Teaching with Technology

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Teaching with Technology

Teaching with On-Line Primary Sources (Journal Article #3)

March 16th, 2010 · No Comments · Bob, Uncategorized

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb302/is_2_34/ai_n45100149/?tag=content;col1

This week I will review another article from Teaching History: A Journal of Methods which appeared in the Fall 2009 publication. The title of the article is: Teaching with on-line primary sources: documents from the national archives. Michael Hussey is the author and he is writing about newly available information of a primary source nature and how it can be used to teach a lesson about “perspectives on the new immigrants” in the time period of 1903 to 1911 in New York City.

            Hussey describes the historical event/period he is talking about, which focuses on the annual report of the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island in 1911 and a response from the Lower East Side’s Citizen’s Committee (primarily an immigrant neighborhood), which disagrees with some negative comments he has made about the immigrants in general. In addition, the Citizen’s Committee prepared a study documenting the good character and positive nature of their neighborhood. The author uses the on-line availability of these reports as well as numerous photographs from Ellis Island and the neighborhood to craft a lesson for students. The on-line primary sources are from the National Archives website: www.archives.gov/research.

            The main part of the article details a series of student activities based on the original source documents and photographs to highlight the differences of opinion regarding the large scale immigration that was occurring at the time and the incredibly crowded living conditions in the lower east side of New York City. While it is unclear if the original source data is just recently available or if the exercises are to be done in or outside of class, the article does show how these original sources can be used to give a far more realistic and meaningful lesson about immigration and urban life in New York City than just a dry paragraph in a textbook. Practically speaking, it appears to me that the class exercises could be done in or out of the classroom, depending upon available computer resources in the classroom.

            Specifically, there is a focus activity requiring the students to access photographs of immigrants from Ellis Island and from the lower east side neighborhoods. The students are to interpret them through a series of questions. Further they are then to review the written documents that were the basis of the original controversy. There are other suggested assignments including the students drafting letters to the Commissioner of Immigration regarding his initial comments from the viewpoint of the immigrants. In the end, the students are to write an essay in which “they formulate their own portrait ..” of the immigrant’s life based on their review of the original source data.

            I think this is an excellent use of primary sources and gets to the basic question in History of what it means to “Do History.” It is not just the memorization of facts or the discussion of a particular event and its broader implications. It is also the “detective work” which a historian must do to get to the bottom of what actually happened – in other words, what were the facts? Use of the primary sources with the guidance of the instructor, brings to mind Jenkin’s work on encouraging the use of new media, but guiding the student to be able to assess the veracity of on-line information as well as interpret differing points of view based on differing biases.

            It is clear that original source documentation is all over the internet. This documentation is a fertile ground for all sorts of teaching and learning activities. All that it requires is computer access plus a teacher who has taken the time to orient his students to the source sites so they can be actively involved in the project.

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Online webinars for continuing medical education

March 15th, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Online Webinars for Continuing Medical Education: An effective method of live distance learning by Kristine M. Zargoza- Anderson
This article presents Webinars as an effective tool that is used in Distant Education. Webinars are “web-based seminars” where interactions between learners and educators utilizing the internet to transmit lectures, presentations and engage in workshops.
Identifying effective teaching and learning tools that support Distant Learning is very important for the continued growth and propagation of this style of education. Distant learning supports the needs of lifelong learning that is demanded by some professional associations that demand their members to earn continuing education credits/units (CEU). These requirements are implemented to insure that the members of these professional associations are updated with the latest development in their field s. An example of these associations are those of practicing professionals such as doctors, certified public accountants and lawyers are that demand such continued education certifications. Distant Education programs utilizing Webinars allow these professionals to attend these classes without the need to travel to meet the lecturer or to physically attend these classes. This alternate method of delivery of these classes presents a great convenience and provides a great service to these professionals.
The article presents the necessary steps to insure the design of effective webinars that deliver the instructional information with effective instructional methodologies.
The article outlines that the success of distant educational courses are determined by the “qualities of the participating learners, the topics that lend themselves to distant learning methodologies and the use of the proper techniques by the instructors to deliver the materials in distant learning.
The following four steps present the elements of “Instructional Design Process” which involves ongoing evaluation of each of the steps along the way:

1. Conduct needs assessment for the distant course. In this case the need was very clear to provide new information for the professionals to satisfy the “continuing Education Requirement.
2. Outline Instructional Goals & produce instructional materials. The content of each distant learning course is designed by experts in the respective professional filed.
3. Provide training and practice for instructors and facilitators. This step is very important since many teaching skills in the traditional FTF do not transport to distant education. The need to provide training to instructors to help them “re-design” their “instructional strategies”.
4. Implement the program of distant education. A pilot program is suggested to examine the design and refine its elements before the program is implemented.
These were the steps that were used in the design of effective webinars for the required continuing education courses with continued evaluation of the process after each step is taken to further refine the processes.

Zaragoza-Anderson, K. (2008). Online webinars for continuing medical education:
an effective method of live distance learning: International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning , 5( 8), Retrieved from http://itdl.org/Journal/Aug_08/article01.htm doi: 1550-6908

Hanan

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“The Mean Business of Second Life: Teaching Entrepreneurship, Technology and e-Commerce in Immersive Environments” (KBA #3)

March 15th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Gil

This article describes the use of a virtual world, Second Life (SL), in a six-week graduate course in e-commerce offered at Iowa State University to 29 students. The course documented in this article was a first time experience utilizing SL for instruction at Iowa State both for the participating faculty and students.

For those who have not experienced SL, it is a lot like navigating through a 3-D video game. Each user has a virtual representation of him- or herself (an “avatar”) and can encounter and interact with other users’ avatars. The physical rules (“laws of nature”) and makeup of the SL virtual world are malleable and can be structured for specific learning activities. SL has its own currency; various forms of businesses including retail shops and e-commerce are prevalent within SL.

The authors describe a differentiation between “immersion” and “presence” that has been made in the academic literature around the use of virtual worlds. “Immersion” is the pervasive use of the virtual world platform for the delivery of course content, and as such is objectively quantifiable, whereas “presence” or the sense of actual engagement in the virtual world and more dependent on psychological states of “being there”.

From the article it appears the original plan was to provide a platform for students to experience presence in a robust virtual world:

The vibrant character of this environment offers particularly attractive opportunities for teaching business-related concepts. SL is designed as a self-contained economy, complete with its own currency and currency exchange, the LindeX. Business activity is thriving and growing with residents retaining intellectual property rights to the items they create. A resident can build a virtual object like a chair, sell it to other residents, and invest the earnings in a new accessory for her avatar. In addition, because residents can convert their Linden dollars to real world currency, they make real world profits from their SL activities. In other words, entrepreneurs can start and run virtual businesses in a manner quite similar to the way people engage in business in the real world. A unique virtual environment, where entrepreneurship is so readily on display, SL might become a useful tool for exposing students to business and e-commerce concepts.

Consistent with this objective, the article states,

The instructor of the MBA course described in this paper used SL to create this sense of presence in an active economy in order to evoke student engagement and strong interest in the subject matter, e-commerce and entrepreneurship.

Except, that wasn’t exactly how the course evolved over the six week term. The authors note a steep learning curve, significant time and high levels of frustration were devoted to setting up avatars and learning to navigate SL. A “scavenger hunt” completed by students working in teams provided opportunities for students to learn more about SL, and guest speakers addressed the class and conducted product demonstrations within SL; students synchronously participated from different physical locations (e.g., from Dubai); however, comments suggest that the virtual world of SL itself presented challenging obstacles for students to overcome rather than serving as a transparent medium in which students could work on issues pertaining to course content.

Rather than establishing a sense of “presence,” the authors conclude they realized only “immersion”. And so they offer these suggestions for developing an immersion course:

-Seek out and make use of existing teaching and technology support structures within the university.
-An instructor will be more successful with the assistance from professional support staff.
-Administrators’ support is essential.
-When introducing a virtual world into a course for the first time, budget considerable time for planning, design, and implementation of course content and infrastructure.
-An instructor will be more successful when an investment is made in planning and designing how a virtual world’s content will be meshed with the course content.
-It is important to orient students in their exploration of a virtual world.
-Students will benefit from an advanced notice of the use of a virtual world in the course.
-Students must be provided tools to support their immersion in a virtual world.
-An instructor must invest in planning and designing infrastructure to use a virtual world for teaching and learning.

Based on the reported student responses to this course the foregoing lessons were earned at the proverbial “school of hard knocks”. Much of the reported learning that occurred seemed to be more about SL and less about e-commerce.

Among my conclusions from this article is that it’s tough to be on the leading edge of innovation at any institution. The authors here needed to set up even the most rudimentary interfaces in SL for their students. They were starting from ground zero. Particularly on the heels of a previous JOLT article about the case method I was excited at the prospect of seeing virtual “user-created” cases of entrepreneurial e-commerce instruction.

As noted above, students reported high levels of frustration with basic set-up processes in SL. The authors conclude,

Presence takes time and effort as an individual chooses to become involved with the SL community and depends on a variety of subjective psychological factors. For this course the feeling could have influenced the effectiveness of student learning. On the other side, intense presence might have been distracting learners from an unbiased evaluation of the economic processes of SL. To assess this hypothesis, the instructor designed a slip-on avatar course the following semester, in which fully configured and ready-to-go slip-on avatars were distributed to students. The research findings from the slip-on avatar course will be disseminated in a separate paper.

Source: Brian Mennecke, Hassall, L. and Triplett, J., “The Mean Business of Second Life: Teaching Entrepreneurship, Technology and e-Commerce in Immersive Environments,” MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 4, No. 3 (September 2008): 339-348.

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Teachers and technology: Enhancing technology competencies for preservice teachers. J-article 4.

March 14th, 2010 · No Comments · John

Citation

Blankson, J., Keengwe, J., and Kyei-Blankson, L.  (2010).  Teachers and technology:  Enhancing technology competencies for preservice teachers.  International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education, 6 (1), 45-54.  doi: 10.4018/jicte.2010091104

Main Points

–    Today’s teacher requirements to teach students.

—   Content knowledge, technology skills, and technology tools.

–    Teacher education programs mandate all preservice teachers to enroll in technology courses as part of their teacher preparatory curriculum.

–    International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has established the National Education Technology Standards for teachers (NETS- T) to promote teacher technology competencies.

–    The purpose of the study was to evaluate preservice teachers’ self-assessed technology competency to determine whether preservice teachers perceived that their technology class enabled them to meet ISTE’s required standards focused at a participating midwest college.

Analysis

This article does a very good job of pointing out how prepared incoming students are in basic technology skills like word, e-mailing, and powerpoint as well as some technology tools like blogs, wikis, and ipods.  At the same time, preservice teachers feel that they are not adequately prepared to integrate technology into teaching.  My initial qualms when starting our own CTCH 603, Technology in Higher Education, course gives me the distinct feeling that the authors of this study are on to something.  The authors presented 17 pre-test and post-test questions (to compare for learning attained after classes) focused in three areas for the study; (1) Do the tech classes for the preservice teachers give them skills over and above what students already know, (2) Do they perceive that their tech competencies improve after the tech classes, and (3) Will the tech modules covered ensure they meet the necessary ISTE standards.  Ten preservice candidates enrolled in the preparatory tech classes at a 650 student mid-western college were asked the questions.  The teachers were all white, ages 20-25, with seven female and three male.  They used a five point Likert scale for the questions.

All of the courses the preservice teachers were in were more than applicable for the college’s goal to get them ready for technology in the learning environment.  The study showed a positive growth in perceived understanding in all areas from the pre-test scores to the post-test scores.  It did discover some interesting sidebar items after the tech classes; teachers still had difficulty in installing/uninstalling programs, the tech classes should occur after their methods courses, and teacher focus should be on how to integrate tech into the classroom and less on teaching technology.  I think the research served as a good in-house evaluation of the college’s program more than it was a clinical study.  In my view the study just had much too small and too homogenous of a sample size and should be replicated on a larger scale.  It leaves me with too many questions on its validity at a less homogenous school with a much more diverse faculty.

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Evaluating faculty using SEF. J-article 3.

March 14th, 2010 · No Comments · John

Citation

Ololube, N. P., Ubogu, A. E., Egbezor, D. E., and Nwachukwu, U.  (2010).  Evaluating faculty teaching of research methodology to undergraduate geography students in a Nigerian university.  International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education,
6 (1), 30-44.  doi: 10.4018/jicte.2010091103

Main Points

The effective ways of teaching research methods to students is a process closely connected to socializing students towards writing an effective research project before graduation and determines how successful and effective they are in conducting individualized research.  Several factors apart from setting up a successful learning community are essential, but competencies determine faculty effectiveness.  This paper appraises students’ evaluation of faculty (SEF).  It evaluates students’ perception of competencies required by faculty in teaching research methodology to undergraduate geography students at the Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.  Using a questionnaire to gather data for the study, the paper argues that by evaluating the performance of faculty members, their knowledge, expertise, skills, and by applying certain adaptation mechanisms in teaching, the experience and effectiveness of teaching students’ research methodology can be significantly improved.  The authors use this medium to encourage colleges and universities, education planners and policy makers in Nigeria of the need to introduce and carry out SEF along side other evaluation techniques in determining faculty performances and effectiveness.

Analysis

Student evaluations have been in America since the 1960s and have really become a part of our methodology in U.S. colleges and universities.  The questions has always been whether these evaluations should carry a small or large weight in assessing instructors.  The authors apply an interesting idea to their study on assessing faculty effectiveness in teaching geography students how to conduct effective research by having the students evaluate the faculty.  The notion they are studying is if a fair and unbiased correlation can be made from the student assessments on faulty effectiveness to the students learning.  The total sampling sizes are small with the total number of faculty at 20, with only two Professors, and a student size of 86 respondents.  The study was aimed at how students perceived faculty teaching methodology at improving or decreasing student academic achievement.  They asked 19 questions that focused on five main areas (1) to measure how students perceive faculty teaching methodology, (2) to evaluate the extent to which students perceive faculty instructional material utilization competencies, (3) to analyze the extent to which students perceive faculty instructional process competencies, (4) to evaluate the degree to which students perceive faculty instructional evaluation competencies, and (5) to assess the extent to which students perceive faculty interaction process competences.  The study results support the notion that students are relevant in faculty member evaluation and their input is a significant step for constructively improving the quality and role of faculty members.  It revalidated that using SEF is a meaningful part of the overall faculty assessment process.

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CwBraun (Journal 3) Spatial Thinking and Technologies in the Undergraduate Social Science Classroom

March 14th, 2010 · No Comments · Chris

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In this third article in the series on GIS in the classroom, we will look at an article in The Journal of Geography in Higher Education titled: Spatial Thinking and Technologies in the Undergraduate Social Science Classroom. The authors believe that although spatial thinking and analysis has grown in popularity at the higher levels of education, there is still a shortfall at the undergraduate level in understanding its value in a well-rounded education. There can be little argument that spatial thinking techniques and technology in the social sciences has contributed to a number of new and important discoveries. Even though the article concentrates on the field of Archaeology, the lessons and rules apply to a variety of social science disciplines. Additionally, with the widespread use and lowering cost of GPS data and GIS software, there is every reason to encourage its use in each field of study (Hespanha et al).
There are a number of accepted strategies shown in the article that can be used for assessing spatial thinking and knowledge in students which the instructor can then use to form a basis for developing lessons and activities in the classroom:
• Prior Knowledge Survey: Used at the beginning of the course incorporating spatial concepts and thought processes which incorporate content based questions.
• One minute Paper: Following a lecture or laboratory exercise, students complete a fast one page paper in class summarizing the most important points.
• Pro/Con Grid: Students review a recent decision in their field and make a list of pros and cons of that decision. They are further asked to describe a birds-eye view and a perspective view of different features of the scene as observed.
• Theory Comparison: The students provide a summary of the differences between two theories that describe the same phenomenon. Encouragement is given to the students to think spatially in their answers.

Guided Problem Solving Activities are exercises that can be used to evaluate if the student has achieved an appropriate level of learning and if they are beginning to think spatially. They ask the student to go beyond the requirement of just providing information back to the instructor and allow for the student to not only interpret data but to apply new knowledge in decision making. Some activities provided in the article about using specific discipline driven problem solving activities in the classroom include:
• Multi-discipline: Students are provided a thematic map (theme or discipline related) and asked to provide a list of critical variables and symbols that would help identify the problem presented and/or help display possible solutions.
• Multi-discipline: Students are given examples of geographic data in recognizable formats such as spreadsheets, maps, photographs and asked to use the information to make a decision and/or prove their rationale behind the decision. They are additionally asked what information could have been provided for them to make a more informed decision.

• Sociology: Students are provided maps of a cities administrative districts and minority populations that exceed a given average and asked to discuss possible reasons for the observed distributions.
• Business: Students view a map that displays manufacturing facilities for a specific industry and students are asked to look at population density, travel corridors, pollution issues to determine new locations for development.
• Economics: Students are shown maps containing gross domestic products, life expectancy, population growth or income levels and asked to provide their thoughts on the interrelationships between each category.
• Criminology: Students look at a map depicting high and low crime rates for a specific region and discuss reasons for the levels. Also discussed are income levels, land use, public services, transportation networks.
• History/Anthropology: Students are given satellite imagery of areas of the planet and are asked to determine patterns of civilization and the reasons development existed in certain areas

Researchers at the graduate level often rely on spatial analysis tools for gathering, analyzing and presentation of data about human activities and interaction with geographic or environmental elements. It is not always necessary to work with GIS software in a computer lab, with some forethought and creative planning as well as the use of maps and geo-spatial data, it is possible to develop these spatial thinking skills in undergraduates as well.

Hespanha, Stacy R, Fiona Goodchild, and Donald Janelle. “Spatial Thinking and Technologies in the Undergraduate Social Science Classroom”. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 33: Suppl 1, S17-27. 2009.

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‘A Silent Revolution’

March 11th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Jennifer

‘A Silent Revolution’

Collaboration is at the core of media literacy.  It stirs curiosity, awakens the imagination, breeds knowledge, and prompts innovation.  Consider a learning environment in which “evaluation is part of the process….there is no fear of failure….students learn at their own pace….there is liberation from ranking,” students are entrusted with their own learning, gender equality is the norm, not the exception, active learning evolves from the repetition of material in a variety of settings, and the hierarchy of learning is situated horizontally allowing for movement amongst the collective strengths of one’s surrounding peers; “it is order without the booming voice of authority…it is a silent revolution” (A Silent Revolution, 2008). 

Collaboration is learning. 

This argument is at the core of my article for this week. Essentially, what is argued is that a peer tutoring scheme would help to engage students in a shared learning experience while working in the music studio.  This scheme belongs to a type of observational learning that incorporates four different processes:

  1. Attention:  For observational learning to happen, the observer must pay attention and be fully immersed in the learning situation.
  2. Retention:  The retention process requires that the tutor be cognizant of the tutee’s learning needs and use those to guide instructional methods
  3. Production:  The actual procedures and methods involved in executing tasks
  4. Motivation: The use of reinforcement to promote further learning (Jones & King, 55).

It is important to note the role of observational learning in media literacy and the collaborative learning that fosters its development.  Attention, retention, and motivation, for example, work together to foster a continued learning cycle.  Through tagging, keywords, remix videos, comment boards, blogs, etc a community of digital learners can interact and respond to one another based on similar interests that capture their attention, a ‘supply-and-demand’ of information that supports retention, and the resulting motivation to keep alive the inquiry and dialogue amongst its users. 

Peer-to-peer teaching.

Another interesting feature of this article is the idea of the four basic types of peer-to-peer teaching at the undergraduate level:

  1. Surrogate Teaching: This involves the delegation of responsibility to selected students (often PhD) of some of the teaching functions normally carried out by academic staff.
  2. Proctoring:  In this situation, students take on the role of individual tutors for fellow students who have a similar or lower level understanding of a subject.
  3. Co-tutoring (or reciprocal tutoring):  this happens on an informal basis regularly within the study body; in co-tutoring, students aid each other to help understanding of topics in which they encounter difficulty.
  4. Teacher-less Groups:  These are peer-led discussion groups which met in the absence of a teacher. 

These four types of peer-to-peer teaching also reflect the learning communities that develop through media interaction, but speak to the types of relationships that exist rather than the types of learning that exist.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

I thought this was the most compelling feature of the article, which also relates back to the Silent Revolution YouTube video quoted at the beginning of this summary.  Kozulin (2003) defines the ZPD as follows:  ‘An interaction on a task between a more competent persona and a less competent person, such that the less competent person becomes independently proficient at what was initially a joint accomplished task” (as cited in Jones & King, p. 58).  This speaks to the process of absorption that truly defines this discussion of collaborative learning.  When we interact with others, we absorb their habits, perspectives, thoughts, and beliefs to the extent that they start to blend with our own.  Through a “silent revolution” we are slowly creating a collective thought system that is developing naturally through this zone of proximal development. The result is a future charged with the possibilities derived from a system that thrives on the power of its collective voice, not by the duly appointed “technician” of our learning.   

Jones, C., & King, A. (2009).  Peer learning in the music studio.  Journal of Music, Technology

and Education.  2(1), 55-70.  doi:  10.1386/jmte.2.1.55/1

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CwBraun(Journal2) Strategies for Transplanting GIS Courses between Disciplines.

March 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Chris

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In my last journal article, I introduced the concept of the role of GIS in Higher Education and it’s use by non-geography specific disciplines. In this second article, we will take a look at a few strategies for developing and delivering GIS curricula outside the boundaries of the traditional Department of Geography where it currently lies. The process to take a mature GIS course or curriculum and transplant it to an outside discipline requires a look at five key elements in order to be successful:
1. Identifying a Disciplinary Best-fit: How does geo-spatial information fit into the realm of your teaching subject. In business it may be the identification of site location for hospitals, hotels, shopping malls or land development; or an analysis of consumer targeting, retail distribution, and logistics. All of these have applications for GIS spatial queries and filters. For distance/linear applications, GIS can be used to find suitable routes, way points alternate routes or navigation of commercial or private vehicles (such as mobile GPS units in private automobiles). Other applications include forestry and wildlife conservation, water conservation, geological exploration and mining, land use patterns, emergency response, pollution monitoring, city planning, map publishing and home owner surveys.
2. Establishing an Effective Curriculum: If the university or college does not have its own GIS department (usually associated with Geography), then there are basically two options of getting GIS into a non-geographic discipline. First, GIS can be embedded into the course as an additional module. This option requires the minimum amount of staff input and the least amount of disruption to the current way of doing business. The disadvantage is that the instructor now becomes the “resident expert” in GIS and must have sufficient background knowledge to get the students through the particular project for that class. It provides the best exposure to GIS but provides only limited capability due to time and resource restraints. Option two is to offer an individual GIS class within the department as an elective or required course toward graduation. Although this requires more in the form of manpower and resources, it allows a discipline to shape a specific course of study providing students full exposure to the maximum benefits of using GIS.
3. Choosing What, and How Much Geography, to Include: This is one of the harder issues to address. There is no correct answer besides the obvious of introducing geo-referencing data such as longitude and latitude. Most geographic and specifically geo-spatial knowledge comes naturally after years of study by geographers. Subjects such as map projections, the identification of clusters or dispersed distributions, or the ability to find associations between spatial patterns are helpful and can enhance a student’s ability to fully utilize GIS within a subject but are not critical in most applications. As an instructor, the level of understanding of geographic/geo-spatial information by students needs to be taken into account and may be the impetus into developing a stand-alone course in GIS for various disciplines.
4. Designing an Appropriate Pedagogy: Using GIS to its fullest requires students to experience hands-on technology incorporating a high level of independent leaning. Illustrating the aims and principles of teaching modules with everyday examples from each discipline shortens the gap between a student’s existing knowledge to new material. The frequent use of current material and examples in a student’s discipline additionally helps ease the triple learning challenge that faces new users of GIS. These challenges include using and manipulating GIS technology (software and digital data), understanding geographical ways of thinking, and incorporating an independent style of learning. Leaning by doing and experimentation, such as the ability to create an infinite amount of geo-spatial depictions is not a standard rule for many disciplines and can be a challenge for newcomers of GIS.
5. Acquiring the Necessary Resources: One of the first decisions to decide as an instructor is whether you want to teach with GIS or teach about GIS. Teaching “with GIS” will support almost all non-geographic discipline and can be delivered with relatively few specialist resources. Today, there are a number of free GIS-like software applications on the internet which are accompanied with global datasets to provide all that is needed to begin. The goal is not to make students experts in the use of GIS, but to open their minds to the capability that GIS provides in their discipline. A second decision is whether the students will actually do hands-on work. If the goal is just to introduce the principles of GIS and work through application case studies, then less resourcing is needed and most activities can be accomplished with the use of Powerpoint, video, handouts and the world-wide-web. Each resource decision is closely tied to both the curricular and pedagogic concerns of the instructor and what the final outcome is intended to be.
In the case study described in this article, a GIS curriculum was successfully transplanted from the Geography department to the School of Business in a small college. In this instance, a specific GIS elective course was created for business majors that offered real-world examples of how GIS could support their discipline and field of study. After offering the course for a two year period, over 90% of the students felt that GIS study was “fairly important” or “very important” in their field and one third indicated that they would consider specializing in GIS in the future. With the relatively small number of students enrolled in Geography programs around the country, the push for GIS to support multi-disciplines on campus makes this a large, potential far-reaching market.

Shepherd, Ifan. “From Geography Department to Business School: Strategies for Transplanting GIS Courses between Disciplines.” Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 33: 1, S28-45, 2009.

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The Role of Distance Education in Forming Communities of Learning

March 1st, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

The article I read this week is titled “Mimicking Proximity: The Role of Distance Education in forming Communities of Learning” discusses the importance of utilizing the development in communication technology to facilitate communication between instructors, learners and help establish learning communities that enhances the learning experience.

The article represented social and psychological factors that encourage communication among distance education participants to mimic proximity factors found in face to face setting such as social activities in classrooms and campuses.

Learning is represented as a social process that involves communication and interaction within a group of players comprising a community of learning that encourages its members to participate and their contribution is accepted by all. The interactions inside learning communities develop common views, interdependence, shared values and trust between the individuals in those learning communities. Effective learning communities emphasize the importance of the learner and place these learners at the center of the learning experience. Participation of all individuals is encouraged to improve their interaction. The role of the instructor changes from a source of information to a social mediator of information and a participant in the learning community.

When higher levels of comfort among members of a learning community is established, new interests start to develop among subgroups within the same learning community which represent “sub-communities”

It is important to utilize the advancement in communication technology to build the needed infrastructure that will allow the participants in distance education to develop the interaction that mimics the social dynamics that develops in class rooms and campuses. When these social dynamics are not created in distance learning environment, students’ failure to complete distance courses is higher. Communication technology should be used to provide distant learning students the support services that are present in campuses such as health services, libraries, clubs and counseling which are the elements of the needed social space.

Virtual social space for distant learning students that are supported by communication technologies is an integral part to cultivate deeper collaboration among the students. Interaction helps the learners to form concepts, and new understandings that supports their transformation that is “defined by participation in a social community”

Socializing among the members of a learning community helps build their common interests, values and skills that identifies the culture. As learning is a process of becoming part of group, we need to accept that the interaction within a learning community will for sure involve activities that are not related to the content of the class. These facts need to be accepted by the instructors because they do solidify the building of common views and educational goals of the learning community. The article presents that it is important to support an environment of “camaraderie, safety, collegiality and feelings” that help counteract the sense of loneliness of students in distance learning and helps the collaborative efforts that enhances the learning experience.
Hanan

Hodge, E., Bosse, M., Faulconer, J., & Fewell, M. (2006). Mimicking proximity: the role of distance education in forming communities of learning . International journal of instructional technology and distance learning , 3(12), Retrieved from http://itdl.org/Journal/Dec_06/article01.htm

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Wikis

March 1st, 2010 · 2 Comments · Susan

Blog  4

 What happens when 40 “pre-service Non-Native (NNS) English teachers” (p. 79) studying at a “large Mexican university” are given a semester long assignment to collaboratively create and develop a wiki on the meaning of culture and are not given any other guidance or teacher instruction other than four reminders to contribute to the wiki? From reading Kessler’s Student-initiated attention to form in wiki based collaborative writing, it seems that a lot of attention will be placed on the wiki’s content and not much on the accuracy of its grammar, or as it’s known in the linguistics world, form.  Faced with this information, I have questions such as, if wikis administered with little teacher supervision promote a lack of form focus, is this a problem?  What are the advantages of wikis as a collaborative technology enriched tool for teaching a foreign language?

 

 My teaching philosophy leans toward the promotion of language use and less toward an overt focus on the formalities of a grammar, but I was startled by the following quote regarding the student participants: “In many cases they were willing to devote a great deal of time altering font and adding links to support the content of sentences that contained numerous grammatical errors. When asked about this observation, some responded that they had no problem understanding the meaning of the sentences in question and, thus, they did not bother to correct these errors” (p. 84). Given that the participants are studying to become English teachers, their lack of concern about the level of their grammatical accuracy was, well, concerning. However, it must be noted that students were more willing to correct the grammar of other students. Leaving me to wonder if students did not correct their own grammatical errors, simply because they did not recognize that they made errors.

 

Despite some concern regarding the English students laissez faire attitude toward grammar, I agree with Kessler’s conclusions that a greater focus on grammar, if that is desired, could likely be produced by defining  grammatical accuracy as a condition for project completion. What I am more interested in is the collaborative nature of wikis and the associated benefits.

 

Kessler cites research regarding the benefits of wikis and other collaborative writing projects such as, “an increased complexity in writing and willingness to utilize feedback … as well as increased grammatical accuracy and overall quality of writing” and “more opportunity for practice” (p. 80). Kessler notes that unlike past collaborative projects that utilize pairs or small groups, wiki technology “supports a many-to-many form of collaboration”. This type of collaboration is timely because today’s youth have been primed for collaborative use of technology.  Ito et al.’s report on youth and work in technology fields, Hanging out, messing around, geeking out: living and learning with new media ,details how this age cohort is using technology in collaborative ways such as, massively multiplayer online role playing (MMORP) games, fansubbing, video production, etc. Considering that young people are a significant percentage of the students studying a foreign language, their familiarity with using technology collaboratively makes wikis a good base on which to build technology enriched learning activities. If teachers want to exploit the benefits provided by wikis’ collaborative format, then identifying the preferred focus, i.e., content production or form, would be an important aspect in implementing this technology enriched learning activity.

 

Kessler, G.  (February 2009). Student-initiated attention to form in wiki-based collaborative writing. Language Learning & Technology, 13 (1), 79-95.  Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num1/kessler.pdf

 

Ito, M. et al. Hanging out, messing around, geeking out: living and learning with new media, final report: work, digital youth research, kid’s informal learning with digital media. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/5jvyof

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