OU Innovating Pedagogy 2019 – notes from reading group

All read sections of the OU Innovating Pedagogies 2019 report

Learning with Robots (read by Naomi Beckett)

This short piece talked about how Robots are now being used for educational purposes and which ones are being used. The article talked a lot about how Robots can be used in a way that enhances learning by learning things themselves. Learners can teach something to the Robots as a process of showing they have accomplished a new skill and in turn the Robot is gaining new information.

The article also talked about how Robots can enable a passive approach to teaching. Robots won’t raise their voice or show (real) emotions in a session. Having this calm approach to teaching, it is argued, will now allow students to learn in a calmer environment. It also discusses how having a Robot as a learning tool may excite or motivate learners too. Although it only briefly mentions how a Robot would souly conduct a class full of students.

There were some aspects of the article that did make some sense on how Robots could aid learning, but these ideas didn’t go into much depth. It was discussed how Robots could talk in several languages so could be able to converse comfortably with a wider range of students. It also talked about how Robots could act as mediators to students, being able to check in, or provide advice at any time of the day. They could conduct the routine tasks and issues, freeing up teacher’s time so they can spend it with their learners.

As mentioned in the article ‘many people have an inherent distrust of advancing technologies.’ There are several questions to ask on how much a Robot is integrated into a learning environment, and when does it become too much. But there are a number of interesting points in the article about how Robots are making small steps to aid and enhance learning.

Reading this section got me thinking about the AV1 Robot. A robot created by NoIsolation. They created a robot to ‘reduce loneliness and social isolation through warm technology’. AVI was a Robot created for children who are too ill to go to school. The robot sits in the class and the child at home can connect through it. Using an app, the children can take part in the classroom. They can raise their hand to answer questions, talk to nearby students, ask questions, and just listen if they want to. A great use of technology to keep students engaged with their learning and classmates.

Decolonising learning (read by Sarah Davies)

This section was not about decolonising the curriculum – itself an important area for Bristol – but rather reflecting on how digital environments, tools and activities can be used in ways which invert power relationships and cultural and educational capital of the dominant culture, and support colonised or marginalised populations in education, sense-making and cultural development which is meaningful to them. It notes that decolonisation requires systematic unsettling change.

The article reminds us that we need to acknowledge the ways in which digital presence can contribute to colonisation – so digital environments created by a dominant culture may not create spaces for the kind of discussions, activities and issues which are meaningful to those of other cultures. It suggests that MOOCs can often be a form of digital colonisation – people from all over the world learn from massive courses produced in just a few countries.

In contrast, digital decolonisation considers how to support colonised, under-represented, uprooted or otherwise marginalised people with technology in order to:

  • connect them with a shared history,
  • support a critical perspective on their present,
  • provide tools for them to shape their futures.

But how to use the technology must be decided by the people themselves.

Critical pedagogies – in which students are expressly encouraged to question and challenge power structures, authority and the status quo – provide frameworks for the academic success of diverse students – eg by seeking to provide a way of maintaining their cultural integrity while achieving academic success, or to sustain the cultural competence of their community while gaining access to the dominant cultural competence.

Digital storytelling is an example of a pedagogical tool that can be used for decolonising purposes – empowering students to tell their own stories, turning a critical lens on settler colonialism, capturing stories of indigenous or marginalised people taking action on issues, critiques of colonial nations.

Two final messages from this article which resonated for me were that success in or after HE for some groups of students may be at odds with notions of success in the dominant society (as captured in things like Graduate Outcomes); and that education needs to be reimagined as an activity that serves the needs of local communities – though what that means for Bristol and the local, national and international communities it exists within, I’m not sure.

Virtual studios (read by Suzi Wells)

I found this a useful exercise in thinking about what a studio is and what it is for – and how much of that might be reimagined online. Studios are described in the report as collaborative, creative, social, communal spaces. They contain creative artefacts (sketches, models, objects). Learning in studios is by doing and is often peer-supported with tutors facilitating and guiding rather than instructing.

The report describes virtual studios as being focused on digital artefacts. “Virtual studios are all about online exchange of ideas, rapid feedback from tutors and peers, checks on progress against learning outcomes, and collaboration”

The first benefit of virtual studios given is scale: a studio can be for 100s of learners. This left me wondering if this is in conflict with the idea of studios as a community.

Virtual studios are also described as “hubs”, an idea I would have liked to explore further. I wanted to know how a hub is different from a community. What are we trying to achieve when we make something hub-like? I suppose a hub is a place which provides a starting point or a loose join between disparate activities or organisations. It’s not just a community, but has other communities floating around it.

Virtual studios can be a way to give more people (fully open even) access to experts and facilities. Example given was the (oft cited, so fairly unique?) ds106 Digital Storytelling.

Areas to explore further:

  • Could e-portfolios benefit from being grounded in something more virtual-studio-like (how much are they doing that already)?
  • How big can a virtual studio be before it loses the community feeling? Is there a way to scale community?

Place Based Learning (read by Michael Marcinkowski)

While the article on place based learning only provided a surface view of the approach, I found it very interesting in two distinct ways.

First, it focused on place based learning as not being solely the province of lessons conducted in the field, away from the classroom. What was highlighted in the article was the way that place based learning could just as easily take place in the classroom with students studying their local communities or local histories from their desks. Whether in the classroom or the field, the focus is on how students are able to make robust connections between their personal situation and their learning.

This kind of connection between the learner and their local community provides the foundation for the second point of interest in the article: that place-based learning can easily incorporate aspects of critical pedagogy. As students explore their local communities, they can both explore critical issues facing the community and build on their own experiences in order to support their learning. One example that was noted was having students explore the function of public transportation networks in their community, looking at questions of availability, accommodation, and planning.

An important development in place based learning has been the rise in the ubiquity of smartphones and other location-aware devices. By tapping into GPS and other forms of location networks, it becomes possible to develop applications that allow learners to dynamically access information about their surroundings. The article mentions one project that allows language learners to access vocabulary specific to the locations in which it is used, for instance, having transit based vocabulary guides triggered near bus stops. The idea is that such systems allow for the in-situ acquisition of vocabulary in a way which is both useful in the moment and that reinforces learning.

There are already a number of good examples of place based learning that have been developed out of the University of Bristol, including the Bristol Futures Course which encourages students to explore and engage with the wider city of Bristol and the Romantic Bristol smartphone app which highlights places of historic and literary importance around the city.

Particularly as the University begins to confront its legacy of involvement with the slave trade, there look to be a number of ways in which place based education can continue to be fostered among the University community.

Roots of Empathy (read by Chrysanthi Tseloudi)

This section describes a classroom programme that aims to teach children empathy, so they can have healthy and constructive social interactions.

In this programme, children between 5-13 years old get visits in their school class every 3 weeks from a local baby, their parent and a Roots of Empathy instructor. The children observe how the baby and its feelings develop and its interactions with the parent. With the guidance of the instructor, the children learn about infant development and identify the baby’s feelings, their own and those of others; they then reflect on them, describe and explain them. There are opportunities for discussion and other activities, including the children recording songs for their baby and reflecting on what they would like the baby’s future to be like. The curriculum is broken down into themes, which are then broken down further into age ranges. While the activities focus on feelings, some use knowledge and skills from school subjects, e.g. mathematics. Research on the programme has shown positive results in decreasing aggression and increasing positive social behaviours.

It was interesting to read about this approach. Something that stood out for me was that while the learners identifying their own feelings is mentioned, it is not obvious if this is an explicit aim of this programme. That made me wonder whether it is assumed that a person that is able to identify others’ feelings is definitely able to identify their own (in which case this programme addresses this skill implicitly), whether it is assumed that the children are able to do this already or whether knowing one’s own feelings is not considered an important skill in healthy social interactions. I also wondered how children that have significant difficulties identifying their own or others’ feelings fare in this programme and if/ how they are further supported.

Online communities – notes from the reading group

Amy read Professors share ideas for building community in online courses. The over-arching narrative of this piece was that ‘humanizing learning’ was the most effective was to build online learning communities, which occurs when students connect on a emotional and social level when engaging with the community. The author, Sharon O’Malley, suggest six methods for achieving this:

  1. Let students get to know you – instructors need to present themselves as ‘real people’ – this can be done by appearing goofy or telling genuine anecdotes in videos, for example. Students should also be encouraged to reveal their non-academic lives, in order for others to feel more like they know them personally, rather than just in the learning context
  2. Incorporating video and audio resources and feedback
  3. Meet in real time – students can talk to each other in real time and make instant connections
  4. Work in small groups – students get connected with others in their group – instead of feeling like they’re in a class of fifty, they feel they are in a class of 5, 10 etc.
  5. Require constant interaction – group projects and collaborative writing assignments force students to engage with each other out of the session
  6. Rise to the challenge – building community takes time – it takes planning and experimentation. Stick with it if it doesn’t immediately work!

Roger introduced a Building learning communities card activity. This is an activity from QAA Scotland, designed to stimulate discussion about what helps an effective learning community. The activity cards suggest the following factors:

  • Clearly defined and inclusive values
  • A clearly articulated and shared purpose
  • Clearly articulated and shared purpose goals
  • Active and vibrant interaction
  • Owned and managed by its people
  • Dedicated structure
  • Collaboration
  • Adequate and appropriate support
  • Understood and respected expectations
  • Adequate and appropriate resources
  • Built in evaluation

The instructions ask the group to consider which of these are essential and which are “nice to haves”.   The activity was certainly effective in stimulating discussion in reading group.]

Suzi watched Building Community: A Conversation with Dave Cormier – a recording of an edX webinar from 2014 – video. Here Cormier, who coined the term MOOC, talks to edX about how they could and should use online learning communities.

Cormier talks about four models of learning that you could scale up online:

  • One-to-one (adaptive learning, tutoring on skype?)
  • One-to-many (video lectures on MOOCs)
  • Cooperative learning: many-to-many, all working on the same thing
  • Collaborative learning: many-to-many, shared interest but each with own project

Collaborative learning is the one which he thinks is particularly – perhaps only – served by online communities. The real life equivalent being chaos, or maybe conferences (which, arguably, don’t work well for learning).

He draws the distinction between mastery learning (where skills can be ticked off a list as you progress) and complexity. Communities are not a particularly useful tool for mastery, or for checking who has learnt what. They are much better suited for complexity. This seemed to echo discussions we’d had about the difference between using gamification and using playfulness in learning – gamification being more for mastery, playfulness for complexity.

Cormier offers some tips on building a successful community.

  • A community should have, should move people towards building, shared values and a shared language.
  • Drive participation by having a famous person (but this can become one-to-many) or by asking annoying questions that people can’t resist engaging with (eg “how do we recognise cheating as a valuable part of education?”).
  • Shape participation by assigning roles to people and having course leader presence to set the tone.
  • Give people ways to get to know each other and make connections: recognising who people are and recognising aspects of yourself in them.

His view on evaluation and measuring success might be more specific to the MOOC context. He suggests borrowing techniques from advertising to demonstrate their value (but he doesn’t give details). The outcomes he suggests you might hope for are things like building more interest in your research area, or building the brand of an academic / department / institution.

He also asks some interesting questions. About the authenticity of work we give to students – how will their work persist? Can it be right that so much of students work is destined to be thrown away? About life beyond the community – how will the community persist? Communities are emotional – you shouldn’t just pull the plug at the end.

Lots of this is challenging in an educational context. For instance, communities take time to build but we generally work with units that last for a teaching block at most. Our online Bristol Futures courses only last four weeks. I wonder if this is to do with setting expectations. Perhaps we need thin and thick communities: the thin communities being time-bound but with much more scaffolding and a narrower purpose, the thick communities being more what Cormier is talking about here.

I also read The year we wanted the internet to be smaller (on the growth of niche communities in 2017) and 11 tips for building an engaged online community (practical advice aimed at NGOs). Both are interesting in their own right and worth a read. In both the idea of shared values, shared language and a sense of purpose came up. They also talk also recognition: communities as a place where you find “your people”. This resonates with my positive experiences of online communities but is, again, challenging in an education context. As Suzanne pointed out I think – if the tone and being among “your people” is important you must be able to walk out and find something different if you don’t feel comfortable. And it may be far better that you work with people who aren’t just  “your people”, or at least who don’t start that way.

Suggested reading

Online communities in education

From other sectors

Education communities – articles that are 10+ years old

Suggested listening

6 very good things about MIT’s #medialabcourse MOOC

I started taking MIT’s Media Lab’s Learning Creative Learning MOOC (often referred to as #medialabcourse or LCL) at the beginning of February. It’s something I’ve done in my spare time rather than directly for work but it’s been a great experience and I wanted to reflect on what has worked so well for me.

1. Google+ communities. Google+ turns out to be really rather good for groups and group discussions. The combination of threaded discussion (with email notifications of responses) and micro-blogging type front-page (making it easy to scan through new posts) has certainly promoted impressively engaging and lively discussion. It’s even (and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Google product) nice to look at.

2. Small groups. People who enrolled in time were placed into small groups, each with its own email list, and each encouraged to set up its own Google+ group. These small groups (my own included) have largely petered-out – but others have survived, often by picking up refugees from the less active groups, and I joined one of those. They provide a safer, less public, arena for discussion – especially for those people who are perhaps less confident or for material that doesn’t seem important / relevant / polished enough to share with the world.

3.Openness. LCL was designed to be almost entirely open, based on P2PU’s mechanical MOOC. Course reading is published on a public website and the main community is an open Google+ group. Weekly emails are sent out to remind people about this week’s activity and reading. Even with the small groups, I get the impression it’s those who left their Google+ communities as open who have survived because they could pick up new members. As well as being a Good Thing, this openness helps to make it easier to navigate the course, and to access the materials from a range of computers and devices.

4. Variety. Each week there are suggested readings, an activity, and further resources. There’s also a video panel discussion, and of course there’s continuous activity and discussion on the Google+ community. Early on the course, the course leaders stated explicitly that people should engage with what they can / what interests them and not feel they have to do everything. The variety of tasks and materials (some of the “readings” are short videos) make it possible to stay engaged even when you have little time to spare.

5. Events. There are live-broadcast panel discussion each week, directly relating to the week’s reading and activity. The video stream for these is embedded within a chat forum so that you can chat with your fellow students while you watch, and submit questions for the Q&A section at the end. These broadcasts feel very personal and inclusive, they are relaxed and conversational in tone. Course moderators join the chat rooms – providing helpful information, support with technical issues, and (maybe more than anything else) a real sense that the online participants do matter. In terms of a teaching device, I’m not sure how well they work – I find myself picking up fragments of the video and fragments of the chat and not properly engaging in either. But they can be useful place to reflect on and refine my ideas and they help give the course a nice pace.

6. Enthusiasm. Mitch Resnik, Natalie Rusk, and the rest of the course team exude enthusiasm for their subject, excitement about the course, and an openness that makes you feel like a real student. They seem friendly and genuinely interested in what online participants are saying. I think their attitude sets the tone for the community as a whole.