·
How you would you implement one or more kinds of
support in some learning provision in which you are involved?
·
The challenges you think they might experience.
For this task I’ve been taking a look at George Siemens’
article on what he calls the Learning Development Cycle. As I often find with
his work, it’s extremely dense (the look of it, font, line spacing etc doesn’t
make it an easy article to get to grips with…) but on closer inspection I find
thought-provoking nuggets which I’d like to explore further. For me, the
concept of the four learning domains which he describes (see below) is more interesting and
useful than the actual Learning Development Cycle which he outlines later in the paper. I’ll try to relate these
domains to my own context and describe how I think they overlap.
I sometimes teach on a Pre-Sessional Academic English programme for
international students. The aim of the course is to give these students the
necessary language and academic skills to be able to participate in a course of
under- or postgraduate study.
There is no escaping the Transmission domain for this
course. There is a tried and tested syllabus, materials, timetable and
assessment framework which needs to be adhered to. This is, of course, not
perfect, but it has the advantage of giving structure to the course and providing
a degree of familiarity/comfort for international students with an extremely
wide and diverse range of educational experiences. This is not something that
is likely to change in the near future, so I think the important question is:
How
can Instructors on the course begin to integrate elements of the other 3
domains of learning into this existing framework?
Siemens outlines the role of
the designer (Instructor in this case…) in each of the domains:
Transmission: Create
courses, workshops
Accretion: Create
networks, ecologies, environments
Acquistion: Ensure
availability of resources
Emergence: Foster
and encourage reflection
He also categorises how each domain is indicative of a
particular type of learning theory or view of learning:
Transmission:
Behaviourism / Cognitivism
Accretion:
Connectivism
Acquistion:
Connectivism / Constructivism
Emergence:
Constructivism / Cognitivism
For me this is useful as it highlights the fact that no one
learning theory fits all, and that good learning and teaching practice cannot
generally be described by one over-arching learning theory, but instead will
have elements of a variety of learning theories.
So, in terms of my course, how would I bring these other
elements in? Here are some examples:
Transmission: As
an Instructor on this course, most of the course material and the syllabus has
already been created. In the transmission domain, my role would be to ‘deliver’
these during face to face sessions, manage the assessed components of the
course and so on.
Accretion: The
aim here would be to help learners build their own learning networks so that
they have the skills to find what they need as they progress into their full
degree programmes. For example, I might create a Diigo (social bookmarking)
group and encourage students to find and add relevant sites for academic or
language skills. A Twitter feed embedded in their course site (currently
Blackboard Learn) could highlight useful information and articles, or even better,
they could create their own Twitter lists of practitioners in their particular
subject area. Use of some of the social communication tools (e.g. blogs,
discussion boards) within the course could begin to build up a community of
learners and, once some confidence had been developed in this (relatively safe)
environment, this could be extended out into a wider network (using
Nancy White’sideas of Community and Network - great webinar by the way, well worth a look if you haven't already).
Acquisition: The
idea here would be to provide a variety of resources in different media to try
to meet the different needs of learners. For example, rather than links to lots
of dense PDF documents, I’d also try to include some OERs in various formats e.g. a video, podcast, prezi, slideshare etc. It’s
relatively straightforward to provide a good variety of different resources. The
challenging part is persuading learners to engage with these resources. Self-directed
learning does not come naturally to many learners – certain educational
cultures are prone to spoon-feeding content, and some learners may see this as
the norm and find it difficult to adopt different learning behaviours. So acquisition also requires good scaffolding in my view.
Emergence: To
encourage reflection and meta-cognition, a personal journal can be used to
encourage students to reflect in writing on their own learning. Again, it’s
fairly simple to build elements of reflection and self-assessment into a
course, although it is sometimes necessary to make these a part of assessment
in order to encourage participation. This may be outside learners’ experience
of education and therefore needs to be done with care. It always helps to
explain exactly why we are doing it and what can be gained by it. Having
students accompany any piece of written work with a short description of what
they found difficult about the task and how well they think they achieved it
can also be an interesting exercise.
In my view, these are all things which an Instructor can do
to help learners reach their particular learning goals. The challenges inherent
in trying to enable learning in all of these domains often relates to student
expectations/experience (particularly when your cohort is international
students with an extremely diverse range of educational backgrounds). In a
sense, we look to encourage a cultural change among learners, to help them become
more self-directed, reflective, networked and risk-taking learners.
(If you're a Diigo user, I've made a few highlights and comments on the Siemens Learning Development Cycle article which you can access at
https://groups.diigo.com/group/alt-octel - depending on browser you're using you might need to hit Annotate in Diigo toolbar or widget to allow you to see highlights / comments)
