Dr. Ellen's ETEC Expressions

End of Year

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:04:00 +0000

Despite my good intentions, I don't seem to find the time to write as often as I would like. I am impressed by all the bloggers who do manage to put some words of wisdom out each day. Their ideas and resources get me thinking and help me stay on top of new sites. So as the year ends, I want to send out a thank you to all who take the time to share.

Is Connectivism the wave of future learning theory?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:10:00 +0000

I’ve finished reading the week 1 materials for the MOOC, “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge.” I like the idea of a grand learning theory and having answers to some big questions.

What is the relation between knowledge, education and learning?

What is the relation of the individual to the social?

Is there a “grand theory” of learning that will get us closer to understanding?

And do the semantics get in the way when we talk about any of these concepts? Or maybe it’s other assumptions about how the world works and we function in it. Would it be the same conversation in say Tagalog or Chinese or Hawaiian?

I came away from the articles with more questions than answers about the merits of connectivism. At first, I just felt stupid—grand theory tends to do that to most of us therefore making it hard to get up the courage to critique or even blog publicly. This is even more true when one is a seasoned academic who is supposed to know it all.

But the more I read, the more I found incredibly loose usages of the terms and the greater the assumptions. How are information and knowledge different? Who is the learner? What is the role of the individual versus the role of society? Where does education occur? Is adult learning different than infant learning? At what level does the theory attempt to provide explanation? Does connectivism as it is currently unfolding make the classic error of concatenating levels of analysis?

The connectivism theory has strong foundations in Western views of self, rationality, technology, and progress. How convenient that the theory parallels the current technology of process and networks. But this seems a narrow view of technology and one that does not clearly delineate the levels at which learning and process take place. Theory will look very different from a cognitive (internal) perspective than from a socio-cultural one. Connectivism seems to be more an emerging concept that has the basis for challenging existing paradigms but not replacing them.

I’m not ready to give up yet. Despite my complaints, there may be something useful in there. The advantage to this discourse is that we might figure out where it is. Maybe I’m just missing something that the advocates all know about learning theory. Guess this course is a great way to find out.

Using the Cognitive Surplus

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:53:00 +0000

Saw this video of a speech by Clay Shirky about the use of cognitive surplus on the blog by Tim Lauer. Can you imagine what would happen if all the hours we spent watching television suddenly were shifted to interactive social media?

Clay Shirky Keynote at Web 2.0 Expo, April 24, 2008 (transcript)

I realized that it is a version of the speech we give our working adult graduate students. We all decide what we will do with our time, and in the process, set our priorities--all too often without really thinking about what that commitment means or how we might be "wasting" our precious minutes. Clay argues that the participatory Web is possible because of the billions of hours we used to spend passively watching television.

Of course, the critics argue that this time is taken from the hours once spent socializing and in personal, in-your-face interactions. Are we bowling alone? Will the time spent being elves in the basement have a positive or negative impact on the social fabric?

Howard Rheingold has suggested this is a new kind of community organization and will in fact bring people back to connectedness. We are shifting from passively watching the events on television, from the wars in Iraq to the tragedies of Katrina or the demonstrations for human rights in Tibet, to a collective consciousness that will use new media to make a difference. It raises a question of whether we can indeed change society from our living room sofas while wearing our pajamas.

Second Life: A Second Chance for Education?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:13:00 +0000

I'm a six-day old avatar in Second Life (SL), and have been exploring both its educational and cultural world. I finally took the plunge because I've been to so many conference presentations and read multiple articles about the amazing things educators are doing there. I've actually been a bit embarrassed about not having jumped in much sooner. Ah, too many technologies, too little time...

So far I got rid of my newbie hair, found some freebie clothes to look respectable, attended some social events (I love to dance), and earned a few Linden $ so I'm no longer impoverished. I visited museums and libraries, peaceful beaches and raunchy clubs. I checked out historical re-creations and architectural wonders that could not exist in the physical world. I've chatted with folks about things to see and do, and met people from far away places and with amazing visions. I am able to be the ultimate tourist without worrying about the rising price of plane fares as gas prices skyrocket. Even better, I can fly or climb mountains without getting hot and sweaty!

The Good

Seeing virtual presentations and classrooms is exciting. The ability to have meetings in 3D, exchange virtual objects, and even get to see facial expressions (cartoonish but impassioned) adds a personal touch that has been missing from online learning. The biggest complaints from students in online courses is that they miss the "touchy-feely"-ness of the face-to-face class. Distance learning is fine but student contact, while intellectually satisfying, doesn't quite live up to the emotional satisfaction of seeing each other in person.

Even more fun in SL than the immediacy is that we all get to be the person we never were born as. All those imperfections (I love being as skinny as the best Size 2!) we sneer at in the mirror each morning suddenly disappear. The students in the classroom are more interesting in appearance than the ones I really see everyday at the University. This is a boon for every one of us who wasn't the prom queen or hero athlete in high school. We can stop focusing on appearance when everyone is beautiful, healthy, active, and without economic barriers. We are equal in way that we strive for in life, often through our activism that too often feels inadequate to have major impact. Differences are chosen rather than imposed, making all the difference.

The appeal of SL for educators is obvious, particularly those who enjoy seeing how technology can enhance the learning experience. This is a rich environment for trying new things and doing more than is possible in real classrooms. I can instantly have the ultimate interactive whiteboard or any other technology I yearn for, every student has immediate access to the digital world, and the seats are padded and comfortable (not a broken chair or desk in sight). The room is not dingy, is immaculately clean, is in a stunning architectural creation, and is likely to have a spectacular view (or we can meet outside and not worry about traffic noise and bad weather). Best of all, we didn't have to leave the comfort of our own living room, worry about the fact we are really sitting in our favorite stained T-shirt, nor deal with being in different time zones and countries.

We can take field trips at will and visit the kinds of educational places that aren't possible to see for most classes. We can go together as a class to try simulations or view what we are learning about. I get all the things I never can in real schools and universities. This is exciting and exhilarating, and gets all those creative juices flowing that sometimes get lost in the day-to-day reality of administrative bureaucracy and always tight budgets. I get to leave all the real-world problems of education back there in the real world.

The Bad and the Ugly

What surprised me is what I hadn't heard from all those educators passionate about Second Life. Yes, I read the articles about the Linden economy. I'd seen material on griefers and rapes. So far, I haven't had any direct experience with these, just as most people don't regularly encounter such extremes in daily life. Much as I react to the television news of today's distaster and tragedy, I just cross my fingers (or do my own seemingly limited activist thing) that the harshness of the world will stay away and mostly, it does and life goes on.

What was more interesting was the culture and economy that are forming in SL. Here is the ultimate capitalistic vision, where everyone gets what they want and anything you want can be bought. No hard work, no sweat shops, no wars, no death and illness. We all get to live as though we were on happy pills.

The world of Second Life is amazingly materialistic, narcissistic, and revolves around advertising and sales. Get rich in the virtual economy. Look, there are reports of self-made millionaires and you can live like one even if you don't have a billion Lindens! Everywhere you look are the ads pushing goods and consumerism, and we know that our behaviors are being mined to learn what we like and how we will spend. You can make L$ by filling out surveys for companies in the first world.

We may be teaching in a way that allows new intellectual exploration and freedom, but in this world we are also implicitly teaching values and worth. The former is great, and I can see why educators are exploring this world. But they seem to do so by blinding themselves to the latter. Where in the many papers and presentations by smart educators did this egotistical, materialist culture get mentioned?

Oh wait, I can just here the defenders noting, there are lots of folks giving things away and altruism thrives. Yes, but that ignores the fact that massive and ever-present buying and selling are rampant and drive the whole concept and are required for the freebies to work. It seems the ads never stop unless you can build a little retreat for yourself somewhere. Consumerism and the push for self-gratification is central and harder to avoid in SL.

The Wise Child Responds

As always, I went to my personal expert on digital youth--my daughter to discuss the pros and cons, particularly the consumerism. While not currently an SL participant, she is an avid gamer and social networker. As we talked about the pros and cons of SL for education, she pointed out to me what I think we all missed. Here is a way for educators to have it all at least virtually. All our dreams of games and simulations have been limited in the past by economics. Creating solely for education has proved for most innovators an economically dismal proposition. As a result, we don't get Hollywood style animators and programmers or the resources of multi-national corporations for research and development. In the world of public education, we instead deal with shrinking public funding, distrust in our missions and ability to educate the next generation, crumbling infrastructure, and students who quickly discover that the online world of information often has more to offer than our classrooms can. It is only because of the thriving economy in SL that our new classrooms are able to exist.

What makes the richness of SL possible for educators? All that selling, sex, and make-me-happy culture in the rest of SL. We can ignore the values of that virtual world just as we try to set up our calm ivory towers in the physical one. And at times, we can even piggy-back on the fact that our digital-age students are engaged by this new way of learning and exploring, pushing us as teachers to be more creative and thus energizing our scholarly lives. We are subsidized through the larger SL world in contrast to the education-only ventures that have failed for lack of adequate profits to support growth and development.

A New Economic Order

Whether the SL virtual economy, along with the easy access to a new environment for education, is sustainable in the real world of bubble-bursting dot.coms remains an unknown. A few digital corporations survive and grow, including Google and Amazon, and these have often made positive impacts on education by adding new capabilities that don't rely on tax dollars and public goodwill.

For now, I will hold my dismay of SL capitalism and consumerism at its best and worst and try to enjoy the potential it brings to my teaching and learning. Besides, there is always some new Web 3.0 undreamed of fad that will come along next year to keep us fresh. Meanwhile in RL (real life), I will sit at those hard, wooden desks in crumbling classrooms without any technology imagining what could be if I were just back in my second life for real.

Are Hybrid Courses Really Better?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:06:00 +0000

When Brian McFarlin, University of Houston, announced that his comparative study of a traditional versus hybrid course showed the latter produced final grades 9.9% higher, the story was picked up throughout the blogosphere and in multiple tech periodicals. The headlines hyped the success of hybrid teaching. The full article, published in Advances in Exercise Physiology, was far less widely distributed.

As always, the hype doesn’t quite match the premise of the article. What do you find in the fine print? The course was traditionally taught as a two-lecture a week class. Did they miss the fact that so much current research on how people learn shows this is not an ideal strategy? As a result, they might have found similar results with almost any mode of delivery that moved away from lectures to more interactive learning. In fact, the hybrid course not only involved Web based materials to replace one lecture, but added an interactive response system in the remaining lecture.

There are lots of reasons that hybrid courses work but this doesn't prove that they are significantly better. In fact, the study has all the common problems of educational research in the real world where it is incredibly difficult to control all the variables. There are too many possible reasons that they hybrid mode worked better to declare success.

Why do these kind of articles continue to not only appear but get such attention? Wouldn't it be great if we could just agree that technology works when it is used well to support good teaching? It's not about the technology but about creating outstanding learning experiences whether these are online or in person.

Growing Up Online - PBS Frontline Report

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:35:00 +0000

Just got a chance to view the PBS Frontline program on "Growing Up Online." If you haven't seen this one and have an interest in ET, you should definitely take a look. It is an interesting exploration of generational differences in the role of media in our lives. As interesting as the videos are the discussion that has ensued, with a mix of praise and condemnation. While I tend to agree that the selections were likely to increase parental concerns, the reactions seem to have much more to do with what individuals already believed than the content they viewed.

The piece on the Internet and schools was really interesting. The questions it raises about what happens in classrooms is likely to be a growing debate in coming years. What do our children need to know in the digital age? What role do traditional subjects and face-to-face interaction have in this new world? Is reading of literature a dying art?

ETEC Videos - A Student View

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:12:00 +0000

Tried a multimedia project as a way to explore ed tech concepts and background in one of my graduate classes. Had a lot of fun and got some interesting ideas.

Video is Everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 03:33:00 +0000

I'm about to teach a digital video course, and looked back at what I had done last fall. I remember trying to find great sources on the use of video in the classroom. YouTube was out there but still growing up. Now there are so many great sites and tools, including TeacherTube just for education. Hard to believe the change a year makes, and how much the course will need to change too. With open source tools, it has become even easier to do all kinds of effects and editing.

A big question is what to do about mashups when we have always emphasized copyright in ed tech classes. While fair use allows students a lot of latitude, as future teachers we want them to be models of ethical and legal behavior. What is the right balance for allowing maximum flexibility in assignments?

Evaluating Online Teaching

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:11:00 +0000

I've been working on an article about student evaluation of online classes. Like lots of educational research, many of the reports are contradictory. For example, some claim that evaluations are impacted by gender, with females tending to be more critical, while others show no difference on this variable.

But what is more interesting in the research is the issue of what makes an effective university teacher. The articles tend to do studies of the opinions of different groups on this question. That might mean they survey students with questions like "what do you think are the characteristics of a good teacher?" Or maybe they talk to college faculty, or administrators, or experts in the field. A few might do classroom observations, but to do this you have to have some idea of what you already think makes for effective teaching to decide what to look at.

As I'm thinking about this, I see a couple of issues.

First, most of the research has been in F2F classes. This immediately raises the question of which findings translate directly to online classes. But there has been some initial work on distance learning and at least some things stay the same.

In my own teaching, I have noticed a big difference between online classes that are totally asynchronous versus those with synchronous sessions. The latter have more similarity to F2F, and even the comments from students are pretty similar when there are real-time sessions. But in asynchronous sessions, students seem to have a hard time telling who the professor actually is. Their interactions with course content become confused with the personality of the faculty member. Depending on how much direct interaction a particular student has (for example, via email or in discussion boards), they don't have a sense of a real person out there. If there is funny reading material in the lesson, the professor must be funny. This is particularly amusing when course material is shared between multiple teachers but all of them get lumped in the same view.

Second, and maybe a bigger issue for me as an educator is that the criteria for effective are usually based on what a teacher does. What happened to learning in this equation? Does it matter if the goals of the course were met? Is it okay if the students only learned half of what was supposed to be covered? When the course was finished, did the students know what they needed to continue in their future studies and careers? Can they apply any of the content outside of class? Do they understand how the course material relates to the larger discipline and to the world in general?

In part, I think about a former colleague who always got outstanding reviews from students. I have seen this professor teach and the individual is personable, has a great sense of humor, tells really wonderful stories, and keeps the students' attention through activities and interesting lectures. I have to agree the person was just amazing in the classroom. BUT...the classes, which were part of a larger program with very specific goals, never covered the material that was in the objectives. Invariably, students came out of the class without the skills and knowledge that was expected in more advanced classes. The professor made the class easy and fun by deleting many of the expected assignments. This made him popular with students, but the learning just wasn't there. As you can guess, when it came to decisions about his teaching, he got great praise in the review process and even won a teaching award. No one ever worried much about outcomes.

This kind of situation raises some very serious questions about what it means to be an effective teacher at a college level. There is little question that students have very definite opinions about good teaching. Some of those are critical issues, because when you don't like what a teacher is doing, you have a harder time focusing on what you are supposed to learn. All of us have tuned out a boring lecturer at some time in the past. But shouldn't the content matter more? Is it okay if a teacher makes us enjoy a class where but we avoid the hard work and challenging material that was the goal of a course? Are we missing something when effective teaching is defined the way it is and primarily determined by evaluations that deal only with input (what the teacher did) rather than output (what I learned or should have learned)?

What does make an effective teacher? How do we send a message to students about the difference between good personality and good learning? What would we need to create an evaluation process that has more of a focus on learning?

Should Ed Tech be Revolutionary?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 09:01:00 +0000

Everything is Miscellaneous is a new book by David Weinberger that deals with classification. Now that sounds really boring, but as his Google Tech Talk video from May 10 shows, it can be both interesting and funny (Everything is Miscellaneous video).

Weinberger isn't so much saying something new, but is putting it together in a way that will make sense to many as he looks at classification from Aristotle to the Dewey decimal system to "folksonomies" created by tagging and popular usage on the Web. Told with humor, he argues that we are moving away from traditional authority as the basis for organizing knowledge to a new "public negotiation of meaning." The line between metadata and data is blurring as we enter a "third order" of knowledge organization, making possible multi-dimensional and infinitely connected ways of sorting and linking (mash-ups) not possible when arranging physical books and media. In this new world of knowledge in which millions can contribute, authority no longer has the same level of control.

Okay, that isn't nearly as funny as he was, nor does that cover all the territory in the 57 minute video. But the part that most interests me isn't what he said, but what this line of thought suggests. As someone who has looked at communication through the eyes of many social science disciplines, from journalism to anthropology/linguistics to history and sociology, I have always been fascinated by the way new communications technologies have spawned social change and even revolutions, toppling kings, empires, religions and other human institutions. As powerful as established systems may be, there is also a countering force in popular voice, beliefs and mob action when amplified by a new communications channel that every now and then, pushes a system over the edge. During such times, authority loses control over the belief systems that are a key to sustaining existing social relations.

For example, the birth of the U.S. can be seen in part as the result of new printing technologies. The distribution of broadsheets that were often biased and even incorrect had a powerful effect on popular opinion. Radical ideas could be spread faster than they could be squelched or countered by royal authority, even when the partisans got it wrong or intentionally mislead. Print gave these revolutionary writers a reach greater than their voices (and there were some great orators among them). Print had power as the broadsides were passed from hand to hand and village to village, so many could access the rhetoric and reports. The words swayed enough of the population to result in revolt against English domination and the eventual independence of the colonies.

Communications technologies have changed the world in the past. Could we be seeing the beginning of a new revolution against authority and institutions based on networked, digital communication technologies that remake the way large numbers of individuals can see and understand our world? How might this new popular form of knowledge organization impact existing social and political structures? Could it create a new "tipping point"? In at least one other current book this shift in relationships based on new ways of organizing knowledge and social relations came into focus. I recently finished reading Tapscott's and William's book, Wikinomics, about how social networks and Web 2.0 tools are impacting business by enhancing knowledge management and global collaborations that alter the way corporations operate. Not the best written book ever, but a really interesting collection of case studies of new practices and the fall of traditional institutions locked into old ways of doing business. It suggests that a major realignment is underway, but it may be too soon to know if it is a revolution.

So what does this have to do with educational technology, you might be asking? Perhaps we should be thinking bigger about the relationship between technology and education. Many practitioners and scholars have commented on how little impact educational technology has on schools. But if, as Weinberger suggests, authority is shifting, the basis for formal education founded on disciplinary expertise and traditional knowledge definitions is likely to be impacted in ways that we haven't even begun to explore. As he points out, the way we have created the walls between subjects is artificial--a binary scheme to classify a complexly attributed universe--necessary in the past where organization was physical and knowledge was captured in physical media. Now we have rich digital data and multi-level emergent schemes from the semantic web that can be explored from many individual points of view. When students have more knowledge and capability to explore it at their fingertips than the entire school holds, and they have the ability to contribute rather than just consume, what is the role of the teacher? This is an impact far greater than determining if technology enhances achievement or has value in classrooms. Is it possible that educational technology should be thinking of itself as a revolutionary discipline?

Internet Changing the World

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:15:00 +0000

Just this week I got an invitation to the 20th anniversary celebration of NSFNET. For those of you who don't know much about Internet history, NSF funded the research and implementation that changed the Internet from a small and closed military research network to the commercial Internet you all know and love today.

Back then, I was on the team that made it happen. Those were exhilarating times, when we went across the country doing seminars telling people that the Internet was coming and would be revolutionary. Most people didn't believe it. Look how far we have come in just two decades!

What I am most proud of is the commitment we had to making this new thing we were developing and testing a resource that would change education. NSF began with a limited idea of connecting all the four-year-plus colleges and universities, then about 3,500 institutions. Within a few years, the goal had changed to finding ways to connect all education. Corporations were finding ways to cover the high costs of connection but education didn't have the deep pockets needed to pay the fare. While most of higher ed did find a way to link up in those first years of NSFNET, it wasn't until the federal E-rate program that schools did the same.

Think about what has changed in 20 years. Then think about what hasn't. Our visions back then were big but have yet to be realized even now. Will schools ever find a way to tap into this revolutionary world in meaningful ways?

Thinking Public

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ellen Hoffman) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:55:00 +0000

When I studied journalism, I learned that the hardest thing to write was the first sentence. When you get that part right, all the rest of the story will follow. Get it wrong and you will keep writing in circles.

Even with all the writing and publishing I have done, the idea of putting my thoughts and words here where anyone can see them is a bit intimidating. Maybe that is one of the biggest differences between digital natives like many of my undergrad students and digital immigrants like me. We have different ideas of public and private spaces. Or is it just that the folks who are most outgoing are the ones we see in these blogs?

What do you think? Who is putting all this amazing stuff online? Is it really pervasive or is it just that the highly visible get all the attention?