TechTalks Transcript
Collaboration Technologies and Strategies for Teaching and Learning�
April 4, 2002
Audio
• Streaming
MP3
• Download
MP3 (Download
Tips)
 Judith Boettcher [JB] |
 Howard Strauss [HS] |
 Julie K. Little [JL] |
 John M. Peters [JP] |
JB: Welcome to the CREN Tech Talk Series for Spring of 2002 and to this session on Collaboration Technologies and Strategies for Teaching and Learning. You are here because it�s time to discuss the core technologies for your future campus. This is Judith Boettcher, your CREN host, and our session is coming to you today with the support of the CREN member institutions. I�d like to welcome Howard Strauss of Princeton, our well-know web technology expert, portal expert and our technology anchor. Welcome, Howard.
HS: Thank you, Judith. I�m Howard Strauss, the technology anchor for the Tech Talk series of technology webcasts. In this webcast, I invite you to join Judith and me in a lively technical dialogue with our guest experts, Julie Little and John Peters, that will answer the questions you�d like answered about collaboration technologies for teaching and learning and ask those very important follow-up questions. You can join in this dialogue by sending your questions via e-mail to expert@cren.net anytime during this webcast. If we don�t get to your questions during the webcast, we�ll provide an answer in the webcast archive. When I was a lad, just three-foot-three/certain questions occurred to me./So I asked my dad very seriously/�Tell me about collaboration technologies for teaching and learning, please.� He said, �Son, go speak to my friend Ben Franklin, one of the most famous Philadelphians�except, of course, for me.� So I went to see Ben and he said, �Howard, early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.� But I was already getting up early and my mom was making me go to bed even earlier than my big sister. And while we were both healthy, neither of us�especially my older sister�were wealthy or wise. So Ben�s ideas definitely didn�t work. There had to be more to teaching and learning than this. So I went back to my father and he said, �Son, go speak to my good friend, Professor Piaget, the famous Swiss psychologist.� So I went to Geneva to see Piaget and he said, �Howard, the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction with logically embedded structures, superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower, less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones, up to adulthood.� Well, coming from Piaget, I knew this must be true but it was clear as mud and confusion made my head go round. So I asked a gardener what she had found. She said, �Son, it is very simple. You just need a green thumb.� But I didn�t want to work with plants. I just wanted to know the best way to acquire knowledge, and so I continued on my quest until after 93 years of wandering the earth, I made it to the Oracle of Delphi who said, �Son, I�m afraid you�re too late. You know you can�t teach an old dog new tricks!� But having wandered the earth for so long, I had learned quite a few tricks. John Lennon said that life is what happens to you while you�re making other plans, and education happens to you all the time, no matter what you do. After all, we all know that experience is the best teacher. But is there a best way to learn? Is Plato�s mentorship model, the talk and chalk method, learning by sharing, learning by collaboration or just hard work and persistence the surest path to knowledge? It might be that the answer is different for different people and for different skills. It would not be surprising to discover that the way one learns to be a great actor is very different than how one learns to be a great mathematician. When we add information technologies to this equation, we are certain to raise even more questions. How does electronic interaction, for example, compare with real interaction as a learning tool? When PowerPoint slides get as overused as scribbling on the blackboard with chalk, does it offer any real improvement? Can all this information technology stuff really improve a student�s ability to do creative writing? Any serious discussion of these issues, like Ben Franklin�s kite, is sure to attract lightning. But though Franklin, Piaget and a host of others have failed me, with Judith�s help, I�ll try once more by asking John and Julie to tell us about collaboration technologies for teaching and learning on today�s webcast of Tech Talk. Judith?
JB: Thank you, Howard. I must say that I am overwhelmed by the poetry and achieving parity is going to be difficult in the next session here. Let me segue and introduce our experts. Our first guest is Julie Little. Julie is the Director of Educational Technologies and Innovative Technology at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In this role�and she has many others�she supports faculty in the integration of technologies into teaching practice. Welcome, Julie.
JL: Thank you, Judith.
JB: Great! And then our second expert today is John Peters, and John is a professor of Educational Psychology and the Coordinator of the Doctoral Program in Collaborative Learning at the University of Tennessee. He�s also co-author of a coming book on facilitating collaborative learning and we look forward to hearing a little bit more about all of this including the innovative doctoral program. Welcome, John.
JP: Thanks, Judith and Howard.
HS: Julie, what�s wrong with talk and chalk anyway? Most teaching today is done with talk and chalk. Why do we have to improve it?
JL: Well, not only because the chalk can be bad for those that are breathing in the dust or that like to wear a lot of dark clothing or the fact that the chalk might be missing from the tray, really that it provides very little opportunity for student input if it�s just the writing on the chalkboard and the instructor talking to the student. Then where is the opportunity for the student to respond to what is on the board, to respond to the faculty member, to create new knowledge which would be even going up to the board and writing on the board? So I wouldn�t say that it�s wrong. It�s just outdated in terms of the opportunities with technologies that we have and with opportunities to open up a more learner-centered environment that it might not be the appropriate tool anymore.
HS: John, do you want to talk about what a couple better models might be than talk and chalk?
JP: Well, again, I think �better� is relative to subject matter. The situation [inaudible]��
HS: So you�re saying talk and chalk still works for some things, it still may be the best choice for some things.
JP: That�s right, and you said it earlier. You know, there�s no one best method for all�all subjects, all people. And we�ve tried to identify at least three broad alternatives. I�m sure there are more and they are variously [inaudible].
HS: Could you talk about those?
JP: Well, we�ve developed three types of teaching and learning, Joe Armstrong and I specifically. Type one is something we call teaching by transmission and learning by reception. Type two is teaching by transmission and learning by sharing and the third type is simply collaborative learning, where people jointly construct knowledge.
JB: The first type is what a lot of folks refer to as the stooge on the stage, John, right?
JP: Yes.
JB: Okay, and then��
HS: So if we were to describe that, it would be teacher stands in front of the room. Whole bunch of students sit in some lecture area and the teacher just transmits knowledge to the students.
JP: Pretty much. The assumption is the teacher knows and the students don�t and the teacher tells the students, whether they�re standing in front or not. But the most familiar plan of that is, indeed, what you described for the lecture.
HS: And you�re saying that that�s good for some kinds of things. Could we take a stab at what that�s good for?
JP: Well, if there�s theory, say, to be communicated, told about, people informed about it. Like I say, our equations formally, things that are seen to be fixed or at least actual and necessary for the next experience. Something has to be said and done quickly, not invented [inaudible] or not invented anew. It�s there, it needs to be known by others.
HS: Does that mean that for lots of introductory courses, this is the kind of thing that still might be best?
JP: Introductory if, indeed, they�re seen to contain concepts that are factual information and so on that people need to go on with, go on to the next level, post introduction. But even in some introductory areas, I can think of there being room for construction, but predominantly, I believe you�re right. Type one would be useful.
HS: Okay, and you said type two was learning by sharing?
JP: Type two is learning by sharing. The assumption there is that the students have something to offer one another, perhaps even the teacher, but they have something in their own experience, their own prior educational experiences to bring to the concept or the ideas that the teacher has and therefore make meaning for themselves and help each other make meaning.
HS: And what kind of things�where would that be used, as opposed to the teaching by transmission?
JP: The most familiar form or the thing most commonly called type two would be cooperative learning. That was made popular in the K-12 arena but adopted by higher ed institutions here and there. The subject matter, well, I think the social sciences, the professional colleges and so forth have maybe better uses or more uses for that sort of thing.
HS: But this means that the teacher and the students are kind of working together here.
JP: More the students are working together. The teacher would still be the primary expert and the concept would still be primarily known by, studied by, accessed by the teacher and the students have to come up with it.
HS: I�ll just push you on this point a little because it sounds like the students are actually collaborating and I think some people might think this is collaborative learning, and you said type three is collaborative learning.
JP: Yeah, oftentimes these two things are used interchangeably. Cooperative leaning and collaborative learning. We tried to make a distinction between the two. In cooperative learning, or type two, again, the teacher�s knowledge or the teacher�s access to knowledge is the primary thing. The students are merely trying to come out with an understanding consistently of what the teacher already knows, but they just work together in doing so. I call them cooperating and not call them collaborating when they do so, but they�re primarily doing it in terms of what he or she knows, the teacher. In the type three case, collaborative learning, the teacher actually joins the students as members of a group and they jointly construct something that no member, including the teacher, really can come up with on his or her own.
HS: So is the teacher a facilitator? I mean, the teacher has no special knowledge, but is the teacher the facilitator then?
JP: The teacher can and often does have special knowledge, but the teacher doesn�t assume the all and end-all, that there�s room for further construction or new construction, and their task is to be an expert but not the expert and to be a facilitator as well. So they have a dual responsibility in that case.
JB: John, in terms of going back to the three examples, all three types of learning�would you use them all within the same class gathering?
JP: Not necessarily, but if there�s room for the use of collaborative learning, type three, chances are there�ll be room for the other two. But not necessarily the other way around.
JB: Okay. So you might have a class gathering with the first two but then in other words
JP: Or just the first one, right. Yes.
HS: Okay, now we have these three kinds of learning sort of spelled out, maybe we can talk a little bit about how we apply technology to this. Julie, you�re the Director of the Innovative Technology Center. I actually like the word �innovative� very much there. I�ve seen all kinds of everything else in front of TC. Innovative is a good choice! What does that group do, Innovative Technology Center.
JL: Our core mission is to work with faculty here at the University of Tennessee to bring technology effectively into their teaching practice, however that�s defined. In some cases, it�s in the face-to-face classroom. In some cases, it could be augmenting through the web or totally online.
HS: And how do you do that? I�m a faculty member. I�m happily going along and teaching Psychology 203. How does your group get involved with me?
JL: Well, we have several opportunities for faculty. We offer courses, workshops, usually an hour, two hours, sometimes three hours, that might teach your initial skills but we really try to focus on after looking at what the power of a particular application might be, then let�s look at the appropriate pedagogical applications of a tool in your teaching. A lot of that is working one-on-one with faculty to find out what is their style, what is the content, what�s their typical learner like? What are they comfortable with? Where do they have access to? What do they already know?
HS: So you�re not building courses or websites for faculty, you�re teaching them skills so that they can do that stuff themselves, is that right?
JL: Absolutely! We really want the faculty to learn how to do this for themselves and to take on as much as they have time or interest or already have in terms of skills that are under their belt, ready to apply. So we will develop for, but we find that in many cases when we develop for, it�s just as large a learning curve to take ownership of that development. So how do you execute a course that�s been developed for someone? You really have to have that content expertise and a course or even an instructional object or module really needs to have the instructor�s�the artistic side of teaching. Not the science side, that�s the instructional design side, but the artistic side which would be how they prefer to deliver and interact and communicate with their students. We also work one-on-one with consultation and we have some small incentive grants that we offer faculty to get them started or to create a seed opportunity for a larger grant.
HS: What kind of things do you teach them? Do you teach them Word or HTML or C++?
JL: No. Well, we used to teach HTML before course management systems came along, like Blackboard, which is the core tool that�s used here at the University, or something like WebCT where you do not have to know HTML. If you do, it just further enhances a page. We teach PowerPoint, you know, the streaming within PowerPoint. We look at all kinds of using digital media, how to use the flatbed scanner, a 35mm slide scanner in order to create databases and archives, how to create CGI forms where they can create surveys or evaluations in their classes to get student feedback regarding either the course or their teaching or an activity. We really try to stay away from a lot of the file-name-start kind of experiences and really look at not so much about the tool, but what you might want to do with the tool because here the tools constantly change. Probably our most popular activities are PowerPoint because it�s that direct translation from the overhead slide and the transparency. But we see a real growth in online communication tools. Faculty want to know, �How do I communicate more with my students? How do I communicate better? How do I get them to communicate with each other?��
JB: How actually--you know, we were talking today about collaboration technologies, Julie. Which of the technologies really support collaboration?
JL: Well, if you wanted to look specifically at e-mail as probably the most pervasive and widely-used and it certainly can create community.
HS: And [inaudible].
JB: Yeah, that sounds�it�s not something that one would immediately call a collaboration technology. What kinds of things do faculty do with it that really turn it into a collaboration technology?
HS: Well, within Blackboard, for example, you have immediate access to grouping students with e-mail within the groups or e-mail within the entire class and you can facilitate discussion through an e-mail, similar to what we might do with our professional listserves or our private listserves as we interact with people of similar interests on topics of similar interest and it�s all done through our e-mail vehicle.
JB: Are students solving problems in e-mail or just what are they doing?
JL: Absolutely, especially when they�re involved in team projects. That would probably be the primary mode of communication. Most people are logged into their e-mail all the time so the students are interacting with each other. In my own example, this semester I�m teaching a class about effective teaching and learning online and the students have the option of several tools at they�re working on the collaborative project, which is to develop an online workshop. And I�ve found the majority of them were communicating and problem solving and developing and designing and critiquing with each other via e-mail. So it seems to be the initial tool of choice, the comfortable tool of choice, I suspect because it�s been in our arsenal the longest.
JB: [inaudible]�
HS: Do your students at Tennessee live on campus?
JL: We have students that are on campus as well as off campus.
HS: I guess I wonder why the on campus students don�t just get together rather than use e-mail. What does e-mail buy them, as opposed to getting together?
JL: Well, I imagine that there are those that do get together, but in the case of the commuting student that might be in a class with students who live on campus or students that live in other dormitories, many times it�s relative to time and place. And if a student is working or if they�re involved in a lot of activities, they may not be able to come to a face-to-face meeting. But that means with e-mail, they can still engage and interact with others. It may not be real time. It�s done through e-mail.
HS: What does this do to the faculty member? Even something simple like this. I assume it means now that the faculty member has to monitor the e-mail lists and has to interact. So the faculty member, even when the class is over�even when office hours are over!�still has more stuff to do. Does this just add to the burden of faculty?
JL: Well, one of the things that we really work with faculty is how to triage your e-mail and give them some tips and tricks in terms of when a student really has a problem, that they can identify a word in the subject line so a faculty knows this is something I need immediately to take care of. And so I think that kind of teacher direction comes in very effectively when stating that these are the ways that you need to communicate with me to help me triage through all my e-mail because it can be completely overwhelming. Just as soon as you join into a listserve, especially if it�s a very chatty listserve, that your in box could be filled up very quickly. And it can be overwhelming. And you learn to monitor and take a look at what the students are asking and those that really need immediate problem solving vs. those that are communicating, you�re just staying aware of their communication. It also depends upon how you apply in terms of assessment a student interaction. Some people count e-mails in terms of participating in a class and��
HS: If I were a student [inaudible]�
JB: [inaudible]�
JL: [inaudible] encourage faculty to do that. Absolutely not! I mean, to me, that�s not an indicator that someone is participating in a course. It just meant that they�re hitting SEND or hitting REPLY. But a lot of times, faculty just want to monitor the kind of dialogue, especially if a problem gets out of hand or a direction goes in the wrong direction, they might be able to intervene at that stage. So it does take more time, but if you can manage those e-mails through some techniques I just mentioned, I think that it is not as burdensome.
HS: John, going back to your type three collaborative learning thing, if we were to look at that one, what kind of technology can we apply to that that would be useful in that mode? Anything more than e-mail?
JP: Well, not really. Julie, what do we call those messages on the��
JL: The discussion board.
JP: The discussion board. It�s�my�it reminds me of like e-mail but it�s somehow qualitatively different. We were able to, last spring, for example, Howard, do some collaborative learning online by constructing messages back and forth to one another. They weren�t e-mails in the sense that people sent out these things to a listserve and what people saw on their screens was as usual. They were actually, I would say, pieces of text more than just messages to��
HS: Kind of like a thread of discussion.
JP: Yeah, exactly. So you could organize those in various ways, by subject or by person, as long as you know it. And that lent itself to construction a little bit more than the back-and-forth, back-and-forth, one piece at a time e-mail.
JB: Were they longer pieces of text, John? Is that the length a critical factor?
JP: I wouldn�t say so, Judith, although my guess is that they might be a shade longer than the e-mails that I get. [inaudible] a few people, of course. But the advantages I saw in the use of that type is we could thematize the material pretty quickly and that really helped us to focus on what is being constructed. And people were able to address the themes as much as they were or more than they were each other in e-mail. I�d see people talking to one another. In this other format, I see people talking to one another and to the topic. You see the difference?
JB: Were they more reflective, perhaps?
JP: They were. Yes. Indeed, it takes some getting used to in order to pull that off. Not everybody�s accustomed to, for example, asking the receiver, the one who reads his or her mail, what do they think? But that imitation [?] oftentimes does make it interactive and then something occurs between which can be identified as their idea. And then that attracts others� interest and so forth.
HS: These collaboration things that you�re talking about seem to work just fine if people are anywhere around the world so it�s�I mean, you don�t have to be on campus, even, to do this kind of stuff. So is this really designed for distance education or is this stuff still good right on campus?
JP: In my experience, both. I don�t [inaudible]. It enables us to do things at a distance we couldn�t have done earlier without the technology, but it also enhances what we do on campus. My own students are on and off campus, mainly computers, but mainly in this area�Tennessee�but in that course I mentioned, they participated as well as people from Australia and Europe and I couldn�t tell the difference in terms of their attention to the mail, our e-mail or the message boards or to the quality of their work, whatever else I usually go by.
HS: So you actually had a class where there were some students on campus, John, and some scattered around the world?
JP: Yes, I did. It was
HS: Just a common bunch of students all taking this thing together at the same time?
JP: That�s right, and it involved face-to-face and online instruction and two different courses, one here and one in Australia, and then four faculty members�virtual visiting faculty, if you will�from other parts of the world. So in combination, we ran a course but it had several different parts, traditional and not so traditional.
JB: Was this a course offered as part of your doctoral program that you have offered?
JP: Yes, indeed. And the focus was on social construction and we were basically able to reflect on the very process we were studying as we developed the course, as we did the messaging and so forth.
HS: But it really was a distance education course, and I guess I�m a little lost here as to�you had face-to-face contact, obviously not with the students from Australia. How did that work?
JP: Well, I wouldn�t call it a distance education course, not in the sense I understand distance education. But rather than send our resources out to them, we relayed [?] most resources into this campus and to the one in Melbourne. We joined each other online, basically. How did it work? The professor responsible for the course in Australia and her students who worked together face to face in their own right and actually took a different stand on the subject and we did ours here in Knoxville and then we jointly talked about what we were constructing in our classrooms. But as much online, as we didn�t limit our talk to what happened in class, although that was a big part of it. We literally constructed as much in between the continents, if you will, as we did in our respective classrooms.
JB: So the person, the faculty member in Australia had his or her own set of students as well as you had your own set of students.
JP: That�s right.
JB: All right. Didn�t get that at first!
JP: I�m sorry.
HS: Julie, what about other collaboration technologies? A lot of people, when they think about collaboration technologies, they think about videoconferencing and NetMeeting and things that enable you to share more than text.
JL: Right.
HS: Are you involved in working on those and how do they work?
JL: Absolutely. I guess we could go through the slew of types of communications technology, but it�s really falling under that umbrella of CMC, Computer Mediated Communication, so if you�re looking at the initial e-mail and then web-based discussion boards, chatrooms�which facilitates the real time, although I think it�s more difficult in the chatroom because things happen very quickly and usually it�s one or two sentences. There�s not a lot of opportunity for reflection and dialogue. It�s a lot of�a great place for brainstorming and initiating, which then you could roll over to a discussion board. You could bring in something like the [inaudible] Symposium which is also supported on our campus by our [inaudible] and Continuing Education Program which allows for a synchronous audio stream and then a web-based shared board such as a PowerPoint board or a shared white space. Similarly in Blackboard, which ITC provides, there�s a shared white space. NetMeeting provides the shared space as well as document and application sharing. Videoconferencing, desktop conferencing, I think that allows us to do more of the real time interaction with individuals and then the opportunity to view that video stream in archive fashion or that audio stream in archive fashion and then react in a discussion board as an extension activity for those that weren�t able to meet during the real time session. And of course, I think we need to always keep in mind the MOO�s and the MUD�s, you know, the multi-object-oriented areas and the user dimension areas. A lot of gaming has occurred with those devices, but here again, they�re shared and described common spaces and it can be done through text and it can be done through a common drawing board.
HS: Okay, we have a question that came in and we are especially pleased to have it come in from as far away as it did. It came in from Russia, from Tamara Kharatenova. And Tamara says, �How do you get students interested in learning through the Internet?� And I think her point is it�s easy to get students to play on the Internet. In fact, it�s probably difficult to stop them. But what kind of learning opportunities are there on the Internet and how do you encourage that? John, do you want to start?
JP: I�Julie would do better at that.
HS: Okay, I��
JP: In my own case��
JB: [inaudible]�
JP: In our own case, I think I�m approaching it by building the Internet capabilities and opportunities into existing courses or courses I�m developing. So the students develop their interests by way of necessity at first and then for most of them, I�ve found, they just keep going. But maybe that initial experience for most is enough for them to taste it. But they get into that first experience by way of, if you will, course requirements. There�s not an initial motivation there that would just speak to their interest on their own.
JB: But you do require, by virtue of the structure of your course, you�ve actually built in requirements that include students interacting online?
JP: In every course, yes.
JB: In every course, okay. All right.
HS: Julie? Since you were supposed to handle this, apparently!
JB: You got handed off.
JP: We�re buddies, you know.
JL: That�s right. Well, I think it�s really about motivation and it�s about effective teaching and so it would be the same question that she could ask in an opposite way, you know. How do you get the student interested in learning in the face-to-face environment? It�s really about the level of engagement, the level of application, personal application. How can they see what they�re learning in real world contexts and how is it going to help them, apply to them? Is the teacher interested in their opinions? Is there opportunity to interact with their peers in the classroom and find out what their experiences might be? And I think that�s the real motivation. It�s about the effective teaching aspect of motivation and is the learner engaged and are they getting rich and rapid feedback? And is there a reasonable time on task and are there opportunities to interact with the teacher as well as with each other? That�s what would motivate someone and presenting a course online as well as a face-to-face, whether it�s enhanced with technology or totally online, to present those variables to the student would get them motivated into learning.
JB: What about�well, first of all, let me remind everyone that now is a good time to send in some questions and to send in questions for Julie and John at expert@cren.net. What about the requirements for the environment? If students are going to learn through the Internet and people are learning at a distance and using these different tools all the way from e-mail to discussion boards, Julie, the streaming audio, video, etc., have you found that students respond depending upon the level and reliability of the technology available to them?
JL: Um��
JB: I asked a long question, sorry about that.
JL: Yeah. Well, I guess you can only respond if it is reliable and if you can�t log on, there�s not an opportunity to respond. It�s kind of the typical, well, you know, the dog ate my homework so I couldn�t turn it in or the network was down so I couldn�t complete my homework. We see a lot of that, or �I couldn�t log on� or something or other with my computer. I don�t think that the students are turned off in terms of not wanting to become engaged with computer based learning. They may use the computer as an excuse, as a viable excuse as always, and I suspect that that will always happen.
HS: Yeah, it was handy.
JL: Yeah. But it is frustrating for them when there is a problem. For example, if there is a lot of stuff that they have to take to download or plug in in order to be able to view a particular application or, you know, we�re not all savvy with all the cables and so forth that go along with our computer and that could also include the interface of a browser. So there are a lot of special configurations that you have to do on your computer. That can be an obstacle to learning. So again, one of the aspects if the teacher�s going to get involved with the technologies is to provide that same kind of comfort zone, management zone as they would in their face-to-face classroom. Is there a chair for everybody to sit in? Is there enough light for people to be able to see? It�s that same physical environment, where there�s at least support, whether it be through the university network with support or whether that be through their own support structure, that the student can get to the learning opportunity. I don�t think students by and large are turned off by it. Maybe a little bit of phobia, if they�ve not had much experience.
JB: Okay. So just to kind of then move on, it sounds like that�s not a problem. What about in terms of creating pedagogically compelling content? How does that factor in the collaborative learning space?
JP: If I understand the question, it sounds a little like what content might lend itself best to collaboration?
JB: Yes, um-hum.
JP: Okay, I think in general, any content in which there is room for creativity, there is room to make it up, if you will�after all, somebody�s got to do that!�and then within that, I think going back to your question about environment, the psychological environment, if you will, needs to be very supportive, very respecting of people�s ideas so that folks are wont to put their ideas out and trust that somebody won�t stomp all over them, but would rather build on them.
HS: What do you do when that happens? That must happen. It happens in classrooms.
JP: Yeah, it sure does, and even when they get stomped on, right?
HS: Yeah, when somebody says �That�s really [inaudible] idea. Richard, how could you possibly���
JP: We use this with some frequency down here. You call them on it.
HS: Is that the responsibility of the teacher?
JP: One of many, one of many.
HS: Or do you try to encourage the other students to do that?
JP: Ultimately they are, but initially the Big F, if we can call them that, the facilitator must do that and continue to do that. But that needs to be something, as you�ve asked, shared by all and that, in itself, enhances the trust environment.
HS: It also seems like, again, just looking at what happens in a classroom, you�ll see somebody will stomp on any idea but you�ll also see some students are very, very timid, who just don�t participate in the class. How do you draw those folks out electronically? I mean, in a class, you can actually see them. Electronically, it seems easier to forget that they�re there.
JP: Well, I think you can�t forget that they�re there if you�re the teacher. You�re looking for them all the time. In the classrooms that I facilitate, I try not to call on people in terms of putting them on the spot but I�ll call on them if they remain silent and not talk. And as soon as I find anything in what they say that can be reinforced and cited as something significant and important, I�ll do that. You know, that�s pretty old reinforcement idea, isn�t it? And as soon as that happens, they�re more likely then to come out the next time. That same thing happens online. There�s very little difference here in my experience in what works online and what works face-to-face in terms of the results of reinforcement and trust-building and so forth.
HS: Probably because we�re dealing with people and [inaudible].
JP: And the same [inaudible], yes.
HS: Julie, I don�t know if you were serious when you said that some people measure or assess how well somebody�s doing by the number of e-mails they send off in a conference. But when we look at assessment in this kind of collaborative learning environment using technology, how do we do assessment? Do we do it differently than we do it in the regular talk and chalk environment?
JL: I think that it lends itself more to the constructive assessment, but to go back to the idea of counting e-mails, at one time that was one of the questions that we got from faculty is, �How do I measure student participation in a discussion board and realizing that they may have been posting that, �Oh, I agree� or �Yes, I�m with you on that�?� Was that a rich response? So we have to look at the context in which the student�and teach the student in terms of how to respond effectively rather than just giving the blessed Amen to what someone else might be saying. But it really is project based, authentic types of assessment vs. the objective types of measurements. And after a while, I find even in my own online course this semester�and I really have to refer to it as �our� course because it�s not mine anymore, it has become ours, the participants in the class and myself��
HS: So they will give you a grade?
JL: We have�yes! And it really, we really created a new learning environment and their ideas have been actively contributing to initial ideas and we�re making new meaning about what is effective teaching and learning online. And we�ve forgotten about this need to try to measure ourselves because our measurement now is the fact that we only have three weeks more of the semester.
HS: But students taking a course, I mean, expect a grade. There�s going to be a grade on your transcripts and things like that.
JL: Right.
HS: So I mean, I personally think that grades are a bad idea, but since they�re required�because students go on to graduate school or go on wherever they�re going�again, how do you do this? When I come into a course, normally the professor sits there and says, �Twenty percent of your grade is going to be the final and 16.2 percent�s going to be a midterm� and so forth. What do you tell students? You�re saying you don�t tell them, �Just write a lot of e-mail�? J: Well, this is not�this is a graduate course to begin with and so it�s been all about the development of our team-based project but [inaudible].
HS: [inaudible] that kind of thing, when you�re doing this thing with undergrads, which the ITC does, right?
JL: Exactly, and there are�if you have the type one type of learning, as we talked about through John and Joe�s model, the idea that there is the need to measure ownership of basic knowledge, fact finding knowledge, formula and these kinds of things, and that�s where objective testing comes into play. And there are wonderful electronic tools for doing that. Within Blackboard, for example, there�s a Quizzing and Assessment Generator within that feeds right into the gradebook and so you can say that 50% of your test is going to be based on these weekly quizzes and then there�s going to be this midterm that�s going to be this percentage. But then to introduce the idea of the participation grade, and how do we measure participation in the face-to-face classroom? From the number of times that hands were raised or students that are engaging with the faculty member or engaging with each other when those opportunities came around? And that�s the same thing in the online classroom. Those that are engaging effectively, not just reinforcing what someone else may have said by saying �I agree� but to engage in the reflective in commentary and to teach the learner to be comfortable with that kind of assessment. And also to teach the faculty member to be comfortable with that type of assessment. It�s an elusive target. It�s not easy to measure as it is to identify whether you got A, B, C, D or E correct.
HS: John, it seems like assessment with your type three thing is the most difficult kind of thing. Is that fair?
JP: Well, type three is a good way for individuals to learn and for groups to learn, and in that, I still look for evidence of individual learning. My evidence is the same online and off and that mainly the plums of student products, if you will, usually are written�perhaps narratives, term papers and the like. So those come in either environment and they come with collaborative learning as well as type one or type two learning. The bonus to type three is the group learning that happens. I don�t grade the group, but the group usually enhances the individual learning that goes on. So really, I may not be answering your question in terms of the difficulty of assessing, but the quality of what I get back when I do assess, however I assess, I believe is enhanced by the group learning experience.
HS: Is there any objective evidence that this collaboration kind of thing really works? I mean, has somebody does a study that compares folks doing something in this collaborative learning way and doing it in the other way? Just to see that this really has real advantages?
JP: Most of the research has been done in the name of cooperative learning. Some people call it, as we mentioned, collaborative learning. The work that Slavin has summarized, for example, some over a hundred studies, doesn�t show overwhelming advantages but it does show advantages in some subject matter areas and few disadvantages. So it works�on my conclusion, it works at least as well as the others in its own appropriate place.
HS: You said it has a few disadvantages. I wonder what they are.
JP: Well, the disadvantages are usually practical, not in terms of outcomes, and the practicality of it is it takes some effort on the part of those teachers who would facilitate this kind of thing, especially in type three. That presents a real need for learning experience on the part of the faculty. I�ve met very few who have come by this naturally or who are already trained when they come into collegiate positions, for example.
HS: Okay. We have a question from David Brown at Wake Forest University, and I think we all know David, actually. And David says, �What tips should be given to instructors who are building collaborative projects, especially technologically enhanced projects?� Julie, you want to try that?
JL: I think the first requirement would be if you�re going to be using online communications or collaborative communications, to look at are you a good facilitator or dialogue? Are you a good facilitator of online communications? And to look at some of those tips and tricks in terms of how do you facilitate a discussion, creating the open-ended question and so forth. If it�s a matter of framing a project that�s a collaborative project, to put clear boundaries without establishing total boundary so that the learners, as they�re creating this project, as they�re designing, developing, working within those parameters, they have that latitude for collaboration. I think the third aspect would be to see if you can find other examples of what it is that you�re wanting to do so that you have a model or framework to see are you comfortable using these kinds of technologies. If it�s too many new software packages, too many types of computer technologies that you�re trying to bring into play that that becomes the focus rather than the learning, then we�ve got to eliminate something because you can get overwhelmed with it.
JB: Julie, if I�m a faculty member and I�ve been doing this for 20 years and you ask me if I�m a good facilitator of dialogue, I�m not certain whether I would know whether I am or not. How do you help faculty with knowing whether they�re good facilitators in this new environment?
JL: Sometimes it�s a little bit of micro-teaching, to ask them �How do you ask questions in your classroom? What are open-ended questions? How do you find a point to move on with students to get them to continue to dig deeper into a topic?� If they mainly ask yes/no, fill in the blank kinds of questions, then that�s not really a dialogue-extending type of facilitation. To show them examples in web-based discussion areas which are rich in dialogue and facilitation that those that aren�t. We�re really trying to teach by model, to show examples of what they might be and to see if that�s comfortable for them. If it�s not comfortable for them, why not? Do they really want to do this? And that might get back to another tip, you know, given to instructors who are building collaborative projects to find out, are they motivated to do it or are they being asked to do it? Because in many cases, those that are being asked or required to do it are not quite as motivated or haven�t bought into it, so it�s a little more difficult.
HS: We have another question from Ken Kelly at UTK. Judith, do you have any idea where UTK is or what UTK is?
JL: University of Tennessee!
JB: I think I answered [inaudible].
HS: Okay, he�s not at dot-edu, he�s at
JB: Actually, you folks may know him. He says that he�s an HRD training student.
JL: I don�t know him particularly, but I know the HRD training program.
JB: There he is, all right.
JP: I see the message. It comes from prodigy.net. The UTK? Oh, I see��
HS: [inaudible].
JP: There it is.
JB: Anyhow��
HS: And John, you�re not supposed to be looking at these messages.
JB: Right!
JP: Oh, but I [inaudible].
JB: Turn it off, turn away!
JP: Okay, I�m done.
JB: Turn it off and [inaudible].
HS: [inaudible] here. Okay, Ken Kelly says, �As broadband increases, so will the complexity of applications used. How can we bring the learning curve for the technology smaller while keeping it very affordable for low income persons? Will we have studios and web stars and not educators?� Will we, Julie?
JL: I hope not.
HS: How are we going to stop that?
JP: [inaudible]�
JL: I think that there are two separate questions there. One is the issue of access and providing access to your learners, and one of the first things you have to do if you�re going to move into an online environment as students are taking a course, if it�s a required course or not a required course, to find out what their access is and do surveying in the beginning of the class. You can find out from the lowest common denominator. Then you know that�s how far you can push the technologies. If somebody is still working on a very low bandwidth, then you can�t work with some of the higher broadband technologies, obviously because they can�t access the material. So we still have to look at working towards the lowest common denominators for some of the technologies because it is an access issue. When it comes to creating web stars or studios and not educators, there will always be the content expertise there. There�s a reason why there is the teacher and the teacher has a certain degree of understanding and has put a framework around the course for however many weeks the course or the learning experience might exist. And so they�ll always be at the center of that development experience or that delivery experience. If they happen to take on a lot of technologies and do a lot of savvy kind of things, well, yeah, then they are a star. But the core is still there. If they�re pedagogically sound, they�re still the educator.
HS: Okay, we had another question which I think is a very good question here. Here�s a question about what happens when you�re successful from Richard Danielson of Laurentian University in Canada. And Richard says, �I use a bulletin board in my classes. In classes of 50 or more, it is very easy to get more than a thousand postings over the course of a term. After a while, the messages become a blur. Some students stand out, but most do not. The task of objectively, validly and reliably measuring the participation is a real problem.� Maybe that�s why counting posted replies is done by faculty, which he says he certainly doesn�t do. His question is, �How do you handle this kind of information overload?� It�s kind of�gee, a thousand posts! How do you ever deal with it?
JP: Well, I did!
JB: Maybe you only did it once, eh?
HS: [inaudible]�
JP: May never do it again. I think that most
HS: This is great success, but if I got a thousand posts! What do you do with that?
JP: It�s a good thing to have in some ways. It�s good news/bad news, but I don�t know, I see a good question in that and this kind of value could be overwhelming. But in our case, I was rather proud of that production on the part of those participating. We only had maybe ten to 25 or 30 people who wrote those thousand or so messages, but they were extraordinarily rich. But they were sortable, if you will. Earlier, we talked about thematizing or sorting messages according to themes and other categories. And I think that helped a lot. That helped a lot in terms of understanding the complexity of the messages rather than just take them one by one. In terms of level of participation by individual students, you could tell the difference. I found myself counting the number of messages per student up to a point. I can see relativeness in some of the participation in terms of how many times they�re on there. Some are on there 40 and 50 times. Others, seven or eight times. I wondered about that. But in most cases, for my students, they were the same folks who were relatively quiet or relatively talkative in class, so that wasn�t surprising nor was it necessarily a problem. I looked inside those messages and in most cases, found a lot of substance that overwhelmed any concern I had with volume. So they were manageable, I guess is what I�m saying.
JB: John, did you structure it in some way so that the expectation was not that you were going to read them all, rather than some students were going to do some summary or filtering for you as a faculty member?
JP: No. No, it was open. It was structured only in that we talked around each of four visiting scholars on messages and so we had two week blocks of talk time online, messaging time, and yet within those two weeks, depending on the scholar and depending on the interest level and so forth, there were more or less messages. So there was nothing that otherwise reduced the number or constrained the people�s participation.
HS: This is really only 20 messages per student. It�s not a lot of messages per student.
JP: No, it�s not, really. That�s right.
HS: And a class of 50 is not like a giant lecture. You sit in a giant lecture, there�s 500 students and they could send more messages. It seems possible for you to have ten thousand!
JB: That�s right.
JL: There�s an example from the Open University where their classes are 1400 that are considered interactive and high communication, and the power of grouping students and you become the facilitator within a group rather than trying to address the needs of every individual. And also kind of giving that permission, that it�s okay to answer someone else�s question. You don�t always have to be the one to answer a question.
JB: That was what I was kind of wondering about in terms of collaboration, as I was looking over some of the material. It mentioned the need for building a community of trust and delegating authority and that type of thing.
JL: Right.
JP: Right.
JB: It looks to me as if, to keep faculty sane, that we�re going to have to figure out how to build some models that mean that they are not going to be reading all these messages.
JP: Yeah. May I comment on that? I think we�ve ironically come all the way around to one of the features of collaborative learning. It�s a student-to-student and student-to-group and student-to teacher and teacher-to-group kind of interaction that we�re talking about. And in the case that I�m citing along the way here, I probably contributed, oh, an average number of e-mails or messages on to this 25 or30 people who participated. Otherwise, they talk with each other. I didn�t feel any obligation to respond to each and every mail. It would be ridiculous to try, but it never occurred to me to do that and one reason it didn�t occur to me is that it was a collaborative effort. So yes, what Judith said, you give people permission to talk to one another and not just to you. That whole point of view is fundamental. If an instructor sets up as the sole source and the sole responder to 50 students hard, they can be worked out of business perhaps if they�ve got a very active group of students. But if you�re entering the experience as one participant among many, then the burden is entirely [inaudible]. JL Distributed.
HS: But doesn�t every student see these thousand posts as well?
JP: Yes, okay.
HS: I mean, it seems like it�s also overwhelming to students. There�s a thousand posts out there, or in a bigger course, ten thousand posts.
JP: There may be ten thousand, but a thousand spread in our case over 15 weeks�maybe not. It�s relative. I don�t know. Ten thousand, I shudder to hear that.
JL: One of the things in the power of the group is that it might be the very same question or issue that�s being addressed, but to take that class of 50 and put it into ten groups of five that are all addressing that is the benefit that everybody in the group must hear everyone else�s responses or having that opportunity to discuss and maybe then elect a representative that might come back to the entire class discussion forum to state, �Here are some of our conclusions� and kind of begin that dialogue with each other. So if you, to break it down for the students as well and to make it more manageable for them, or it could be overwhelming.
JP: And another thing, we form so-called teams online to do the very thing that Julie mentioned and we had the overall forum going on at the same time and we found that nearly all the students spent their time in the overall forum. One group, small group, spent some extra time in their team forum but they all seemed�most of them, at least, seemed to prefer the larger forum where all the other messages were floating around.
JB: That�s interesting! Well, we can invite our participants to perhaps send in their comments or questions or advice on this topic because I think that it is a topic that will benefit from a lot of perspectives on this.
HS: And even if we get a thousand of them, we�ll do it!
JB: If we get a thousand, Howard will respond to every one!
HS: I will respond to every one! But I�m not telling you how long it will take me to respond to everyone. But I will respond [inaudible] security.
JB: Right.
JL: I can�t remember whether we mentioned this, but the visuals for the type one and type two and type three models that Terry has beautifully put online and so for those folks that might enjoy an opportunity to see a graphic representation of these models, they�re up on today�s website.
JB: That�s right. In fact, if our folks have not reloaded recently, I would encourage them to do so because it was put up just right after we started. So reload and you�ll see all those good links to both the collaboration technology sites as well as the descriptions of the types of learning that we�ve been talking about. Okay, Howard, do you have a final question?
HS: Yeah, actually I have 12 final questions! But I have one��
JL: [inaudible] times 24 responses, okay.
HS: I never have just one final question. There�s so many things I still want to know here. But one of the things that strikes me, Julie, you said before we really started this webcast, you were talking about how the folks at Penn State, whatever their ITC group is called out there, do things very differently than you do. You said that your group goes out and tries to teach people tools and things, that Penn State actually builds the courses or websites or things like that. Which technique works better? I mean, I know you�re doing your thing. Why would you have one or the other? Why do you think Penn State�s doing what they�re doing, you�re doing what you�re doing? Which way should other universities go?
JL: I don�t think it�s a matter of better or worse, but it is a matter of an institution choosing a particular direction. Obviously the Penn State model is very supportive of distance education and has a very strong distance initiative and program initiative and the way to recognize getting programs online, getting courses online, getting programs, getting degrees, to speed that up would be to put into place a team of instructional designers and graphic interface designers and programmers and multimedia specialists and online course developers, to put these people in place to work with the subject matter expert, which would be the faculty member, to expedite getting these courses online. And they have invested in that and created a very strong team to do it with the faculty member, but in essence to do it for the faculty member with the faculty member as the content expert, helping them to develop the goals and the objectives in making sure the activities and assessments measure those goals and objectives. In our case, we don�t have the size of the team to do that development for faculty. What we really want to do is to teach the faculty how to do that. We work with them and obviously, we do it for a fee if someone wants to hire us to do a course or develop instructional models or learning objects for them. But our objective is to show faculty how to begin to integrate technology and to do it on their own with our guidance and consultation and critique as they want it, available and ready to think about the next steps when they�re ready to take the next steps. Is one way better than another? I guess it depends upon what the institution�s investment in wanting to get programs and technology-enhanced course produced.
HS: But certainly you�re saying that Penn State method of doing this is more expensive.
JL: Definitely more expensive. But then you might look at what revenue might be generated as the result of having extended customers or clients or students taking these classes vs. those that would be coming to the face-to-face classes on campus. So maybe that return on the investment. I�ve not had an opportunity investigate their business model. I can�t imagine they can do it for long without making money at it.
JB: I think, too, as we talked before during the prep section, I think they have multiple models depending on the course purpose and destination, shall we say?
JL: Absolutely. See, a lot of faculty want to learn how to do it. They want to do it for themselves and I would certainly applaud that direction, too.
JB: Good. Howard, do you have another final question?
HS: Yeah! When you talk about faculty who want to do this, Julie, I wonder about the difference between tenured faculty and untenured faculty. I mean, it seems like untenured faculty can�t afford to do this. They�ve got to be going off and working on getting tenure. Do you find that when you help folks, that you just see tenured faculty?
JL: Not at all! We see both, but it really depends on the departmental leadership with that faculty and how they might recognize the role and the value of the time and energy and research behind using technology effectively in the teaching. In some cases, we see faculty that are highly supported by their departmental leadership and administration that say �Yes, we want you to do these kind of things and we recognize this as being valid and rigorous academic work.� And it�s part of their promotion tenure review. Others that may not have the leadership but have the interest, they�re kind of working undercover and working behind the scenes and doing double time to do not only what the Promotion and Tenure Review Committee wants them to do but at the same time doing what it is that they really are intrinsically motivated��
HS: [inaudible] instructional technology.
JL: Yeah. And so we�re aware that there is�we�re working very hard through our Instructional Technology subcommittee of our Faculty Senate to look at the role of the Promotion and Tenure Review process in the adoption of technology to create at least some guidelines that faculty and departmental leadership and Promotion and Tenure Review Committees can take a look at when investigating someone�s interest and time that they�ve put into using technology and what they�ve developed out of it. So I really think that it�s becoming to be�we�ll see it to be a larger issue and the dialogue will get a little bit louder as more and more faculty are spending time and spending time well, to want to have it recognized.
JB: Great! Just this one final question that I would like to ask! If there was any tool that you would like� END OF FIRST SIDE�
JP: --endless circle.
JB: Okay, got it! I like it, I like it!
JL: Be careful.
JB: And Julie, would you have a quick, short desire as well?
JL: I would absolutely love that environment, being the visual learner that I am. I�d have to say at least to be able to have projected faces so that we can see the smiles and wrinkles in the forehead when there�s inquiry. And those glassy eyes, too, the frustrations of the ones that are, you know, kind of flippant because they�re getting ready to fall asleep. I think that to see the face is something that�s very valuable.
JB: And we want to be virtually there if we can�t be physically there.
HS: I think it�s great that we�re getting back to [inaudible]. I think it�s [inaudible] there.
JB: Well, we started with Plato. Oh, no, we started with Piaget this one today, right?
HS: Plato was [inaudible].
JB: Plato was certainly in the queue somewhere. Okay, let�s close this out. We�re a little bit over time but I�d like to thank everyone for being with us here today and if you do have any follow-up questions, you may send them for a short period of time to expert@cren.net. Join us again in two weeks, on April 18, for a session with Bill Weems and his campus story at the University of Texas Houston on Deploying Digital Certificates on Campus. Many thanks to our sponsors, our CREN member institutions today, and to our Tech Talk experts, Julie Little and John Peters; to technology anchor, Howard Strauss; to Terry Calhoun, Tech Talk web guru; to Jason Russell, Bonnie Boyles and the support team at Merit; to Susie Berneis, audio file transcriber; and finally, a thanks again to all of you for being here. You were here because it�s time. Bye, Julie. Bye, John. Bye, Howard. Bye, everyone.
HS: Bye. Take care.
JP: [inaudible] Bye.
END OF WEBCAST
