Environmental aspects of learning

Classroom space, in second life
A while back I really wanted to develop a course (for the instructional design program I teach in every now and again) on environmental factors of learning.  I know that the topic might seem nebulous but I think that's where the strength of the course would come from†.  We could examine not only technologies which we use to facilitate our learning (and how they promote and don't promote learning, or certain kinds of learning), but also look at learning from a cross-disciplinary perspective including room design, social factors, architecture, technologies, learner attitudes, and so on.

This idea is still in the nascent stages while I am working on my doctorate‡.  That said - despite the busy schedule this semester - I decided to dive into #NR001PL, a cMOOC looking at Personal Learning Environments which is hosted by the National Research Council of Canada (where Stephen Downes works).  The course is interesting in that it ties in gRSShopper◊ (or CCK MOOC fame), OpenEdX (which I am not really digging), and a couple of other systems such as LPSS.me, arke, and so on.

So, the topic of the week (for week 1) if I am guessing right, is "learning through practice".  As I was looking at the course on OpenEdX, and viewing the recordings for the live sessions which I missed, and I came across one part in which Downes cites Tony Bates:

Tony Bates says there are many possible effective learning environments. So what distinguishes between good learning environments and bad learning environments? "It is important for every individual teacher to think about what components may be necessary within their own context and then on how best to ensure these components are effectively present and used," he writes. "The learners must do the learning. We need to make sure that learners are able to work within an environment that helps them do this." 

This is a good question to ponder - what makes a good learning space?  I'll focus more on the online for this pondering, but looking at face to face environments is also an interesting thing to ponder.  In an online environment a lot of the learning is mediated by various software platforms, two of the most ubiquitous are the Learning Management System and the synchronous conferencing system.  I've been part of my own institutions RFQ process for replace our old LMS with something new in the past five years.  It was an interesting process because our "needs" (which were determined before I got there) focused more on doing things to get over shortcomings of the previous LMS, rather than think about what we want to do, from a pedagogical perspective in our class.  Hence, the new LMS, from the eyes of the users whose user stories were gathered, were about replicating the old LMS, which wasn't working well.  Go figure.

When we look at LMS we are sold on bells and whistles, however we don't actually see good examples of pedagogy.  I think the more bells and whistles we have on a system the more we are actually constrained in their use, and the more they constrain our practice since software is really never value-neutral; it's created to solve specific needs, for specific people, in specific contexts. I'd be in favor of creating a more cut back LE (learning environment) where the learner and the instructor have more capability to customize their workspace.  This allows the learner to take more control of their environment and their learning, and it allows instructors to think outside the box.  It also requires that instructors are better prepared to teach (in general), and to (more specifically) teach online. This way you are providing instructors with the ability to shape their own teaching space without mandating (or highly recommending) instructivist principles through institutional templates.  Templates can be good, but just like other aspects of technology they can be abused, and constrain pedagogy.


As a side note, I am not sure how to submit something to OpenEdX for "assessment" of this MOOC...any one got any ideas?

Your thoughts?



SIDENOTES
† potential for some rhizomatic and connectivist learning for you!
‡ so until I have that EdD after my name, that course won't happen ;-)
◊ I have yet to find gRSShopper, and as of this blog post OpenEdX is down...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latour: Third Source of Uncertainty - Objects have agency too!

Image
Continuing on my exploration of ANT, and asynchronous and indirect dialogue with Latour - this blog post will cover the third source of uncertainty, which according to Latour, is that Objects have agency too! As with the previous blog posts, I've pulled out quotes from the book that seemed interesting, or that I reacted to in some way, and I am responding to them here. no tie can be said to be durable and made of social stuff (p. 66) This quote seems to continue Latour's assertion that there is no such thing as "social" or "social stuff" and that "social", or the meaning of needs to be negotiated and better understood.  It also continues the thought that social can only be seen from the actions of its actors, the traces they leave behind, and that these bonds are not durable because they need continuous reinforcement. I guess Social is a perishable item. Left to its own devices, a power relationship that mobilizes nothing but social skil
Read more

MOOC participation - open door policy and analytics

The other day I was reading ZML Didaktik on the topic of MOOC participants. In MOOCs, one of the big questions is why are people lurking and not participating? If more than 500 people join a MOOC, why are only 10% contributing with any amount of regularity?  On the same blog, in a previous blog post, I had commented (it was an open stream of thought really) that perhaps there should be an open enrollment period, and then if the system sees that certain participants are bellow a threshold of activity, the system may give them the option to self-identify as a lurker, or un-register from the class. This line of thought went along a view that compared to the traditional classroom; in a traditional classroom students register for the course, they can attend classes for a week and then decide whether or not they want to stay with the course or not. If they do stay with the course they know that there is a certain amount of "lurking" that they can get away with, but they do have
Read more

You've been punk'd! However, that was an educational experience

Image
It's now the end of Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required (aka #massiveteaching) on coursera. Well, almost, we still have a couple of days left. I guess that the lesson here is that we were (the "learners") were punk'd† by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the Univerisity of Zurich. After that last blog post (and subsequent pickup of the post by George Siemens and others) Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle wanted to chat with me about this MOOC experience. I only had time for one of the two before things went to press, so my 15 minutes of fame went to IHE.  Both IHE and the C hronicle have written about the topic, and have received some information from Coursera on the incident.  Others have also written about it (see here , here and here ) It's surprising to me that the University, and Coursera, waited until after this thing was a big issue in order to respond in the class, and clue people into what was happening. On Wednesday (day 3 of Week 3/3 of the
Read more