higher education and information dumps

Been thinking lately about the nature of learning at higher ed institutions – and how it effects content development for online courses.

In an “old” episode of a  TWiT, This Week in Tech podcast (from May 31, 2009), they were discussing the shift to new media especially among young people, and how universities haven’t really caught on yet. The whole episode is interesting, but at about 50 minutes in, a comment from Don Trapscott really resonated for me:

…if somebody was frozen a hundred years ago and they miraculously came alive today and they looked around at the professions, a doctor in an operating theatre or a pilot in a jet, they’d think “Wow has the world has ever changed”. And technology has been at the heart of it. While if they walked into a lecture theatre at a typical university or in a classroom, they’d breathe a sigh of relief, they’d say this something I recognize…               transcript

The model has remained basically the same: lecturer up front (or behind the learning management system) pours out knowledge to brains that will hold onto it until they’re tested on it. Information dump. Students are tested on knowledge and how well they retain it, so they develop strategies accordingly.

Then just today I came across a comment from Cathy Moore, author of the blog Making Change – ideas for lively elearning. (It’s also from months ago – what can I say, it’s impossible to really stay up to date.) What Cathy says ties in well with the quote above, I think:

I agree that a lot of instructional design as it’s currently practiced has been influenced by thinkers in higher education. Since in higher ed the goal really is to get knowledge into people’s brains and not necessarily to have them use that knowledge, it makes sense that a lot of the models and theory put knowledge first.

Her comment was on a post about focussing on actions rather than “learning objectives”.  After the first time I read that post I tried to pay more attention to the learning objectives written for content I was developing. Many of the objectives started with the words “know”, or “recognize”, or other similar terms for “get this in the head and hold on to it”. Cathy’s blog emphasizes the action that your learners need to perform (maybe with the help of some missing knowledge) and developing activities that support that active goal.

The question that seems to be lacking in a lot of higher ed offerings: “What do you want to do with that knowledge?”… (besides pass the exam ).

JISC online conference: innovative e-learning 2008

Are we prepared?. Hmmm. Maybe not.

I signed up late for this conference (on the 3rd day of it!), so didn’t get to follow jisc’s recommendations for getting the best out of it. That included signing in two weeks before it started to get a jump on the reading materials. Reading materials? For a conference?

I had hoped to be able to listen in on live talks on the last two days, but it seems I missed them. The “presentations” are mostly file-based: powerpoints (some with audio), or pdf files. After hunting around for a schedule, I found that there were very few live presentations – or I just couldn’t find them, either way, no luck there.

It feels more like an old-fashioned online course than an innovative internet conference. Alas.Tons of reading on screen (or printing and reading) and asynchronous forum discussions.

The forum idea is good, I guess, if you get in early enough and did the homework. Unfortunately, the forum tool displays the discussions with topic titles only, so you can’t quickly browse a discussion to decide whether or not to jump in. Lots of effort involved, just to get oriented. Work. Bleh.

There is some audio, either attached to ppt presentations or available as sound files. It’s baffling to me how a conference about innovation can refer to non rss-based audio files as podcasts. Wha? Maybe I’m too demanding. Maybe e-learning innovation will come from somewhere other than academia. I kind of hope so.

Since we have access for a month still, I’ll spend some time trying to pin down what might interest me and check them out, maybe. My first impression is disappointment, not very enthusiastic. As for the question, “Are we prepared?”…

…If this is where the forefront of innovative e-learning is, then, no, I don’t really think we’re ready.

dump the drone for livelier e-learning

Cathy Moore has posted a slideshow on slideshare.net called “Dump the Drone – Easy Steps to Livelier Courses“. It’s a whopping 92 slides, but they’re quick to go through and have excellent tips about writing for the web (and how to write English well in general, in my humble opinion ).

students give profs online rating at meinprof.ch

Here’s a very interesting tip from a Médialogues listener: meinprof.ch, a website that shows ratings of Swiss university profs as judged by students. In the March 5, 2008 episode of RSR’s Médialogues show, the item “Wie gut ist dein Professor?” (How good is your professor?), mentions several sites that publish students’ ratings.

[vikiri/fotolia]

Coming from Swiss higher education, I of course checked out meinprof.ch. Very nice layout and organisation, easy to browse or look for a specific school, field or prof within a school. Of course, as discussed on the medialogue podcast, the tricky part is that any “student” can sign up and leave an evaluation behind; so the validity of the ratings depends heavily on the earnestness of the students’ entries. Along those lines, the French equivalent site, note2be.com, was recently shut down by a court decision: Apparently the danger of slandering profs was seen as too great.

Hmmm. Going on the assumption that the ratings are based on honest opinion and not petty motives (admittedly a big assumption), maybe it’s not such a bad idea to publicize students’ evaluations of professors. It could be one way to tip the balance a bit, providing a forum where teaching – finally – gets some weight in judging a prof’s preformance.

The criteria on meinprof.ch, listed per prof and course, are pretty straight forward: fairness, support, materials, understandability, fun, interest, plus an overall rating averaged over those six. Additionally each course gets a ratio of grade/effort, meant to reflect the effort needed to get a good grade (not included in the overall rating).

I can hear the shouts now: “What?! Fun?! Interest?! That’s not a professor’s job!! We’re not clowns up there to entertain those lazy students!” Of course not. But I definitely find those 2 criteria valid. If anything, they serve to separate the good profs from the great profs: Presenting your academic field in a fair, understandable way is fine to be good enough; but sparking students’ interest in the academic field that is your passion (yes, passion) is what it should take to be called a great prof. And that’s good for teaching *and* for research. OK, rant over.

Some more links…

note2be.com French students rate their profs (currently censured by court order)

Studimedia.ch a marketing agency for higher education institutions, responsible for meinprof.ch

studisurf.ch surfing fun for uni students in Switzerland

meinprof.de German students rate their profs

coming soon: monprof.ch Swiss students from French-speaking Switzerland rate thier profs

it’s good to be short!

I’ve known this my whole life but now it’s official. Why you really want to be short. Short and sweet, to the point, that is.

It’s about interactive elearning content. Cathy Moore’s advice on instructional design consists of 3 rules: drop the intro, show don’t tell, and set your learners free (ie give them the control). Definitely some overlap with Kathy Sierra’s take on creating passionate users. Maybe it’s in the name… ?

e-learning examples

This page of e-learning samples from Cathy Moore looks like a good resource to keep on hand, if only as a reminder of what the basic ingredients are for quality e-learning experiences (like interactive, engaging, lively material). I’m looking forward to spending some time checking out the many links, grouped into several categories: simpler interactives, more advanced interactives, simulations, vendor demonstrations, artistic and political, and other.

Just the title of Cathy Moore’s blog, “Making change – Ideas for lively e-learning”, makes you stop a sec… after all, when’s the last time you heard someone refer to e-learning as “lively”? I like that direction!

Thanks to Martin at the eLearningNews forum.

the head first formula

I’ve been a Head First fan since the very first book in the series came out (from O’Reilly Media). For me, the ideas behind Head First learning books are right on, whether you apply them to books or to any learning situation. The folks over at Head First Labs have posted a new page that lists the simple yet brilliant principles that make up the Head First Formula. This is a keeper, for sure.

Check out the page for the details, it’s a great read. (If you’ve ever opened up a Head First book, you’ll recognize it as the introductory part that explains the book’s approach to the reader.) In short, the goal is to get your brain’s attention. How? Use pictures, people, redundancy, activities, multiple learning styles, stories, challenges, questions, to list just a few.

The Head First Formula page also lists some excellent learning tips, practical stuff like drinking water and not trying to absorb too much new material at one time.

I especially like the brain drawing at the top of their page. It’s message could be my mantra:

I learn, therefore I am. : -)

note to self: check out podclass

No time to explore this one, definitely want to check it out later:

http://www.podclass.com/

del.icio.us for learning 2.0

A short video on how to use delicious for learning purposes. Unfortunately, the quality of the video embedded in the page is only barely acceptable, due to the small resolution stretched to a bigger size.

The speaker, Kathleen Gilroy of the Otter Group, provides a good introduction to delicious, how it works, and you can use it to share your links and access other people’s links. It includes a quick how-to followed by specific examples of how del.icio.us can help you when researching the web, or working with groups.

Kathleen’s speaking style is a tad stiff, but she gives a very good overview and nice concrete examples.

The video lasts nice and short 8 minutes, definitely worth a quick listen/look.

podcasting in education, a couple of examples

Podcasting in education, links courtesy of the folks at ProfCast:

Podcasting at the University of Connecticut: Enhancing the Educational Experience

Globalizing Education One Podcast at a Time

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