EDU720 Week 1 Introduction to Developing Flexible Learning Environments

LO’s:

• Critically reflect on and discuss personal experiences of the benefits and constraints of online learning;
• Apply knowledge of the EDU710 Module and Assessment 2: Reflective Blog to produce, share, critically evaluate and discuss summary reflections on your learning that could help demonstrate achievement of Assessment 2’s Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria;
• Produce critical reflection on what and how you have learned online this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of supporting student learning in your local teaching contexts.

A introduction to flexible learning environments, which it highly topical right now!

I was a tad uncertain of the differences between blended and flipped learning before this week.

Reading up about blended e-learning. The book is 2007 – it surprised me to see how much they were using technology to facilitate learning by that point already. It’s interesting to be able to apply hindsight to some of the considerations in the book; will e-learning result in fewer teachers trying to teach far more students? Yes!

Basically, blended learning is using digital technology to support, personalise and facilitate learning alongside more traditional methods such as face to face (f2f). it has a number of advantages and disadvantages – not all of which were identified by the book;

Pros:

• Remote access 24/7
• Can learn at own pace – can re-play content and pause as often as needed
• Variety of media to use, depending upon preference
• Can fit in around a variety of lifestyles, around work, children etc.
• personalisation – offers a greater personalisation of learning
• Ability to more closely track and assess students’ progress and development.
• Easier to ID issues with content and delivery.

Cons:

• Lack of f2f – many students miss the ‘campus experience’ and meeting with many people of a similar age, interested in the same subjects.
• Quality – concerns

This is certainly going to feature heavily in teaching for probably the next year or so. I’m wondering if some of the outliers of online learning, e.g. use of Second Life, are still going and being used as the general consensus on the forum was that whilst it had major benefits in offering flexibility and supporting part-time study (we are / were all working full or part time at the same time as studying), it couldn’t replace F2F learning and I agree; humans are social creatures first and foremost and social learning is vital. Online can’t quite replace that (although Safia suggests that well-designed online courses perhaps may better support students that some F2F).

I think it’s probably a highly personal thing; I can see online suiting some neuro-diverse people very well, and not suiting others. I know I prefer F2F – possibly for a number of reasons; it’s what I’m used to, I associate it with a positive experience at Uni, I lip-read a lot…). I’d be intrigued to see how much MBTI types fit in with preferences for learning media?

Harriet makes the strong point that it’s enabled her to study at home whilst dealing with a 7 month old baby!

Hmm, but all those comments are around necessity rather than choice. If there were no constraints, I suspect most would choose F2F. This suggests then that whilst online does a marvellous job of increasing accessibility to learning, it’s still not the preferred way to learn? Angela makes a very good point that has been backed up by research – human beings need connection. It’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a basic psychological need, and our modern life is increasingly depriving us of that. Online learning can never replace the F2F connectivity.

Toby makes a very good point about job losses – as Kirsty Allsop points out; ‘If your job can be done online, it can be done abroad where wages are cheaper’.

A lot of this week was going over the requirements for assessment 2 of this module – the CRJ. My practice CRJ summary below as it touches on online learning:

Anna Dovey

11 Jun 2020 11 Jun at 17:18

Like others, my CRJ wasn’t continuous throughout module 1 (‘What gets assessed, gets learnt’!).

I will reflect on weeks 2 – 4. We were starting to build towards the first assessment; a lesson plan for a micro-teach session, a recording of the session itself and two professional learning forms reviewing other’s sessions.

• LO1 – evaluate, justify and develop practice in teaching.

Ironically week 2 touched on reflective learning….

This was an elucidating section. I was able to determine that I was broadly on track regarding my delivery and content, but this course provided me with the understanding and terminology to justify it. Using the Lesson plan helped me to identify that I was trying to cram too much into sessions and allowed me to take a more structured approach to lessons.

I already take a student-centred approach to teaching, using empathy; what I had perhaps not utilised consistently before was an approach that encouraged the students to do more work than myself. I have asked questions in lessons to allow student to demonstrate their ‘learning incomes’ and pool each other’s knowledge in a social learning approach. I have used a variety of methods such as exercises, quizzes etc. to engage students and to provide them with opportunities to practice what they have been taught, eliciting more of a ‘deep’ learning approach than ‘shallow’. Areas identified for further development were around summarising lessons for students and practicing new technology in a classroom situation before using it in class.

The micro-teach session and following reviews by others was very useful. It reassured me that I was not as bad as I feared I was, whilst providing useful constructive feedback from others. Seeing others teaching sessions was also reassuring.

• LO6 subject-specific practice for supporting student learning; evaluation and critical reflection is used to effectively inform professional development as a teaching and learning practitioner.

This mostly centred around the micro-teach session and the following learning conversations with colleagues over these three weeks. Evaluating and critically reflecting upon my own work and that of others was very useful – we are often aware of our areas for development, we just need a safe space to ‘unpack’ and review these, without the blame that Western society tends to attached to admissions of ‘failure’. This is incredibly important for our own students too; no-one is perfect, we all have areas of strengths and weaknesses; acknowledging those and seeking to improve is valuable practice.

• LO7 – Work demonstrates thoughtful engagement with peer discussion and offers critical appraisal of different perspectives on teaching practice from fellow practitioners on supporting student learning.

The learning conversations from the micro-teach sessions and the weekly on-line conversations and webinars were opportunities to practice this. I found it comparatively easy to engage with peer discussion and have always enjoyed critical appraisal of perspectives; the difficulty with this topic is there are so many different perspectives approaching teaching from so many different angles, e.g. psychology and sociology. 

During lockdown, as a break from the PGCHE I read an article on ‘Spartan Literacy’. Which ended up discussing education… the best way to teach people has clearly been discussed since before 500BC (interestingly, the Spartans felt that reading was not the best way to inculcate good citizenship; they felt strongly it was by teaching by example- a form of social learning whereby older, more experienced citizens would explain and demonstrate good citizenship). If we haven’t arrived at a conclusive theory of the best way to teach people in 2,500 years, I doubt we’re going to solve that debate any time soon.

I suspect the ‘best ways’ to teach people will vary as much as people vary, but realistically completely individualised teaching and learning is impracticable in the current system. Online teaching offers more flexibility in this regard, but the current Covid-19 situation has provided a unique opportunity for mass online learning to be observed (cue hundreds of dissertations on this very topic for the next few years). Forcing entire populations of students to learn purely online has resulted in a lot of complaints and demands for fee refunds; students have strongly expressed a desire that this method not continue from September 2020 – Susan Strudwick reports potential new students stating they will take a gap year if they cannot have the campus experience. Which brings us to something of an impasse; it is impossible to deliver wholly individualised learning in group settings, yet most humans want to learn in groups as we are ultimately social creatures. Discuss…

Dario Faniglione

7 Jun 2020 7 Jun at 14:21

TUTOR SUMMARY

Well done to those of you who have managed to contribute to this discussion.
As you have gathered, this exercise is intended to let you practice on the recurring activity for this module, which will also feature in your assessment submission as a task. Also, it has been an opportunity to focus your attention on the learning outcomes for this module, and the expectations around assessing your achievement of these.

Even if we do not have many contributions to this discussion, I was very pleased to read through your summaries and I have identified some key points for feedforward, which will be more or less relevant to you individually. These points complement our webinar discussion, which you can also review in the recording. (Links to an external site.)

1. Reflection is personal

Although there are models and structures of reflective writing, how we construct a reflective piece is always personal and intimate. For this reason, as you all have done, it’s important to write in the first person and highlight what is/has been important for you. As you have probably noticed in this discussion, two pieces of reflection (by two people) on the same subject will ever be the same… and that’s great!

Also, be as honest as you can. “Reflection” is a precious tool, and its outcomes are for you to keep. When writing reflective on your experiences as part of assessment submissions (for this programme), we do not mark the content of the descriptive component (“what happened”), but rather how you are analysing facts/content/resources and relate these to your own learning and development. In a very simplistic way, consider structuring your reflection in three parts: what? (what happened/what are talking about/context), so what? (why is this relevant to you now? how did you feel and why? etc.), now what? (what did you learn? How will you address these issues in the future? Why?) (Driscoll, 1994). The more hows and whys you can address, the richer, more critical, and meaningful your reflection will be.

2. Engagement with scholarship

You will have already received personalised feedback and feedforward on this, in the feedback sheets of your EDU710 assessments. As we have mentioned a number of times in the past few months, regurgitating/repeating what has been said in the literature is not what is expected here. We would like to see you have engaged with pedagogical scholarship and you have an informed and critical perspective on what you have read. Some of the questions you can ask yourself are “why and how this piece of literature is relevant to me and practice?”, “are there alternative views out there?”, “how this view/perspective helps me making a case/justifying my practice?”, etc.
As usual, please review the Falmouth’s Harvard referencing style https://ask.fxplus.ac.uk/harvard-falmouthLinks to an external site.

3. Engagement with peers

You have been practicing this for a number of weeks now. What’s important here is demonstrating you are acknowledging peers’ perspectives/point of view, explain why and how this might be different/inline from your own, suggest informed and justified alternatives.

When providing feedback directly (like in this activity), highlight the strong points and then suggest improvements, using supportive and positive language: e.g. rather than “You should have done this”, maybe better “Next time, you should consider doing this, because…”.   

4. Keep it to the point

In your CRJ you do not have a word count limit, so you can explore and go on as much as you want. However, when it comes to summarise and producing your 250 words bites, it’s important to focus on what really counts. Go back to point 1 above: what we really want to hear about are the hows and whys, i.e. your critical analysis. In a few concise sentences, you will need to condense you will need to explain the “meaty” aspects of your reflection, and if relevant, enrich these with your engagement with literature and peers’ perspectives.

Apologies for the long post. I don’t think what has been said above is new to you, but perhaps it can help to have these tips all in one place. Reply Reply to comment

• Collapse Sub discussion Andy Peisley Andy Peisley 8 Jun 2020 8 Jun at 8:20

Hi Dario, great summary and feedback, thanks for this. 

A couple of extra points re meeting LO7:

• Firstly, remember that the EDU720 Assessment 2 Additional Guidance Doc, in the supplementary documents section of the EDU720 Assessment 2, Assignments section, has extra information to help you meet this learning outcome in what you write
• This is a new learning outcome that you have not encountered in any of your PGCHE assessments so far (even though lots of you actually have been taking steps towards achieving this already through your responses to each others perspectives, as encouraged in the discussion forums). So it will be worth: really spending some extra thought in getting your head around this LO7, practicing at demonstrating it more in your CRJ, reading the additional guidance document, etc; because it is a new one, and is only summatively assessed once in the course in your EDU720 Assessment 2 work. This can be one where PGCHE students can let themselves down in the high grade that they otherwise might have achieved in their EDU720 Assessment 2, as they don’t provide much evidence for this LO7.
• In this practice exercise, a way in to demonstrating how you have achieved LO7 through what you write in your summary reflection post, would be to focus on what had been discussed by you and your peers in the discussion forums, during that 3 week period of learning that you were reflecting upon. E.g. what perspectives expressed by your peers particularly struck you, and how and why, during that 3 weekly period of the module? How did that inform or change your thinking about your teaching practice? Why? In terms of perspectives expressed by your peers in different posts in those 3 weeks, which did you agree with, and how and why? Which did you not agree with and how and why? What has changed in terms of your thinking about your practice, and/or your practice, from engaging with their post or comments?
• Also some of this may well have already have been discussed on the webinar last week, so as Dario suggests, if you weren’t there then it would be a good idea to listen to the recording of this

• To what extent do you think you have achieved each of the Learning Outcomes for this week? If you think there is room for you to achieve these more fully, what could you do to achieve that? I think I have achieved most of the learning objectives . If I am honest I have engaged in strategic learning, partly as a result of COVID-19 distraction, going through redundancy and the resulting job hunting!
• What have you learned this week regarding the use of online learning to support student learning? I have learned from the forum that there are pros and cons, but that most people would *prefer* F2F due to the social side of it; however through various situations and contexts they have chosen online learning through *necessity*. This would suggest that other students on other online courses are forced to make similar choices and are in similar situations. That having been said, online learning does at least offer that choice (note: OU was successfully offering distance learning long before online came along, so for many that choice did already exist – online learning just offers more convenience and (immediacy. The human race is so driven by convenience – we’re a lazy bunch! (which is an evolutionary imperative – save energy = higher chance of survival)
• What does all this suggest about the ways you and your colleagues are currently supporting your students learning, in your own practice and teaching context? What does it suggest that is currently good about this, and about how it could be further developed in the future? Given that I have had no students since March and will not be at ACM for much longer, this is something of a moot point! I think some of my course colleagues are already delivering online learning and have this has given them pause for thought. I think, as so many are, some have been flung in at the deep end by Covid-19. Going forward, I will consider some of these points – students are often on online courses out of necessity, not choice, and creating some sense of social learning is important.
• How has your understanding of the use of online and / or blended learning changed from doing this week’s topic and activities? My eyes have been opened by the various comments on the forum as to how it has increased accessibility (but again; that has been there since the OU – perhaps though, it has resulted in a greater number of courses being available.
• How did you learn this?
• What supported your learning?
• What has challenged you?
• What has surprised you?
• How does this relate to what has been proposed in the different sources of scholarship you read? Which specific sources and what claims in those does this relate to? Accessibility is cited as a factor in several sources.