|
Back to menu of Reflective Statements by
Participating Members
Reflections on Three
Questions I am Trying to Answer
Deb LaPointe
University of New
Mexico
Received: October
3, 2005
The Background Giving Rise
to My Questions
The questions I posed - (a) Can
assumptions about self, authority, and knowledge develop so that
online learners can come to see and know themselves as knowledge
constructors; (b) Are we ready to facilitate learning
for gamers and learners from diverse cultures and backgrounds;
(c) Are we preparing learners for creative global collaboration
- grow out of a sincere concern to address one question frequently
posed about learning at a distance: Can distance education really
provide a quality learning experience? The question bothers me
for many reasons but mainly because I fear it possibly reflects
a deeply ingrained societal belief that learning can only occur
when the teacher and students are gathered together. Holding
that belief suggests that any learning occurring outside of that
configuration is, by definition, an inferior learning situation.
Besides slighting the field of distance learning, its designers,
and instructors, this attitude carries with it derision for the
learners who take advantage of the ability to learn at a distance
and the quality of the education they receive and can apply.
Abiding by the belief-be it pervasive
or not-that distance education is not as good as face-to-face
learning places many learners at a disadvantage, eliminates learning
opportunities for others, and robs our world of the contributions
made by those whose only chance to learn comes at a distance.
The most viable method to terminate that belief of distance education
as an inferior way to learn is to continue to improve the quality
of the learning experience at a distance. For those reasons,
I ask how do we make distance education better correspond with
the way people learn; how do we make distance education a quality
experience. The answers, in part, require that distance education
design moves beyond single-sensory, autonomous learning through
reading text-based lecture notes and taking online quizzes. I
am searching ways to design learning at a distance that feels
compatible with the way we really learn in a multisensory
world, moving away from the computer for some of the learning
activities, sometimes learning together, sometimes learning alone.
Trying to Educate Myself out
of My Experience
To find answers to my search,
I'm trying to educate myself out of my experiences-the way I
have been taught as well as the way I have been taught to teach,
usually using two senses-hearing and seeing. I'm seeking ways
to facilitate multi-sensory learning, experiential learning that
can lead to transformational learning at a distance. I'm trying
to match media, technologies, interaction, and learning activities
with the attributes of today's learners entering universities
and to facilitate Kolb's (1984) experiential learning cycle at
a distance. And for now, I'm seeking these answers without a
budget for developing virtual environments or computer games.
Why seek multi-sensory experiences
at a distance? The mind ultimately is not and of itself real;
it is made of up of different experiences stimulated by different
phenomena (The Dalai Lama, 2001). Our learning experiences, our
relationships, our quality of life, and our identity depend,
in part, on both what we do, whom we gather with, and how we
experience what we do. Our actions and our perceptions are linked
through real-world objects and experiences that afford a range
of certain possibilities. Learning is experiencing some of the
potential possibilities in the world in new ways, situating the
meaning of words, images, symbols, and artifacts, forming new
associations and patterns of thought, and forming new affiliations
with other people (Gee, 2003). Since our mind is a parallel ensemble
of physiological operations linking the muscular, endocrine,
immune, and nervous systems, it performs several activities at
once, engaging our whole being with movement, feelings, and perceptions
(Bownds, 1999). This ensemble informs our actions; our actions
reciprocally change the environment for others. These ongoing
environmental changes affect our actions in a pattern of learning
with characteristics common of dynamic systems (Yan & Fisher,
2002). Thinking is the activity of deciding what movement to
make next in a given environment with a group of people and tools.
Consequently, thoughts separate from mind, body, and experience
have no relevance to learners.
However, doing is not the end
all and be all. Doing could merely be an automatic reaction to
a stimulus perceived as pain or pleasure. The doing that higher
education seeks to stimulate is an embodied experience in harmony
with what the learner feels, wishes, and thinks, accompanied
by the learner's search for meaning of the experience. When learners
reach that harmony, Csikszentmihalyi (1990) would say there is
flow. When the learner realizes that the meaning he or she takes
away from a setting is but one of many possibilities and cares
about the effect of his or her doing on others residing on the
opposite side of the world, there is significant learning (Fink,
2003), the beginning of transformational learning (Mezirow, 2000).
Today I'm seeking how to facilitate
flow and significant, engaged, transformational learning at a
distance. It is suggested that flow and engaged learning do not
happen at the will of the instructor or designer or even the
learner. Flow and engaged learning happen when learning activities
provide a balance between high challenge and high skills and
allow the learner to focus on clear goals and receive immediate
feedback (Fink, 2003). Flow and engaged learning happen when
learners commit themselves fully to learning in terms of time,
effort, and active participation (Gee, 2003). They happen when
learners are willing to see themselves as the kind of culturally
sensitive person who can learn, use, and value the learning experience
offered, integrating insights gained from multicultural experiences.
The literature suggests that
yesterday's generations of learners dutifully participated in
learning activities with little if any questioning why. Today's
generations of learners, who frequently grew up playing video
and computer games, enter our institutions of higher education
bringing a different identity and thought process. The video
and computer games they have played while growing up and continue
to play today have changed their identity. That identity and
its attributes may be the source of additional ideas on how to
design engaging distance education environments. This new generation
comes to the university as active problem solvers who consult
friends and classmates, seek resources and information, try out
solutions, persist in trying to solve a problem even after making
mistakes, and do not consider mistakes as errors but as opportunities
for reflection and further learning (Gee, 2003; Beck & Wade,
2004). They see themselves as people who learn to experience
the world in new ways and gain the potential to join and collaborate
with a new affinity group, and develop resources for future learning
and problem solving (Gee, 2003). They learn by trial and error;
they operate with less structure.
Learning, therefore, does not
just affect what a learner knows; it can transform how the learner
understands the nature of knowing. While past generations of
learners may have been, in Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and
Tarule's (1986) terms, received or subjective knowers, today's
learners are more likely to be procedural knowers and independent,
critical, creative thinkers who do not just progress sequentially
toward competence. Our learners who do come to us as received
or subjective knowers need to move toward seeing themselves as
independent thinkers and knowers. All learners progress along
a complex web of connections, varying with their experiences,
culture, range of variation in level, and kind of pathway shown
and followed (Yan & Fischer, 2002) as well as their identity
as a learner.
To facilitate engaged learners
in a balance of high competence and high skill, learners need
to not only learn about the domain but also about themselves
and their current and potential capacities. They must learn how
to engage in new action-intellectual, social or physical-and
in new ways of thinking-critical, creative, or practical (Fink,
2003). They must learn how to self-assess and monitor, so they
can continue the learning, enable the flow, and collaborate with
others globally. The distance education environment then needs
to provide the opportunity for learners to repeatedly meet learners
from other cultures, practice, try out, take risks in a place
where real-world consequences are lowered, and reflect. Learners
cannot learn deeply by being told things outside the context
of embodied experiences (Gee, 2003).
Learning builds on previous learning
experiences and knowledge; each learner's experience will be
different as each learner is working from a different set of
motivations, attitudes, beliefs, and thoughts based on previous
experiences. Therefore, the distance education instructor is
not teaching a class; she is teaching individual students (Bain,
2004). The students are not following a uniform learning path
headed sequentially toward competence. Learning is not linear
but filled with stops and starts, reversals and breakthroughs,
success and positive emotions, failures, negative emotions, varying
degrees of scaffolding required, and uncontrolled differences
in social interaction and task requirements (Yan & Fischer,
2002). Each student takes a different pathway from novice to
expert, from received knower to creative, constructed knower.
Each pathway includes differing number of steps, levels of complexity,
sequence of performances, degree and type of social interaction,
and time to complete the task. Each student manifests his or
her own unique unfolding course of activity, and through reflective
abstraction on those experiences; each learner makes judgments
about what has happened. New understanding is constructed from
the integration of the new with prior, existing knowledge. Such
application and generalization are difficult to attain without
the time to experience and process the experience (Gee, 2003).
Therefore, we need to fully immerse the learners in experiences
while trying to eliminate their fear of making a poor grade while
generating a hypothesis, testing out a new idea, and maintaining
a highly challenging environment. Learners need to actively process-design
an experience, consolidate, internalize, and test.
While I have been pondering these
questions, I have been seeking answers through the literature
and using the possibilities I find in the literature to design
my distance education courses. I have been using Kolb's (1984)
experiential learning cycle. Kolb's learning cycle is based as
its name suggests on the learner's experiences. Briefly summarized,
Kolb's learning cycle can be described as follows. The learner
has a concrete experience of some type. That experience becomes
integrated with previous experience through learner reflection.
The learner generates a new abstract idea or hypothesis after
his or her previous experience is reorganized to accommodate
or assimilate the new experience; the learner then devises a
plan for testing the new idea. The new idea is tested through
yet another concrete experience.
As a distance education designer
and instructor, I have been trying to solve the problem of making
distance education a quality learning experience. I have been
trying to match distance education media, technology, and learning
activity to stimulate each phase of Kolb's (1984) learning cycle
as suggested by Zull (2002). I have been trying to determine
when the learners need to come together to stimulate learning
and when they need to work independently. I have initially assigned
synchronous voice discussions as one way of testing out new ideas
and asynchronous text-based private journals for the reflection/integration
stage . . . based on how I reflect and integrate through thinking
and writing alone. After first implementing this design, I asked
for feedback. The first comment I received from a learner was
I reflect and integrate aloud when participating in class
discussions and feel stifled having to reflect alone through
a private journal. Now I am back to the drawing board . .
. after testing out my new hypothesis and getting feedback. My
recent experience, however, renews my interest in using problems
and Kolb's experiential learning cycle to stimulate significant,
engaged, caring learning through experience.
Conclusion
I hope distance education can overcome the stigma that some people
still hold. I hope that we can reduce the uncertainty about learning
at a distance that society, perspective students and parents,
and employers may hold. I hope that we will soon hear that many
view the distance education environment as a place where significant,
engaged, transformational learning occurs, where personal connections
with other learners across the globe are made, and those experiences
with others develop caring, culturally sensitive global learners.
I hope those experiences are the start of learners' identities
as people who are highly motivated to work creatively and collaboratively
at a global level.
Bibliography
Bain, K. (2004). What the
Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Beck, J. C. & Wade, M. (2004). Got Game: How the Gamer
Generation is Reshaping Business Forever. Boston, MA: Harvard
Business School Press.
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M, Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule,
J. M. (1986). Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of
Self, Voice, and Mind. United States of America: Basic Books.
Bownds, M. D. (1999). The Biology of the Minds: Origins and
Structures of Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. Bethesda, MD:
Fitzgerald Science Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience. New York, NY: Harper-Collins.
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating Significant Learning Experiences.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About
Learning and Literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the
Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives
on a Theory in Progress. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
The Dalai Lama (2001). An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion
in Everyday Life. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company.
Yan, Z. & Fischer, K. (2002). Always under construction:
dynamic variations in adult cognitive microdevelopment. Human
Development, 45, 141-160.
Zull, J. E. (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain. Sterling,
VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
|
|
Back to menu of Reflective Statements by
Participating Members
Reflections on My
Questions for the AECT 2005 Presidential Panel
J. Michael Spector
Florida State University
Received: October
5, 2005
My three questions were about
online courses: (1) What makes a good online course good? (2)
Do those things differ from what makes good face-to-face courses
good? and, (3) Do online courses develop "personalities"
that might influence the selection and use of effective strategies
and activities? Those questions came to mind partly as a result
of my work for the International Board of Standards for Training,
Performance, and Instruction (ibstpi) in the last nine years
concerned with competencies for instructional designers, especially
those designing technology intensive learning environments, and
more recently competencies for online instructors and learners.
These questions also arose in conjunction with online master's
programs in instructional design and technology at Syracuse University
and at Florida State University.
The chance to work with ibstpi
colleagues in identifying relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes
and values that pertain to online learning and instruction was
enriching. We examined research, talked with many experienced
practitioners, conducted interviews and surveys, and shared our
own experiences. I worked with a doctoral student who conducted
a qualitative investigation of the practices, perceptions, and
approaches of highly experienced online teachers. We investigated;
we discussed; we published papers and books - that on which academics
thrive.
My experience with regard to
the university programs was quite different. In both cases the
faculty involved with developing and implementing these programs
were enthusiastic and very knowledgeable. However, there was
noticeable resistance from those not involved with online learning
and instruction - especially in departments that did not make
use of online learning in any of its many forms. Skepticism is
fine; entrenched and dogmatic resistance is downright discouraging,
especially from highly educated colleagues and administrators.
In any case, that context caused
me to focus on those three questions. There is a thread running
through my questions that suggests that online courses may have
many significant things in common with face-to-face courses.
As researchers, we have tended to focus more on the differences.
That thread of similarity perhaps developed as a practical way
to respond to those who regard online teaching as an alien ritual
performed by people wearing masks. There is a complementary thread
that pertains to quality. Like many others, I would like to do
what I do well - at least every now and again. Satisfying that
occasional desire for quality requires understanding what is
likely to contribute to quality - not only from my perspective
but from the perspective of students and those who may employ
or work with my students afterwards.
The latter question is really
a question of conscience. Stated simply, it comes to this: What
good will come from what I am now doing and likely to do tomorrow?
After tripping over this question while wondering about in academic
darkness, I have come to this conclusion: I do not know. Not
only do I not know what good will come from what I am doing,
I do not know in general what will result from what I am doing.
Ouch. The truth bites.
I do have an underlying belief,
however, that I am willing to share. In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates
and Protagoras are discussing virtue. Socrates proposes and apparently
convinces Protagoras that if one knows what the right thing to
do is in a particular situation, then one is compelled to do
it; failure to do what is right implies ignorance. The paradox
is interesting in its own right, but my concern here is somewhat
different. For Socrates, the indication of understanding virtue
was based entirely on action or performance. Socrates perhaps
introduced the first performance-based criterion for understanding.
There is also an implication that there may be a difference between
what one says and what one does. Saying the right thing, at least
in the cases Socrates considered (most of which involved values
and virtue), is not a sufficient indication of understanding;
one must also do what is right. In the words of my philosopher
professor, O. K. Bouwsma: "Surely your life will show what
you think of yourself."
That trip down memory lane may
raise all sorts of other issues, such as the nature of values
or the value of nature. I only wanted to suggest the general
principle that performance is a reliable indication of knowledge
in complex problem-solving domains. In order to determine how
good any intentional learning situation is, online or otherwise,
one might examine performance on representative problems in that
domain. Performance is not the only indicator of learning. Learning
is a process that occurs over time. Evidence suggests that sustained
periods of focused and reflective practice result in improved
performance. This would imply that another indication that learning
is occurring might be commitment or motivation to continue. While
the first measure might be characterized as the hitting-the-target
measure, the latter measure might be characterized as the stickiness
(stick-to-it) measure. Learning is a sticky business. And academics
love to make a mess - this one at least.
|
|
Back to menu of Reflective Statements by
Participating Members
Learners in a Changing
Learning Landscape: New Roles and Expectations - One Learner's
Reflections
Diana Stirling
Received: October
5, 2005
Introduction
I'd like to start my reflections
by considering a question posed by our facilitator, Dr. Jan Visser:
Is the online learner a distinct subspecies among the wider
species of learners in general?
Perhaps the online learning environment
brings out different aspects of a learner than in-person classroom
environments do. There is evidence from psychology that people
behave differently in different situations based on the roles
and/or expectations assigned to them. Might this apply to online
learners as well? If so, then learner expectations may be important
to declare explicitly in the online environment. This leads to
further questions about expectations in in-person learning environments
and how those get communicated as compared with expectations
in online learning environments.
This, in turn, brings to mind
some ideas presented in Edward T. Hall's book Beyond Culture
in which he discusses some differences between what he calls
high-context and low-context communications (1976,
p.91-93). Here's how Hall explains these differences.
A high-context (HC) communication
or message is one in which most of the information is either
in the physical context or internalized in the person, while
very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the
message. A low-context (LC) communication is just the opposite;
i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code.
(p.91)
It seems worth examining what
might be happening in online learning environments in terms of
these ideas of context. If messages are not explicit, might the
learners look for or respond to implicit messages conveyed by
the software design and its use by the instructor? If so, what
might be being communicated via these interactions?
My questions for the workshop
are centered on these very issues. They are:
- How does the design of the
online software environment communicate expectations to learners?
What gets communicated?
- How does instructor use of
online learning tools (e.g. the software environment and its
contents) communicate expectations to learners? What gets communicated?
- What do learners themselves
expect in online environments? What role can/do those expectations
play in the overall online learning experience?
I'd like to address these questions
in turn, always keeping in mind Hall's framework for understanding
communications in terms of context.
Software As Context
Basic software design decisions
may have a profound effect on the online learning environment,
and thus, on the online learning experience. The flexibility
of the environment in terms of learner input and collaboration
- not just in discussion areas, but also with regard to the larger
parameters of how the virtual space is organized - communicates
underlying expectations of learner roles. Is it worthwhile to
articulate these expectations prior to designing the software?
Are instructors, students, curriculum designers, and software
engineers all involved in the process of virtual environmental
design? Are the issues of learner expectations in these environments
being considered with respect to design features? And finally,
is there an examination of the underlying philosophies and educational
approaches that are implicitly embodied in the design of virtual
learning environments?
My experience in online learning
is limited to graduate studies. The program in which I am currently
enrolled uses the D2L learning environment. This environment
(at least as I've experienced it) includes the following areas
or sections for each course: Course Home (with an area for posting
news, links to Events - which are typically assignments, Personal
Preferences, Personal Homepage, Personal Profile, Personal Schedule
and Bookmarks), Chat, Checklist, Classlist, Content, Discussions,
Dropbox, FAQ, Glossary, Grades, Journal, Quizzes, and Survey.
Not all of these features appear for every class, the choice
being apparently made by the instructor. In addition, each student
has an overall Home section in which all of the online courses
in which she is enrolled are listed, a central Email location
to which all D2L email messages are sent, and a Locker, as well
as a link to a Help page.
The student has input to Personal
Preferences, which determine the characteristics of the display,
and the Personal Profile, which is a form that the student may
elect to complete in order to provide other students with information
about herself. The student may also elect to upload files to
the Locker section and may choose to keep an online Journal.
The Schedule automatically enters due dates if they have been
added by the instructor for a particular class, but does not
consolidate the due dates for all the classes in which a student
is currently enrolled. This can be done manually by the student,
however.
The main point I'd like to make
here is that all the rest of the sections, i.e., those that concern
the substance of the course: Content, Discussion areas, Checklists,
and etc. are entirely controlled by the instructor. Only the
instructor can post discussion topics, establish permanent chat
groups, set up surveys, make entries into a glossary or FAQ section,
and so on. The instructor is always firmly and unequivocally
in control of the community learning space.
What does such a context convey
to the learners in terms of expectations? That depends, in part,
on how the instructor uses the environment. Which leads to the
next set of questions.
Instructor Use of the Online
Environment
How does instructor use of
online learning tools (e.g. the software environment and its
contents) communicate expectations to learners? What gets communicated?
Taking into consideration that
only instructors can set up discussion areas, some go one step
further and set limitations on how many or how few contributions
must be posted per student. One instructor of a class in which
I'm currently enrolled restricts posts to one per week per student.
She posts a question and each student must post one answer in
response. These responses are then graded by her. Each week a
new question is posted by her. Such a situation makes conversation
among students in the discussion area impossible. Every post
is specifically directed toward the instructor.
In another class, the instructor
does not limit the number of posts per student, nor does he require
a particular minimum. He posts a question based on the lecture
or reading and the students are meant to post responses. In some
cases, I have wanted to discuss a different point of the lecture
or readings in addition to the one that is posted, so have written
asking him to open a general discussion area for the readings/lecture
of that week. He has responded saying that he didn't want to
do that because he didn't want the discussion to become "confusing."
What kinds of messages are being
conveyed by these uses of the software environment? Rather than
making an attempt to broaden the parameters imposed by the software,
these instructors limit them further. In this way, student interactions
with one another are restricted. It is difficult to create a
sense of a learning community within such restrictions. In the
first instance, the social aspects of learning are all but ignored.
In the second instance, while social learning interactions are
enabled, construction of learning by individuals and groups is
unnecessarily limited.
In combination, the software
design and its use by instructors convey implicit messages to
learners about their roles in the virtual environment. It is
worth examining these in light of assumptions about: the capabilities
of graduate students, what kinds of learning experiences are
desirable in terms of preparation for further study and professional
work, and the underlying purposes and processes of learning in
general. An examination of the explicit messages being conveyed
merits consideration as well.
Learners' Expectations
It is hard to generalize about
what expectations learners bring to the online learning environment.
As Deb LaPointe describes in her contribution to these proceedings,
every learner brings a complex combination of "motivations,
attitudes, beliefs, and thoughts based on previous experiences"
(10) to the online environment. I would add that these components
are in a constant state of flux. Even the online learning experience
itself contributes to learners' internal revisions. These various
components contribute to the expectations of the learners at
the outset and as the online learning experience progresses.
Can these expectations be
made explicit? Should they be? If so, how?
Sometimes one's expectations
aren't consciously known even to oneself until they are contradicted.
Anyone who has traveled or lived in a culture much different
than the one in which she typically operates has experienced
the clash and confusion caused by expectations that prove to
be problematic in new or unfamiliar circumstances. Even in these
situations, it can be hard to identify and articulate precisely
where the problem lies. Could this be analogous to the situation
encountered by learners (and possibly teachers) in online environments?
If so, and if making expectations explicit is considered important,
then how to facilitate the process of identifying and expressing
them online also bears consideration.
Whether or not learner expectations
are important may depend on the goals of the online program.
If the goal is to provide step-by-step instruction for a specific
task, or to provide data for memorization so that the learner
can pass a multiple-choice exam, then the issue of learner expectations
may be insignificant. If the goals of the program are more far-reaching
and include providing qualitative as well as quantitative learning
environments and experiences, then the issue of learner expectations
becomes quite significant.
Online Learning Environments:
High-context or Low-context?
I'd like to clarify that Hall's
concept of high- and low-context communications is expressed
as a continuum rather than as a dichotomy (p. 91). He explains
his idea in terms of cultures, but for this discussion I'd like
to apply the concept to situations within cultures and then to
online learning environments.
Imagine that you are with a group
of your longtime friends and you are relaxing together, maybe
at a party. And further, imagine that you have brought along
a new friend who is unknown to the group. Typically there will
be lots of phrases and innuendos in the conversation that will
be undecipherable to the newcomer. The group of friends together
engages in high-context communications, the context having been
built up over time by mutual experience and understanding with
which the newcomer is unfamiliar. In order to be included, you
will have to explicitly explain to the newcomer the details that
are encoded in the communications between your longtime friends.
I'd like to suggest that many
online learning environments are necessarily low-context, particularly
those that are entirely text-based, and that some of the problems
encountered in these environments have to do with a lack of explicit
communication. The participants in online classes may live in
different parts of the world and be from different cultural backgrounds.
They may never have an opportunity to meet in person. Further
complications can arise when teachers and learners come from
cultures with different context densities. These factors all
contribute to the need for communication to be made explicit.
In the absence of explicit communication, individuals in online
environments attempt to interpret communications in terms of
their own previous experiences, which may or may not lead to
misunderstandings. Naturally, these kinds of interpretations
occur in all kinds of environments, including in-person classes,
but in computer mediated learning situations, they may be all
the student has to use as a guide. Lacking the visual and kinesthetic
cues that are present in in-person learning situations can also
contribute to the potential for misunderstanding. The lag time
between recognizing and correcting misunderstandings in online
environments seems to be longer than in in-person situations
as well, due to limitations in the communication capabilities
inherent in much of the software. If video conferencing is a
part of the online environment, the potential for this kind of
misunderstanding and the lag time needed to clarify messages
might be reduced.
It seems possible that if a group
of learners were to interact in an online learning environment
consistently over time, the potential for moving the context
toward greater density would exist. That increase in context
density might result from the cumulative communications and shared
experiences of the participants.
Virtual Environmental Design
for Learning Communities
My experience with the D2L learning
environment is that it is not conducive to student-centered or
constructivist approaches. Exclusive instructor control is inherent
in its design. It essentially supports the traditional lecture
approach: the instructor talks and students listen, contributing
only when they have permission from the instructor to do so.
It would be awkward and cumbersome to use such an environment
as the context for the co-creation of a learning community by
its members.
But D2L and the other software
products in the same category are not the only options. I have
spent quite a bit of time considering questions like the one
John Bransford proposed for this meeting, i.e., "How can
we build environments that appeal to people who are more inquiry
and action oriented than "tell me what I need to know"
oriented?" I have also been influenced by questions Jan
Visser has posed in our conversations about learning communities.
From these conversations I've been inspired to wonder how an
environment can facilitate the emergence of supportive, interactive,
inclusive communities of learning.
If one were to start with the
assumption that such communities are desirable and such environments
ought to be created, what features would these environments have?
There are so many possibilities that might work. Ideally, the
environment would be designed by the learning community itself.
However, this could be a kind of chicken-and-egg problem because
it might be necessary to create the virtual space in order for
the learning community to coalesce. So, for the sake of this
discussion, imagine the task of designing such an online learning
environment has been given to us.
Here are some of the features
I would suggest:
Flexibility - the environment should not only have
the capacity for a variety of features, such as the addition
of hyperlinks, audio and video clips, Web conferencing, games,
etc., but the overall organization of the environment should
lend itself to change as the community's needs evolve. In addition,
the environment ought to support flexibility in the roles participants
play.
Accessibility - naturally, the environment needs to
be accessible to the community it serves
Distributed Control - every participant ought to have the
ability to contribute to and change the environment as s/he deems
appropriate; thereby, all participants can share in the responsibility
for the success (by whatever measures are valued by the participants)
of the community (Wikipedia is an example of an environment with
this feature.)
Navigability - the environment ought to be easy to
navigate, and support searching and finding
Reliability -the environment ought to be technically
reliable
There are innovators working
on questions similar to these. One example is Chide Groenouwe's
group in The Netherlands. Their project, Network Universalis
(http://www.network-universalis.org),
provides an environment in which the roles of teacher and learner
are interchangeable and contributions are made and interconnected
in ways determined by the participants as the process unfolds.
Closing Thoughts
In an environment such as the
one I've described in the previous section, expectations of learners
would surely be different than the expectations supported by
environments like D2L. In framing our questions about learner
expectations, which environment(s) should we consider? This brings
me back to Jan Visser's question at the beginning of this paper,
about whether the online learner should be considered a subspecies
of the broader category of learners in general. Maybe instead
of trying to distinguish types of learners, it would be more
productive to examine learning environments and the implicit
and explicit expectations they can reasonably support.
Resources
Bransford, J. (2005). Questions
formulated by participating members. Retrieved 10/4/2005
from http://www.learndev.org/ibstpi-AECT2005.html
Groenouwe, C. Network Universalis (http://www.network-universalis.org).
Contact: chide@few.vu.nl , +315987449, Free University Amsterdam,
Room R-261, De Boelelaan 1081- 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam
Hall, Edward T. (1976). Beyond culture. NY: Doubleday.
LaPointe, D. (2005). Reflections on three questions I am trying
to answer. Retrieved 10/4/2005 from http://www.learndev.org/ibstpi-AECT2005.html#anchor1673958
Visser, J. (2005). Questions formulated by participating members.
Retrieved 10/4/2005 from http://www.learndev.org/ibstpi-AECT2005.html
|
|
Back to menu of Reflective Statements by
Participating Members
Reflections on Learning
and Learners
Jan Visser
Learning Development
Institute
Received: October
5, 2005
I Have a Bias
One can't help being influenced
by one's own experiences when thinking about what it means to
be a learner, what learning entails and how it impacts people.
So many things we learn throughout life and in so many ways do
we profoundly change, thanks to our ability to learn, as we grow
older. The diversity of who we are and the different circumstances
in which we find ourselves can't but produce a rich variety of
ways in which we attribute meaning to the experience of learning.
I spent a significant portion
of my younger years becoming a physicist, going through formal
university training; learnt making documentary films entirely
on my own through extensive reading and experimenting with film
equipment; became effectively conversant with the Spanish language
using a self-instructional book with accompanying audio recordings;
failed on various occasions when I tried to do the same for Arabic
but finally succeeded when the opportunity arose to take face-to-face
classes; learnt to play the piano since the age of eight and
am still learning, either by taking the occasional lesson or
by trying things out for myself, carefully listening to the performances
by others; familiarized myself in my late forties and fifties
with the instructional design field, again using the formal setting
of a university but this time only after serious negotiation
about how I would use that environment; and learnt to construct
complicated musical instruments, having acquired basic woodworking
skills as a child while watching my father using his hands in
applying those skills--as well as other skills that I still had
to learn--following detailed written guidance. Besides the above
more obvious instances of learning, I learnt numerous other things,
such as overcoming shyness, accepting tragic and irreversible
loss, and interacting gently with most of those I meet, none
of which were ever taught to me in any formal way or setting.
I had to find out for myself, interacting with those whose advice
I chose to accept and whose model I wanted to follow. Learning,
in each person's life, is extremely varied and it often remains
a mystery what suddenly seems to turn the switch between being
an apprentice and the master of one's abilities.
While I learnt many component
skills, such as solving second-order partial differential equations;
planing a piece of wood; editing a sequence of film shots; or
presenting an argument in written form, those are not the things
I feel added real value to my life. Without the more comprehensive
perspectives of becoming a theoretical physicist, able to contribute
to my field of interest; building musical instruments that I
or other people would want to play; producing a documentary movie
on an issue I felt passionate about; or being a contributing
intellectual, none of the above skills, however competent I might
have become in performing them, would have meant much to me.
Thus, my perspective on learning
is one that is in the first place determined by awareness of
the various comprehensive roles we wish to play in life. We want
to be a good parent, a skillful carpenter, an effective teacher,
a creative physicist, or a performing pianist who thinks with
his own head rather than imitating someone else's performance.
A Matter of Definition
In answering a number of the
questions posed in this dialogue, I am turned in the first place
to those I raised myself (Questions 1 to 3). I proposed the third
of these questions as one that should be dealt with before any
other one. It asks: "What does learning actually mean?"
and suggests that a response to it has something to do with "our
view of what it means to be human" (J. Visser, in this dialogue).
I usually express my view of
what it means to be human in materialistic terms. My down-to-earth
view of members of the human species is that they are nothing
more but also nothing less than pieces of organized matter--just
the same as rocks, plants, and other animals. What makes them
special and somehow unique is the fact that, in the course of
evolution, humans became endowed with the faculty of consciousness,
the ability to reflect on their actions, to hold things in mind
and contemplate them, carrying out thought experiments, and to
foresee, to an extent, the consequences of what they intend to
do. What exactly consciousness is; to what extent some form of
it might be present in other species or be an exclusive feature
of humans; what allowed it to emerge; and what are the neuronal
correlates of consciousness are questions in which only recently
some tentative insights have started to develop (e.g., Edelman
and Tononi, 2000; Carter, 2002; Greenfield, 2002; Edelman, 2004;
Koch, 2004; Koch 2005; Steinberg, 2005).
Consciousness allows us to experience
joy and sorrow as we transit through life. It is the cause of
the eternal amazement with which we stand, generation after generation,
in awe of who we are, where we come from, what we are here for,
and where we are going. It is at the origin of our sense of belonging,
of being part of a larger whole, an experience to which we give
expression in religious beliefs, mythologies, evolving world
views based on the methodical and disciplined pursuit of scientific
insight, and great works of art.
Within the above perspective,
being human means having the unique faculty of participating
consciously--for a brief moment--in the evolution of the universe.
This is both an outrageous claim and a call to humility.
If one accepts the above vision
of being human, then learning must be conceived of in a similarly
broad perspective of purposeful interaction with an environment
to whose constant change we must adapt while being ourselves
the conscious participants in creating it. 'Constructive interaction
with change' thus ought to feature prominently in a definition
of human learning at this level, expressing what ultimately learning
is all about. Besides, it should be recognized that not only
individual human beings partake in such constructive conscious
interaction with change, but that the same behavior equally applies
to larger social entities at a variety of levels of complex organization.
Moreover, learning as conceived in this perspective is intimately
interwoven with being alive. It is therefore not something one
engages in every now and then, but rather a lifelong disposition.
Finally, the disposition referred to in the last sentence is
characterized by openness towards dialogue. Hence, I define human
learning as "the disposition of human beings, and of the
social entities to which they pertain, to engage in continuous
dialogue with the human, social, biological and physical environment,
so as to generate intelligent behavior to interact constructively
with change" (J. Visser, 2001). When I first proposed this
definition, I called it an 'undefinition,' referring to its intended
purpose to remove the boundaries from around the current, too
narrowly conceived, definitions of learning.
Four Levels of Learning
The above definition of learning
applies at the most comprehensive level of being human, the level
at which we are most distinctively different from anything else
that learns, such as non-human animals or machines. Nonetheless,
it should be recognized that human adaptive behavior, and thus
learning, occurs at least at the following four levels of organizational
complexity, some of which we share with other organisms (J. Visser,
2002, n.p.):
- Level 1: Interaction with threats and opportunities in
the environment through genetically transmitted preprogrammed
responses, e.g. fight and flight responses.
Level 2: Acquisition of essential environment-specific
abilities, such as mastery of the mother tongue, driven by an
inherited predisposition to do so.
Level 3: Deliberate acquisition of specific skills, knowledge,
habits and propensities, motivated by individual choices or societal
expectations, usually by exposing oneself to a purposely designed
instructional--or self-instructional--process.
Level 4: The development and maintenance of a lifelong
disposition to dialogue with one's environment for the purpose
of constructively interacting with change in that environment.
-
It can be argued that the above
four levels of learning-related adaptive behavior in humans "represent
a progression of increasingly higher levels of consciousness
about one's role in life and in the world" and that "the
four levels are not entirely distinct from each other" (n.p.).
In fact, they may interact.
Not everyone is happy with a
comprehensive definition like the one referred to above because
it is difficult to use in the operational context of intentionally
designed instruction. Besides, it may be seen to stress the obvious
(see for a brief polemic on this issue the exchange between Chadwick,
2002, and J. Visser & Y. L. Visser, 2003). Most common definitions
of human learning contemplate adaptive behavior at Level 3. There
is nothing wrong, at least not in principle, with defining learning
more restrictively--as is often done (see e.g. Jonassen's [2002]
definition referred to in connection with Question 23 in this
dialogue)--than my own comprehensive definition. It would be
wrong, though, to do so without having in mind that one is dealing
with only a segment of what it means to be learning. However
important that segment may be at a practical level of intentional
intervention in changing human performance capability to serve
accepted societal goals--these days usually related to the interests
of the prevailing economic model--by closing one's eyes to human
functioning at a higher level of consciousness one is at risk
of developing human beings who increasingly lose the capacity
to intervene in ever more complex situations at a time when the
major problems the world faces are exactly situated at such a
higher level of complexity.
Thus, in view of the above rationale,
I should like to argue that, at whatever level we interact with
the development of human learning in our fellow citizens, we
should always do so within the perspective of the highest level
of complexity within which we expect people to be able to operate.
Against the backdrop of that argument it is sad to observe how
increasingly formal education, up to the highest level, is being
dealt with as if it were a mere commodity (see for arguments
in favor of this position Daniel, 2002, and Daniel, 2003, and
for opposing arguments Jain et al., 2003).
Is There Such a Thing as an
Online Learner?
I raised the question (Question
1), "Is the online learner a distinct subspecies among the
wider species of learners in general?" (J. Visser, in this
dialogue). The underlying thoughts that accompanied my question,
particularly the reference to Dreyfus's (2001) claim that the
online environment is incapable of accommodating "emotional,
involved, embodied human beings" (p. 48) in ways that allow
those who learn to reach proficiency and expertise, triggered
off another question (Question 29), "What really is embodied
learning, and how does it affect the effectiveness of instructional
modalities?" (Y. L. Visser, in this dialogue). Stirling
(in this dialogue) draws attention in Questions 4, 5 and 6 to
the expectations created in learners due to their participation
in online learning environments whose features, and ways in which
those features are being used, affect the learners. In Question
8, Spector (in this dialogue) also refers to learner expectations,
suggesting that "many expect more in terms of improved learning
from an online course than a face-to-face course." I doubt
whether this is indeed the case, but agree with both Stirling
and Spector that it is reasonable to assume that the environment
in which one learns creates expectations--perhaps not only in
the learners, but also in those who facilitate the learning--that
are determined, at least in part, by the characteristics of that
environment. Merriënboer in this dialogue (Question 10)
suggests that the entire concept 'online' may just be too broad
to be useful to generate specific research questions. This suggestion,
on the one hand, underlines that the environment is a likely
factor (or set of factors) of influence but, on the other hand,
it also points to the need to become more specific in describing
the various defining characteristics of learning environments.
I would argue, in that case, that such a differentiated approach
in referring to the learning environment is similarly relevant
in the case of online, face-to-face and hybrid learning settings.
Nonetheless, the online learning
environment has its own specificities. For instance, it is able
to facilitate kinds of learning, such as through global collabora |
