Discuss and critically appraise different perspectives on supporting student learning with fellow practitioners

-This made me realise that art and design students tend to have a higher incidence of learning disabilities (particularly dyslexia, adhd) and i believe that long-duration online lectures could result in reduced engagement with this type of student especially. It made me realise the difference in the way we experience time online and offline. A 25-minute face-to-face lecture would be considered quite short, but a 25 minute online video lecture seems quite mammoth when thinking about art and design students! 

Reading Matt's flipped classroom idea for a collaborative Pinterest board made me realise that he hadn't written how he planned for the students to use this Pinterest board in the in-class session. This made me doubt whether students would engage with this activity, and made me reflect on that fact that I also hadn't accounted for how my visual-collaborative-idea-generation activity on Instagram would be incorporated into the in-class time. 

It made me consider how to integrate more explicitly the on-line activity of the collaborative visual instagram into the classroom activities to ensure students participate - so far I have considered defining a minimum number of images each student needs to upload, and telling students the instagram will be used to inform the Monday's launch activities (I am actually not 100% sure yet how the instagram could be used, so I will have to work this out before that session.)

Reflection Prompts:

thinking, “It is not enough simply to put individuals in a context that allows for collaboration and expect them to engage in it effectively” (Kuhn 2015, 51). In the end, I decided to tell students we would use the likes/dislikes from the instagram in the Monday morning activities (using the words as material for a drawing game). However, this is a new cohort for me, that started the semester last week, and they have been extremely unengaged and impossible to reach through email/canvas (I also informed the students that attended class about the video and tasks that needed to be done for Monday). I launched the video on Friday and by Sunday there were 2 views and no interaction with the instagram account.

I also picked up a great method to use in art and design for helping students define direction in their projects from Matt's session plan, although this isn't directly related to the flipped classroom:
The idea of reducing their self-initiated briefs down to 16/8/4/2 words to get students to really understand the main themes/focus of what it is they're trying to communicate.

An article by Perrow (2017) included a number of ideas that were relevant to my flipped classroom planning. She mentioned that 'simply posing higher-order questions for students to answers does not necessarily result in higher-order thinking (Kanuka, Rourke and Laflamme 2007). She also includes McDonald et al.'s (year?) argument to include interpersonal, social processes into online tasks, because she believes that engaging students socially and emotionally in tasks naturally 'nudges' students into higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive skills (such as comparing, analysing, integrating, resolving, evaluating, applying and extending ideas). Indeed, she mentions how Vygotsky's social-constructivist theory of learning has been applied to online learning through discussion forums, in which we construct and clarify our understanding of new concepts to existing knowledge and experience through peer interaction. 

These ideas are relevant to my teaching practice as I use a lot of teaching activities to try to build a community of practice and collaboration between my students, and the collaborative instagram was intended to continue this method online. The instagram activity fits within Vygotsky's learning theory as students were to learn from each other in a cycle of creation and reflection on pre-existing knowledge of likes and dislikes.

Purpose: 

The video content, online activities and in-class activities are constructively aligned and explicitly linked to the LOs in relation to the specific project.

Medium as a video: 

‘Video works better than audio for practical-based learning’ (IMPALA model commentary). The points raised in my self-evaluation for Medium are strengths:

For an art and design course, I cannot imagine audio-based learning having much success. Students undertake a VARK test in Foundation before progressing to BA, and in the past 2 years not more than 10% of students have self-identified as ‘auditory’ learners. For this reason I believe it needs to be video-based to engage learners visually in my discipline of Illustration. A huge majority of learners identify as kinaesthetic, over 50%, and the collaborative instagram task attempts to address this. Peterson et al. (2015) describes the studio as ‘where learning emerges through action’, and suggests that the ‘studio model of learning’ is important in the use of technology to ‘foster a learning community’.

Instructor’s presence in videos has been found to affect the students’ sense of community and emotional connectedness (Jäminki 2008; Shea et al. 2005; Swan et al. 2009) and perhaps this is something I could revise somehow in the video through animating over the top of a video of myself talking. I am not comfortable in front of the camera and other research suggests that instructor presence ‘increases enjoyment but has no effect on recall or comprehension (Griffin, Mitchell and Thompson 2009; Dey, Burn and Gerdes 2009), which makes me question the necessity of it. If enjoyment is linked to increased engagement and watch time, then I believe it is worth it (although I have no found any research addressing this yet). 

Length also relates to the points raised about students in art and design contexts identifying as kinaesthetic learners. These students do not learn well through passive activities such as reading and listening. They learn through doing. I was surprised that various PGCHE peers responded positively to Ian’s suggestion on my evaluation that short videos are ‘giving into the snapchat generation’, as I honestly found this to be quite dismissive of different learners’ needs, taking into consideration VARK models and learning disabilities (of which there is often a higher incidence in art and design students). My exchange with Ian reminded me of what I had read by Stein and Graham (2014) about the absence of emotional engagement in online learning that can reduce motivation to participate. This led me to further reading this week on the issue of affective engagement in online learning in Boelens et al. (2017).

This week I also read about ‘transactional distance’ (Moore 1993) which refers to the increased psychological and communication space as a result of online learning, which can make social interaction more difficult. This transactional distance can increase the likelihood of student misunderstanding of instructor input (Moore 1993; Chen et al. 2014). This can also result in a reduced motivation to learn (Osguthorpe and Graham 2003).

Structure: releasing the videos in installments so as not to overload students with information at the beginning of a project, as project-based learning is sequential and students need to develop past certain initial stages of the creative process before they can consider deeper theoretical challenges. 

Style: Simple aesthetic and inclusion of humorous illustrations / playful sound design to try and make the videos more entertaining. Boelens et al. (2017) cite humour, encouragement and empathy as ways to encourage an affective learning environment, based on research (Mazer et al., 2007; Plax, Kearney, McCroskey, & Richmond, 1986; Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2013).

Areas to improve: 

Convergence: 

The activities surrounding the flipped classroom - my design did not accommodate well for pre-flipped classroom activities that could have prepared students better and improved their understanding of the video (eg. by talking them through the brief before releasing the video). This relates to what I have read about Garrison and Vaughan’s ‘design considerations’ for four cyclical phases of blended learning: before, during, and after face-to-face class sessions (and preparation for the next session).

I could have gathered feedback from the previous cohort and what to include in the webcasts. 

Capacity: 

Cohort size is an issue for the instagram activity based on Mason’s (1994) estimate that only 1/3 of students actively engage with online activities and in a cohort of 6, that means only 2 will actively engage. This made me think about possible ways of increasing student accountability in the task, such as being in designated pairs for the instagram activity (it could be that the activity would need to be adapted a little to account for this, such as students making it clear what/who they were responding to in their posts). 

In future webcast could be further integrated by engagement being part of the assessment evidence of the brief? 

Further thoughts:
Inclusivity:

I am really unsure about whether online learning is beneficial to lower achievers or not, as the literature on this subject includes a wealth of research that has had many contradicting outcomes. Numerous studies have cast doubt on whether flipped classroom/blended learning makes a positive difference (Jensen et al. 2015; Eichler and Peeples 2016; Davies et al. 2016; Hotle and Garrow 2016; Boassaer et al. 2016; Song and Kapur 2017; Goates et al. 2017), and questions have been raised about whether low achievers possess the necessary skills for independent learning (Owston et al, 2013; Bossaer et al. 2016).  Inclusivity is also a serious issue to be raised in blended learning, which Jump (2010) declaring that technology may simply ‘enhance the barriers’ faced by students with financial, time and cognitive constraints.

A comment from Anna Roberts on one of my posts from the third week acts a reminder that a blended course should not result in an increased workload for students, but should be replacing onsite activities (Stein and Graham 2014). This made me question whether I had in fact increased the workload of my students, but in reality I had only added the instagram activity as something new, but I consider this activity to be very useful to the project if done as intended. 

A post by Joy Maccarthy in which she spoke about recording some of her reflections as audios, prompted me to consider recording some of the in-class discussions with my students and uploading them to Canvas so that students can revisit feedback they were given, that often gets lost in face-to-face conversation if it hasn’t been written down. However, my new cohort is proving to be very challenging in terms of motivation, and where I have previously encouraged independent peer-led group discussions, I am aware that this approach is not currently working for my current students. I intend to record discussions this semester (perhaps starting with the next project), but at the moment I will need to bring students in to discuss their work in detail in tutor-led group discussions, as I cannot currently rely on students to be doing this independently.

Prompts:

Conflicting research about the benefit of the flipped classroom to low-achievers (Owston et al, 2013; Bossaer et al. 2016), combined with my own unsuccessful flipped classroom pilot, left me doubting the value of the flipped classroom in engaging these students. Selwood (2020) and Oradini (2020) helped me recognise that continued contact with the flipped classroom may ultimately benefit low-achievers most, and that low-motivation is complex and dependent on various factors, including the balance between workload complexity and quantity (Kyndt 2010), authenticity (Bloxham and Boyd 2007) of the task, the successful integration of online and face-to-face tasks (Jin-Young 2018), learners' online communication self-efficacy (Hung et al. 2010) and misunderstandings of learners’ assumed prior knowledge (Taber 2001).

Dixon (2020) raised concerns about the relevance of online learning to art and design pedagogy, and research by Peterson et al. (2015) supports the idea that blended learning must be used to enhance the ‘studio model’, not distract or dilute it. The ‘online lecture’ and ‘transmission’ of knowledge model associated with the flipped classroom  is problematic for creativity (Uskokovic 2018) and a discipline in which “reverse-transmission” (Orr et al. 2014: 6), from student to lecturer, can, and even should, take place.

279 words w/out references

Further points that that could be considered in summary reflection week 4-6

I thought it was very interesting what Salmon (2013) said about time taking on ‘a new dimension’ online, as I had launched a series of e-tivities yesterday to my cohort that reflected what the students would have comfortably completed in-class, and I received complaints about the ‘volume’ of work being too high. She notes that a half-hour activity could take an entire week in ‘elapsed time’, and that one of the most common mistakes made by e-tivities designers is underestimating the time needed for achieving an e-tivity. This is quite shocking to me, as art and design is dependent on high quantities of work in order to produce high quality outcomes, and I wonder whether e-learning may reduce student output and therefore lower performance.

I found Salmon’s recommendations for ‘creating rhythm’ particularly helpful, to establish patterns of online working, constantly requiring students to build on the work of each other and give/receive feedback and to constantly provide reasons for students to be returning online.

A piece of research recommended by Bennett (2020) highlighted to me the impressive gain in collaborative idea generation when moved online. Deakin and Webb's (2016) study showed that face-to-face brainstorming resulted in 25 ideas and online brainstorms resulted in 100-125 ideas.

When designing my online course, Selwood's (2020) course draft mentioned the use of remote textile printing, and for some reason it reminded me of something I had read in EDU710 about chemistry courses using online laboratory simulations (where?) for students to learn through experimentation, and this made me realise that simulations could be used in Illustration for students to learn Printmaking processes. Printmaking involves many different processes that can be quite complicated, and simulations of these processes would allow students to learn and practice from a distance, before going into any real-life print rooms accessible to them in their area.

Moving to online teaching this last week has highlighted to my teaching team just how many students neither have computers nor the software needed, or they have computers that are very old and cannot run the software. However, I have also learned about 'remote access' this week, which can be provided to students on a VPN and allows students to access an on-campus computer and use both the software and the memory of the computer, meaning it does not matter if their computer is old, as they will essentially be 'streaming' through another computer. Student problems with technology led me to create pre-requisites in my online course design that require students to have the necessary equipment to study, although the remote-access possibility opens this up to simply needing 'a computer'.

As Oradini (2020) mentioned in one of the forums about the use of augmented reality in medicine, technological developments are moving at such speed that ambitious solutions can be suggested without being unrealistic. The timing of the coronavirus and the increased workload and stress led me to design my initial online course on the existing module I'm teaching, to streamline my workload at a very challenging moment in my life. However, in the coming weeks I may find I adjust and start to tweak this module into a more ambitious design that incorporates some of the things I wanted to introduce in my assessment design from EDU710.

Up until now, I had been creating online video lectures for my students to watch on Youtube. As mentioned previously, I am working with an exceptionally unresponsive cohort of students, and moving to online has brought with it a whole new headache of challenges to try and overcome, now from a distance. After giving an online lesson for the Foundation programme at EBAC, I realised I can change tactic, and I will be interested to see if this has any impact on my students. I will now only be offering activities and lectures in real-time through presentations on zoom (as students appear to have stopped watching the videos). I will be moving to a one-to-one sign up tutorial system, instead of inviting them to general 'group tutorials' and asking them to create blogs for their work and research. They simply do not upload their work to Canvas when asked to, and if asked to bring it to a video tutorial, they are not showing up. Dependent on the result of this new strategy, it may influence what I have written in my initial course design, although I should consider that these strategies are targeting students that are specifically unmotivated, experiencing extreme psychological circumstances and that did not choose to study an online course.

Reflective Prompts:

Think back to what you learned earlier this week about Characteristics of the Successful Online Student (Illinois Online Network, 2007):

Reflect back and refer to the first discussion forum of this week, on your experience of being online learners. Imagine you were an online tutor working on this PGCHE module EDU720: Developing Flexible Learning Environments:

It was useful to research about techniques to deal with disruptive online behaviours. While I haven't encountered many of the examples in my online teaching experience to date, it was useful to be prepared for the scenarios presented to us, and other scenarios I read about in research literature. It was quite clear that the majority of disruptive behaviours are a result of poor course design, perhaps because explanations of expectations and appropriate use of discussions was not clear or structured (Anderson et al. 2001; Paloff and Pratt 2007). More extreme behavioural issues seem to be dealt with in two ways: direct messages to the students or by simply doing nothing (Cowden 2011;  Posner 2016). Direct messaging was shown in research to be used by 86% of teacher with a high success rate in resolving these situations (Posner 2016). Importantly, it was clear that the more extreme students should not be responded to publicly (Ko and Rosen 2010), because this can aggravate the situation. Confirming common strategies used by teachers in dealing with these behaviours is useful to gain confidence in the strategies I have used myself with a current student who fits the 'saboteur' profile. Important aspects of course design that can avoid these behavioural issues appearing in the first place include... establishing 'netiquette' behaviour in the introduction week (Bloxham and Boyd 2007; Meyer 2008; Cowden 2011; Li 2012) / course discussion post examples and a rubric? (MacKinnon 2000; Lai 2012) / open-ended prompts and directions to respond to each other's posts (Dennen 2001; Salmon 2013) / providing an online social space for off-topic discussion (Harasim et al. 1995) / the institution having an online communication policy that can be referred to in extreme cases (Galbraith and Jones 2010; Posner 2016). An important thing I learned from reading Matt Dixon's (2020) strategy for dealing with these students is that his first response was pastoral care, and I think it's important to highlight that this should always be the first response to any behavioural issue.

I have read into the debate about assessing discussion forums extensively this week, which has been really useful and interesting even if just to clarify my own thoughts and feelings on the subject. This arose when I was considering my response to 'the black hole' learner profile, as I remembered reading that assessing discussion forums was a contested issue. I wanted to know if there were case studies that explained why it was beneficial or had a negative impact, and why. I understood that assessing discussion forums can lead to increased participation (Hew and Cheung 2012), although there is evidence that voluntary participation can lead to enhanced learning outcomes (Weisskirch and Milburn 2003). Assessing discussion boards can increase anxiousness about contributing and limit spontaneous discussion (MacKinnon 2000), and these feelings were confirmed by Jo Reynold's (2020) shared experiences in the forums this week. Combining these anxieties with learning disabilities such as dyslexia or even for non-native English-speaking students, it is easy to imagine how assessed discussion might negatively impact some students. This made me think carefully about the PGCHE course structure and strategy to ensure discussion participation through the assignment that requires continuous reflection for each week, combined with a specific learning outcome for collaborative peer-learning. I believe this to be a preferable strategy to ensure participation, and I think some of the analytical tools used in VLE systems to give data on user word counts, lexical variation and critical thinking skills may actually be more useful in the prevention of plagiarism than as a tool for assessment. 



Subject-Specific and collaboration lacking! -- what about that text I saw that said academic writing shouldn't be a part of illustration education? Want to read about synchronous learning!

Prompts: