An assessment for Online PD with NMIT
from sue.rimmer@cit.act.edu.au
This essay traces my journey as a student/teacher online, over the last five years, and examines several possible future directions for travelling. With each step, I try to establish the learning accomplished, as well of some of the unresolved issues.
My first step as an online learner was linked to enrolment in a university degree, by distance education. While most work was completed through printed materials, and an occasional phone call from a tutor, several teleconferences were also scheduled. The best of these were skilfully managed, across various time zones, and with a range of educator/participants, each of whom had very different research interests. I now realise these events were far too spasmodic to develop much student interaction, let alone establish a long-term learning community. However, I learnt about other student projects, and enjoyed the sense of participating with people scattered across the continent.
My university study continues, with a now well-developed system of emailing between myself and my supervisor. This asynchronous interaction is independent of our time zones and locations (Collins and Berge, 1996), enabling our links to continue, despite technical glitches, leave and overseas work (for her) at intervals in the last two semesters. Recently I supplemented this pattern with physical attendance at a weekend of seminars on the university campus (where I had been once in six years of study). This made me realise how I much I enjoy the types of conversation, and non-verbal communication, available through this mode. However, I'm not sure I need it on a regular basis, and anyway distance and cost factors make this an impossibility. I use other NLT on a regular basis, particularly for literature searches.
My next formal step involved a very steep learning curve. Last year I simultaneously became developer of an online component of a core module; tutor and mentor for this module which I had previously delivered in a classroom; plus coordinator for the graduate certificate to which the module belonged. Although an avid user of the Net for developing resource material for students in other courses, I had never used Topclass or html before, and had never tutored online. I had informal, occasional training to develop my skills, as the module progressed.
Fortunately, I was reasonably familiar with the existing module content. I learnt to put up coursework online at about the same rate as some students accessed it; read widely and developed a network of colleagues with helpful experience of online teaching and learning; and learnt to manage a variety of degrees of on-line readiness among the already enrolled students.
Student reactions often surprised me since they contradicted the hype of NLT optimists. For example, hostility to going online at all; unwillingness to take risks such as joining discussion; waiting passively for the technology to magically repair itself. This made me consider future best practice induction methods, and how to incorporate more strategies to facilitate interaction online. Clearly one factor I needed to pay much more attention to was the social dimension influencing learner effectiveness, especially factors which enable students to "cross a threshold from feeling like outsiders to feeling like insiders" (Wegerif, 1998).
However, I know the realities of these students' worklives very well. As full time teachers, they operate in increasingly difficult educational environments - a highly competitive open training market; ever-diminishing budgets; increasing class sizes; and general intensification of their workloads. Kim is typical. Her innovative project is potentially very exciting, and she is enthusiastic about developing it. However, she is teaching more than twenty hours face-to-face per week, replacing two specialist teachers on sick leave for lengthy periods, and has family responsibilities as well. She is physically exhausted. Any spare time, let alone online study time, is sheer luxury. What might first appear as 'lack of motivation' in failing to complete the module, is really related to severe workplace constraints on her time and energy.
The next step in my journey has been the NMIT OPD course, providing an opportunity to re-evaluate some of these earlier experiences, as well as develop useful new skills and resources, and read more widely. For example, developing an educational model has taught me that a more carefully planned holistic approach may encourage greater student online interactivity. In addition I have built up a much more extensive folio of resources evaluating online teaching and learning for future reference.
There are three ideas in my back-pack, for the next section of my online journey. One idea is to develop support strategies for teachers like Kim. Part of this involves unravelling the notion of 'lack of motivation', since it is obviously complex. Wegerif's use of participant observation and in-depth interviewing enabled him to reconstruct categories through which participants interpreted their experience (1998). I could use my research skills to explore this approach further.
I am also interested in developing more strategies for facilitating online interactivity of all types. Collins and Berge emphasise the importance of scaffolding, by modelling appropriate interaction and facilitation techniques on screen, and providing metaphors and analogies to personalise and humanise the transactional space (1996). Exploring how students' individual thinking is developing, as well as their interactive skills (Salmon and Giles, 1997), also seem valuable areas to investigate.
Thirdly, I am fascinated by interactive projects for students. My passion is geography and I've developed Net exercises for Year 12 adult students to monitor on-line exploration teams in the Amazon and across Alaska by dog sled. The NASA K-12 Internet Initiative (http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/interactive) offers exciting opportunities for integration into existing curriculum. For example, Live from the Stratosphere Online (which includes image archives, resources for learning, collaborative activities, a teachers' lounge, and even a Spanish version); and the forthcoming (July 28) Sustainable Seas Expedition. NASA also present lessons learned from past projects, with invaluable tips for teachers planning online projects.
An ongoing challenge remains how to develop and implement such projects
given the current institutional climate which, in practice, does little
to support the concepts of a learning organisation and lifelong learning.
However, I'm optimistic about my future travels as a student/teacher online,
and ultimately hope to continue developing new skills in the online learning
community established by the University of the Third Age.
Collins, Mauri and Berge, Zane. June, 1996. "Facilitating Interaction in Computer Mediated Online Courses". Background paper for a presentation at the FSU/AECT Distance Education Conference.
Salmon, Gilly and Giles, Ken. 1997. "Moderating On Line". Conference paper presented to the Online Education Conference, Berlin. 29-31st October.
Sobski, Jozefa. 1997. "From Chalkface to Cyberspace: Changing Work Practices". Conference paper presented at the ANTA National Flexible Delivery Physical and Online Conference: NET*Working '97. Shaping the Online Learning Environment. November 19 - 21.
Wegerif, Rupert. March, 1998. "The Social Dimension of Asynchronous
Learning Networks". Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks. vol. 2.
issue 1.