George Veletsianos, PhD

Author: George Veletsianos Page 35 of 82

Digital Learning Environments, Networks, Communities. Your thoughts on a new course?

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On October 17, 2016

In courses, Ideas, online learning, open

At the School of Education and Technology at Royal Roads University, we are very excited to be redesigning our MA in Learning and Technology. We will share more about the program in the near future, but for now we’d love any input that you may have on one of the courses my colleague Elizabeth Childs and I are designing. The course is called Digital Learning, Environments, Networks, and Communities. The link sends you to a Google Doc that hosts a very rough first draft of the course. We would love to hear your thoughts, critiques, ideas, gaps, etc on the Google Doc. Are we missing important details/readings? Are there additional activities that we should consider? What questions do you have? How can this course be better?

Some background information on the program follows.

Context: This is the first course in a two year MA degree in Learning and Technology (33 credits). The degree is offered in two modes: fully online and blended. The online group of students and the blended group of students come together in the third course. Thereafter, they continue together and complete the rest of the degree fully online.

Program Goal:

The program is founded upon principles of networked learning, open pedagogy, personalization, relevance, and digital mindsets. Students collaborate and contribute meaningfully to digital learning networks and communities in the field. Graduates will be able to create and evaluate digital learning environments. Students will apply theoretical and practical knowledge to critically analyze learning innovations and assess their impact on organizations and society.

Program Description:

The program responds to the demand for qualified professionals in the field of technology-mediated learning and education. It addresses the need for individuals who have the knowledge, skills and ability to assume the leadership roles that are required to plan, design, develop, implement and evaluate contemporary learning initiatives. Following several foundational courses, students transition into the inquiry-focused portion of the program. Next, they create digital learning resources based on personalized learning plans and facilitate a student-designed and student-led seminar experience that requires them to draw upon the networks and community(ies) they have been contributing to and cultivating over the duration of the program.  

Educational Technology. #EdTech. A discipline?

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On October 16, 2016

In Ideas, open, scholarship, sharing

I’ve been (re) reading the numerous posts on whether educational technology is a discipline, and on whether it’s needed. In light of that, I thought I’d post a link to this book: Educational Technology: A definition with commentary.

The first paragraph from the introduction reads:

“Continuing the tradition of the 1963, 1977, and 1994 AECT projects to define the ever-changing contours of the field, the Definition and Terminology Committee completed the most recent definitional effort with the publication of Educational Technology: A Definition with Commentary in 2007. The main purpose of the 384-page book is to frame the issues confronting educational technology in the context of today’s world of education and training. What is new, and frankly, controversial, about this latest definition is its insistence that “values” are integral to the very meaning of educational technology.”

I wonder what this conversation around discipline would look like if we published our work in more open ways, described the field in more consistent ways, were more inclusive, and engaged in more advocacy.

The most solid advice for researchers studying the use of technology in education

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On September 8, 2016

In scholarship, sharing

If you are engaged in any sort of inquiry into the use of technology in education (whether a student, research, instructor, etc), the following recommendation cannot be emphasized enough:

“Given the increasingly complex role that technology now plays in education and the growing need for clarity around what technology can and cannot do to improve learner success, it is critical that the research we do addresses real-world educational needs and is disseminated in a way that can meaningfully inform design practice. It is, therefore, becoming increasingly clear that the field’s major outlets for disseminating our scholarship should be organized around the problems we are trying to address (flagging learner engagement, poor teaching, rising costs of education, lack of accessibility) rather than the things we are using to solve those problems (learning analytics, online learning, gamification, 3D printing, and the like).”

In short: study problems, not things.

The quote comes from the call of proposals for AECT’s latest Handbook of Research in Educational Communications and Technology.

Video and audio summaries of our research

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On August 29, 2016

In my research, research shorts, scholarship, sharing

I wrote a guest post for the Chronicle’s Prof Hacker section describing our use of video and audio to summarize our research findings. The post was published today and it is available here, but I am reposting it below as well.

 

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Street: First pass – CC licensed image

I use an eclectic assortment of learning resources in my courses. Books, peer-reviewed journal articles, op-eds, white papers, websites, documentaries, lecture videos, podcasts. Readings – especially peer-reviewed journal articles – are integral to my teaching, but I am intentional in my desire to go beyond text, to be inclusive and diverse in my selection of learning resources. In my research, and in my attempts to include multimodal learning resources in my teaching, I discovered that we could do a better job at sharing our scholarship.

 

One of the ways that I am using to share my scholarship in different ways is through the creation of short video and audio clips that accompany each one of my published papers. I believe these might be helpful to colleagues, students, and broader audiences. Colleagues might use them as a way to introduce, humanize, and explore a topic. Students might access them at times when listening is preferable to reading. For example, I listen to podcasts on bus rides because reading on the bus makes me feel dizzy. Others might be in the same predicament. Some students in our research noted that they watched video lectures when engaging in other activities – such as cooking – as a way to accommodate their studies in their busy lives. Broader audiences, such as the general public or journalists, might find video and audio clips valuable as well, as these clips contain information that usually resides behind journal paywalls.

We have created a dedicated YouTube channel to host these videos. Here is a playlist of some of them:

 

The audio is hosted on my personal SoundCloud channel. Here’s a playlist:

We follow a simple process to create these. For each published paper, I collaborate with members of my research group to (a) write a script, (b) record an mp3 file, and (c) produce an animated movie. These media are produced by two individuals using off-the-shelf software. One person writes the script and shares it with the other using a shared Dropbox folder. When I narrate the script, I use Audacity to create the audio file. When my colleague Laura Pasquini narrates, she uses GarageBand. We use instrumental music shared under Creative Commons licenses as background. Once the audio file is created, I post it in on my SoundCloud channel and users can stream it or download it from there. Next, we use VideoScribe to create the animation and since the software is cloud-based, we can both review the draft version of the video prior to publication. The final video is then posted on a YouTube account dedicated to these videos.

 

My research team and I are enjoying exploring the many ways available at our disposal to share our scholarship. We know that creating a video trailer or writing a blog post about a publication isn’t a substitute for high-quality scholarship, but we are enthused at the opportunity to use new technologies to mobilize our research. What are some other ways that you have discovered to share your research with colleagues, students, and the broader public?

 

Discreet Openness: Scholars’ Selective and Intentional Self-Disclosures Online

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On August 17, 2016

In emerging technologies, NPS, open, papers, scholarship, sharing

What do scholars share on social media? Like the jelly jars below, some topics shared/discussed are familiar. The center jelly nn the top row? I’ve seen many of those. A scholar sharing a link to a paper? I’ve seen many of those, too. Other jellies, and scholarly activities online, are more complex and require a closer look. The bottom right jelly? I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Some scholars disclose challenging professional and personal issues on social media. That’s what Bonnie Stewart and I set out to understand in a our paper Discreet Openness: Scholars’ Selective and Intentional Self-Disclosures Online. Popular literature tends to offer conflicting advice on this topic. Scholars are encouraged to share both personal and professional aspects of their self online, but at the same time they are advised to “watch what they say.”  The empirical literature examining scholars’ online self-disclosures and the reasons for making these disclosures remains limited.

jelly_jars

DGJ_5184 – Jelly Jars by Dennis Jarvis

Research into emergent forms of scholarship focuses on academics’ use of technology for learning, teaching, and research. Very little attention has been paid in the literature to scholars’ uses of social media to disclose challenging personal and professional issues. This article addresses the identified gap in the literature and presents a qualitative investigation into the types of disclosures that 16 scholars made online and their reasons for doing so. Results identify wide-ranging personal and professional disclosures. Participants disclosed not only about academia-related issues but also about challenges pertaining to family, mental health, physical health, identity, and relationships. Some scholars disclosed as a way to grapple with challenges they faced; others disclosed tactically, sharing information for political rather than personal reasons. Yet others disclosed as a way to welcome care in their lives. In all instances, though, disclosures were selective, intentional, and approached with foresight.

Unlike popular literature that suggests that scholars are “naive users of social media” and must exercise caution, our research shows that people might be thinking deeply about the the ways that the share aspects of their lives.

You can retrieve the paper from here:

Veletsianos, G. & Stewart, B. (2016). Scholars’ open practices: Selective and intentional self-disclosures and the reasons behind them. Social Media + Society, 2(3). doi: 10.1177/2056305116664222

Your thoughts on our Table of Contents for an upcoming book proposal?

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On July 22, 2016

In Ideas, my research, online learning, open

My colleague Ash Shaw and I are working on a book. The book aims to highlight student voices in online learning. The main aims are to surface the experiences of online learners in an evocative and accessible manner, synthesize literature on the topic, and present our original work. Below is our draft table of contents. If you have a couple of minutes, could you take a look at it and let us know if there are any topics/debates/issues that might be of interest to the average faculty member and student that we are missing?

Thank you!

# Topic Summary and questions answered
2 Demographics Examines who today’s online learners are and how online learners demographics have changed over time. Who are today’s online learners? How many students enroll in online courses nationally and globally? How have demographics changed over time?
3 Who succeeds? (or, The online paradox) Investigates the reasons why students who take online courses have greater degree completion rates when online courses are characterized by higher attrition rates.
4 Motivations Investigates the reasons that individuals take online courses. Shows that students take online courses for a variety of reasons, and reveals that reasons differ depending on the type of online course (e.g., some learners take MOOCs for different reasons than online courses).
5 Digital Literacies Examines the need for skills and the skills required to participate productively in online courses.
6 Note-taking Uses note-taking to illustrate that online learning research that focuses on tracking student activity on platforms alone is insufficient to understand the human condition and hence improve learning outcomes.
7 Self-directed learning Investigates self-directed learning as a process necessary for contemporary learners to develop and apply.
8 Openness Investigates the meaning of the term openness in the context of online learning.
9 Personalized learning Examines efforts to develop adaptive learning software and automate instruction (system control), and juxtaposes those efforts with designs that allow learners to personalize their own learning (learner control). Explores instructor strategies and designs to personalize learning.
10 Flexibility Examines the ways that online courses can be designed to accommodate learners’ lives and allow flexible participation. Investigates issues of modality and (a)synchrnonicity.
11 Social Media Investigates how social media are used in online courses and shows how intentional integration of such tools can lead to positive outcomes.
12 Loneliness or “The student who watched videos alone” Examines how online learning can be a lonely and isolating experience and proposes strategies for enhancing presence and immediacy.
13 Emotions Shows that learning online is an emotional experience, calling for a more caring pedagogy and critiquing the calls to employ online learning to simply make online learning offerings more efficient.
14 Lurking or “The student who learned as much by just watching videos” Investigates the topic of lurking. Highlights the visible and invisible practices that online learners engage in. Demostrates…
15 Time or “The student who stole time from his family to study” Explores the topic of time-management in online students’ lives, and investigates how courses can be designed to fit with the complexity of learner’s day-to-day realities (e.g., work and family requirements).
16 Dropout, Attrition, and Persistence Explores the topic of attrition, as online courses often face higher attrition rates than alternatives.
17 Instructor The role of the instructor in online learning environments. Investigates instructor presence, support, and explores how instructors can contribute to meaningful and effective learning experiences
18 Online vs. face-to-face learning Investigates the question as to whether face-to-face learning is better than online learning. Presents the empirical research on the question and highlights (a) how different forms of education serve different needs, and (b) how learning design is a more significant factor in determining learning outcomes than modality.
19 MOOCs or “The student who completed 200 courses: And other, less profound, online learning experiences” Explores the topic of MOOCs and summarizes the empirical research that exists on the topic. Explains the origins of the term, the different designs, and how the concept has evolved over time, with particular emphasis on students’ experiences in MOOCs.
20 The Learning Management System and Next-Generation Digital Learning Environments Investigates the idea that Learning Management Systems contribute little to student learning. Proposes the courses are “nodes in a network” as opposed to hermetic containers of knowledge. Shows how course design differs between these two ideas.
21 Challenges and remediation strategies Investigates the challenges that online learners face and the strategies employed by themselves and others to remediate them.

Theories for Learning with Emerging Technologies

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On July 6, 2016

In sharing

What follows is a summary of one of the chapters included in Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications. 

How do people learn in digital and online contexts?In this chapter, Terry Anderson examines a variety of way to theorize online learning including social constructivism, heautagogy, and connectivism.

Anderson, T. (2016). Theories for Learning with Emerging Technologies. In G. Veletsianos (Ed.), Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications (pp. 35-50). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

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