NLII Learning Environment Design Focus Session
Meeting Notes
The
NLII May Focus Session on Learning Environment Design took place at the
Future Workgroups and Communities of Practice
Detailed
Team Notes <need link here, http://www.west.asu.edu/nlii/mayfs.htm>
The
session was sponsored by WebCT,
Industry Canada, and the University of British Columbia.
Carole
Barone, Vice President of EDUCAUSE, opened the session by remarking on the
great possibilities for teaching and learning transformation within the field
of learning design and online learning. Interest and work on the course
management system environment is lively, and noted that we should be seeing
research on these systems by the EDUCAUSE ECAR group in the next few months.
She
emphasized that online learning would not be where it is now without the rich
collaboration of industry, government and higher education that was
demonstrated in the opening panel of co-hosts greeting the audience. The group was� composed of :
Yuri
Daschko, Director, Multimedia Learning Group,
Industry
Michelle
N. Lamberson, Senior Manager of User Community
Relations, WebCT
Jim
Tom, Director Networks, IT Services,
Vicki
Suter, Director of NLII Projects, introduced the audience to the format of the
day and presented the small group questions and plans that would be studied and
discussed all day.
The
participants quickly moved into five small groups to attempt to define �first
principles of learning� based on the session pre-readings. Most of the groups
found this difficult to synthesize, but reported rich, dynamic discussions of
the essential components necessary to good learning experiences. The groups did
record their �principles� on post-it notes and then later grouped them
according to similarities.
The
general session was a keynote address by Margaret Haughey,
Editor, Canadian Journal of Distance
Education-University of
Haughey put forth the belief that �Elearning means change�: in choice, participation, and
learning patterns. In designing Elearning
environments, she noted that learning is not about teaching. It has to be based
in what the students know, can practice, absorb, and understand. Learning
demands the active involvement of the learner, and this cannot be designed, but
instead “designed for”.
She
spoke to the attributes of best environments for learning, which include:
Active
Resource rich, supported
environment
Group work / collaboration
Real world problems /
authentic
Ongoing assessment
The
participants were asked to consider some key questions in addressing the
challenges of moving to online learning environments:
What do new roles look like for faculty? How
do we deal with demands of faculty time?
How do we support good pedagogical practice
and use of technology but also allow autonomy and choice?
How much do course management tools
constrain choice?
How do we measure production value vs.
instructional value?
Haughey also reminded us that, although the true
challenge will be in the changes needed to allow the paradigm shift for faculty
(development, support, concerns and control), there will also continue to be infrastructure
issues that need to be addressed concerning access, speed, interactivity,
institutional politics and sustained support of the elearning
environment.
After
a short break, people returned to their original breakout session groups to
finish working on their learning principles and discuss the technology that
might be involved in enabling a learning environment based on principles
identified.
Future
Workgroups and Communities of Practice Planning
The
NLII 2002 Fellows briefly presented their research topic in deeper learning and
course management systems and asked if members of the audience would be
interested in an ongoing discussion of the topic.
Members
expressed great interest in further discussion, in seeing the day’s work
posted, in maintaining discussions begun in their breakout groups. (A community site has been set up for these
purposes at http://team.educause.edu/learning.htm)
The
afternoon program started with a panel discussion. Moderated by Michelle Lamberson, Sr Manager of User
Community Relations for WebCT, the topic centered on
effective practices and technologies that support what we understand about
‘first principles of learning’.
Panel
members were:
Mark
Bullen, Associate Director, Distance Ed &
Technology, Continuing Studies,
Bryan
Fair, Educational Technologist, Learning Resources Unit, British Columbia
Institute of Technology
Tim
Pychyl, Associate Dean of Students,
Each
panel member took a few minutes to present innovative course design practices
in higher education, faculty development and government training. Specific issues addressed included how
existing technologies are being used to support teaching and learning
strategies and whether we need these technologies or if we can be just as
effective without them. Examples from the panel allowed rich discussion of the
need to model use of technology, and support behavior and culture in the
instruction as a reflection of the values of the learner. Some issues that were
raised included:
1.
Investment in course development through venture capital and similar
initiatives
• Given the culture of higher education, will a corporate model be accepted?
• What about sustainability?
2. Partnering with content providers
• How will we decide the courses in which to invest?
• How can we sustain development between funding
envelopes/programs and opportunities?
3. Using technology
• Where is the learning innovation?
• Is it enough to “just” increase access?
Birds-of-a-Feather
The
last group session of the day was a birds-of-a-feather approach that allowed
the session participants to go to breakouts focused on four areas:
1.
NEW
UNDERSTANDINGS: In what ways
do the principles contribute to or change our understanding of
learner-centeredness?
2.
EXISTING
TECHNOLOGIES: How can we use
existing technologies to design effective teaching and learning experiences?
How can Learning Management/Course Management Systems be used effectively?
3.
NEW
TECHNOLOGIES: What do we
need from new learning environment technologies that would reflect and
implement these first principles of instruction? What are the indicators that
next-generation technologies will further support these goals?
4.
NEW
ROLES: Who are the learning environment
designers and what are the new roles for traditional learning designers,
faculty members, instructional technologists, students?
New Understandings:
The rapporteur for Group 1 was Darren Cambridge,
Technology Consultant, American Association for Higher
Education ([email protected]). He
provided the following notes on this session:
Context:
we want to provide first principles for “lone ranger” teachers, instructional
designers, and instructional technology support people who do not have the time
to survey the learning theory literature and don’t have access to expert help.
Need a broad, higher order set of principles generalizable
from the various schools of learning research. Five or so broad principles so
that technology alone does not drive the design of technology-enhanced
learning. We need to provide something simple and easy to digest.
What
are the essential principles of learning that should drive design of
educational technology to support practice?
A
learning principle is a basic statement about what facilitates learning
A
principle is independent of technology and instructional architecture,
particular research body
|
Learning Principle |
Teaching
Strategies |
|
Learning is enhanced by negotiation of the meaning of the
object of knowledge |
Create
social interaction |
|
Appropriate feedback is important to learning |
Make
the feedback as close in time and space as appropriate to a performance (?) Encourage
reflection |
|
Motivation is important to learning |
|
|
The learner builds on prior knowledge |
|
|
Social interaction is important to learning |
|
|
Learning is enhanced by learners knowing how they learn |
Students
need to learn about their own learning styles |
|
Learning is context-based |
Provide
a resource-rich environmentà multiple representations |
|
Learning is enhanced by different ways of knowing |
|
|
Students needs to have reflective control of their
own learning (?) |
|
Existing
Technologies:
Jeremy Haefner, 2002 NLII Fellow, was the rapporteur
for Group 2:
To build communities of
learners, a number of strategies can be used such as the use of course email
services, survey tool, annotated bibliographies, glossary builder tools, peer
review activities, email ‘pushed’ out to students to bring them into the
course, group tools such as a shared digital dropbox,
and group discussion activities.
To enhance student ownership
of learning, ideas include: allowing students to develop their own webpages, use of graduated (gradually more complex)
assessment strategies such as in self-testing, and use of anonymous survey tool
to identify mistakes and learn from them.
To engage the student, the
instructor could use case studies, develop role-playing activities where students
have to research biographies in order to ‘guess’ who their partner is
pretending to be, and use informal grammatical approaches to casual discussion
but insist on more grammatical care for formal assignments.
Finally, to invoke contextual
learning (learning based on prior knowledge), instructors can release modules
or content AFTER students have completed prerequisite modules or they can
pre-assess existing knowledge through quizzes.
New
Technologies:
Katy Campbell,
Questions:
• If the first principles of
learning are THE accepted principles, how can there be room for new and
emerging principles?
• How can we focus on what will help people learn?
• How do we get from knowledge to content to process to communication?
• Simulations: online gaming technologies appear to be changing learning
environments
o Can commercial simulation environments be scaled for
education?
o Are
simulated environments economical to develop and deliver?
o
Differences between designer-defined, learner-defined, and open outcomes
• Common concerns:
o the fractured nature of
academic/service support units
o providing “technology at the
fingertips” to help learners collaborate?
o are the
“new” technologies already here? Are we building on tools we already have, into
new generations?
o enhancing accessibility –
ideas
included VR and immersive environments, voice recognition and natural language processing
o encouraging learning after the
course ‘expires’, or the formal experience ends
Note: learner-directed activity
supported through profiles and personalization tools?
o identifying and sustaining
networks of ‘best practices’, innovation potential, and related emerging best
practices
Tools:
• How will learning technologies help me gain the learning tools I need when I
need them? TeleHealth as an example of bringing healthcare to the public.
• Can the tools themselves contain advice on good pedagogy? Note: does this implies an expert system? IMS work in Learning Design is
aware that this is a potentially controversial issue and in its scope speaks of
a pedagogically agnostic information model. However, the idea of a learning
design models repository is interesting…
• Can we develop tools that support: adapting objects?
For example, can other tools be embedded in, or linked to LCMS that make it
transparent for faculty to do this? Note: lack of general awareness of the work
in knowledge management/object economy systems. How can we help faculty take
advantage of work of SCORM, IMS, etc.? How can we encourage members to go
beyond Content Packaging, Simple Sequencing, and QTI?
• student ‘initiation’ (?)
• provide self-evaluation, especially to evaluate essays and creative works
• asset management
• evaluation tools of the ‘does it work’ variety
• Next steps?
o
Facilitating the discourse – how?
o What do
we mean by ‘next generation’?
o Develop a
strategy to retire tools that haven’t worked well or that have been superceded
o NLII can help us to find kindred
spirits
Participant summaries and reactions from Group 3:
New
ways of seeing, experiencing and learning are being incorporated into software
tools all the time. Gaming, situational tools, voice recognition, body suits
that allow interactive experience. All are possibilities for technologies that
we might see in future teaching and learning modules.
Although
this won’t appear in standard instruction for some time, it’s important that
CMS vendors collaborate with other vendors that might be marketing these tools
in the near future. Use of open standards that allow CMS vendors to link to
third party software will aid in this ‘next generation’ import to the CMS
experience.
CMS
tools should have instructional design built into them, because many faculty don’t have the skills to design good learning
modules. Faculty may be experts in content area, but may not have the time or
resources to become well versed in instructional design. CMS tools could
provide direction, prompts and modules that model and link learning activities
associated with content and teaching modules.
More
seamless access to shared sources like MERLOT would assist faculty in embedding
materials and learning modules.
Voice
recognition should be considered for future implementations. Natural language
processing is more accessible and should be explored in effective teaching
possibilities.
Student-initiated
threads and independent learning endeavors should be better supported. Self-evaluation based on essay interpretation
and instructor rubrics, to complement the hard data question assessment tools,
would be valuable for many of the humanities fields that don’t value testing as
much as other disciplines.
IMS
has a way to package course materials to make content interoperable.
Dream
Weaver, GoLive, MS-LRN, IMS, OKI,
how many standards are there? Institutionally, we must each settle on what’s
needed and implement institutional decision to write to that standard.
Tools
that support output or byproduct of learning, especially the next generation of
e-portfolios should be evaluated for inclusion.
New Roles:
Sarah Burke of WebCT was the rapporteur
for Group 4, exploring new roles for traditional learning designers, faculty
members, instructional technologists, and students.
Our
group included a mix of faculty, instructional designers, and support staff.
The
session began with a round-robin discussion of the various roles of
participants around the table. Following that, we began to talk more generally
about the roles of Faculty, Support, and Instructional Design Teams.
There
was disagreement in the group as to what the roles of faculty and instructional
designers are. Instructional designers in the group also voiced a concern that
there is a gap in understanding on the part of administration as far as the
legitimacy and value of the role of instructional designers.
Support
staff in the room viewed the role of Support as assisting faculty in using
technology to present their own content. Participants discussed the role of
faculty as providing student experiences, and providing context as well as
content.
We
had a discussion about the various roles within an institution related to
online course design, including:
Digital
licensing specialists
Instructional
designers
Course
researchers
Faculty
Media
developers/Web developers, videographer, digital
media, graphic designer
Project
Manager
Team
Designer
Student
Technology Assistants
Writers
Editors
Some
participants’ institutions leveraged extensive instructional design teams,
whereas others had more limited resources. In many cases, individuals play
multiple roles and must possess diverse skills. For example, an individual
might be a Project Manager and a Course Researcher. Using a team design
approach can be ideal for multiple courses or “course clusters.” Team design
can add multiple perspectives and capabilities to the course design process.
Vicki
Suter, Director of NLII projects, wrapped
up the day by asking the room to keep two persona in mind in determining ‘first
principles’:
·
the faculty member that doesn’t read the
literature or come to learning design conferences but wishes to be reflective about
their teaching practice. If we were able to give that faculty a few rules of
thumb to change their teaching practice so that it is based on learning and
cognition theory, what would they be?
·
the instructional designer whose background is more technical
than pedagogical. What learning principles are consequential? What principles
could truly transform teaching and learning if the technology supported
learning-centered teaching practice?
Participants
agreed that we want to keep going, to form community, to define principles of
learning, to determine teaching and learning strategies that apply to these
principles, create learning activities that relate to those strategies, and
identify technologies that will support the teaching and learning activities.
We need further sessions and discussions like this one, bringing together
passionate faculty, instructional designers and thinkers. Not wanting to
reinvent the wheel, and recognizing the limited opportunities for us all to
gather together physically, NLII asked for participants in virtual workgroups
that will
1)
help the Fellows with learning and CMS research,
2)
further explore learning design issues and a third
suggestion that NLII work on research-based best practices in teaching.
Those interested in the progress of this work are welcome to visit the Learner-Centered practice Key Theme page at http://www.educause.edu/nlii/keythemes/learnercentered.asp.