So, the blogging is over. Well, the assessed blogging anyway.

I mentioned in my very first post a couple of reasons why I chose to keep a reflective blog as part of the BOE course, and I have to say that both of them were proven time and again throughout the past 7 weeks.

Firstly, I mentioned that I am a terrible rote learner and that I need to digest, process and re-deliver information before it truly sinks into my stubborn brain. Throughout this module I’ve been constantly thinking about my next blog post and taking notes of various things to talk about. I’ve found, though, that even after taking notes and thinking about issues beforehand, when I begin writing about a subject I always seem to come up with new ideas mid-stream, and often I’ve changed tack on blog posts half way through and had to go back and change the start. I’ve learned that writing about issues and ideas is a very valuable process for me and prompts much deeper thinking than I would ever have imagined.

Secondly I mentioned that I hoped that this process would push me out of my strategic learner mindset. This was a less successful process than the first but I think it has certainly improved. I still find I’m doing my coursework ‘just-in-time’, but I have begun to pay more attention to the extra material that I might have skimmed over before. Because I have come to really enjoy writing the blog I have been pursuaded to follow up interesting looking links or references in the hope of finding good material to write about. I suppose the blog gives me an extra incentive to learn more and often as I gain the reward of writing good, informative posts, and I suspect this would work for almost anyone, rather than just me. Even if a learner didn’t enjoy writing as much, I wonder whether the pressure of having their work broadcast to the whole class would prompt wider research and deeper learning.

Moving on from the first post, there are a couple of other issues I can tie up a little more neatly now. One early post of mine was centred around the difficulties of group work, and was made in the first couple of weeks of our group work project. I mentioned the fact that we were having a lot of trouble with synchronous communication and, I have to admit, this problem hasn’t really improved. The trials and tribulations of getting 4 people together online at the same time have been far more numerous than I would have expected. Having talked face-to-face with my group in the intervening time we also agree that an hour online is probably equivalent to around a 15 minute face-to-face meeting, through both technical issues and practical limitations of the medium. I have noticed, however, that asynchronous communication has been continuing without any problem and the time-lag between posts has been causing no problem at all. One thing that may explain this is the fact that we agreed at an early stage to have a daily post by the group chair, even if just to say, “Hi all, hope you have a good day today.” This encouraged you to go online every day to check the board as there was always something there to read.

Overall, based on what I have learned on this module, I would say that any group project needs a solid stream of asynchronous communication to base collaboration on. Synchronous, if you can arrange it, certainly has some advantages, but it’s often frustrating and usually inefficient so I wouldn’t recommend reliance on it’s use.

Another area to tie up relates to my initial post about the group seminar that Martin and I worked on near the beginning of the course. The seminar was run as a role-playing game, with a back story and assigned sides, and going by the feedback I’ve had from some of my classmates it seems to have been a huge success! I commented initially that it had been a fair bit more work to set up the role-playing element and the setting than it would have for a standard debate. But I feel that those elements are what engaged the participants so much, and as a consequence, the extra time was well worth it. In any case, the materials that were created are very easily reused and hopefully with the same success, thus further justifying the time investment in the beginning. I think that this is an approach which I will definately be using again myself, and will be recommending to any lecturers that I work with. I’m quite interested in doing a little more research in the future on games for education and I feel this simple type of game is a good starting point.

The last post I want to comment on was my slight rant about writing style in academia, and how innaccessible it is. Well, my feelings on this have certainly not softened having read even more ridiculously worded papers since, but I’ve found my own writing improving as a consequence of that post. In writing materials for websites, seminars or blogs I’ve made an effort to simplify everything as much as possible. While not forgetting who my target audience is, I’ve made an effort to make everything as accessible as possible, and I have to admit it makes writing a little more enjoyable. When you forget about the idea of making your writing seem impressive and intelligent you begin to think more about the ideas and how to convey them clearly. It makes writing easier and I’m sure it makes it more pleasurable to read.

Overall, I’ve learned a huge amount about student support throughout this module, and I’m sure there’s plenty more to come before the end. I think the overriding idea that sticks in my mind, though, is that of invisible guidance and encouragement. I mentioned that writing a blog has helped me to overcome some of my learning weaknesses, and I think that this would be true of many, many learners. I also mentioned that constant, regular asynchronous communication has greatly helped the process of group work even if that communication isn’t directly related to the work itself. Next, I discussed how a little extra work on turning a standard activity into a game can improve engagement. And lastly, I discussed how writing for a much more high level audience doesn’t necessarily make your material more distinguished or intelligent, it can simply exclude a large part of your audience.

All of these are elements of guidance and student support that aren’t necessarily transparent, they may be hidden within your course design to push the student down the correct path. For example, blogging was a choice for me, and I took it despite the fact that I considered it the more difficult choice. Most students wouldn’t make that decision though, and so on a normal undergraduate course blogging could be a required, assessed part of the cirriculum. The students wouldn’t realise that in this you were supporting their learning, but they would benefit anyway. In group projects you could require a post per day, and most likely you couldn’t explain to the student’s satisfaction why this is necessary, but you know it works and so it could be assessed. And lastly, simply by writing in a more accessible manner you are supporting the student in a way which isn’t immediately obvious.

I think that obvious support mechanisms are clearly required, in the form of moderation, tutor presence, specific support tools and the like, but it is perhaps the more invisible methods of support, achieved by thinking deeply about student support when designing the course from the ground up, that really make the difference.

It’s easy to tack a problems forum on to existing material and call that support, but the far more difficult aim is to saturate your materials with invisible support mechanisms so that the student doesn’t even know that they’re there.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking at Induction processes here at Napier University - most specifically those introducing students to WebCT, Napier’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) of choice. Some of my discoveries have been quite interesting and back up in reality a lot of the theory that we’ve already discussed regarding the support of on-line learners.

One example comes in the form of a induction process devised by the social science department of the university, a pilot of which was run on an MSc course last semester. The format of this process was a 2 week course of daily activities, all very short - sub 30mins. Each activity would introduce the student to a different part of WebCT and show how it would be used on the course, including such things as discussion forums, chat rooms and multimedia libraries. An activity would be released each day over the two week period and the students were expected to work on them that day, collaborating with each other as required, as is the case on discussion tasks in particular. This higlights the second purpose of the induction process - to build a sense of community among the students despite working at distance. There were plenty of opportunities for discussion among the two weeks and it was hoped that they would participate in these at the correct time, thus creating asynchronous but quick-response conversations.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the students didn’t use the induction materials at all in the way intended…

I talked to the program leader about the whole process and the main learning point that arose was the fact that students, even well qualified and high acheiving students such as study on the course in question, will not follow a strict schedule, especially measured on a scale of days. The course leaders observed the students throughout the two weeks and noticed a trend of irregular visits, every few days at most, and on these visits the student would complete all available tasks at once. Rarely did a student complete the allocated task on it’s given day, probably due to the fact that they discovered the brevity of each activity at the beginning and realised that they were never going to fall behind. This led, naturally, to a lack of communication among the class as they were never on the same task simultaneously, and so the sense of community was never fostered among the group.

The second trend observed by the course leader was that while every student looked in on every task, some did not complete a large percentage of their tasks. Having talked to these students afterwards in feedback sessions she discovered that a they had decided that there was no point in completeting the tests and tasks at this early stage. They decided that they’d have a look now, take note of what resources were available, and then come back when the information was required, ie. when the problem or activity actually cropped up in coursework.

I feel that both of the above trends show that too much structure was given to the student. As we’ve seen and discussed in earlier sections of BOE, one of the main strengths of on-line learning is it’s flexibility. The on-demand, anytime learning offered by this medium is often quoted as it’s most desirable quality, so by giving the student tasks which require participation each and every day the process was setting itself up to fail. The fact that every student did complete every task shows that they were well designed and useful, but the delivery mechanism seemed to be flawed. Perhaps making communication and discussion tasks run over a week on the next run of the process and making completion deadlines for other tasks more flexible would improve the community building aspect, and allow students to work more in the way they desire.

This approach would also tie in with the second point of interest, which is the fact that some of the students themselves seemed to brand the induction activities as a resource to be referred back to as and when required. By branding the activities with a specific time and date, it encourages a ‘complete and forget’ mentality where the students consider the entire induction resource redundant after the induction period. If this idea was relaxed, and the students were encouraged to work through the tasks as and when needed, as suggested above and including throughout the course, then they would be more likely to refer back to the introductory help when required, and thus overcome problems more easily.

Overall, the induction materials were a success in that students found them useful, and problems with the VLE were cut, but I feel, along with the course leader, that a change in delivery method would make them even more useful. Looking at it more generally, students will always be strategic learners and attempt to complete their work via the path of least resistance. Accounting for this though and offering the resources in a manner that allows this more easily will make always them more well received, and thus more well used. Also, making sure that students realise that induction resources are not just useful at the start of a course but can be dipped into as and when needed will ensure that they are well supported throughout the program.

Our widening access debate wound down this weekend with a nice summary from Martin and a collection of resources put together throughout the two weeks. I thought it was worth going through my final thoughts on the debate.

Firstly, I have to admit to a little of my own views creeping into Dr Johnson’s vehement speech which kicked off the debate. These are mainly due to my own experience as an undergraduate which, despite where I’ve ended up, was pretty unsuccessful (on the academic side at least…). I went to Edinburgh University after a pretty successful school career (5 As in my Highers pretty much gave me the pick of any course, anywhere) mainly through lack of any alternative. The thought of not going to Uni was inconceivable after I made the mistake of showing a bit of intelligence at school, and I had no desire to be a doctor or a Lawyer so I simply chose the subject I was best at: Physics. This was loudly applauded by both guidance teacher and parents - “Physics eh? That’s hard! Whoo-wee, he’ll get a high paying job out of that!” Little or no thought, however, went into what that job would be, or whether I’d actually want to do it. The mentality at the time was simply to get the degree and you’d have a guaranteed high paying job for life. Naturally, as a gullible 18 year old I complied!

What followed was a pretty unproductive 4 years in which I coasted the first 2 and hit a bit of a block in the third, mainly due to coasting the first 2… Physics, while covering a lot of interesting concepts, was basically pretty dull, and I had no concept of what it might gain me to push me through that barrier. I left after completing the 3rd year, got my ordinary degree and ended up with very little advantage over my situation of 3 years before apart from a nice big chunk of student debt.

The point I’m getting at is that I don’t think university was for me at that time, or if it was I needed a lot more advice on how to choose a course. A lot of discussion has gone on in our debate about the fact that many degrees offer small advantage to the modern job hunter considering how long they take to gain. I wonder if that’s partially to do with the fact that many people are railroaded into attending FE and HE simply because it’s seen as the panacea for someone who’s unsure what to do with their life. They choose a subject that might interest them, often with little thought as to where it might take them, and then the university and the government are surprised when it takes them nowhere, either by feeding retention statistics by dropping out or simply not finding a job they want through their degree.

I feel that Christina was right when she said that a lot of the current problems associated with Widening Access could be solved by investing more time at school in preparing students for what comes next. Students have to be told that university or college will only benefit them if they have a clear aim in mind, and that 3 or 4 year’s relevant work experience can often give them the same leverage as a degree when applying for jobs. This applies to anyone, whether from a disadvantaged background or a public school upbringing. I certainly feel that I negatively affected the retention statistics and I had both a middle-class background and a successful school career behind me. It was simply preparation and support in the application phase that I lacked. Mark De Groot made a similar point about his own children. Despite again being from a ‘traditional’ student background they have graduated from University with little idea of what they want to do in life and gained naut but a hugely relaxed attitude towards debt!

I think the point I’m winding my way towards is that I don’t think that widening access should even be an issue. Proper support should be offered to every school leaver in choosing their path in life, whether that be a joinery apprenticeship, a journalism cadetship, a medical degree or a PHd, and if they require FE or HE along that path then that option should be open to them. Encouraging everyone and anyone to attend further education wont solve anything - it will simply raise the national debt statistics and waste time for people who probably didn’t require it in the first place. The perfect system would support every student equally, regardless of background, and instead of blindly pushing them down a certain path it would offer them support to achieve whatever they want in life. The aim should not be widening access to education, but widening access to a productive career. In this systen further education would make up an important, but often unnecessary, part of the whole.

In the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of academic writing online, not only for the SBOSE course but for a number of workshops at Napier that run both online and face-to-face. The experience has got me thinking more about the writing style I use when doing this.

One of the other things that got me pondering was the fact that I like writing anyway, outside of work. Whether I’m good at it or not I’m not sure, but I enjoy it anyway and I keep a Blog on my favourite timewaster, Mountain Biking, in my spare time. In the past few weeks I’ve been noticing the mental shift required when swapping between writing my academic material and my personal content, and I’m beginning to wonder if that’s a good thing.

I’ve been through a fair bit of education in my life and had plenty of experience of wading through the often over-the-top, why use 1 word when 5 will do academic approach to writing. I like to think I’m an intelligent and literate person (most of the time anyway…) but I often get frustrated trying to decipher the weighty prose in many academic papers. Despite this, however, I sometimes find myself joining their ranks and including words and phrases in my academic work simply because they sound impressive or convey intelligence, rather than convey clear meaning. I think it’s an easy trap to fall into, particularly when you’re relatively new to the environment like myself and trying to match yourself against esteemed and proven colleagues.

Now, compare this with my personal writing, in which I try to be informal, unpretentious and hopefully as accessible as possible. I know the kind of guys I go biking with and the variety of folk I meet on the trail. I want all of them to read my articles and enjoy them regardless of background and ability. Somehow, this is starting to sounds familiar… I’ve begun to ask myself why this is any different from writing academic pieces, when we should always be thinking about making content as accessible as possible in order not to hamper learning. This can just as easily be applied to writing for your colleagues as you can never assume that others have the same vocabulary as yourself no matter how well qualified they are.

In the student-led seminar that myself and Martin have been running we’ve been discussing the widening access issue, in which the government has set a target to increase access to education for those from the working classes and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Entrance requirements are being lowered to allow more people the chance to study, and some argue that this leads to a dumbing-down of education. I would argue, though, that some elements of dumbing-down may be a good thing. Making education more accessible by simply writing in a more approachable manner would surely help all students, not just those who haven’t acheived such a high literacy level. Taking myself as an example, I waste hours reading academicised (my new word…) papers and articles multiple times in order to decipher the premise, and once I have the idea I can often see how easy it would have been to convey said premise in a much more simple manner. Those hours could be far more productively spent elsewhere. Supporting the student surely involves making their learning as easy and accessible as possible while maintaining your standards, and so not forcing a time wasting translation process has to be a step forward.

Going back to my original point, from now on I’m going to try to approach my academic writing from the same point of view as the personal. I’ll always write for the broadest possible audience. Obviously, this is easier in some subjects than others and some concepts always require more obscure, inaccessible language, but in general terms it’s very achievable.

I wonder, for my final point, if readers have noticed that I’m already attempting to escape from one of the more restrictive rules. Can you imagine handing in a dissertation with contractions in it for example? Why not though? They’re easier and faster to read, and fully accepted as part of the english language, so why are they not allowed in academic writing? Moreno and Mayer did some research in this area and based on their results they proposed the Personalisation Principle (Moreno & Mayer, 2000). In their research they discovered that students learned more effectively when content was presented in an informal, personalised manner rather than in a formal, distant format.

So, not only does it seem like a good idea for inclusivity but more informal writing is backed up by solid research. Come on my fellow academic writers - shake off your thesauruses (thesauresi…?), bring out the apostrophes and write for people rather than for academia. I’ll never have to read a paragraph twice again.

Hi, welcome to the first (and slightly late!) post of my SBOSE reflective blog.

I thought it’d be worth spending a wee while going through the reasons why I chose to do a blog for this part of the coursework as it reflects a few of the experiences I’ve had of online learning so far. It also gives a bit more background about me and, so I’m told, apparently that’s a prerequiste for a sucessful blog!

So, to the reasons:

1. Personal Learning Style: I know this is true of probably most people, but I feel it’s particularly true of me - I’m terrible at learning by rote. I need to think about things, process them and reorganise them in my head in order to remember anything. I studied Astrophysics as an undergrad and I found it easier to work out how to derive forumlae that to remember them by heart. At least the process of deriving made sense in my head, rather than just being a collection of random letters.I’m finding this is true also of doing lots of readings as is required on this course. I’ve read a fair bit of the recommended readings, and felt that I took it in at the time, but a week later I can’t recall most of the detail. If, however, I’ve made a discussion posting on the subject in the day or two after reading it which requires a bit of processing then I recall it for far far longer. It’s classic contructivist learning I think, having to connect the dots, tie it in with previous knowledge and re-present the information (Kearsley, 2008) and I think it works very well for me. It also brings home to me how important using these tools is for student support, as I feel that a lot of people are in a similar ‘learning boat’ with me. If it’s not present already, then attempting to force a little reflection can only be a good thing for supporting a student’s learning. Therefore, blogging it is for this course - hopefully this will force me to reflect on my readings more often and therefore retain a lot more information!
2. It forces me out of my strategic learner mindset: I will hold my hands up and proclaim, I am very much a strategic learner when I don’t make the effort not to be. I will look at the assessment criteria and carefully craft my submissions aimed straight at the centre. I will attempt to keep my work to a minimum while still attaining a good grade. For example, when choosing whether to do a blog or a development project, I could visualise a number of things on which I am working just now which would fit the bill. I could complete them, as is requried for my work in any case, and no doubt pass the assessment with little extra work on my part. But, the purpose of taking this course is to learn of course! I’m not really doing it for the qualification, I’ve already got my masters after all, and so I took the conscious decision to do a blog based on the fact that it would force me to read more and reflect more, hopefully learning more.How this changes my view of student support I’m not sure. I do like the thought of offering students a choice in how they’re assessed, thus bringing them into the decision making process as is recommended in Knowles’ Theory of Andragogy. But will they always take this responsibility seriously, or will they simply expend vast amounts of time and energy (far more than they do on the coursework) finding the path of least resistance? Either way, I’ve decided to take what I think is, for me, the path of most resistance, and hope to reap the rewards. But will no doubt simply face the consequences!

Anyway, sorry for the slightly long post, but hopefully they’ll be shorter from now on. I’m going to attempt to live up to point number 1 above and reflect on things as I’m reading them. Let’s see how it goes…

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Kearsley, G (2008). Constructivist Theory. Available from: http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html [Accessed: 26/02/08].

Knowles, M. (1984). The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (3rd Ed.). Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing.