Trick or Treat

Instruction technology requires an empathetic Teacher for its working partner. S/he should be able to function in a network environment and adjust to various tutorial roles. S/he should have the ability to identify different interactive styles. In writing messages, it is good to be positive in outlook and also slightly more cautious than in face-to-face communications. Teaching on the net is always interactive as well, and the tools of the teacher are, simply speaking, asking questions, giving feedback and providing counselling and support.

 

George Siemens: What impact does networked learning have on *in class* activity?

Stephen Downes: People looking for tips and tricks to support their classroom teaching are, in my opinion, looking in the wrong place.

The actual act of learning does not consist in the sitting and listening, or even the reading; it never has. It consists in the doing and thinking – the practice and reflection – that actually have a substantial effect on your neural state.
So – insofar as there is a pedagogy attached to Connectivism, I content that it involves more and more removing students from a structured and managed classroom environment, and more and more providing means for them to be immersed in communities of practitioners, and for this to happen at a younger and younger age, openly and including new and inexperienced members into their communities.

So to me, an answer to the question “What impact does networked learning have on *in class* activity?” should be, “it eliminates it”.

Graham Attwell:  Couldn’t resist this topic . I am not sure if Stephen’s definition of teaching – to model and to demonstrate goes far enough – neither is it connected enough.

Lately I am much taken with Vygotsky’s idea of the Zone of Proximal Development. – - If you take this idea then the job of the teacher is to guide the learner towards that potential development. Of course modelling and demonstrating could be part of that guidance role. But it could be much more – for instance through posing problems, providing advice, co-learning, providing feedback and so on.

But in the sense of peer group learning – especially connected peer group learning - the roles of teachers and learners are not so clearly distinguished. 

Stephen Downes:  While Vygotsky no doubt meant to contrast individual self-study with what can be learned via any sort of social interaction, we reinterpret this to mean with some sort of teaching interaction. And as a result, the normal sort learning that a person can do in a community is left out of the discussion.

Maybe we need a new term for this. Call it the “Zone of Possible Development”. Let it represent the learning that could have taken place, but didn’t, because of the attempts of educators to ‘provide learning’. I’m sure millions of students sitting in classrooms waiting for the teacher to say something interesting will know exactly what I mean my this concept.

 James Neill: This is sweet music to my ears, Stephen. Thank you.

(Yester)Daily

A teacher on the network does not turn into an insignificant background figure. The task of the instructor is not merely the transfer of materials to the net: rather, s/he also plans the activities, cooperation and interaction to occur there. In interaction, the tutor functions as an initiator, listener, questioner, commentator, support person and provider of feedback. Online working is holistic: it requires making oneself susceptible and empathizing with the student’s position.

 

Eduardo Peirano: ” This is a great opportunity to assess how useful is The Daily newsletter to the participants in this course.”

Ken Anderson: “I recall complaints from some participants at that time that the Daily was censoring some of the blogs in a sense, by highlighting those blogs that seemed to favour the agendas of the courses facilitators, Downes and Siemens.”

Cosimo Urbanowicz: “ The most useful way to think about it is to imagine that the daily is down intentionally — to provoke us to build our own! Where do you think the conversation is most visible/ active right now, beside this forum?”

Eric Calvert:” I think maybe an unintended benefit of the way the course has been structured is that learning continues despite one of the instructors being temporarily knocked out.”

Jane Brotchie: “Come to think of it, maybe I should make my own Daily.”

Horror in the virtual classroom

It is the custom in online instruction to emphasize that what is involved is not teaching as such but attention to equality and interaction is important, because it leads away from the authoritarian teaching model. Expertise on the part of the teacher has nevertheless also been partly surrendered in the name of group guidance. Even so, opening up the teacher’s expertise in dialogue makes the  knowledge connected with the content field apparent to the student and helps him/her to establish a bridge between theory and experiential knowledge. 

 

Luz Pearson: “The best kind of teachers is needed: the ones that settles the stage and leave the play to the actors.”

Benjamin Stewart: “I think most teachers set out to design, plan for, etc. structures students need…”

Kerry Dobbins: “It is interesting that in some respects connectivism equalizes the position of the teacher in relation to the students. – - Most of us know that less is more when it comes to being the ‘expert’: admitting when you don’t know the answer but being willing to find it.”

Geetha Nehemia: “I envision an environment where students and teachers are learning together.”

Martin Aasbrenn: “ Should the facilitator in such discussions be someone else than the expert of the subject?”

Ulöp O’Taat:  “Maybe a lesson to the facilitators:  be aware of your affect on the network.”

Kerry Dobbins: “Considering the interaction on Elluminate the other day, I would not challenge my teachers if they react so strongly. It’s happened to me too.”

Heli Nurmi: “In networked learning everybody is responsible for his emotional state and the style of writing and talking. I don’t know about his emotions, SD voice is always unclear in Ellumination.”

Roy Williams: “Dont raise your voice, raise the quality of your argument” (Archbishop Tutu).

Old Socs: “And as originators of connectivism and these courses, you start from a power and responsibility position, imho. Your voices are much louder than anyone elses.  End of story.”

Expertise versus crowd wisdom

On the Internet, the object is to make the generation of data transparent and self-corrective in the same manner as in the scientific community. Electronic credibility is therefore not ensured by gatekeepers but rather by an active web community. The quality of the data offered by f.ex.Wikipedia always generates brisk discussion in education circles. As such it is, of course, useful that considering the reliability of information has become a matter important for all of us, but it must be remembered that sharp critique of sources should extend not only to electronic but to written materials as well: the format of publication in itself does not make data reliable or unreliable.

 

Ryan Ali: “Just wondering if there has been any discussion about how to evaluate the quality of the information contributed by a member of a network?”

 Jarmo Talvivaara: “How does the quantity and quality of connections correlate?”

Heli Nurmi: “The real question is in Quality. It is really hard to define.”

Roland Legrand:  “However, don’t we use editors, reviewers, curators all the time just because we want someone to sift through things detecting quality? This is what journalists, teachers, museum curators, bloggers do – or am I wrong here? -  – Aren’t Stephen Downes and George Siemens middlemen, curators?”

Martin Aasbrenn: “When lurking in the forums, I keep thinking about all the natural sciences where popularity among the readers say very little about quality.  – - The scientific truth is approximated via experiments, not via crowd wisdom.

When I decide whether or not to give a patient Tamiflu, I want 1) A scientific study about Tamiflu effectiviness, not 2) how a blogger from Bergen felt after taking Tamiflu, never mind how popular link number 2 is.”

Ailsa Haxell: ”My fear is that the person you describe as cutting through swathes of information, may just have been
a) overwhelmed by repeated journalesque masquerading as peer reviewed articles.
or alternately…
b) be bought.”‘

George Siemens: “Equals are less likely to be subject to manipulation…or when they are, they have the opportunity to respond.”

Scott Smith: “The Truth is Out There”

…and back to pedagogical implications

 

It important to speak about dialogic and investigative teachership, because what is primarily important in network teaching is that the teacher, as an equal specialist member of the group, solves problems, generates information and makes his own thinking visible in a dialogue with others. The e-teacher must also undergo a transition from a master of knowledge to a creator of new information. The task involves handling the sorts of open, complex questions of working life which the instructor does not have ready ’yes’ or ’no’ answers for.

 

Dialogue in process:

George Siemens: “Instead, I think we are left at a place where consideration needs to be given to the implications of the connection-base of learning and education. What does it mean to “know” a topic well? Or to be an expert? I would say, an expert is a person who has formed diverse neural connections in relation to a particular topic – –.

But how do we “get there” as educators? How do we develop expertise? How do we develop complex and diverse ways of knowing? Here we turn to consideration of the environment/ecology in which learning occurs. Barriers that restrict formation of important connections or the development of important mindsets are negative. A teacher that promotes duplication of content in a textbook as “learning” instead of assisting learners to explore broadly and form novel connections is not helping a child or adult to learn. A teacher, in my opinion, needs to curate resources and assist students in forming network connections, and to evaluate those connections, in the service of a learning target.”

Ken Anderson: “But I will enjoy the discussion on pedagogical implications. Would you concede that this is the primary concern of the focus on the primacy of connections?”

George Siemens:  “For most people, yes…as long as I can use pedagogy to mean learning & teaching. I think there are a few in this course who enjoy theoretical discussion. Most, I suspect, are here to learn about the implications of connectivism in their teaching and learning.”

Ken Anderson: “Yes, I was using pedagogy in the more common usage (not specific to child-teaching-learning).”

Slight frustrations after enthusiasm?

What kind of tutoring and learning is needed in an online course? One way to outline the nature of online teaching or guidance is to divide it into three parts in the manner of Päivi Mäkinen: interactive, reflective and operational guidance. Interactive guidance contains support for group work, the reflective supervision for content-related expertise and functional supervision for the coordination of studies. All three fields are important, but from the perspective of achieving goals, it is essential how reflective guidance succeeds and what, above all, are the channels and problem aspects of such supervision.

Information overload appears to be the biggest problem in learning. There is too much data, it comes too fast, and it is often wrong or in a format difficult to handle. What is pivotal, therefore, is to be able to select information in a target-oriented manner.

 

Comments picked up from forums: 

Hilda Kabuki Ocansey: “Kabuki is entirely lost amidst all these experts and ‘familiar-to’ participants.”

Kae Novak: “Live and let lurk! I’m not sure lurking isn’t part of some people’s learning process. Especially when we are in the midst of connected/networked learning, it’s entirely new way of learning for some people. To feel comfortable in this new type of environment they may need to lurk for awhile. And since this type of learning is new maybe we’re just used to how the early adopters (textroverts) treat this environment.”  

Adam Warren: “I think that the sheer density of the messages can make it difficult for novices to post their own thoughts – especially if they are not natural ‘textroverts’.”

Inger Carin Grøndal: “I have two concerns about learning through connections, and they are maybe contradicting each other. – – The first concern is that when you learn through networks, the network tend to repeat and strengthen what the members say, in psychology terms, you get group think. The dissidents are soon saying the same as the majority, or they move to another network. The second concern is that learning through networks tend to get overwhelming. People in this course already complains that the information provided is overwhelming, and that goes for connectivism as well.”

Bibiana Jou: “I still don’t get the difference between constructivism and connectivism – -. I’m still confused with all the terminology and what it actually means and imply…”

Jennifer Verschoor: “I´ve just found this wiki that has two different points of view about Connectivism. Which is your position?”

 Minh McCloy: “George, Stephen – need informed clarification here”

 Eduardo Peirano: “Are we getting support from the instructors? Do we need their support? Note that I am not complaining.”

The pedagogical consequences of connectivism

The pedagogical consequences of constructivism include the following (according Päivi Tynjälä):

•  emphasis on the activity of the learner
•  change in the teacher’s role
•  the learner’s previous knowledge as the foundation for new learning
•  comprehension is more important than knowing something by rote
•  transition from an emphasis on facts to a problem orientation
•  emphasis on social interaction
•  the development of new methods of assessment
•  bringing the relativity of knowledge and its production methods to the fore.

What would be the pedagogical consequences of connectivism?

 

Gurmit Singh: ”If everyone is a teacher and a learner at the same time, and we don’t need a virtuoso leading the orchestra from the front…”

Benjamin Stewart: “…instruction whereby people take on leadership, teacher, and learner roles interchangeably.”

Dennis Richards: “I think we need a virtuoso more than ever, but with all the skills a teacher traditionally needed and much more.”

Minh McCloy: ”Diversity, openness, autonomy, connectivity.”

Maijann Ruby: “My understanding of Connectivism is that it is a learning theory that ‘denies that knowledge is propositional’ or ‘grounded in language or logic’ (S. Downes). This theory is concerned with the nature of learning via the connections / associations between entities.”

Ken Anderson: “Am I connecting when I perceive a phenomenon through any of my senses? What do you mean by the word connection?  What is it, to connect?”

Stephen Downes: “Let’s learn how to learn first, then worry about teaching.”

Australia, Canada, Ghana, Norway, Spain,…

Hundreds of e-learning specialists around the world, interesting views, and lots of talk. Here are  the highlights of discussion:

 

 Leon Cych: “I guess the only way I can make sense of all this is to do it intuitively.”

 Leila Nachawati: “Disappointed with traditional education: no participation, no dialogue, no involvement, just copying and pasting in a mechanical way.”

George Siemens: “Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.”

 Darcy Moore: “Growing awareness may, hopefully, result in learning professionals becoming ’supernodes’ ensuring rapid distribution of knowledge.”

 Ken Anderson: “I think connectivism is an attempt to create a new theory of learning to describe what is happening with education in light of the increased use of digital technologies for communication purposes.”

 Jarmo Talvivaara: “Connectivism does – more than bring something new – emphasize other things than constructivism.”

 Andy Burghardt:  “I think connectivism is more about organizing and sorting information in a way that makes sense to the student.”

 Jenny Mackness: “Connectivism for dummies. I like that!”