It's been a while since I last blogged due to a number of things that have been happening in my life and work - busy, but all good. I attended the Dim Dim session last week and found it really energising and, just as all the other sessions have, it set me thinking about how I can use these experiences in my teaching. While I'm getting a chance to trial some of the applications I'm also able to feel what is like to be a student online. This is a new experience for me because all my study in the past has been face-to-face with some technology added-in. I marvelled at how the facilitators managed in what could have been a stressful situation and it was interesting to observe how we, the learners, are now relaxing and took the initiative to use the whiteboard during the delays and to chat through the text messaging facility. In fact I felt as if we were beginning to form a community of sorts. The smooth shift from Dim Dim to Elluminate left me in awe!!

Today is my first day as a 'twitterer' or is it 'tweeter'. That is I have opened my twitter account, connected it to my blog and even found out how to follow people. I feel like saying "well done me" - well in fact I have said it and that's how I feel. However, I have to say that I have been and am still to a certain degree skeptical about these tools because as a learning adviser my role is to try and have students move their thinking, reading and writing skills from the surface to a deeper level and hopefully eventually thinking critically. I'm not sure that these tools assist my task but also see that they aid other things like the ability to learn with people in Canada, Australia, Britain... I even have an active facebook page now having had an inactive one for some time. I'm wondering how others see twitter being useful as a learning tool.

Where did the Week Go?

This week was taken up with tasks that limited my time on this course. The tasks included making an application for position review. It was time consuming the application had to be made online. Although that makes a lot of sense at first glance, it showed that much use of technology is limited because there is a one size fits all mentality. In this case the application form did not provide for roles which were outside the standard of what is perceived as normal teaching. In contrast, one of the frustrations I have with my development of online resources for academic literacy is the need to cobble together a number of different applications to get the effect I want to best convey the content to the students. Given our heavy workload there is often not the time to learn and apply new applications. In this case I would really like that magic one fits all application!!

On the positive side I have had the opportunity to use an aspect of my knowledge to benefit a not-for-profit organisation I am involved with. I opened a Google Group so that the secretary, treasurer and manager can upload and access standard documents. We also opened a facebook page which is attracting considerable attention and has brought some offers of assistance for the group. I had doubts about this as a means of promoting the organisation but it seems to work at promoting awareness. OF2010 is giving me the confidence to try these things. My questions for this week are - What purpose do other not-for-profit organisations ICT for? What particular applications do they find useful? Are the outcomes from the use of ICT any different than the more traditional methods?

Delayed Viewing

I have just made time to watch to the facilitated discussion with Greg Walker as the guest speaker. Sadly I missed it on Friday but isn't technology great as it allowed me to watch at a time that suited me. I see that as one of the main benefits of online learning;learners can study in their own time, at their own place, at their own pace and very often if many situations if they are short of time they can leave and return to complete their task or learning when they have free time. Also, following my previous experience I managed to keep my attention focused on the recording this time by making a few notes about the content as the recording progressed. However, concentration wasn't that difficult because I found myself very interested in the way Greg and the facilitators managed the process of getting everyone involved and focused on the topic but then allowed the discussion to virtually take its own course towards the end. Another thought is I was probably more focused because I wasn't actively participating, which would have required me to manage the technology and actively listen. This highlights a major difference for learners between asynchronous and synchronous discussions.

The topic of developing critical thinking is also of interest to me. My observation following Greg's presentation is that the pedagogy for online learning is similar to that which I apply when teaching face-to-face as I endeavour to move student's thinking through analysis, evaluation towards taking a critical stance. This is a concept that challenges many of our students and the discussion on levels of questioning was useful. The online teaching I do is for students who are self selected and there is no assessment so the challenge I face is getting them online and completing activities. Participation in this situation requires a high level of self directedness. I see a similarity to my participating in this online facilitating opportunity and what keeps me participating is my interest in the topic, my acknowledgment that I need to know more and increasingly the community that is developing and the discussions that are taking place. Gradually I am developing ideas about the process and the applications that can be used to create an online community and I'm continuing to reflect on how I can replicate that for the learners who access my papers.

Another Perspective

This week I have been looking at online learning from a student's perspective. This was brought on by the fact that I was facilitating a workshop for a group of students, many of them are studying fully online and having difficulties with different aspects. I find there is little literature written from the student's perspective that give insights into the difficulties they have moving from face-to-face to online although there is much written on teaching online. The first insight I had was when I was unable to be online for the last facilitated session I decided to watch on the recording but my attention kept wandering and I found myself tuning out as I tidied my desk and moved paper around my office. The second insight was when I tried to find my way through and read the large number of blogs in this paper. It came to me that I needed to think about how I learn best, my favoured learning style(s). I would not expect to sit through a face-to-face lecture on campus without taking notes and the reason I take notes is to keep myself engaged. Nor would expect to cope with the quantity of information in the blogs without a system for sorting those that I wished to read more deeply and those that were less relevant to my interests.

The relevance of all this to the students I work with is that they have difficulty managing their contributions and the amount of information in the discussion forums in Moodle and they have difficulty studying effectively and avoiding the pitfalls of poor time management and procrastination etc. The upshot of all this is that when preparing students to study online in an environment which they have previously used more as a play ground it is important to encourage them to think about how they learn best and ways they can transfer that to the online environment. While I still see development of online opportunities is - pedagogy + content + technology increasingly I am becoming aware of the challenges that face online learners. Also, when sharing information about different applications I was made aware of a site called Diigo which I have begun to explore. However I am beginning to feel that all these online opportunities are overwhelming and feel I am fast losing control. How do I pull the different online threads together and management them effectively in relation to time and content? Again I suspect this is a similar problem the learners I work with have.

Learning by Observing

Last week was the first time I have been involved in a real time meeting online. I found it very interesting, first coming to terms with the process and the use of the technology, then once I was comfortable with that I had the opportunity to observe online facilitation. Certainly the application that was used was reasonably intuitive and it provided an insight into how I could improve community with such a tool in my Moodle pages. At present I rely on forums for questions and comments but entries are text based and asynchronise. I also observed the facilitation process and the way Sarah made us all feel comfortable then encouraged us to join the discussion with focused questions and activities. I think I read somewhere there is a free to download equivalent to Elluminate but can't recollect where I saw it or indeed what the name was. Perhaps someone could provide me with that detail. The questions I am asking myself are: How would including synchronised communication benefit students learning and improve my role as a learning advisor? How can I implement it to ensure students participate as there is no assessment requirement in my pages?

Back Again

Wow great to see that some people have read my blog. A little more about me. I'm a learning adviser and I work with students across the disciplines and levels at the University of Waikato. It is a really interesting and varied role as I meet students one-to-one, present workshops and create on-line learning development opportunities. Our purpose is to assist students increase their academic literacy skills. I think "being along for the ride" on this course will extend my knowledge of how to engage with learners while online particularly as the visitors to our pages are transitional (ie no assessment or requirement to attend).

More ramblings

I could get to enjoy this blogging especially now that I have managed to get the link into the paper. However, there is something about sitting in front of a blank page and wondering whether I have anything worth saying or whether anyone would want to read anything I have to say. Hence I can understand why so many of our students hesitate to make entries into the discussion forums until the last possible moment when learning online. Must say I did get a sense of satisfaction having finally got my blog set up and the link into Wikieducator working.