Helen's EDC blog

I’m fascinated by AfL and the the application of theories in practice. I focused a lot on student to teacher feedback during the Learning Analytics module, with the results of Hattie’s ‘Visible Learning’ research informing much of my work. As you suggest, however, it is worth considering differentiated and personalised approaches to assessment and AfL approaches. For me, it’s not that I mind peers reviewing and commenting on my work; rather, I am intimidated by the quality and rigour of much of theirs! I suppose that one of the outcomes of this might be an improvement in my own contributions but it is not a comfortable process and it makes me reflect on how some of my students must have felt when I used to share their peers’ work with them as exemplars of best/model practice.

An interesting question about community-building. I very much feel like we are in the nascent stages of building our EDC community of inquiry developing our social and cognitive presence. Garrison and Anderson suggest that yes, ongoing interaction is important. However, this interaction may be in the form of us continuing to review and reflect upon one another’s work and progress via the blogs. I think, as you suggest, that considerations around community building (and Garrison and Anderson’s work in particular) will be useful to hold in mind as I embark upon my MOOC.

With regard to the ethical considerations, I’m interested as to when it is appropriate to let other MOOC participants know that we are carrying out research. Ethically, I feel that it should be at the outset. However, I am concerned that this will have a negative impact on the nature of the interactions I am able to establish with my fellow course participants. It’s really interesting to be embarking upon research within a field which is still grappling with and defining its own codes.

*Garrison, D. and Anderson, T. (2003), E-Learning in the 21st Century. Routledge-Falmer, London

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Hello Helen, thanks for the link to the images – stunning!

I’ll e-mail you a screen shot of the transcript, now.

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Hello Helen, thanks for this really clear rationale for selecting a field site for the mini ethnography.

Bearing in mind your interest in the subject of the MOOC, will you be participating in the different activities? You’re not required to do this and indeed might not have the time, however participant observation – where the researcher gets actively involved in activities with the community (rather than observing from the edge) in order to better understand their rituals, has a longstanding tradition within ethnography.

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‘The public nature of our lifestream blogs also allows us to see just how varied our responses, strategies and approaches are. It’s also more than a little intimidating, and I haven’t yet reached a conclusion about whether I’d prefer to work ‘blind’ and have my progress reviewed by only a tutor…’

This is really interesting and timely for me, Helen. Earlier today I participated in a seminar around assessment where a great deal of value was placed on students providing each other with feedback. One of the key ideas put forward was moving the tutor away from centre stage in order to get students to work together on establishing what represents high quality work. Something that I think is overlooked in this – and which you attest to here – is how comfortable students feel about sharing work with their peers. Your experience would suggest that putting work on display for fellow students is at least as anxiety invoking as getting feedback from a tutor? As course and designers and tutors, I wonder whether we are in a danger of focusing so much on the benefits of community learning that we can sometimes become blind to whether this type of peer review approach really works for every student?

‘The second half of the week brought, for me, a sense of disconnect as we retreated to consider our MOOC choices. After spending three weeks developing my links and connections with the other students on this course, it felt like we were moving away from ‘our ‘community to explore community.’

I’m intrigued by this, Helen. Out of interest, do you think that ongoing interaction is important to maintaining a sense of community? Do you think something is lost when we step back from some of the more communal spaces to work individually for a while? Is there something about digital learning environments that makes it particularly important to have some kind of ongoing interaction with one’s peers? It will be interesting to think about this in relation to your chosen MOOC over the coming weeks.

‘It’s interesting that our discussion around the MOOCs and our choices has moved to the relatively private world of the Hub and I was thinking about why this might be: is it to ensure that our discussion around the MOOCs is not accessible by others who are participating in/delivering the MOOCs?’

In a way, moving conversation into a forum on the Hub seems out-of-step with the very public and open nature of the EDC course. On the other hand, as you recognise, conversations around the different MOOC communities might feel stifled if they were held in a more public space.

‘I’m already considering the ethics of engaging with the other learners on my chosen course when my motivations aren’t ‘pure’. This presentation by Kozinets considers some of the issues but I need to find out more about the netnography netiquette and the ethical issues and suggested approaches to ethnographic studies of online communities.’

The idea of whether we should feel entitled to observe others – what I taking from your comment about not having ‘pure’ intentions – is one of the concerns that ethnographers sometimes wrestle with. What I’d say here Helen is that if there’s anything in particular you are uncertain about please do let me know by e-mail and we can discuss it. I presume you’ve already seen this information on the course site:
http://ift.tt/2koreyv

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Hi James. I’m a bit confused as I’m not seeing a transcript…can you send a screen grab please so that I can see what you’re seeing? And thank you for the link to the exhibition: it looks superb. As a former English teacher, I love poetry which plays with its own visual form. There are some really interesting examples here.

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Hello Helen, I’m intrigued as to your inclusion of the transcript from the Prezi. At first glance, I thought the transcription was in itself intended to be a visual artefact. It reminded me of an exhibition some years ago in Edinburgh where artists used the layout, shape and positioning of words to convey meaning beyond language:

http://ift.tt/2lwjk71

In the example of your own work, the layout and mixture of upper and lower case text looks like computer code cascading down the screen. There’s almost a rhythm to it. Cyborg poetry?

Or perhaps reproducing the text was just good practice in terms of accessibility?

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I agree with the rethink Helen, there is too much weight given to learning spaces being a recognised, I hate to say official, place. One of the examples I use is that I often think about things away from the learning environment as it seems to help me process. A perfect example I used for a previous course is available on my media hopper channel, I set up a camera and chatted to myself about “learnification”. Biesta, G.J.J., 2012. Giving Teaching Back to Education: Phenomenology & Practice, 6(2), pp.35–49.

http://ift.tt/2kYciek

Is my kitchen less of a learning space? It’s my main thinking space, my place where I concrete my thoughts…

Eli

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Renee – what lovely feedback: thank you. Like you, I struggled with it though: I couldn’t quite find the right medium to be able to express what I wanted to. And I think your artefact is brilliantly executed!

I couldn’t agree more with your observation about how datafication can impact on relationships. Do you have experience of this yourself?

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Chenée: as I mentioned to Nigel (http://bit.ly/2k89Y0t) I was hoping that the images would prove to be similar rather than contrasting; that’s also the reason why I ’embedded’ the modern within the old – to try and suggest that the design of our educational spaces has not really shifted or developed in line with our use of technologies. I was really interested to see that you had used an old (Victorian?) classroom in your artefact too. I find it befuddling really: I’ve been involved in a number of school new build programmes and the default design is always comprised of little teaching boxes…

Data is all-pervasive in secondary education in a way which it wasn’t when I first started teaching nearly twenty years ago. I fear – like you suggest – that data is reductive and fails to reflect all that is important about the individual learner. As you’ll have seen at BETT, there are so many ‘data dashboards’ on the market now, but very few of them go beyond allowing for the logging of quantitative data or – importantly – giving the student themselves a voice. As Hattie highlights (Hattie & Timperley, 2007) , student feedback on their on own learning is one of the key factors in improving attainment: it’s a key AfL principle and yet is ignored within the dashboard marketplace.

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What an interesting observation Eli. I was really interested in Miller’s observations about ‘homo faber’: ‘the maker and user of objects, his self to a large extent a reflection of things withe which he interacts.’ (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981:1). I guess one of the key things for me is how little the interaction of human and tool/tech has been reflected in the design of pedagogical spaces or practice. Bayne highlighted this, noting how technology is often perceived as simply an enhancement of current practice. Key questions aren’t asked about how the ‘entanglement’ of learner and technology, of teacher and technology, perhaps requires a radical rethink of how and where we teach and learn.

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