actual, “real world” performance, should I not do that rather than approximating learner capabilities using less direct methods?
Back to my walk-in model of a PC . . . I can actually observe learners interacting with the model – either directly by synchronous presence or indirectly via tools I’ve developed to record their interactions with the devices/parts. Setting aside the task of creating the necessary tools in SL, the pedagogical task for me becomes identifying the different levels of performance learners may exhibit. Exactly what sort of interaction with the model constitutes “expert” level knowledge of PC parts and functions? What’s the difference between that and “average/sufficient” level of knowledge? And, finally, what sort of behavior with the device demonstrates that the learner has insufficient or poor understanding of PC hardware?
In short, I develop a list of criteria or objectives which my learners must meet, and then for each, I work to identify three different levels of performance to which point values may be assigned for grading performances. The end result is a performance rubric or matrix.
I think this type of assessment in Second Life is imperative. Transitioning different types of objective assessment tools to Second Life – quiz tools etc – is not a valuable exercise. It’s imposing a philosophically inconsistent method of assessment on the Second Life learning environment in a manner which turns the concepts of reliability and validity backwards. The ability for learners to engage authentic learning through virtual “performance” in Second Life should exclude traditional forms of assessment. Using those forms of assessment in Second Life is a sign of laziness or lack of awareness regarding more appropriate assessment tools and methods.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Sloan-C Professional Development Event
Sep 23rd
This past Friday, I attended the first Sloan-C Professional Development event for educators working in Second Life. The event was held in-world at Cybrary City and hosted by ShaunG Lynch. The question the event sought to answer was, “What can educators do in SL that can’t be done better using other platforms?” Two speakers offered examples of educational uses to the 25+ avatars in attendance: CDB Barkeley (RL: Alan Levine, NMC) and
Max Chatnoir (RL: Dr. Mary Ann Clark, Texas Wesleyan Univ).
CDB provided a high level overview and list of projects with which he’s familiar; given his position with the NMC and the weekly Teacher’s Buzz that he hosts, Alan’s familiar with a broad range of educational projects occurring in Second Life. Among the projects he mentioned:
- Ed Lamoureaux at Bradley University runs an entire course within Second Life; learners in his social research class perform research in-world to engage research techniques and methods.
- There’s been “burst of interesting projects that are reconstructions of real places or historical rebuilds” including: Morocco by Ann Enigma (RL: Hilary Mason), Sistene Chapel by Vassar College, plus virtual Egypt (pics), Dublin and Rome.
- Literature Alive! by Beth Ritter-Guth recently included a build of Dante’s Inferno; through that environment and others she has built, Beth’s learners are asked to engage activities focused on researching literature and contributing content.
- Timeline of Earth History by University of Arizona uses a 3D spiral to represent the 4.5 million years of earth history; undergraduate learners have researched information and built exhibits at various points on the timeline.
- Second Life in Education wiki by Jo Kay and Sean McDunnagh
During her time, Max Chatnoir offered a thorough sitting tour of Genome Island. Briefly, she described:
- Mendel’s Abbey used for teaching inheritance patterns,
- the Terrace which has a large model of a cell that links to other areas on the island with a few experiments for learning; a bunny hutch and bioinformatics kitchen are under develpoment,
- the Gene Pool will house experiments with population genetics and has a sandbox available for visitors and learners to create objects for the island,
- the Tower is a series of small labs, mostly for molecular genetics; it has about 25 modular sections which may be expanded; it includes what Max includes is a key part of the island: a human chromosome gallery with information about various human genes.
The island has a variety of experiments rooted in some concept or hypothesis and generates a set of data to notecards which can be exported to external software packages for further analysis. There are several games included for learners to play to learn various biological and genetic concepts: “The Mating Game” and “Genetics Trivial Pursuit.”
Certainly, Alan’s perspective and description of exciting educational projects in Second Life will always be useful given his level of immersion in the environment; in his role with the NMC and the Teacher’s Buzz event, he certainly provides an excellent list of resources and interesting projects. And, Max’s work with Genome Island is exciting and provides a fantastic in-world science resource. With that said, I believe there’s a long way to go to answer, “What can educators do in SL that can’t be done better using other platforms?” And, of course, as I’ve argued multiple times previously in this space, I believe that question is critical to developing quality learning environments in Second Life.
After Max’s presentation, another guest at the event asked, “A fair amount, it seems could be done via the web, in javascript or Flash. What does the 3D and social aspect add?” Unfortunately, not much attention was given to the question despite it hitting at the crux of the issue, I believe, the education industry should be addressing in regards to the use of virtual worlds, and that is the question initially posed by the event, “What can we do in SL that we can’t do as well or better using other platforms?”
I believe Genome Island answers, in part, the question – perhaps with one clarification by Max Chatnoir (RL: Dr. Clark). *IF* Dr. Clark is capable of personally creating the rich, interactive environments currently available on Genome Island, which she indicates she has done but at the same time does not possess the knowledge to do the same via the web using javascript or Flash, then Second Life uniquely makes it possible for a broader audience of faculty to author rich, interactive content by providing a platform with usable building and scripting tools accessible to more educators.
I believe the event answers the question, in part, as well. The type of professional development possible through Second Life, while uncreatively similar to RL conferences or seminars, are simply not possible via the web. The visual engagement of “seeing” colleagues at an event is perceptually different than seeing a name listed in a chat room or online discussion board. The opportunities to network with colleagues cannot be matched by other platforms, in my opinion.
With that said, I do not believe we explored during the event whether learning resources in Second Life that could not be accomplished equally well or better through other platforms. It does raise the “specter” of “comparative media” studies which last enjoyed popularity in the late 1990′s as distance learning via the internet surged in popularity.
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