Technology in Education

The Sunday New York Times included a front page article discussing the impact of technology in the classroom. Their issue of the moment for this nearly two- page-long article is simple: They contend that studies are inconclusive, but there is no documentation that heavy technology expenditures improve student learning.

“Technology in Schools Faces Questions of Value”, New York Times, September 4, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/technology/technology-in-schools-faces-questions-on-value.html?_r=2&ref=education

Well, let’s back up a moment. Everyone in the article appears to say that technology allows students to be more engaged, and that it delivers information in a more interactive and informative matter.

What studies do NOT show is that there is any improvement in students’ test scores is schools with more tech-enabled classes, compared to schools that are not heavy into technology-assisted learning.

It is a fascinating article. I’d enjoy hearing your viewpoints on this – simply because as the story points out, many schools spend as much on technology as they do text books. Is that technology expense justified?

Do you feel the article is fairly presenting the issue? Is the question that the article proposes the correct one to ask? Do you feel that test scores are the correct method to use to measure the success or failure of technology in the classroom?

I have my thoughts, and will share them later this week – though anyone who knows me, or has taken a class with me will be able to guess my inclination on this.

Meanwhile, here is the link to the article in question!

“Technology in Schools Faces Questions of Value”, New York Times, September 4, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/technology/technology-in-schools-faces-questions-on-value.html?_r=2&ref=education

What is the right way?

I am currently working my way through Thomas College’s Distant Education graduate course. It is a great class, I am learning a lot, and I am happy to consider the possibilities.

Three weeks in, though, I have read some disturbing news in this book. As far as I can tell, it is the death-knell of the lone academic.

The land of higher ed has long valued their independent instructors. America, long the patron saint of independents, of course, has since the 1950′s been bent on becoming the institutional equivalent of “The Organizational Man” even as the organization no longer want to support all those people. Today the organization only wants your allegiance, not your liabilities.

OK, for the younger set: I’m saying we are becoming the Borg out of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Except the Borg liked their component parts more than corporate Americans like their fellow Americans. Oops. That’s a different screed!

But as in everything else in America, this land once built by individuals and independents now values only group sessions, creation by committee, and organizational ownership.

The point that started this dark introspection: the Instructional Design model as recounted by the course textbook. I have no doubt that it is accurate, but it is frightening to me in its statements of fact:

“The single mode open universities use the team approach to course design…. [snip] Each course is designed and produced by a team of 20 or more people, of which every member is a specialist.”

They are talking about the Course Team Model, as opposed to the far simplier Author Editor model of distant education course design.

The book goes on, reveling in the greatness of the group model of design, and in the necessity of drafts, meetings, planning groups, the superior results, the need for adhering to a style and a schedule, on and on and on. I get it. I really do. And I am sure they are right. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Eventually, it gets down to this long two sentence paragraph. Ready?

“Managing the course development process in a course team is a very complex business, with many tasks to be accomplished by different people. It is usually desirable to have a senior academic to head up the team and steer the process, and an administrator to be responsible for ensuring each task in the development schedule (which often lasts 1-2 years) is completed on time.”

I bet.

And, I cannot imagine a more accurate version of Dante’s rings of hell.

I have taken, delivered, written, created and sold online courses. I was present at the creation of some of the first two way TV conferences that acted as high tech DE in the 1980s. I helped out on live satellite, or live broadcast conferences. I created video ‘how to’ courses for a college. I helped design some teleconferencing rooms for DE for schools, and made much of it possible by helping create the grants and delivering the tech know-how to make it all happen.

There are many things I’ve done that I’ve not enjoyed, but the above description of creating an online instruction would certainly would quality as a bad day x 730 in my book. Ugh. Just ugh.

I can’t help it – in my mind all I can see is a vision of a modern day chain gang, shackled together, swinging sledge hammers high, stuck going as slowly as their slowest detail-consumed associate. All in pursuit of … academic excellence?

I know the book is right. I know it is likely the only way to do this.

But gosh, I hate to hear it.

As in everything else in America, the independent is being pushed out, and the team approach is the only approach. Sigh.

“Respect my Author-i-ty,” says a media icon.

Ah, the reality of it all. I guess it means education, and America, are growing up.

Oops – wait a minute! Buried down below, in the middle of a subsequent paragraph, is this caveat:

“In America universities [snip] it has proven, so far, impossible to find an organizational structure that can demand more of [the faculty's] time than that required by the author editor model.”

I think that unwieldy sentence might be saying their lauded, wished-for Course Team model might not yet be the law of the land!

Oops. Maybe a different media icon is still in the saddle! Individualism still reigns in America!

Though what I keep hearing is, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” It is not a real victory of independence – simply just a delay of a few more minutes before the game clock runs out on American Individualism….

But for right now, academic freedom lives to fight another day! (smirk!)

“Khrushchev in Iowa: 1959″ A matter of trust…

The program at Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City, Iowa had a great turnout. The crowd was engaged and the addition of Liz Garst, grand-daughter of one of the principal players in the event was great.

But the fascinating thing was the stories from the audience remembering the visit. I used footage of Khrushchev visiting Iowa State University and the home economics class, and one of the women at the event last night had been in that class!  Her husband had also been at the campus, in his  ROTC uniform – and related his experiences later during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 A current newspaper though, asked me the difficult question: what does all this matter?

My overarching goal was to remember the time, but also to search for lessons as we note the differences and similarities between now and then.  I pulled up then-current newscasts and articles so they could consider what was ‘news’ then.

It was also interesting to see how the FBI and the State Department distrusted Garst, and how some people accused this extrememly capitalistic business leader of being a ‘commie’ or worse, a ‘commie dupe.’ Yet I contrast that with the fact that those people making that claim were acting from fear of communism, where Garst acted in the belief in capitalism. 

In showing the old news clips and the tone of the broadcasts, the key thing to note was the fear came out over, and over and over again. That fear motived those people to consider Garst as a ‘commie dupe.’

Of course, there is nothing of value for today’s world that can be learned by looking at the past, right?  Nothing we do today is rooted in newscasts / opinion pieces / rants pushing us a certain direction.  It appears that when motivating the public, 50 years ago or today, the easiest method is to ‘scare the hell out of them.’ (Sen. Robert Taft to Pres. Truman when Truman wanted the initial aid money to ‘contain’ communisim in 1947.)  We need to understand that ‘manipulation’ is not the same as ’motivating.’

My point  is not to say if we should or shouldn’t have been concerned about communism. My only goal is to tell the story of what happened, and look for lessons that we can take home today.  Obviously, yes, we had reason to worry about the communists. Of course, history proves they were right to worry about us, too. 

So is it significant to look back and ask why the news stories all sounded the same? We called information coming from the Soviet Union ‘propaganda.’  But our news was free and unbiased, right?

Yes, but as Taft was suggesting, the Congress would only act if they had ‘cover’ – that the American people were crying out to spend the money to start this Cold War. But the track taken was to ‘scare them’ not reason with them, and the news reports what it hears. It heard, and reported, the message that sacred the hell out of the American public.

The next lesson that history might hold is that there is a danger in this choice. When people get you to do what they want you to do not by trusting you, but by pulling your strings like a puppet master, aren’t there two risks?

-  1, once started, it becomes almost impossible to ever stop the manipulation. The manipulator, without practice in persuasion,  loses the skills needed to reason with you.  

- 2, the huge risk of a snapback from the public once they discover or decide they are being manipulated. 

Of course, we’ve never seen that happen have we?  Doesn’t that describe much of the result and aftermath of the ’60′s?

Lincoln certainly understood this. ‘You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’  For democracy to be a democracy, Americans have to embrace the effort to make informed decisions. But we do not become informed when our choices are made for us. We become informed by knowing enough to base our decisions on reality.

Isn’t it important to realize that rational thought might be more valuable than  manipulation? You might well come to the same conclusion, and you might make the same decisions – but they were YOUR decisions, not someone else’s.

Remember, too, that the ability to reach different conclusions based on the same information is not wrong – it is a right, given us by the Constitution. It is called freedom.

Of course, one of the costs of freedom is expending the energy to make an informed decision, not by abdicating the choice to anyone else. Not a politican, a rock star, a newsperson – or a even a teacher.

Instant Assessment – Online Classes

We are talking specifically about WebEx today, but please answer this poll for me. We’ll talk about the results in class!

Designing Online Courses

I’ve recently completed an effort to design a new online course.  Mind you, I’ve written many before this, though most are for niche communities, and those users will grab the material and run with it as soon as it is out of my computer.

This time, the course is far more limited in scope, and the audience is distinctly smaller: my peers in the training community. That makes it much tougher!

Originally, I tried something fast and off the cuff, and that’s what I got. (check a sample  here) – ok, but not great.

So I took some time, and here is the outline I’ve detailed for the same course, the way I think it SHOULD be done. (Click here for the ‘draft’ course treatment in PDF.)

Next step: I want to develop the course per this outline. It might have to wait a few weeks – the Khrushchev in Iowa, 1959 seminar I’m presenting at Western Iowa Tech Community College is less than 2 weeks away!

Courses and Concepts

Here’s a quick survey point I’d like your input on:

Can you think of a time you took a class where the instructor’s goal was not your goal? How’d that work out for you? (Feel free to click comment to share the results!)

Things that Matter, Part 2

Continuing the look at what I learned in the ‘Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design’ class I took via New York University this term:

Lesson 1. We spent a LOT of time on teaching techniques (pedagogy, in educator-speak.)

I suspect the point is that teaching online must meet the same standards as teaching face to face. (F2F in educator-speak.)

Sub lesson 1: Educators should be communicators – but outside of a classroom, don’t count on it.

As with all professions, educators have their own language. The difference is educators will chide other people for using idioms that only one profession understands – and would consider those other people using their tech terms in mixed public poor communicators indeed.

However, if you are talking with an education professional, you will get terminology constantly. [/snark filter off]

So expect to hear phrases and terminology in detail if you step into their realm. (Educators know they can’t be considered ‘professionals’ if they don’t use these buzz words to impress people. )

Seriously, from the first day of the online orientation course, I watched students ask if a class had set meeting times, and the ‘helpful orientation person’ could only say, “Well, it will tell you if it is asynchronous.”

When pushed, he/she repeated the same answer, never explaining that asynchronous in educator-speak means, ‘courses that do not have to run on a set meeting schedule, but can be accessed by the student when they wish.’ At least, that’s my definition – I’m assuming it, since I can figure a synchronous class means the students are together in their lessons, and their exams, homework, etc. (Thus, they are ‘in sync’ with each other.)

Of course, the people around me are going, “Whaaaa?” because, well, they thought they were signing up to take a course, not be immersed in educator-speak.

Now mind you, if I tried to define parallel lines by telling you they were parallel, you would not find that helpful. It would be even worse if you were, say, a literature student, you understood that sometimes plots and subplots are developed ‘in parallel’ meaning they proceed forward next to each other. But you didn’t add the concept of the technical version of parallel, means they will NEVER intersect; not simply, they won’t intersect YET, as in lit.

My point is, your confusion would be greatly enhanced if you didn’t think about the fact a term can have similar but not exact meanings across professions. And that issue happens often in educator-speak, since they use terms that could be confused with ‘normal’ words and phrases. (Unlike computer geeks, who simply make words up as they need them! )

Thus, I may start saying ‘ibid’ for ‘in educator-speak’ since I could be referring to it often.

OK, I’ll turn my snark filter back on now. [Snark filter on]

Did I sign up for a class on pedagogy? No. I thought I was signing up for a class on creating online courses.

Did I learn important things about pedagogy? Yes. But remember, I am not a professional educator, nor do I play on on TV. (Of course, my friends would point out I’m not a ‘professional’ anything, so… (oops – I thought I turned the snark filter on? Try it again.) [snark filter]

The issue of teaching pedagogy does lead to our next lesson, in a way:

Lesson 2: Valuable information is information you can use, not necessarily what you think you want.

And the Sub lesson is, you may not be the best judge BEFORE the class as to what is valuable and what isn’t.

Gee – sounds like my own complaint of ‘doesn’t anyone shut up and listen any more?’ I did ’shut up and listen,’ and I learned some important things about teaching, from a professional who certainly knows more about it than I do.

Of course, also being me, I have to think about it, consider it, and then reach out to other professionals I know, and get their feedback – via this web blog, phone calls and email.

Lesson 3: Thus, I also learned about ‘reflection’ (considering information and thus letting LEARNING take place, in educator-speak.)

Which was a very good thing to think about as a trainer.

As I told my boss, I am not certain if I am a better ONLINE presenter, (though I learned some important things about using certain tools in online courses) but I am using everything I read about in this course, including building in time for reflection, and seeing the impact.

Those are some BIG ‘Things that Matters’, in my book! Thanks, Jeffrey at the class; Lyn, Gaila, and Rita as my well educated friends who listened to my dumb questions, and helped me see the stupid things I missed.

A special thanks to all the members of the class, for putting up with my dumb questions.

And thanks to Lazette, for helping proof this!

Things that Matter, Part 1

Things we learned in this course that matter:

Almost everything we learned in this class is applicable to a training situation, in my estimation.

However, the method it might be delivered is certainly not likely to occur in business.

The number one difference is:

— the students and their attitudes toward taking the class.

Adult learners are focused: They want something that will make their job easier. They expect to be told what it is, (not ‘discover’ it) and they expect they will ‘learn by doing’ not by being lectured to.

Which is another way of defining that they expect to have a say in times, methods and style of teaching – or they will not ‘buy-in’ to the process.

That’s a big difference between kids who will march and ignore you because they know they are in this class to the end of the term. Those kids may act bored, but they understand their role in the process, and the fact it is not a sprint, but a marathon.

Adults what to learn what they need to know, and race to get back to work before any more work piles up while they are gone!

The number two difference:

— the lesson delivery method. Specifically, the tools, and the method of achieving ‘reflection’ on the subject.

So – adults in a ‘training’ session – I cannot imagine we will have a Wimba page to use. (Though it is likely we might use WebEx which would have some of the tools we need. Do you know how to turn on the camera in WebEx?)

More importantly, though, what we should have learned are all the SKILLS to TEACH/TRAIN – and recognize which are important.

Obviously, one that does certainly apply is the ‘know your audience’ sessions we’ve discussed before. What we are talking about right now is figuring out who our audience is, and why they are in this class. What are their expectations? What is their background and their knowledge base?

And there is much more. Which we will discuss later.

Are there any things in the course that you think were especially important for trainers?

—Russ

Between ‘Teaching’ and ‘Training’ ?

Is there a difference between ‘Teaching’ and ‘Training?’ I thing so, but I suspect I should spell out my use of the terms before we continue.

In this blog, in this set of questions, I am specifically talking about the difference between a college or high school course, with an academic aim,

and a ‘training’ course, which has the aim to teach someone a specific skill, or how to use a specific tool. Or how to work with a specific group of people, or with a specified situation.

Perhaps the difference is simply, ‘teaching’ in this case is talking about the formal education process whose goal is to inform students of a general area of knowledge, like Math, or English, or History. It might even be about computers.

Teachers seem to be trying to open the doors to the past and the present, and to give the students a chance to learn, to evaluate what they know, and draw specifics from the general information. The ideal is that these students will learn to ‘think for themselves’ – a tall order, but a good one.

‘Training’ on the other hand, appears to deal with specific situations, where a certain method, or process can be learned, and then used, to reach success. Our hope, then, is having learned this specific method, perhaps they’ll look outside the box, and be able to ‘intuit’ how to apply the same process to another similar tool or situation.

That said – did the lessons we experienced this class, which was “Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design” apply to trainers?

It was part of a TRAINING certificate, so I thought it would be more applicable to using/developing online courses for TRAINING, than TEACHING.

That said, this is not a criticism of the course, only that WE, the trainers, need to examine which parts of the lesson might apply directly to our situations, and which might not.

Or more accurately, what can we bring over completely, and which items need tweaked?

What things do you think apply to training? What things do you think will need changed or adjusted to use in a ‘training’ course?

My thoughts will follow in my next posting, but I’d certainly like to know what you think.

Will ‘blogging’ work to add ‘reflection’ in a training class?

Will self-assessments be honest if they have to be ‘signed?’

Is the Wimba setup something trainers are likely to use?

Any questions you have thought of during the course as to differences between the two types of trainings?

—Russ

Work in Progress…

I'm looking for different ways to create a 'showcase' for the ePortfolio effort.

This one is counter-intuitive, so it likely won’t survive. (The picture is of many of my writer / presenter credentials, (drat – forgot to get the Presidential passes in there!) but the links are all for computer applits I created.