Smart Pedagogy II: Time Portal and Oculus Rift

Smart Pedagogy means innovating with respect to the elements that must align with a pedagogy shaped by 21st century needs. Pedagogy is not a static entity but is something that is changing because of what we are discovering through multidisciplinary research about how students learn and from a new vision of education that reflects a new culture of innovation.

The focus for this post is how we can take online collaborative discussion and design it in such a way that it is challenging, inspiring, real, and focused on arriving at solutions to real world problems. However, in order to  be effective, the end result must not be left to being just academic exercise but must also have an outlet so that the students receive real world recognition for the solutions that they have come up with. This means that they must have a real world outlet so that their solutions are published and open to examination.

One of the challenges to real and relevant online discussion has been the claim that the asynchronous nature of the Internet creates a problem for involving students across the globe in a specific online collaborative discussion. In other words, it is all about time and time zones!

Credit: twobee

Part of the problem in the past has been we have neglected to lay the foundation for online collaborative discussion to take place within an online environment. One way to solve this problem within any particular LMS is to have a module designed that students reach before entering the course proper where they have to create a personal introduction with YouTube as a possible vehicle and share it with other students who are present as well. Laying the foundation of real online collaborative discussion means that the students need to get to know each other. This introduction of a social aspect is something that students are quite familiar with as a result of their past involvement with such social media sites as Face Book and Twitter to name a couple. In this instance you are taking two modern communication innovations and using them to further the goals of student learning. Within this module is where students may be introduced to the idea that they are going to become involved in online collaborative discussion during the time of the course.

Now turning to the problem of the asynchronous nature of online collaboration, here are some suggestions:

1. Since in the past posting I used online World History as the example, I will continue to use it in these suggestions. When students do their personal introductions, ask them to put in the GMT or time zone that they are in so that other students get an idea as to time difference. Most students of geography understand the basic fact that the world has 24 time zones.
2. Next, include an utility that is built into the course that is in fact a Time Zone Calculator. This means that when students are about to get involved in a online collaborative discussion, they can insert the time zone that their collaborators are in and have it produce the time difference in hours compared to the hosting site.
3. Based on the hosting time zone, suggest that on the particular date that students are told by their instructor the discussion will take place, that the start time be noon. So, what this means is that if the limit is a difference of 12 hrs, it will try to include a majority of students registered in the course. Some might be up late at night but for many who are involved in online gaming which they have no problem with, it shouldn't be a problem to use this time for something more important, their education!
4. The online collaborative discussion is much more than just a text debate. It is presented as a time portal in which students enter in the role of the historical events main characters into an immersive virtual scene where they must make decisions and defend their decisions based on the outcomes that they see.

Next, what they find on the other side and how Oculus Rift may play a pivotal role in what happens.

Smart Pedagogy for the 21st Century --Part I

Greetings-
 Smart pedagogy means using techniques that irresistibly engage the heart and mind of the student. Engaging the heart means that the motivation to persevere in the online course comes from a growing intrinsic motivation that overwhelms previous doubts that students may have harboured about the course. Engaging the mind means that the learning experiences challenge the student to apply the skills they are learning to  real world problems which are presented to them in a unique way. These real world problems are ones that they have never thought about or confronted before. The problems are presented in such a manner as to intrigue the student and they are able to receive immediate feedback on how their decisions affect the outcome for the problems that they are tasked with. Smart pedagogy fosters transformational teaching because the vision dictates that we teach students with the attitude of them and us being change agents in the world.

Credit: CLUC

In the last post I gave you an example of how one technique in online education could be transformed into a more engaging experience that would give a higher yield in sustained, deeper learning for the student. The simple truth here is that collaborative online discussion in an e-learning environment needs to be improved because it is a great vehicle for testing the critical thinking skills of students as they apply to real world problems. We need to shift from learning experiences that seem to be germane only to the course specific to learning experiences that develop the necessary skill sets students need in order to be productive in the world that they are living in now and in the future. The potential application of serious gaming principles to online education learning experiences should not be underestimated.

I would like to emphasize that the purpose of such procedures are not to add to the work load of teachers but instead are to enable them to work smarter with a new mindset that suggests that what they and their students are working towards is transformational in terms of the societies they live in. The rising tide of a culture of innovation will impact all of our societies and education will be the driving force with the generations that it mentors.

More later..........

Developing New Online Pedagogies- The Time Portal and Transformational Teaching

Greetings
In  the last post, time was taken to discuss pedagogy and the elements that align with it to describe the pedagogy. As was to be expected there was a diversity of opinion about whether the nature of our pedagogy needs to change. In this post, I would like to describe to you conceptually an activity that could be used to promote thoughtful engagement on the part of students in online collaborative discussion. To understand the concept to be described it is important to recognize that it originates from the following understandings:

Credit: CLUC

1. This vision of education sees education as a necessary change agent for the future health of our societies. It is based on the idea that in the post-information age, there is developing a new culture of innovation. Comparatively speaking the vision of education based on the industrial model of education which served its purpose in its time frame no longer fits with the present or the future. The vision of the past defined the purpose of education which was to reflect all the attributes of the present society. The goal of education of students was to produce an efficient work force and good consumers of the output of business.
2. The new vision for education in an advancing technological world is that education is to be an agent of change and in educating students, the habits of the mind that are required change the role of the student so that he or she are creators of new knowledge and skill sets that support a growing development of a culture of innovation. They are to become valued partners in learning who are guided by educators who act as facilitators and activators of student learning. Through the use of real world problems and issues and the use of experiential learning within a virtual environment, students and educators foster the growth of a culture innovation.
3. According to Michael Fullan in his book Stratosphere(2012), the integration of technology and pedagogy for the purpose of maximizing learning must meet four criteria:

•  It must be irresistibly engaging. This has been a problem for our students for some time in that the educational experiences that we are providing them with are having the opposite of our intended effect. Students are disengaging from their learning in a growing percentage as they advance through the different grades. The other factor that influences this is the attitude of their teachers which says to them that they too are bored with what they are doing and in fact disconnected. Much of this is the result of a model of education that uses negative extrinsic motivators such as intense teacher assessment and grades to obtain results. What is really needed are designed learning experiences where students develop intrinsic motivation to pursue their learning path.
• It must be elegantly efficient. This means that the technology used in service of pedagogy should be easy to use and intuitive for the users. It needs to work well when called upon. 
• It needs to be technologically ubiquitous. The technology needs to be available 24/7.
• It needs to be steeped in real-life problem solving. Students need to feel that their learning has value and application to real world issues and problems and is not just an in-class exercise that has no connection to the "real" world.

The concept that I am about to describe is an attempt to address the first criterion, that being, it must be irresistibly engaging.

Credit: CLUC

Course :  World History
Goal:  To make collaborative online discussion more effective and  irresistibly engaging for the students
Innovations Used: Gaming principles, virtual reality environment, teacher as primary character and represented as a historical character using an avatar. Students take on the roles of other historical characters and enter the historical virtual reality scene as avatars.
Rationale for Approach: One of the most engaging classroom activities when done effectively is to have students role play a historical scene in which they get to portray a specific character. However, even when done well within the brick and mortar classroom, there are still constraints that prevent it from being as enriching as it could be. Things such as outside interference or disruptions found in the typical school day can destroy the flow for what is to be accomplished. Using technology, we can eliminate such barriers. Within our technological scene students can be presented with the unique real problems faced by the characters that need to be resolved, they can become involved in the thought processes that are unique to the particular event and as a group they can collaborate to find a real solution. Within this context innovation and inspiration can be allowed to flow into the decision making and students can see the result of the decisions they have made. Such an activity can stimulate what is called "flow" where time for the student seems to stand still.
Suggested Integration: Since an online world history course is usually divided up into units, I  would suggest that activities such as this which I will call "Time Portals" be inserted with one in each unit. I also suggest that these rich VR historical scenes have a time clock so that the time in the simulation is visible to the participants.
Potential Scenes:(1) The Manhattan Project, (2) Battle of Thermopylae and other such scenes from different periods of history.
Role of the Teacher: The teacher takes on the role of the primary character in each project and appears to the students as an avatar representing the main character. His or her goals are to present the problem that needs to be solved and direct the students to explore the virtual reality scene that they are immersed in. For example, in regards to the Manhattan Project, the scene could be a detailed laboratory where they collaborate with each other. The teacher also introduces changes in the variables during the simulation that encourages students to take into account the new event in their problem solving. The nature of such an event could be a breaking news bulletin concerning what progress or breakthroughs Nazi scientists have made. Such events are intended to get students to a deeper level of using critical thinking skills. The event announced could be a funding cutback to the program. The final solution that the students come up with in solving the problem must enable them to see the consequences of their solution played out in real time. With the Battle of Thermopylae it might take the form of the students leaving the camp meeting to a hill overlooking the battlefield where they see their solution played out. The educator is to engage the students in an intense discussion in which they are reminded that the time frame must be met. All the potential excuses that students might come up with for lack of progress are to be challenged so that they become more and more effective as a collaborative group.

The concept I have described above is not fully detailed but the purpose for presenting it is to encourage you to think of the possibilities of harnessing technology as a servant to solid pedagogy within the context of an online learning environment. We can take online collaborative discussion and make it exciting, inspiring, and engaging so that when students have finished such an activity they can confess that they achieved a deeper level of learning and they will want more of such designed activities as part of their personalized learning path.

Next entry will detail more about the type of transformational teaching that is required in the changing world of online teaching...

Developing New Online Pedagogies: The Time Portal-Introduction

Greetings

In dealing with the online environment and education, we are faced with the challenging questions:

1. Do the pedagogies that we employ in the brick and mortar school work well in the online education environment?
2. If we simply transfer our pedagogies to the online education environment, are we making full use of the resources that the "web" has to offer for design of courses?
3. Do we achieve the desired "thoughtful engagement" from students in what is taught over the long term?

Before we can even begin to approach these questions, we need to make sure that when we are talking about pedagogy that we are all talking about the same thing. Phylise H. Banner in her blog post entitled: "The Pedagogy of Learning Design: A Translation of Pedagogies" defines what we are talking about and list some essential elements. In the realm of education, the word pedagogy is used when talking about this designed approach to instruction and the alignment of learning elements such as objectives, content, activities, and assessments. She suggested that we need to focus on three key elements in effective e-learning: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence.

 
Social presence focuses on creating a welcoming setting that is open and inviting so that our learners will want to engage with each other, the facilitator, and the learning content. Social presence is fostered by activities, methods, or approaches put in place to break the ice, build trust, and facilitate interaction with those around you.
 
  Teaching presence focuses on three major functions that we take on as training and learning professionals: design, facilitation, and direction of the learning experience. We build teaching presence by designing learning events that guide participants through learning materials, reinforce key concepts, foster critical thinking skills, provide opportunities for formative feedback and support, and evaluate progress throughout the learning experience.


  Cognitive Presence focuses on critical thinking skills. We want our learners to be active learners – to be actively integrating key concepts into their own worlds, exploring related resources, and adding new ideas and new knowledge. Cognitive presence is, in essence, the scaffolding of learning  as we move from the initial stages of knowledge and comprehension toward the critical learning stages of application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  

 In looking at the possibility of developing new online pedagogies, I will suggest to you that the mere transference of the pedagogies that we have been accustomed to in the brick and mortar school to the online education environment is not enough. We have rich resources for online course design on the web. New pedagogies are needed to ensure lasting thoughtful engagement in online education courses. We need to grow new pedagogies that better reflect a new environment.

Credit: CLUC

Over the next few posts, I would like to describe to you how we can create a new pedagogy that is in synch with an environment that is different from the brick and mortar school environment. In doing so, I will use as an example an online course on World History which is a topic I am quite familiar with.

The first element of pedagogy I would like to look at is the transformation of online collaborative discussion. Online collaborative discussion as it exists in many e-learning organizations suffers from the following problems:

• It is hard to get students to gather for an online discussion at the same time because they are at different stages in the course offering
• Online collaborative discussion areas are not effectively moderated by the teacher 
• Discussion parameters are not clearly defined or explained to students. The topics chosen are not engaging.
• Students are not held accountable for their participation in any relevant fashion
• Online collaborative discussion are not flexible enough to allow for creative thinking

You can probably add more to the list. The problems experienced in such groups mirror the problems with collaborative discussion in the brick and mortar school environment. Some of this is due to the fact that this type of activity has been simply transferred without much thought or modification into an online environment.

Some of Phylice's ideas on the translation of pedagogies can be found at the following address:

http://blog.insynctraining.com/the-pedagogy-of-learning-design-a-translation-of-pedagogies?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email

Next post: The Time Portal--Approach to Collaborative Online Discussion

 

A New Pedagogy: Best Practices in An Online Environment?

Greetings
You have heard the old saying that we shouldn't re-create the wheel if at all possible. It is this mindset that  has caused some teachers to try to transfer "best practices" from the brick and mortar school to an online environment. The rationale is that they always worked well in our brick and mortar school so why shouldn't they work in the online environment?
However, this type of mindset is very restrictive when it comes to what could be accomplished making use of the technologies that make the Internet the vibrant and sometimes dangerous place it can be. It makes the false assumption that there is no substantial difference between the regular classroom environment and the online environment.
What is needed is a very real attempt to examine how we can transform our pedagogy to create a enriched educational experience for students that recognizes that the connected environment that they have grown up with has very real potential for education.

Sir Kenneth Robinson offered a quote that describes one of the barriers that stands in our way. This quote was not originally credited belonging to him but it is one he used that is useful here. He said that when it comes to education and its transformation, there are three types of educators:

First, there are the immovable. They are the individuals who have become quite comfortable with the adage that they live by which is:" we have always done it this way, why do we need to change now?" These are the individuals who are quick to dismiss any new approach as unworkable and they are quick to list a litany of failed educational initiatives which both government and local education administration has burdened them with. To be just in our assessment of this mindset, there is a degree of truth to what they say. The problem is that their point of view is not one that tries to discern those initiatives that which are in fact flawed from those that have merit. They are also the types that quite frankly bore our students to death because they are blind and deaf to what students are trying to tell them about their pedagogy.

Secondly, there are those who move. They are the educators that are willing to try new initiatives and add to their pedagogy repertoire but do not really have the time to go deeper to take a new initiative and innovate. They will still cling to the "best practices" whether they are valid or not because of expediency and fear of rocking the boat in their environment. They sincerely care for the learning of their students and devote endless hours to making sure that they deliver an effective education to their students. The problem for them is tied to how professional development dealing with new initiatives is delivered to them. Too many of them walk away from PD sessions feeling that what they have been introduced to them is simply adding more work to their load which they are already having trouble staying ahead of. The fault for this lies with those who deliver PD to staffs. They need to effectively demonstrate how what they are presenting will enable a educator to work smarter rather than longer.

Thirdly, there are the educators who are movers. They are normally the first adapters of new initiatives. They tend to be willing to take risks and experiment with their course material with the goal of creating a better learning experience for their students. One thing they tend to abhor is bureaucracy and are not very good at filling out forms in triplicate or doing endless reports on things tangentially related to what they want to accomplish with their students.

So,  when pedagogy is practiced from these mindsets, you can see why it is difficult to consider what pedagogy should look like in an online education system.





When you consider different practices that are used in the brick and mortar school, the question that needs to be asked is do these practices constitute or encourage transformational teaching? Does the fact that you use a Smartboard to teach using a Socratic method instruction alone make you a level 3 type of educator indicated above? Is our teaching one that encourages students to have a mindset towards the future that says that they can be innovators that can transform society, that their contributions to that transformation starts during their education stage in life and will be valued now instead of when they get out of school and establish themselves in some position of employment?

Next a comparison between practices used in the present brick and mortar school systems and potential practices that are radically different for the online environment...

Transformational Education and the Engine of Business

The convergence of different technologies, as I stated last post, will cause seismic shifts in many areas of our lives. In business, as an example, the culture of business which has followed the same vision and model for the conducting of business over the last century will find itself out of synch with the rapid changes on all fronts of our culture. The needs of employees and clients will be re-shaped or transformed from what was standard procedure in the past. The education of employees or training as business likes to look at it, will no longer be able to depend upon the tech departments to satisfy the needs on the part of employees to re-educate, integrate and re-focus. The culture of innovation that is developing will demand that online education and the increased use of interactive simulations tied to effectiveness be embedded in the work life of the employees. There will be a greater encouragement to innovate and follow accepted new ideas to their completion. Too many great innovative business ideas that come out of once a month or year sessions end up on the shelf to gather dust. The generation of new investors in business will come to the business expecting a return on their investment that fits with a new culture of innovation. Intellectual capital will be the primary focus in the reshaping of business and in new business start ups. These new business entrepreneurs will be people who have never known a time from the day that they were born that they were not connected to the web. They will be the new digital natives. The efficacy of this point of view has appeared already on the scene. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass are just a few high profile examples of the new digital native entrepreneurs that have transformed social media. Of course, we must not forget the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They know what many businesses don't realize that being that converging technologies are leading to transformational changes.

Now, what of education? Education use to have two main philosophies in regards to its purpose in the world. One purpose suggested that it was the goal of education to reflect society. This means that in the shaping of education, structure, goals and decisions were to be faithful to that philosophy. This also meant that education was not a driving force in society but was in fact driven by the main force that did drive society, that being Industry. Education was shaped to serve the goals of industry.
The second philosophy was that education should be an agent of change in society. Education should be a driving force in determining the direction that society would go. This was naturally considered to be a radical philosophy and did not fit the industrial model or serve its needs.

However, today, in creating a new culture of innovation coupled with the perfect storm of converging technologies, transformational education is coming into its own. The second education philosophy will not be just a radical option but instead an essential for living in transformational times. Every aspect of pedagogy is under the microscope and being examined for relevancy within the context of these new realities. Business, instead of being an adversary of education, will be in effect an engine driving this transformational education but in this case education will provide the direction on where our society should take us. Why? The fact is that business has a stake in this that will either allow them develop new innovations or fail as a business unable to cope with the seismic shifts that converging technologies are bringing.

Next, examining in more detail potential changes in pedagogy in order to produce transformational teaching....

The Convergence of Technologies: The Perfect Storm for Online Education-Part II

Greetings-
Sometimes it is wise to step back from our everyday lives, seek a quiet place and reflect on how much we all desire that our world would be so much better. Education as a transformational force for a new generation could lead to improvements in many facets of our lives globally if we take the time and the risk involved in letting go of those things in education that tend to hold us back from seeing the need for a new vision in education. The realities of the impact of converging technologies are real and will turn some ideas of education on their heads. With respect to the design of courses for an online experience the idea is to not react to the converging technologies in a convulsive manner but to instead to take advantage of what these technologies bring to making the education experience relevant to the context we live in, challenging and above all inspiring. It is through inspiration that innovation can lead to great things.
In order to accomplish this renewal, we need to be vitally aware of what the context of the present world is because designing online courses demands this awareness. The following two YouTube videos bring out some of the ideas that we need to be aware of:

This video has been updated a number of times and more frequently since 2010 because it is recognized by the authors that the converging of technologies is accelerating. The following video is dated but they have got it right in that a new vision of online education will have a transformational effect on the way that courses are designed and delivered.
So, this brings us to where should we go with this? There are a number of startling conclusions that we can come to: (1) There will be some courses that will no longer be taught because the skills that they attempt to teach will no longer be necessary because they will be done by computer AI. Therefore, in our societies some occupations/professions will no longer be done. Even in professions such as medicine, surgeries may be partially accomplished as a result of the converging of nanotechnology and robotics by robots. The one caveat here is that the role of surgeons will be transformed to meet the new reality. (2) Pedagogy must change in order to synch with a new vision for education. The industrial model and the pedagogy that came from it will be discarded.The best practices in education will be transformed and will become very fluid in order to synch with converging technologies. We don't have a crystal ball or can we predict the future but all the signs of the perfect storm in online education are there. The real question is whether or not you are ready for the ride? More later....