REFLECTIONS ON LEARNING THEORIES by Claire Killian

I realised I hadn’t done a reflection following the first lecture of our eLearning module when Pauline Rooney mentioned it in her feedback to me on this module!!

Having reviewed all the writing I did that week( and there was lots) I realised that actual reflection on the lecture was missing The lecture covered an introduction to the module along with information on national and international trends in eLearning and particularly in higher education. There were plenty of slides notes and links to articles on our webcourses site.

What I was most interested in was the Gartner cycle and in particular the cycle for higher education (Lowendahl 2015) as a means to understand the concept of trends. I also noticed that learning analytics, adaptive learning and flipped classroom were particularly mentioned as trends nationally and internationally.

A key issue for me in reading the literature in this lecture was its lack of relevance to my practice. I do not work in higher education. Yet adaptive learning is at the heart of what I do as my work involves delivering highly customised individual interventions in the area of teacher, parent and child learning. While learning analytics is not at the heart of my daily work I work in an area where behaviourists collect and measure results from educational interventions within sessions, across the day, by tutor and so on. Graphing of results is done daily and weekly and used as a basis for decision making.

I noticed that collaborative learning appeared as a trend in Johnson et al (2015) and as this was an area that interested me I decided to continue to read and blog in this area for the week.

Lowendahl, J., M. (2015) Hype Cycle for Education 2015. Gartner (2015) Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/doc/3090218/hype-cycle-education- 27.5.16

Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., and Freeman, A. (2015). NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

Today’s workshop with Muireann O Keefe of DCU was all about David White, Visitor and Resident Mapping. We also had a chance to discuss Twitter in some detail and we were given a list of several apps that may be useful to higher education settings.

I was amused to see that all of us were writing furiously as the names of apps were called out. Seems like we are all in the same boat here……trying to identify which of the thousands of apps may be most useful.

This week I have had a chance to begin laying down some foundation for critical reflection on e learning trends. This is a steep mountain to climb. With a limited knowledge of the tools available for becoming a resident user I am on the first step of Blooms taxonomy of learning. The ability to apply a critical analysis of the tools and of a digital approach to learning is a long way off.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing however I am delighted to have an opportunity to experience the tools for the next week - Twitter, Socrative, Bonfyre, Animoto. Fantastic opportunity here to actively experiment and reflect on the experience of using the tools and learning through social collaboration.

I need time over the week to reflect assimilate and analyse what I am learning. I need to gather my focus. I will be reading the handbook for the course again so that I am clearer on the outputs of this module.

Much of the module has been experiential in nature. That's fantastic as I had a significant need to develop skills in the use of some apps that would be useful.The trouble is that I now need time for reflection .There is a need to consider the link between what I am learning and how this could be applied to my professional practice.

I have just finished reading an article by Lantz & Stawiski (2014) on the effect of Clickers ( questions posed on line at the beginning during and at the end of a class. I had hoped to find something on the effects on participation of a teacher posing questions requiring anonymous answers using technology but ended up with an article that was related.

The finding was that Clickers did indeed have a positive effect on student's ability to recall two days later. Interestingly there was no significant difference in ability to recall where questions had been used during the class and at the end of the class.

I'm not really sure of the value of this except to say that we already know from research in traditional approaches to teaching that questions are valuable for developing understanding and recall.

Lantz, M. E., & Stawiski, A. (2014). Effectiveness of Clickers: Effect of feedback and the timing of questions on learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, 280-286.doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.009

It's thought-provoking. We are having an online discussion using this discussion forum right now. Does that mean that we are substituting a face to face discussion with one online? Is there something augmentative about this discussion? If we are face to face the discussion is synchronous and maybe then there is less chance for reflection on what someone has contributed. This online method gives us a chance to read and think without the noise of the other person talking!!!

Can we really claim though, that this online forum will modify the task of discussing things like the SAMR model critically? Would we have a more evaluative discussion if we were face to face?[caption id="attachment_526" align="alignnone" width="1920"]

Puentedura, R. (2014) Learning, Technology, and the SAMR Model: Goals, Processes, and Practice http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/2014/06/29/LearningTechnologySAMRModel.pdf Retrieved 8/3/16

I’m coming to this discussion at the end of a long and intensive week of applying what I’ve read, seen, listened to in an effort to produce a presentation on ‘collaborative environments’.

What can I say…..? This area of elearning trends is enormous and yet in some ways the messages emerging may be relatively simple.

While there is an enormous and growing amount of information and tech available in the virtual world of the web…….it’s so grounding to be able to put down the lap top and turn off the phone. In my world the attractor state remains the world of non tech. That time for calm thinking, unconscious processing of information, problems and ideas is great. I’m at my best when I am free of the mobile phone and laptop.

Rethinking education is all very well. It’s marvellous that we have information for everyone and that everyone can contribute to the creation and collection of information. The key questions remains…..What are we learning( Are we gathering wisdom not information) from all this? What’s emerging that is both new and valuable from all this activity?

Having developed my presentation on collaborative learning I’m under no illusion that what I have to say is new nor that it offers wisdom that is not already present in the ‘ecosystem’ among my colleagues.

There is no doubt that there is a massive growth in on-line activity. Something is clearly becoming inherently attractive in communicating on line. It looks like there may be emergence of a macro phenomenon where a critical mass of people makes on line activity their first choice for communication, information and interaction.

Is this a positive outcome? While education is concerned with staying abreast with the trend is it losing sight of the real need? The real need lies in keeping sight of the core value attaching to communication and learning. How can education assist in ensuring that wisdom is applied in using technology ?

I’m aware of the amount of work I have done and I’m not sure how efficient I have been. Having had some feedback on my video I set out to improve it and my annotated bibliography. I did what I have done all my life, overdo!!! Anyway I’ve made my submission so I’m gladly letting go….My little creations are now happily floating off somewhere, I don’t own them anymore. HORRAY.

What’s marvellous is I am really starting to promote the use of digital technology among my clinical colleagues. Interesting responses are emerging. I’m struck by their caution. For the main part the issues can best be summarised as ‘Real health work involves being face to face with our children and their families’ and ‘Moderation of tweets, videos and other artefacts will be a real concern.’

My perception is that I will need to be aware of the need to discuss how delivering knowledge and skills to our families, carers and educators will not have to mean producing works of great intellect. The messages we could offer digitally could be the same as those we offer face to face.- I’m thinking here of all the fabulous work being undertaken by organisations such as iheed who have produced short simple videos for families.

My learning curve for tools has been steep. It’s hugely time-consuming to develop the skills to work with some tools while others such as Mindmeister have been so easy. I found and I am using Windows Movie Maker. I experimented with YouTube video creator software but wasn’t that happy. Now I am making videos in Movie Maker and uploading to YouTube.

Theoretically I’m sticking with collaboration, interaction analysis and the limitations of tools for achieving higher order thinking. I will be watching out for software that's being used for decision-making as I have a feeling there may be some interesting work around on argumentation as a means to construct knowledge. I have seen nothing so far among the tools we have studies that would provide teachers support to assist students in testing of concept, evaluation and synthesis of knowledge. I know that’s another sweeping statement. I’d be glad if someone argued with me in this discussion forum around this point.

I have read something around the use of bare claims as a means to develop argument.( Bouyias &Demetriadis 2012). I think I will be doing a lot more exploring around this purely for interest.

That brings me to our final year project. I have a long-term plan but I’m not sure that my interest is entirely consistent with this. I need some more reflection on what I’m doing with my life!! On the other hand…..let’s see where this goes.

Bouyias Y.,& Demetriadis.(2012) Peer-monitoring vs. micro-script fading for enhancing knowledge acquisition when learning in computer-supported argumentation environments Computers & Education 59 236–249