Learning Styles and the Online Student: Moving Beyond Reading

By Lynn Zimmerman
Editor, Teacher Education

In his January 30, 2010 article, Reading Ability As a ‘New’ Challenge for Online Students, Jim Shimabukuro focused on the connection between reading skills and the online environment. As a teacher educator, this issue is one of my concerns about online education.  In today’s online environment those who communicate and process well by reading and writing are at a definite advantage, while students who learn and process in other ways may not adapt as easily. As Jim pointed out – reading is more than being able to decode and comprehend words. Therefore, if we want to meet the learning needs of all students, we have to take different ways of learning and processing into account, and use a variety of strategies and techniques to promote learning (see Howard Gardner’s webs site about Multiple Intelligences http://www.howardgardner.com/MI/mi.html or the Illinois Online Network’s page called Learning Styles and the Online Environment at http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/id/learningStyles.asp )

Part of the answer is having technology that will handle audio and video, which can be a challenge. For example, this semester I am teaching a class online that I usually teach as a hybrid. There is a video clip that I usually show my students and after determining that I would not be infringing copyright, I enlisted the aid of our AV people to put the clip into a format that my online students could view. It works great if you are using one of the computers in their computer lab. However, for some reason that no one can pinpoint, the link will not work properly everywhere. On the computer in my office on campus, I get audio only. At home, I get nothing. My students are supposed to watch this clip next week and I have no idea how many of them will actually be able to view it, despite the best efforts of our AV people to make it available in a variety of formats.

On a more positive note, I did have success using Adobe Presenter to record audio onto the PowerPoint presentations that the students will view. In this way, those who prefer to listen can do that and those who prefer to read can read the notes that are part of the presentation. I also located some YouTube videos that I assigned instead of readings on a couple of topics.

However, I have not yet come up with a plan for the students’ being able to produce audio or video clips instead of writing. There are options, of course, but again access to technology can be an issue. I considered asking students to upload an audio or video file as one assignment, but rejected that idea because of the possible problems with technology. I want the students to spend time on the content, not on learning new technology. The best scenario, as far as I’m concerned, would be to have one or two synchronous online discussions using Skype, or similar technology so that students could talk to one another. Maybe next, I can develop something along that line.

To be most effective as a learning tool, online technology has to evolve to the point that students can readily use the skills they already have in addition to (perhaps, while learning) these new skills.

While I agree with Jim,  that “the reading tasks online are therefore a significant departure from the traditional, and they require a whole new set of skills,” I think we need to look at the issue from another direction, too. To be most effective as a learning tool, online technology has to evolve to the point that students can readily use the skills they already have in addition to (perhaps, while learning) these new skills. Otherwise, rather than being an educational equalizer, the online environment will be just another way that we sift and sort students. We will lose those who can’t adapt easily, and we will be educating only those who can.

Social Networking: Weaving the Web of Informal Ties

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

The term networking describes the behavioral patterns that people display to gain, maintain and make use of social relationships in a professional context. The relevance of the concept has increased in recent years due to its ascribed positive effects on individual career paths. Online social networking aims to strengthen informal ties, even within formal settings. These informal connections may ease the stress and stiffness of work-related tasks. People who are part of the informal social network provide resources or further contacts, and reciprocal advantages emerge among the networkers. Examples include simplifying workflows (“cutting through the red tape”), passing on strategic information and mentoring network members in their professional development.

Whereas networking traditionally takes place during conference breaks, in the office’s kitchenette or at the water dispenser, nowadays more and more business contacts are established online. “Social Networking once meant going to a social function such as a cocktail party, conference, or business luncheon. Today, much social networking is achieved through Web sites such as MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn” (Roberts & Roach, 2009, pp. 110-111)

For the majority of students the profile in a social networking community is a natural part of their everyday communication portfolio – just as indispensable as the cell phone or e-mail address.

Since student life is to a great and increasing degree mediated through social networking platforms, academic teachers can hardly ignore these environments.

Platforms such as MySpace and Facebook are likely to attract more student attention than the university’s learning management system. These “social” Web portals form a widely accepted virtual meeting point to deal with the social components of campus life.

This new gathering point challenges academic teachers to find a personal strategy for dealing with social networking sites. Should teachers leave the social networking playground to students or should they actively engage in social networking practices to open up a new communication channel with their students? What platforms are out there to choose from, what appeals to their respective target group and what are the prospects and problems of these Web sites?

Examples

In general, all social networking Web sites are used to organize social contacts online. However, networks differ in their character, which depends on the applications offered, the conventions of use and the kind of relationships displayed in the network. Depending on the character of the site, the member profile page highlights specific aspects of the user’s personality and interests and mediates how he or she interacts with other members. For instance, Facebook, which targets mainly students, features a high amount of informal communication and games, differing in this respect from the platform LinkedIn, which is particularly focused on professional contacts and thus features business recommendations and testimonials. There are numerous social networking sites, which differ greatly in their focus and reach. The following examples are either widely used or specifically target an academic audience:

Facebook: Founded in 2004, the platform has 300 million active users per month. Originally, Facebook was accessible for a limited target group. Until September 2006, users needed the e-mail address of a university to register. Still, students are the dominant member group, though other segments are picking up.

LinkedIn: Since its launch in 2003, the network has attracted 50 million users worldwide. The Web site allows registered users to maintain a contacts list with trusted business acquaintances (so called connections). For student supervisors it is a helpful tool to provide recommendations and support graduates entering the job market.

NING: In this Web community, groups can create and manage their own social network. Ning was launched in October 2005 and has more than 1.6 million members. Examples for e-learning related networks are the AACE Connect community organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) or the Special Interest Group Evaluation of Learners’ Experiences of E-Learning (ELESIG).

MySpace: Since its launch in 2004, the music community and other interest groups continue to heavily use MySpace. Each month 125 million users worldwide log in to their account, search for songs, bands and tour dates, add contacts and post their own photos and videos. Users may continue to access MySpace for political happenings such as the last presidential election or healthcare bill. A rubric dedicated to education and the organization of school events is MySpace School.

ResearchGATE was founded in May 2008. The platform aims to create an international network of scientists and has been quite successful so far. ResearchGATE has 180,000 members worldwide and grows with a rate of approximately 1000 new member registrations daily. The features are targeted to a scientific audience, for instance, supporting the “self archiving” of publications.

scholarz.net has been in existence since 2007 and has approximately 3000 members. The site is a mixture of citation management tool, search engine and meeting point for  scholars. The start-up was originally a research project at the German University of Würzburg. The academic background along with its advertisement free environment adds to the credibility of the site. In the future, their business model foresees member fees.

Prospects

An important part of the university experience is building personal relationship networks. Contacts with fellow students are constantly negotiated, evaluated and maintained collaboratively. Whereas common activities strengthen relationships, inactivity renders them fragile or stagnant at best. Communicating through social networking pages is a means to foster and deepen interpersonal contacts. At this, users are by and large not attracted by the anonymity of the WWW. Despite the potential of global networking, a major amount of contacts maintained through social networks mirrors local binds and relationships to friends, study peers or working colleagues (Livingstone, 2008).

A heavily cited advantage of engaging in social networks goes back to the work and writings of Granovetter (1974). According to the researcher, strong social ties towards friends, neighbors or family members are less relevant for finding a job or choosing a career path than indirect or transient contacts (weak social ties). Social networking platforms make it easier to find indirect connections through visualizing second and third degree contacts. Thereby, one can, with little effort, leverage these contacts and make them a part of one‘s personal network. Plus, the profile page in a social networking site starts to replace the personal homepage. It opens up an easy way to gain experiences in designing Web pages and putting together references and other CV information.

All in all, social networking platforms can be seen as relationship management tools that answer everyday questions of student life. When again is the birthday of my new pal from the introductory course? How can I reach the members of my study group? Short status messages allow for easy navigation in one’s own social network, track activities and keep up to date.  Although students use networks such as Facebook chiefly for informal communication, organizing learning activities is in many cases a sidekick to simply having fun.

Problems

The ubiquitous presence of social networking sites in campus life can develop an unwelcomed dynamic. As a matter of principle, the nature and amount of personal information displayed online should be a personal decision by the individual student. But when all fellow students, the tutors and even the teacher meet on facebook, how can one afford to stay behind? Once a member, the student has to cope with the continuous stream of information. Do I have to react to every short message? Should I also become a member in this new learning network? How many online identities can I manage at a time? The pressure and urge to be ubiquitously present and constantly online can turn out to be detrimental to a student’s learning experience.

The unchecked and uncontrollable aggregation of data and the potential for commercial leverage of member profiles are two central points of criticism when it comes to social networking. Different providers follow specific business models, e.g., collecting fees for special services or unlimited storage, advertising general and personalized products based on information in the members’ profiles.

The close interplay between the social networking profile and the person’s relationship management results in a state of dependence towards the provider. What happens when the provider changes the terms of use? Facebook, for example, introduced in 2006 the feature “Newsfeeds.” Many users protested against this decision that created more transparency and awareness of personal information (Boyd, 2008). In the end users can only choose between the two options of accommodating or leaving the platform altogether.

Likewise, the postings and comments of other users, which are displayed within one’s own profile, result in a loss of personal control. Each online identity needs continuous maintenance to be free of spam and other unwanted pictures, games or comments. This upkeep is particularly important since employers increasingly use the Internet for background checks.

Teaching and Learning Scenarios

• Coordination: Several academic teachers started using Facebook as a tool for working together with colleagues, tutors, research assistants and students. The short messages and status notifications are ideal for arranging duties and coordinating cooperative tasks. As Sara Dixon from the department of psychology at St. Edward’s University puts it: “It is so fast . . . . They check their facebook profile more often than their email account.” The Creative Writing Network on Facebook is a collection of teaching material shared between academics. As the profile page says: “It’s a place to share book and article titles of craft criticism, announce events related to teaching creative writing, and discuss issues in our field.”
• Narration: Brown & Donohue (2007) describe the use of social networking portals in literature studies. When discussing fictional characters in the classroom, a character specific MySpace-profile offers the link to a context students are familiar with:  “[…] it can be useful to ask what that character’s MySpace page might look like — what might such a character include in their ‘Interests’ or ‘About Me’ section? The MySpace template offers students a way to talk about identity construction in familiar ways.”

Alumni: The German university RWTH Aachen uses the platform XING as a tool to support alumni. The alumni group was established in October 2004 and now has 9000 members. Another example is the facebook group from Thomas College or the University of California group on MySpace.

• Lectures: The media informatics work group of Prof. Oliver Vornberger from the German University of Osnabrück has developed a plug-in for Facebook called social virtPresenter. It allows the distribution of lecture recordings via the social networking site. This supports social navigation through the lecture contents.

Conclusions

Whether or not academic teachers choose to create personal social networking profiles and the degree to which they make use of it is a personal decision, one that cannot be made unambiguously from a pedagogical point of view. Mazer et al. (2007) researched the influence of teachers’ Facebook profiles on student motivation, learning behavior and learning climate. In addition, students were allowed to comment on how appropriate they perceived the teachers’ Facebook profiles. Despite positive effects on student motivation in the experimental setting, the majority of subjects surveyed reported that an in-depth teacher profile appears to them as “unprofessional.”

Since student life is to a great and increasing degree mediated through social networking platforms, academic teachers can hardly ignore these environments. Knowledge and personal experience can help instructors to facilitate media competence, critical reflection and responsible use of social networking tools among students. Whenever an openly accessible Web site becomes part of the official learning environment, teachers have a certain responsibility for the way students present themselves and interact with each other online. If open social networks are to be used, it makes sense to develop a respective “netiquette.” Furthermore, teachers need to create awareness of privacy settings.

Social networks with an academic focus, such as ResearchGATE or scholarz, offer the advantage of features that are tailored to the target group of researchers and students. They offer options to manage citations, post presentations and articles, and support educational activities. This makes them a good starting point for teachers to get into social networking.

Online Multimedia: Italian Imperialism

Italian bill on multimedia services

The Italian parliament is presently examining a government proposal of a decree that would modify the law on TV and radio towards the implementation of  “Directive 2007/65/EC [Webcite archived version] of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2007 amending Council Directive 89/552/EEC on the coordination of certain provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States concerning the pursuit of television broadcasting activities.”

The human-readable “schede di lettura” (reading notes) of the Camera dei deputati (Lower House) are available online [Webcite archived version]. The actual bill in legalese has not been officially published online, but an unofficial scan of a fax version is available from several sites, e.g., mcreporter.info/documenti/ac169.pdf (3.7 MB).

Online video = television

While the EU directive’s purpose is to take into account new on demand television offers, the definition of multimedia services in article 4 of the Italian bill also equates Web sites/platforms that offer online video to multimedia services subject to the same obligations stipulated by the bill as television broadcasters, unless their use of video is merely “incidental.” Among these obligations: editorial control, which means – in the case of web sites/platform offering videos – provider’s liability.

Jurisdiction

Article 2 of the Italian bill stipulates that media service providers – including sites/platforms hosting videos in a “non incidental” way, see above – situated in Italy are subject to Italian jurisdiction, i.e., to the bill. The bill’s definition of “situated in Italy” includes media service providers:

• whose main seat is in Italy, even if editorial decisions are taken in another State of the EU
• whose main seat is in Italy, even if service decisions are taken in another State of the EU
• who use an earth-satellite up-link based in Italy

Moreover, article 3, about cross-border broadcasting, of the Italian bill stipulates that Italy  can ask, at the request of EU members, for the block of broadcasts from non-EU countries for motives of:

• public order
• protection of public health
• safeguard of public safety, including national defense
• consumers’ and investors’ protection

and impose a fine of Euro 150.00 – 150′000.00 if the non-EU provider does not comply with the blocking demand.

Paradox of timing restrictions for adult (pornographic, violent) content

One of the paradoxes of considering sites/platforms that offer videos as televisions subject to the bill appears in its article 9, about the protection of minors. This article stipulates that adult (pornographic or violent) content cannot be broadcast between 7 am and 11 pm.

As to the absurdity of applying such a timing limitation to videos offered on the web, see Kine’s ironic remark in the discussion Decreto Romani – Stop ai film vietati in TV e sul Web [Webcite archived version] started Jan. 21, 2010: “Come sarebbe anche al WEB scusa? Non [l]i guardo i film su youjizz dalle 7 alle 23?” (“What, also on the WEB? Can’t I watch videos on youjizz from 7 am to 11 pm?”)

Threat to accessibility

The Italian bill creates a similar absurdity for accessibility: it keeps the EU directive’s audiodescription and  captioning requirements for TV, but it threatens the possibility to use Web sites / platforms offering videos by submitting them to the same  conditions as TV channels. And even if a text-only offering of information and knowledge will pass automated accessibility tests, multimedia is a very important part of real accessibility for all.

The paradox here is that Italy has probably the best legal tools for furthering computer accessibility in EU, and maybe in the world, and actually works at implementing them. See the accessibile.gov.it site of the official observatory for accessibility in the public administration, which recently published Roberto Ellero’s tutorial on Accessibilità e qualità dei contenuti audiovisivi [Webcite archived version]  (Accessibility and quality of audiovisual content).

This tutorial fully integrates a text part and a video provided with Italian and English subtitles:

Webmultimediale

In the text part, Roberto Ellero refers to several pages of www.webmultimediale.org, the main site of  Webmultimediale, a project he founded for the study of online multimedia, and in particular of how the accessibility requirements for online multimedia can be a stimulus for creativity and a great help in education because these requirements also cater to various learning styles.

Webmultimediale is among the projects directly threatened by the bill’s equating of online videos with TV offerings. Not only does its www.webmultimediale.org site make a “non incidental” use of video, but it also has an open video hosting part, www.webmultimediale.it, where people upload their videos with a time-coded transcript in order to caption them. No way either could be maintained if the bill passes. Which means that Roberto Ellero’s tutorial on Accessibilità e qualità dei contenuti audiovisivi [Webcite archived version], commissioned by the government’s Observatory of accessibility in the public administration, would be severely maimed.

I happen to participate in the Webmultimediale project. The jurisdiction conditions in the bill made me think of a discussion about Web accessibility Roberto and I animated at the end of last November. Roberto lives in Venice; I, in Geneva. The discussion venue was the Instructional Technology Forum mailing list, based at the University of Georgia (US) but with subscribers from all over the world, and how we all used variously hosted e-mail accounts. So where were “editorial” decisions made, in so far as there were any? Were they made, e.g., when I embedded a California-hosted YouTube video, made by Roberto in Venice, in the Florida-hosted wiki that we used for background material and, later, to gather the discussion threads? Under what jurisdiction did I do that?

Threat to education

Beyond the Webmultimediale example above, it is the use of multimedia in Italian education that is put at risk by the bill. If it becomes law, what teachers and educational institutions will dare offer a video podcast of lectures, scientific experiments, and use of video in teaching under the threat of being asked to comply with the administrative requirements imposed by the bill for TV broadcasters? Even if they try to upload the videos on a foreign platform and link to them, there would still be a risk that the foreign platform will be considered a television broadcaster and blocked in Italy.

Reading Ability As a ‘New’ Challenge for Online Students

Mary Alexander, Wayne Clugston, and Elizabeth Tice’s The R-Model for Learning Online and Achieving Lifelong Goals (San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc., 2009) is a self-help guide to assessing readiness for online learning. Ashford News published a review (“Top Tips for Online Learning” 1.25.10) this past week, including a summary of attitudes and abilities required for success in the online classroom.

One of the key suggestions is “restructuring,” or rearranging “your life so that you have time to devote to your studies. Online learning removes the travel, parking and childcare issues related to driving to a brick-and-mortar campus, but there is no getting around the fact that you will have to carve out time to read, write, think and interact with instructors and peers.”

The list also includes a reminder to sharpen writing skills since, “as an online student, writing is your sole means of actively participating, building relationships and demonstrating active learning in an online environment.”

The review, however, does not include an item on reading readiness, or the problem of students unprepared for reading online (SUROs). I haven’t had a chance to review the book so I’m not sure if, in fact, this topic is covered. In any case, as an online instructor, I think the lack of effective reading skills is perhaps the biggest obstacle to success.

The crossover from F2F (face to face or real-time) to virtual classrooms is so widespread today that we tend to forget that these are actually very different environments. And one of the key differences is the role that reading plays in web-based classes. In F2F classes, reading is primarily associated with content in textbooks and articles. Procedural instructions are delivered orally and discussed, and printed handouts are used as reminders. In online classes, however, both procedural guidelines and content are accessible only through reading. The reading tasks online are therefore a significant departure from the traditional, and they require a whole new set of skills.

Despite all the advances in web technology, information on a computer screen is still presented one screen at a time.

This isolation of information in a two-dimensional frame creates a critical demand: students must be able to impose a time and space dimension on the information in the otherwise flat screen. Effective readers are able to take individual frames and use them to construct a dynamic, three-dimensional, real-time model. They’re able, in other words, to build a whole from disparate parts — a whole that also incorporates an accurate representation of the entire online learning experience from the first to last day of instruction as well as their own location, at any given time, within the model.

Effective readers are aware that each piece of information is an important part of a larger puzzle that’s continually evolving and that ignoring or forgetting a piece could be disastrous.

The critical difference between F2F and online classes is the sense of now, or knowing where one is in terms of time and space. F2F, students are always in the present, and the future is a linear path that extends from now into tomorrow, next week, etc. They know exactly where they are in the present, e.g., in their classroom, at their desk, on page two of the handout, with the instructor at the chalkboard and classmates seated around them.

Online, however, students don’t have the same sense of now because past, present, and future are equally accessible. They also don’t have the same sense of where they are in terms of classmates and activities since they can’t see others and what they’re doing.

F2F, students who are unwilling or unable to construct an accurate model can still manage to survive and even thrive by simply showing up for class and depending on others in their shared environment for cues. If others are noting a point made by the instructor, then it must be important. The instructor reminds them to turn to page three, now; toward the end of class, he reminds them to submit their drafts in the next session.

Online, these cues are missing from the screen the students are on at the moment.

Red flags for SUROs usually pop up in the first few days of instruction. Perhaps the most common for those who can’t or won’t accept the generative or active function of reading is the following post in discussions or email: “Help. I’ve read everything but don’t have a clue about what to do for this class. Can you (or someone) tell me what I’m supposed to do next?”

The instructor has clearly announced the importance of reviewing the schedule of activities daily, and the assignment that’s due “next” is boldly spelled out in the schedule, but this information is not directly in front of the student at the moment and, thus, doesn’t exist. The student has failed to add this information or, more importantly, the sources of this information to his/her mental construct of the class. In fact, the student’s image of the class is limited to the screen that happens to be in front of him and the other information is lumped into an amorphous mass.

The point is that reality is concrete, abstract, and dynamic, and students who can’t synthesize all three into a working model will have difficulty in an online class.

Another red flag is a student’s insistence on regular F2F or real-time contact with the instructor. These students need to establish and maintain a sense of here and now to get their bearings. They can’t function without the cues that are present in F2F environments. Once the instructor agrees to these real-time interactions, he/she falls into a semester-long trap and literally ends up tutoring the student in a traditional classroom, effectively teaching two classes instead of one, and this places a labor-intensive burden on the instructor.

Students who must have continuous F2F or real-time contact with the instructor simply aren’t ready for online learning.

A third red flag is the consistent failure to follow directions or guidelines. Reminders to do so are usually met with hostility, with the student insisting that he has read the guidelines many times over. For these students, out of sight is out of mind, literally. They’ve read the requirements, but once they’ve moved on to the next screen, the guidelines cease to exist in a form that could inform the current activity.

There are other red flags, I’m sure, but these should suffice for the argument that the reading challenge for online learning is considerable. I’m not sure exactly how to prepare or assist SUROs. I am certain, though, that providing real-time safety nets for them compounds rather than resolves the problem. I’m also certain that, in this day and age, the ability to learn — to reconstruct bits and pieces of virtual information into a real-time working model — online is essential.

Berkeley High School May Eliminate Science Labs

Just put the title of this article into your favorite search engine. The Berkeley High Governance Council (BHGC) has just voted to stop providing science labs to its students so that the roughly $400,000 cost can be redirected into programs to support struggling students.

Berkeley High School (BHS) has a number of features that most schools do not. It’s located in a community that includes lots of University professors and dot-com entrepreneurs and employees as well as plenty of African-American and Latino households.

BHS gives its science labs before and after normal school hours. Five teachers supervise these lab sessions. The reason for the unusual laboratory time scheduling appears to be overcrowding because lab space has been taken during normal school hours for non-lab instructional activities.

Blogs seem to be going wild over this proposed change with charges of racisim flying around like dust on a windy day. The achievement gap at BHS is well beyond national norms. These labs are being labeled as “white” courses. However, one AP teacher claims that her four AP Environmental Science course contain one-third minority students. No figures have been given for AP Physics, AP Biology, or AP Chemistry. The College Board does not label AP Environmental Science as a “laboratory science” course.

What’s to be done? Is the threat to close down the science labs just a threat, a ploy to get more money for remedial education? Does the BGHC really believe that science labs should go? The science department certainly does not. “The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing,” according to Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School’s science department.

This news brings a number of issues together at once and makes sorting them out difficult. It also brings focus on some important issues in education.

Regarding the achievement gap, BHS has an unusually large number of high-achieving students, a fact that skews the achievement gap. Low-achieving students at BHS may do better than in the average California school, although one report puts them below the national average. While that statistic does not remove the necessity for helping low-achieving students, it does make the BHGC action seem rather precipitate.

The necessity for holding special lab sessions in which students typically perform 19^th-century experiments in 19^th-century ways may be crumbling in the 21^st century. We all should be asking ourselves what future we’re preparing students for in these lab sessions. Realize that most science laboratory experiences are “poor” according to the National Research Council. Pipetting technique hardly qualifies as a necessity in today’s job market.

Schools have the means to provide valid lab experiences today that weren’t available before. Instead of removing labs for many students, they should be providing them for all students. Provide appropriate challenges to every student, and make those challenges real, not make-work. This issue goes far beyond science instruction. We face the problem that science just happens to cost more than other academic subjects. History, for example, escapes this dilemma because history courses don’t have labs. In fact, of all non-science school activities, only sports seems to have high-cost settings and major equipment costs.

Schools have the means to provide valid lab experiences today that weren’t available before. Instead of removing labs for many students, they should be providing them for all students.

All educators must rethink our educational system. We must face the fact that a large fraction of students entering school each year are unprepared to learn at the pace required. Finding ways to challenge every student to reach an optimal level of learning must be our goal. Some will begin behind, but many can catch up if challenged appropriately.

Science labs may be just a small piece of this puzzle, but they’re an important one. In these labs, if done properly, students will learn scientific thinking, an important tool for everyday life. They’ll come to understand the nature of science and so be better prepared to make important decisions involving science and technology, stuff that can be as mundane as selecting a laundry detergent. And they’ll have experience with empirical data, an experience that models the complex and ambiguous nature of life in our society today.

When taught well, science (and history too) can challenge students to improve reading and writing abilities as well as critical thinking. Science also helps with math skills. Investigating their world brings engagement to students. Engagement can, in the hands of good teachers, lead to motivation to learn communication skills and math. Thus, the science (and history) courses become the remediation courses for all but the most challenged of students.

Our current recession and global competition combined with the ferment of online education and charter schools have placed large burdens on our society. Technology, as usual, may be our downfall or our savior. We have no perfect solution. Let’s hope that BHS and others make informed and successful compromises that will ensure our future remains bright.

Immediacy and Presence in Online Learning

Credence Baker’s study, “The Impact of Instructor Immediacy and Presence for Online Student Affective Learning, Cognition, and Motivation” in The Journal of Educators Online (7.1, January 2010), is a substantial contribution to online instructional pedagogy.

The study focuses on instructor presence and immediacy in online courses. Presence is manifested in “instructional design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction”; verbal immediacy, in behaviors such as “giving praise, using humor, using self-disclosure.”

Major findings:

• “While instructor immediacy was shown to be positively related to student affective learning, cognition, and motivation, it was not shown to be a significant predictor.”
• “Instructor presence . . . is a significant predictor of student affective learning, cognition, and motivation.”

Instructional activities that impact presence “include presenting content and questions, focusing the discussion on specific issues, summarizing discussion, confirming understanding, diagnosing misperceptions, injecting knowledge from diverse sources and responding to student’s technical concerns.”

According to Baker, a “limitation of the study is the self-reporting nature of the measurement instrument [online survey], which hinders the ability to control errors and bias in the participants’ responses.”

Breakdown of the subjects: “The data collected for this study included 377 (n=377) uniquely completed surveys submitted online. Of the 377 respondents, 265 were females and 112 were males. A total of 71 students (18.8 %) indicated that this was their first online course, and 306 students (81.2%) indicated that they had had previous online course experiences. One hundred forty-one (141) respondents (37.5%) reported being graduate students, whereas 236 respondents (62.5%) reported being undergraduate students.”

Comments

One of my concerns centers on the discreteness of the predictor variables, presence and immediacy, which tend to overlap in discussion activities. For example, instructor participation in online class forums, the most direct means of interaction, seems to incorporate both variables, complicating comparisons.

This concern, however, takes nothing away from the confirmation that course design (to establish presence) is critical for an online class, and, arguably, the most critical implication of this finding is the need to provide ongoing released time for online faculty to continually develop, maintain, and update their virtual learning environments.

Perhaps a second important implication to improve presence (and immediacy) is to explore the incorporation of discussion moderators for online forums. This role could be filled by selected students trained to facilitate discussions.

A third implication is probably controversial, but it needs to be examined — recruiting and hiring instructors who are skilled in developing and using online learning environments. Currently, most online instructors use course management systems (CMSs) maintained by information technology (IT) staff. Eventually, through in-service workshops, they become adept at getting the most out of the CMS. To strengthen online offerings, colleges may want to include CMS skill as a prerequisite for employment.

A fourth implication is that colleges may want to provide ongoing released time for the development of skills that take the instructor beyond the confines of CMSs as well as funds and IT support to implement innovations outside the boundaries of CMSs. Since course design is so critical, it may be time to open it up to influences and resources beyond the college’s IT department.

A fifth and final implication is the need for colleges to keep a finger on the pulse of current technology actually used by our students, who are increasingly turning to handheld communication devices that bridge the gap between cell phone and notebook computer. For many or most of our students, the boundary between face-to-face (F2F) and virtual is shrinking so rapidly that they no longer make a distinction between the two. For all practical purposes, they are one and the same. We may, in other words, have reached the point where the online vs. F2F controversy is, literally, academic.

Baker’s study comes at an opportune time, interrupting a relatively dead period in the dialogue on online instruction. This may be just the breakthrough needed to explore the next step in online education.

Deconstructing STEM

In K-12 education these days, you’ll see frequent use of the acronym, STEM. This word stands for “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” This term is so widespread that no one even seems to question its use. Yet, the inclusion of these four subjects and the exclusion of any other is actually rather arbitrary and tends to mislead the general public about the nature of these subjects and how to teach them. Possibly, it’s the push from industry for more employees trained in these areas that has resulted in this emphasis.

Many people, even in education, do not have a full understanding of the essential differences between these four subjects. Science teachers may present them to students as being essentially the same. Funding agencies are proposing lots of money for STEM education. What are they proposing to fund? Even if you know all about STEM, please take a moment to read the analysis below and comment on anything that’s incorrect or incomplete.

To begin with, why exclude other subjects? For example, physical education uses science, technology, engineering, and mathematics extensively. If the use of one subject by another is reason enough for inclusion in a grouping, then physical education certainly should be added to form something like STEPEM. You can make a case for inclusion of some other subjects as well. Roping off four subjects from everything else makes no real sense for education.

However, it’s the lumping together of these four that makes the least sense. Why not HELASSAWL, grouping history, English language arts, social science, arts, and world languages? Yeah, it’s a mouthful compared to STEM, but logically, it makes as much sense. To understand why, take a look at each of the four STEM subjects.

Mathematics began centuries ago as a means to an end. It was used to regulate trade (arithmetic) and to deal with land (geometry). Then, Euclid came along and made logical, step-by-step proofs the bedrock of geometry. Mathematics hasn’t been the same since. Instead of being just a means to an end, mathematics now stands by itself in pure abstraction with its proof-based system of functioning.

Something that hasn’t been proved in mathematics is merely a conjecture. Mathematicians don’t have to relate their work to anything going on in science, technology, or engineering. They start with axioms and build a tower of theorems, corollaries, and lemmas. Doing mathematics requires a special way of thinking and extensive training.

In total contrast to mathematics, science is all about disproof. Science doesn’t stand apart from the real world in abstractions. Science involves inquiry, exploration, and discovery within the context of reality. It’s a voyage into the world of ideas that develop into explanations of the universe. Scientific theories mean nothing unless they can be compared with real data.

Scientists know that they can never prove their theories. That’s one reason that they’re called theories. New data tomorrow could overturn or at least modify today’s favorite theory. Examples abound. The geocentric view of the universe was overturned (probably more than once) by the heliocentric theory, which itself was modified when all stars were found to be rotating around a galactic center.

Mathematics plays an important role in every branch of science. The eponymous Lord Kelvin, immortalized as a temperature scale, said, “When you measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it.” Mathematics then allows processing of those numbers. Whether physicists are doing quantum mechanics or biologists are making statistical analyses of experimental results, mathematics permeates science. Nevertheless, mathematics is not science. Doing science requires a special, nonintuitive way of thinking and extensive training.

Engineering is all about making things. Engineers use the knowledge they have of how things work to create new physical entities. Much of this knowledge comes from other engineers who have tried numerous approaches and found which work best, and the data used are empirical. Other knowledge comes from the discoveries of scientists.

Engineers design, build, and test. They create skyscrapers and highways, toasters and microwave ovens, automobiles and racing bicycles. Scientists discover; engineers create. These two acts, discovery and creation, seem to be wired into our brains so that we consider them to be very pleasurable. There’s little other connection between these two disciplines, except that they seem to require each other. The discoveries of science help to fuel new engineering, and the new stuff that engineers create often provides devices that scientists use in their research such as telescopes, microscopes, spectrophotometers, and so on. Engineers require extensive training.

Technology is the stuff that mankind creates. It comes originally from engineers and inventors.

Technology is the stuff that mankind creates. It comes originally from engineers and inventors. Building a fire and crafting a spear were early examples of using technology. Today, it’s hard to take a step without involving technology, for example, the technology represented by your shoes. Because technologies are closely tied with scientific discoveries and with engineering designs and creations, people may readily confuse these.

A course on technology, by itself, will be a rare occurrence in elementary and secondary schools. Instead, you find technology woven into K-12 science courses along with engineering (e.g., robotics). Technology makes our lives easier, delivers better health, and allows us to explore places previously inaccessible. It also complicates our lives, pollutes our environment in numerous ways, and requires us to extract our planet’s resources to feed it.

Scientists discovered the ideas that made today’s flat panel televisions possible. Engineers turned these ideas along with engineering principles into televisions. The technology consists of the televisions, all of their pieces and parts, and the means to capture and send the images and sound to the individual televisions. In all of these activities, the scientists and engineers use lots of mathematics, but mathematicians play no role in creating televisions. A technologically literate person will know much about the technologies involved in delivering the television experience to living rooms but may not be familiar with the engineering principles involved in the design. This same person may not understand the nature of science either.

Interestingly, the California Institute of Technology provides bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, many branches of science, and several disciplines of engineering. However, there’s no degree in technology.

This conflation of four terms into STEM, an artificial thing that we’re supposed to be excited about teaching to K-12 students, makes little sense. Science and mathematics departments like it because it elevates them somewhat in the din of the discussion of how to improve education. Here’s what’s actually happening on the ground in many school districts. The districts receive some federal money for improving education. The various departments put in their proposals for a piece of this funding. ELA (English language arts) and mathematics ask for more, in total, than is available and receive all of the money. The science and history departments, not to mention music, arts, physical education, and others, get nothing.

The push for improved reading and mathematics scores trumps everything else and shortchanges the places where real learning takes place. But that’s material for another column.

[Note: The paragraphs on technology were revised by the author after initial publication. 1.15.10]

Picture the Story: E-Comics as Teaching Tool

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

Adding decorative visualizations to learning content is supposed to render educational material more interesting and motivate students. Though entertaining pictures may distract learners and add to the cognitive load, instructional designers seek to avoid the creation of textual wasteland devoid of graphic oases. Thus, the purposeful and selective use of e-comics and other ornamental illustrations is by all means an ingredient in the e-learning design repertoire.

As a graphic medium of storytelling, comics combine pictorial elements with more or less scarcely used text modules – often in the form of speech bubbles. This results in a dialogic style of narration. One way to use this form of narration in instructional design is to depict controversial topics by engaging two characters in a dispute. Another possibility is to trace historic developments and events as pictorial sequences. Following ideas of anchored instruction, comics can picture a scenario or problem that forms the starting point for investigating the learning content. Finally, comics can also be used to simply loosen the ground, i.e., by including a sketch, learning material can be rendered less dense.

There are a number of Web based tools for the design of educational picture stories. They offer a broad variety of elements to create a comic strip, including a drag and drop feature that facilitates the use of this medium significantly.

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Toondoo is a comprehensive, yet easy to use flash application to create comics. It comprises a variety of premade backgrounds, figures and objects. Moreover, you can upload your own photos and graphic materials and create new avatars using a step-by-step wizard. All objects can be aligned, enlarged, reduced, placed in the foreground or background, copied, deleted and more. Besides, you can change the pose and facial expression of the figures. The rubric ImageR allows you to cut, crop and alienate photos – however, a basic desktop photo editor such as Picasa or Irfanview provides more options and better handling. This also applies to the embedded drawing tool Doodler. In contrast, the feature Book Maker proves to be an extremely useful add-on. It  allows you to combine several ComicStrips into a book – a great way to present a class project or group work. You can download your completed comics as PNG-files or store them within the toondoo website in a password protected area.

Pixton is an alternative environment to generate comics from existing models. The process is easy to learn and the expressiveness of the figures is impressive. The Web application offers a wide selection of poses, gestures and mimics. The variety of background images is, in contrast, less comprehensive. In designing a comic, the you can choose between three different formats: The option “Regular” leads to a drag & drop editor, which allows the free arrangement of elements. The option “Quickie” leads to a selection of prearranged settings with figures and speech bubbles. The “Large Format” can be used to design a single, large-scale scene. The completed comics are retrievable through a unique URL and publicly accessible. You can embed their products into your personal websites as flash files. Print and download options are available as well, but require a premium membership.

(Click to zoom in.)

Comiqs is an easy to use environment to turn photos into online picture stories. Based on flash, the tool is particularly interesting for members of the photo sharing community flickr. Pictures can be uploaded or imported from your personal flickr account.  Afterwards, straightforward editing options allow you to arrange photos as comic strips and add speech bubbles.

A Technological Solution to Prerequisite Skills

The Problem of Prerequisite Skills

She was a grade 5-6 multi-age teacher, and she was frustrated. She had just graded a basic multi-digit multiplication test. Most of the students had done well, but a large number had done poorly. There was no one in the middle. She suddenly had a revelation. All the students who did poorly were new to her this year—all the rest had been with her the year before. She looked at the poor tests more carefully and then realized those students were mostly missing the same questions.

What could it be about those questions? She studied them and realized that they all had a 0 (zero) somewhere in the digits. It only took a few more minutes to realize that the students were all treating multiplication by zero as if it were multiplication by one. She realized that she had not taught the zero multiplication rule to this group. She took them aside and gave them a quick lesson, after which they repeated the test with high scores.

How much student failure is caused by teaching students something that assumes they already have skills they do not indeed have?  As this true story above illustrates, sometimes a very small and easily-taught skill can be all that is required to lift a student from failure to success. Unfortunately, few of us have the time that this teacher took on this one test, and even then, it took a certain amount of luck for her to spot the problem. How many similar potential revelations passed by her unnoticed?

Although intelligent curriculum design can solve many of these problems, this is the area where developing technology may be able to do the most good in the coming years.

One of my first reviews of an online curriculum was for AP Language and Composition, a course students frequently take in their junior year. In the very first unit, the students did a reading, after which they were required to write an essay in which they explained the author’s use of rhetorical devices in the piece. The unit had no instruction in rhetorical devices.  This curriculum writer was from a prestigious, high achieving school so, perhaps, he was used to students walking into his class with the ability to complete this assignment, but I would bet that at least 90% of the juniors in America have never seen the phrase rhetorical devices before.

A little common sense in curriculum design goes a long way—don’t expect too much prior learning before a course begins. Once we pass that hurdle, though, we see how technology can help. If we can examine every course and lesson we teach and identify the prerequisite skills, we can then create a list of those skills. If the course writer expects students entering a class to be familiar with rhetorical devices, then that should be included in the course plan. Once we have such a list, we can create pre-tests to ensure students have the necessary skills to complete the course.

A Technological Solution

This is where technology can really help. We could create a library of learning objects for these critical skills. Students who need assistance with a prerequisite skill would be directed to a lesson to bring them up to speed as quickly as possible. A curriculum designer planning a lesson would identify the skills necessary for success. Some of them would be taught in the lesson itself, but others that should have been learned previously would be omitted. When students have not had the prior learning, they would be directed to the necessary learning object for remediation.

Ultimately, in many cases, the technology would make this happen automatically. Someday a computer analysis of a multiplication test will be able to indicate that students failed because they did not know how to multiply by zero, and it will direct those students to an appropriate lesson.  We have some basic programs in math and reading that do some of this already, but this feature is rarely integrated into regular online classes at this time. Furthermore, it usually requires students to leave the regular class and enter a separate program, a process that does not work well for a variety of reasons. In the future, all such learning must be integrated into one learning package.

But even with today’s technology much of this can be done.  We can create that library of learning objects easily right now, and we can direct students to appropriate lessons right now. We can adopt instructional policies that reward students who use these processes to reach higher levels of achievement rather than punish them for starting at a lower level.

All we need is the will to do it.

Live by Example

As previously discussed in this column, when it comes to Twitter, there is no “right way” to do things. Learning the right balance of tweets, re-tweets and replies to meet your needs and increase your return on (time) investment is a learning process like any other. For this column, I’ve compiled a list of educators and technologists that I look to as good examples of using Twitter in an approachable way to network, share, learn and grow.

Programs:

@MAET – Michigan State University Master of Arts in Educational Technology – Shares information on upcoming program events as well as what is new in educational technology. This account is excellent at interacting with program students and others.

@CapMSU – Michigan State University Campus Archaeology – @CapMSU – The MSU Campus Archaeology program excavates sites around the MSU campus and shares their findings with the campus community. This account provides a fascinating historical perspective and shows us what archaeologists do and how they work.

Individuals:

@gravesle – Michigan State University – Leigh is the coordinator of MSU’s Master of Arts in Educational Technology program and shares excellent articles and resources.

@Tjoosten – University of Wisconsin Milwaukee – Tanya is very open to sharing her adventures in educational technology at UWM and has great information.

@UWM_CIO – University of Wisconsin Milwaukee – Bruce Maas is the CIO for the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and very accessible to education colleagues on Twitter. He’s an excellent example of transparency and availability in leadership.

@NealCross – Southwest Baptist University – Neal is an instructor, a learning management system administrator, and very collaborative in his work. He is interactive, helpful and fun to follow.

@Captain_Primate – Michigan State University – Ethan is a professor at MSU and an expert in digital humanities. He is an evangelist for open access teaching and learning, and he teaches his courses outside of the central campus learning management system, using WordPress and more.

@kevinoshea – Purdue University – Kevin is a technologist working closely with online education and is adept at putting Web 2.0 tools to work.

Publications/Organizations:

@Educause, @EducauseReview – EDUCAUSE is a non-profit association with the mission of advancing “higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.” Stay apprised of upcoming events, interesting educational technology news and new study data by following them on Twitter.

@mashable – Mashable is not geared specifically toward higher education, but they offer excellent, short articles on Web 2.0 tools and innovative ways to use them. I get much of my technology news from Mashable and have found them to be an invaluable resource for explaining how things work.

Businesses:

TechSmith: @TechSmith, @TechsmithEDU, @jingTips, @SnagItTips – TechSmith takes a very approachable stance with their customers, offering beta membership, technical support and tips via Twitter. They are always on the lookout for people using their products in innovative ways.

Biggby Coffee: @BiggbyBob, @T_C_B, @BiggbyJedi, @BiggbyFelicity – Biggby Coffee could write the book on using social media in business. The company founders are active, reaching out to customers and offering glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes. Employees obviously love the company, making the excitement contagious.

Insomniac Games: @insomniacgames is an independent video game developer that takes support to new heights using Twitter. Have a question about one of their games? Ask them on Twitter and you’ll often have a response the same day.

Who do you follow that you find interesting? Would you like to add to this list? Please e-mail your favorites to jlknott@gmail.com. You should also follow @etcjournal on Twitter for information and updates each time a new article is posted.