onsdag 5. november 2014

Sticking with it and bowling alone

OK, I am not going to lie to you - sticking with a MOOC is hard. Not because it is hard work; in comparison to a university course, a MOOC is not difficult, or socially demanding in any way (shape or form). From the two courses which I am currently in - where the one is very presence heavy and the other is more traditional lectures - I can honestly say they are a far cry from a university course. We are talking apples and oranges. Perhaps even so much, that WHY they are different deserves som thought.

Firstly, I think the main difference between the two is the social, physical presence factor. Where class is, well class - even if it means only seeing your classmates twice, thrice a semester. So, while you may not see them on a weekly basis, you still have enough time to make social connections, which in turn mean that if you slack off, don't do the work, etc, you will look like (or feel like you look like) a dummy in comparison to every one else. It is basic psychology - we have chosen this social arena to associate with and hence follow the social codes which we (think) everyone is following, too.

On MOOCs, there is no f2f. You may meet people on web chats - which btw are great - but it is not the same as feeling any pressure to deliver simply because you will never be in the same web chat group again. I wish someone would think up some algorithm where the group of say 6 people gets 1-2 people exchanged each week. So there is SOME familiarity, but on the whole you have to face up to your colleagues. Now, bear in mind you will probably never meet these colleagues in rl, but for media savvy having to meet the same people and address them by name is very similar to actually meeting them. You feel some sort of responsibility to deliver.

Secondly, you know there is no test, no grand finale. For school/education/learning positive people such as myself, that actually sucks. I would LIKE a test, an exam. And actually, if that is the case and an exam is a major part of my motivation, I should probably consider taking The future of education, for example as a university course.

The problem with taking that MOOC - as an example - as a university course is that I cannot just go off to London every week to meet my fellow students at the University of London (mind you as  MOOC student through Coursera, you are not actually a student of the University of London, just associated through Coursera). I don't have the time, and my family situation is as such that that is a totally impractical and unlikely thing for me to do. Also, taking a university course is expensive. Even though a lot of university education in Europe is free/cheap doesn't mean you have no expenses.

Therefore, thirdly as to why it is difficult, seems at odds with itself - there are no stakes. No stakes, low threshold, free to walk in and walk out as you please. No bleeding hearts' pleas to stay, no looking back. It is actually a really weird feeling, because never before have I felt like one little dot in a sea of pixels. It is strange to feel like - well, know - that no body will notice if you leave the group or give up. And it is a bit sad. I am glad a university education doesn't feel that way, simply because you can belong there, or chose not to belong, but at the very least relate to others in a positive, communal situation in ways which do not seem possible with a MOOC.  It is very Robert Putnam - but it is like bowling alone.

tirsdag 28. oktober 2014

Banking facts, banking skills: how schools can change education through arts

Course material concerning the critical view of banking (a term used in last week's sessions in The Future of Education) has got me thinking about a couple of aspects of arts and culture education in schools - and in particular arts education.

The implication of poor education of low quality teaching in the arts has been well documented by Anne Bamford in her well known publication The Wow factor, where Bamford discusses how poor instruction in the arts had a detrimental effect on learning in other subjects.

This, naturally, lead to a discussion on what actually constitutes good education in the arts - a topic of course which is rife with theoretical (and non-theoretical) stances claiming one thing or another. Bamford - ultimately - doesn't come with any one approach which is a better stance than any other. The object centred versus making centred perspective is perhaps the most common one to be found in literature in the field today; however, I claim that thought should be given to the third aspect of arts education  - the mind. Not only is it important in understanding and arguing for arts in education and arts education better, it is also significant in understanding how arts education has become perhaps the most significant part or education in the knowledge economy and education for the future.

As a counterpart to the hands-on/making centred approach, emphasising the importance of the mind in the process of arts education not only offers a more holistic approach to understanding the educational benefits of arts education, it also offers a deeper understanding of what arts education is and can be, if structured in appropriate ways in the classroom. To understand this we need to take two steps back.

Counteracting Cartisian dualism through the theoretical works by Gilbert Ryle and Susanne Langer, a marriage between Philosophy of mind and arts education also gives rise to the understanding of the intellectual implications of arts education and not just the cognitive benefits of learning to manipulate form and material with ones hands and body. Such research tells us much about the development of interacting with the world, but little about the development of abstract thought through working with pliable materials. This is precisely the type of praxis-centred learning that both navigates and ultimately links a students' understanding of the world with their own body and mind.

So what does this have to do about banking - and more importantly - can schools make a difference to education and the education what they offer?

To understand the link between the two, one naturally has to include the presence of an active, and appropriately informed teacher. To move away from the idea of banking, the arts education offered in the classroom has to resist the translated form of a fundamentally narrative education in other fields of education - which is skill banking for the purpose of pure skill development. This becomes difficult in real life when skill banking is often associated with arts education in general and the preservation of cultural heritage and heritage techniques in particular. The skill is transferred from the subject teacher to the object students; the students remain passive through not engaging with the core of the technique even though they are physically interacting with the material.

By the core of the technique I mean that they are coming to terms with the main objective of the activity. It is not merely making a traditional garment, it is making a dress with signs and symbols which identify a social and cultural group using the materials, colours and designs which are most relevant, easily attainable and commonly recognisable in a given group.

Just because students are physically touching and working with a material does not automatically mean the students are not passive in the operation of interaction. Students receive, memorise and act out a physical movement which results in the making of an object. There is no magic in the meeting of hand and material alone unless the students are invited into a discussion where their preexisting knowledge is taken to the fore, integrated into their meeting with the core ideas of an object and revitalising this through their own ownership of the newly made object.

Obviously, moving away from the banking of skills is problematic in that - in the arts as in many other fields - you cannot make anything without a baseline understanding of some skills and materials. This is in effect a critique of Freire because some banking of skills is simply necessary for students to make any progression in arts education. Also, in support of Freire, being able to discuss or interact with the material presupposes an informed mind. And, in relation to arts education, an informed mind is one which has theoretical, historical and physical/skills knowledge already.

So what can schools do to change education at that school through the arts? Firstly, underemphasising the importance of object production in the early years of education would allow for more interaction and the critical investigation of materials, signs and symbols. The development of abstraction and abstract thought could be emphasised by practical tasks based on open-ended, problems-based exercises where the students's already acquired knowledge from real life is central. Skill development needs to be concept-based and grouped accordingly so that the particular skill is seen amongst a family of associated skills. And lastly, drawing as a baseline translation of thought to form must be introduced at an early age.

To do this, schools - and headmasters especially - needs to approach the arts and arts education in a more progressive, holistic manner. Investing in the arts especially in the early years will give students more skills and teach them more about learning and abstract thought than what is done today. Headmasters needs to emphasise having informed teachers in all subjects - and naturally in the arts too - but be willing to take a different stance than that which they assume national authorities and parents are expecting of them. To be brave - and to invest in the future of education.

onsdag 22. oktober 2014

MOOC structures

The Bilingual Brain, the second Coursera MOOC I have signed up for, started today.

I am delighted to see that a long list of extra reading resources have been added to the week's work. I have missed more readings and a more traditional structure, even though the more postmodern structure to the course has been work intensive and fun.

I may have been working more, but I am not sure if I have been working smarter. So it will be interested to see how the Bilingual Brain goes: As opposed to The Future of Education, which made by an Education faculty includes lots of different forms of learning tools and opens for lots of discussion, The Bilingual Brain is all about lectures - funny that considering that it is the language department that has developed the course.

I will start on the lectures tomorrow - hoping for an exciting 8 weeks.

Key priorities for schools

What should schools emphasise to change their learning culture from testing and banking, to learning and LLL?

Thinking about what key areas schools need to emphasise in the future, it is easy to just look at the negatives - stop banking, stop testing (so much), stop, stop, stop, stop. 

Instead I think we need to look at the positive suggestions, asking for more learning-postive initiatives. Perhaps a school (in its given milieu) would need to emphasise playing as an integral part of learning (for life) and learning key competencies for learning later in college and as an adult. Check out this: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/opinion/the-building-blocks-of-a-good-pre-k.html?hp&action=click&p... where a letter to The New York Tomes discusses playing as an important learning component for Pre-K (4 y.o.) children now that the city of New York as implemented universal Pre-K in the city. 

School also need to be able to judge key priorities based on their own socio-economic situations/milieus. Perhaps some key priorities work for some schools - maybe - and perhaps they would work very poorly for others. The headmasters and teachers, in collaboration with parents, are the best ones to make that call. (Implying, thus, that we need to trust our headmasters, teachers and parents). 
The emphasis on what if for key priorities is to emphasise the need to discuss, share experiences also with regards to key priorities and not just concrete lesson plans. Greater collaboration on a headmaster level, and collaboration with fex government agencies (as suggested by Dr Jane Perryman of the University of London) would be a far more positive, pro-learning approach to school administration and structures.  

lørdag 18. oktober 2014

Just half way through

At the end of week 3, I am now just half way through this MOOC I am taking - The Future of Education - through the University of London.

Delighted about the MOOC so far. The material is fine, and the structure of the course is interesting - although standard for a MOOC (with Padlet walls, Google+ and all that). But what I have liked the most is talking to teachers, researchers and university professors from around the world.

It has been invigorating to meet up with colleagues from around the world on Talkabout, and to sound out ideas and exchange experiences. My RL friends who are teachers, should certainly look into taking a MOOC like this one.

Obviously, there are a lot of people working in education who are taking it - education on all levels from elementary to university, and in teacher education as well. And, The University of London do a good job both promoting their master's programme in education and developing the MOOC on its own feet.

I would be one to take their master's had it not been for the fact that it costs 11,000 pounds. And while I wholeheartedly believe a degree-rewarding education is miles from a MOOC for many reasons, for me - who just wants to learn something new and not get a job, a raise or a promotion because of it - taking a MOOC to fulfil my needs suits me fine.

onsdag 15. oktober 2014

A good teacher

Today's activity is to reflect on:

  • Do you remember having a good teacher? Or a particularly bad one? Reflect on your memory, what was about it about this teacher that makes them stand out for you?
  • How does this image of a teacher relate to other images you have of a "good" teacher?

I can recall a couple of good teachers, as I am sure - or at least I hope - a lot of people can. And in retrospect what I thought made them good teachers was their ability to get me to look at an issue, an idea differently or from a different perspective. In other words, they managed to challenge my way of thinking. 

I don't think this image of a good teacher is one which has stuck with me throughout my own professional career, as the primary ideal or role model for the teaching profession. Rather, I think the atmosphere or the milieu of learning has been one which I have been more interested in establishing and developing. This of course dependent on there being either a majority of what I would subjectively define as good teachers or at the very least, the teachers I have to interact with being treaters who assist in creating what I define as a good learning milieu. 

So far, these are subjective interpretations, so I am looking forward to getting challenged by the material on these points. 

So now to this week's dose of the future of education. 

Intelligence and school - Week 2 reflection text

My reflection text for this week puts a cap on this week's topic, Intelligence. The written material has been interesting, as has the little films/interviews that has been a pat of the course material, but mostly what I have drawn insight from is the discussions.


Intelligence is assessed in school either we do so intentionally or not. Either it is spoken or unspoken, a pupil/student's ability to interact with the material without teacher intervention is ultimately something we as teachers (on whatever level) have a conscious relationship with on a daily basis. 

Intelligence is assessed, therefore, both formally and inadvertently through testing and informally through daily interaction. Even though we say we are testing skills, we are actually testing a pupil's ability to pick up the concepts and ideas as they have been presented, worked with and discussed by a specific teacher or in a specific school (milieu). If identical twin testing proves that two kids in different milieus do the same, that may actually only prove that traditional teaching forms (the classroom model, which to a very great degree most of the western world abides by) doesn't do much for kids' incremental intellectual growth at all. In other words, current international models gives them facts, does teach them how to learn. 

Informally kids' intelligence is assessed in the school setting on a daily basis, simply because (using a bell curve) a teacher strives to get as many kids as possible inside the body of the bell - and hence getting as many as possible to grasp the material at hand at a sufficient enough level to be able to successfully move on to the next stage in their learning progression plan. The cost/effort of having to follow up those who lag behind is enormous, so the middle of the bell curve is best placed at a level that allows for the least amount of lag. The crux of this matter is that the apex of the bell should not depend on the average or mean IQ of the class, but rather be dependant on the teacher's ability to work with the material and the class in such as way that he or she initially reaches as many as possible. Therefore, as opposed to assessing intelligence, we should assess didactical approaches and learning outcome results. 

Since it is a human quality to be able to learn, nobody simply cannot learn - as has been indicated that some people think in the discussions we have had. This problem was also discussed in some of the course material we had to read for week 2, even though I disagree with that particular newsletter. (That is a whole different discussion). There are, however, some kids that teacher simply cannot teach - not because the kids cannot learn but because that teacher does not have the time/ability/skills to approach that kid in an appropriate matter. Naturally, this effects the educational opportunities children are given in one way or another. 

I realise that this stance argues for differentiation of kids in school, and perhaps that is the best way to go about reaching out to those children, who for one reason or another, have not had the incremental, additive intellectual growth which you otherwise see in "smart" kids. Now, intelligence is a complex construct which means that while some kids have more blocks stacked in their favour than others, other kids might have the same starting point, but lacking the catalysts for intellectual growth they stagnate much earlier than we hope (if, of course, you think that people have to stagnate all together at some point - which I don't). This thinking is in line with Gordon Stobart - and I am looking forward to reading his book on ability and intelligence.   

As to learning, being intelligent does not necessarily mean you are en expert learner - or even a good learner. Very intelligent kids can be horrible learners, and end up with very poorly developed thoughts and stances on a number of complex issues. just as slower (?) kids can end up - with the right training - to be able to follow and develop complex lines of thoughts and arguments. And if there is one think which we can be side of concerning the future of education, it is that we need more people who are able to grasp and content with complex problems and constructs which face society today. 

Rounding off week 2, in week 3

So far learning by moocing has been an interesting experience. I chose to try out Coursera's MOOC offer after checking out other online offers, and even a Norwegian MOOC offer which I believe is organised through NTNU - the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. (Two of their employees recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine - congratulations!)

MOOCing is something like taking an online corse. But without the credit (some courses do offer some sort of statement, but not this one), without the socialising in person (the all important milieu for learning and critically questioning things), and without the high stakes/low threshold problem (it doesn't cost anything to take the course, so t doesn't cost you anything to drop out either). Funnily enough, I am actually rounding off week 2 in week 3, so yes, I am lagging behind already and I am not even half way through the course. So it is really up to you, and what you want to get out of it that is the real test as to whether you will complete a MOOC or not. Nobody is looking over your shoulder.

Still, you do interact with a whole range of people from different background and from all over the world. So even though you don't get the social bonding, the social glue that a university setting offers, you still get to pick from other people's thoughts. More people don't necessarily think better, but they do think more, so if you are willing to sift through a good bit of superficial thinking, you can find some good stuff in there, too. I have - so far at least - gotten really lucky with my net meetings with the other students. Interesting reflections based on their experiences from all over the world.

I find the reading material a bit lacking - or perhaps it is just too little and not rigorous enough for my liking, even though I really appreciate the little films and the other net based offers that the University of London have made for this MOOC. But, truth be told, I don't think I would have found the time to read any longer material than what we already have, either.

One odd reflection is that I have come across an enormous amount of International Baccalaureate people on this MOOC. Either teachers, old pupils, new pupils, headmasters or students. I would like to know if there are more IB people on this course than what is normal on similar MOOCs and if so, why, or if more IB related people do MOOCs in general. I am putting that one out there for someone to look into.

Please stop using Albert Einstein as an example of an expert learner.....

..if you are just doing so on the basis of him being, well, Albert Einstein. (He was very smart = he was an expert learner (even through he dropped out of school/AND he dropped out of school)).

Hands down, the man was incredibly intelligent. He was a high school drop out, and as some have pointed out, book learning (as called here in some posts) did not suit him. People drop out of high school for a whole number of reasons. Some have to do with learning styles, some have to do with other things. Some people succeed to the nth degree even though they drop out, others don't. Others do unforgivable things with their lives afterwards; Hitler was a high school drop out, too; most don't. The point to be made is that school (or 'book learning') is clearly recognised as only a small fraction of learning or a specific source of learning. Furthermore, it doesn't mean the pupils are aware of their own learning activity. Learning how to learn in school will primarily help you achieve good results at learning in school. Anybody in a school system also knows that good grades/results doesn't actually mean that you know anything. Most know some things, but even in A students, the gaps in their knowledge once put to a rigorous test is clear.

Learning how you learn, however, and being able to use and challenge that, is a whole different kettle of fish all together. The question is rather HOW Einstein became and was an expert learner (or a 'good' learner as the question asks). Thus: Einstein had a different, and varied approach to learning, which also suited his ways of thinking and structuring his thoughts incredibly well. This match - although it took him his time - was a productive match for him and he succeeded in amazing things because of it. He was very smart = he managed to approach his learning on a meta level (I am not going to find all of the quotes and sources on this) = he developed into an expert learner, which he managed to apply to his own work.

Just saying he was a genius is a far too superficial approach to the more interesting parts of the question.

mandag 6. oktober 2014

Intelligence

This week, we are asked to reflect on:

  • What you already know about intelligence. How do you know if someone is intelligent or not? 
  • Do you consider yourself to be intelligent? Why? What is your evidence for this? 

The third week of the MOOC I am taking on Coursera, starts with a reflection text on intelligence. It's a topic that most people at some level are interest in - or at the very least have some relationship to - thinking they are smart, dumb, booksmart, streetsmart, etc.

I know a little about intelligence. I have read some books about it, and I recall that parts of my PhD were on intelligence, too. So I am well (enough) read. There are different types of intelligences (depending on who you are reading of course) and different intelligence tests as well. The latter are sometimes problematic because they are culturally tainted and biased. Bilingual children may do worse on the test but be quicker thinkers (and hence often test well in other tests associated with intelligence). I have tons of sources on this, but here's one taken out of thin air. Intelligence, like education and learning, is a complex enough concept - especially since thee is so much prestige associated with being smart and - on the flip side - none with being, well, dumb.

Most people are intelligent at some level, and as to the question at what level are intelligent people intelligent, I guess I have to divide between the quick and the slow thinkers. Some people pick a majority of things up quickly, while others do not. People with high IQs can be quite thick when it comes to certain things, and vice versa.

I personally think people are intelligent and quick when they are quick in the things that matter to me - and honestly, I don't mind much if they are slow in other things. So my perception of a person's intelligence is a cultural matter. 

Yes, I consider myself to be intelligent. But that is probably because my schooling tells me so (by grading) even though schooling doesn't necessarily have anything to do with intelligence. And, I consider my friends to be intelligent - and as I associate with my friends and consider myself equal to them, I by default consider myself to be intelligent along with them. Since they are quick thinkers on the stuff that matters to me - as am I - we are intelligent in my subjective opinion.

So, that out of the ay, I am looking forward to this week's work on intelligence.

Rounding off week one

Today's question:
  • Based on your experience as a learner, what do you think you will be able to get out of this course? And what ideas do you already have about the future of education?
Based on my experience as a learner, I expect that I will read all the material, interact with the others as is expected of me (and then go way over the top, as I have done with this new blog), and complete the entire course.

This in itself will be an achievement as even though the common class size is about 20,000 (!) only a small minority in each class actually complete the MOOC they are taking. That is amongst the 6.7 million students who use MOOCs as a learning tool. There is a difference, in addition, between completion and learning. I am sure that a lot of people who are able to complete, do not complete for practical reasons, and not because the low-threshold format didn't fit them. Just as I am sure there are some who complete who didn't actually learn a thing.
Mind you, my definition of learning something is linked to Säljö's (1979) five types of learning, where the last two, abstraction of thought/material and the application of that material to alter the way in which you interact with the world, are the two most complex ones and the two I associate closest to actual learning. It's also what I am aiming for myself. In addition, I am hoping for something more.

What I think I will learn and get out of this course is ultimately not just mastering the course content (or course structure) itself. Naturally I hope to master and learn the material and topic the course covers; but I also hope to lift that learning to a meta-level, where I will be able to critically assess how I interact with material through the MOOC model of learning and MOOC education.

As I have been discussing in my previous blog posts, I believe that MOOC learning places different demands and has different expectations on the MOOC'er than the traditional student. The ability to reflect on one's own learning process and to critically assess one's own position in the relationship between material, reflection and learning, is paramount for successful learning through MOOCs. Perhaps this is one reason why the efficiency and ability of MOOCs to replace traditional (campus-based) learning is questionable

Consider this: Education may have changed since I was in school, but has learning changed? Fads come and go, of course, associated with a number of different theories. But are these not ultimately teaching theories? Theories about how we learn have different approaches to the act of learning, but the nuts and bolts of the process are basically the same. (For a longer discussion on the definition of learning, check out JS Atherton.) One can be critical of dictionary definitions of learning, but the general point I am making about learning and the process of learning (which is probably more a sociological, anthropological or neurological understanding depending on where you come from), is that while we more or less all agree all agree what learning is at its most basic form, the approach to learning and the learning system (the educational system) is constantly changing.

This is not good or bad, it simply is; and what we must realise is that faced with a new tool to assist this process (learning) we must also change the ways in which we interact with that tool. (Or, a more complex thought is that tools of learning change our approaches to learning as much as we have to change our approaches to being taught). 

What do I mean by MOOC meta-learning? A lot of the discussions relating to the first week's work (check out my Padlet contribution, for example, further down in this blog) take their starting point in what the different individuals themselves experienced in school or in higher education. That's great. But, if the learner isn't able to look past this, and to objectively and critically work through this experience, the learning becomes superficial and sporadic: Simply associated with personal, subjective experience. We are not talking about surface learning (where the student basically learns the bare necessities to make it through the course), but closing the gaps between thought, reflection and material and differentiating between that which is learned and that which is taught.

MOOC meta-learning requires that you not only critically assess that which is taught, internalise it and personalise it (so, learn it), but you also need to constantly revise where you are in the learning process and how you are relating to the material. It is self-driven, as opposed to being fed the material by teachers (the stand and deliver/blackboard concept which isn't used for this particular course - although I am sure some MOOCs do use it), and actually reflects a very advanced relationship to learning and education. Am I there? I don't know, but I am sure to find out as we advance through the next stages of this course, The Future of Education.

As to ideas on the future of education - considering the problems educational systems around the world are facing, the need to get more kids successfully through the educational system, LLL, and knowledge based economies - I am sure what we need more of to secure the future of education is learning how to take advantage of the MOOC method and what it has to offer, while taking the most significant parts of traditional teaching and implementing them in a different way of thinking about education. In closing, this implies emphasising a meta-understanding of learning, and learning how to learn, amongst school age children. How to learn, as well as how we learn, should perhaps be the first thing kids learn to discuss - and challenge - in school.

Reflecting on meta-thinking about learning and education

Although this is a course about learning and education - and I work at university level in education AND, yes, we learn all of the time - I have to admit it was ages ago since I was a student. It's even longer since I was a pupil in elementary school. None the less, I - like a lot of people in higher ed - often start sentences with "When I was a student...". As even more people have attended elementary school than higher levels at university, it comes as no surprise that even more people often reflect/criticise the contemporary school system by starting their sentences with "When I was in school..."

We often fail to keep in mind that when those people were students, the university was (very and at times considerably) different from what it is now. Not to mention how things were in schools then versus now. Different times, different learning cultures and expectations, different levels of education amongst the parents - and the list goes on. A lot, if not most of which, effect the way education and learning takes place today. The social dimension of education should not be underestimated, as it has as great an effect (if not more) than administrative situations or the structure of education. As I have learned from attending my MOOC/The Future of Education there is a great deal to be said about differences in national systems, cultures, age/educational trends, and even schools (differentiated or not).

More precisely put, the educational system and the socio-economic identities of those who partake in the educational system at certain levels HAS changed considerably over the past (say even) 50 years. When people say "When I was in school, things were different" well they are right; things WERE very different. The new demands this places on the pupil, student, teacher and parent (as well as school system in general) is considerable. These new demands equal new roles, but I don't think it has  changed learning in general. So I disagree with the thought that teachers, for example, will no longer be needed in the future. This is the backdrop for two main points I want to make today:

1: When we write meta texts about learning and education, based on our own reflection (reflection texts), how do we secure our texts against being subjective or too personal? My personal experiences cannot be said to be representative of the many. Especially not the MANY we are in contact with through the MOOC. We may be all talking about apples, but there are a whole load of different apples out there. Reflection (directed thinking) may make the material more alive, but it naturally can only do that for certain aspects of the material if reflection texts are a main part of a MOOC's learning strategies.

So, when I reflect on how universities or schools should be today and use my own personal experience as a background to reflect from, I am essentially reflecting from my individual and very subjective memory and and seeing everything else through those lenses. Furthermore, memory can, and does, trick you - so it is not really my experience I am drawing on, but rather my personal, romanticized version of a past, lived period of my life.

2: When we read texts (course material) and not specifically discuss and deal with the course material and the ideas there in detail and in a critical fashion, how can we secure that we are actually understanding the material? Do I understand this material in a half-baked fashion, pulling out those parts of the material which fit well with my romanticized idea of my own education?

Nobody is really putting me to the test with regards to my understanding of the core material. Not that I would be lazy and not read it (this is an optional course, so if you don't want to do it, quit), but what about to discuss the material with me and challenge my understanding of the material? Material such as this auld work your mind, change your way of thinking through actually understanding a different way of looking at a topic. Unless put to the test, I don't know if I can trust myself to have fully understood the ideas at hand.

My end reflection is that while I am working on this course - and spending dare I say hours on it each day (thinking about it, writing my blog, and generally being preoccupied with it in addition to reading and meeting people on discussion forums), I feel I am working really hard. I am working far harder on this, I think, than I did at times on my degrees. But working harder doesn't mean that I am working smarter - or getting more out of the material/course than I would if I had quality, structured intellectual guidance on the topic. To be truly successful with MOOC learning, you must be aware of this, and your conscious approach to MOOC learning needs to be critical, encompassing and thorough. If not, you can end up with half-developed ideas based on personal experiences and misinterpretations of theoretical material.

The difference with MOOC learning is that you have to be working on a meta-level with regards to your own learning all of the time. Not just learning the material, but questioning your learning and learning approaches. Is this challenging my thinking, am I open to these new thoughts? Do I understand them to the full extent that they can be understood, or am I taking them for what I think they mean - to justify my personal, subjective perspective?

That is a very difficult thing to do. I will have to give it a shot, and follow this thought up for later posts.

torsdag 2. oktober 2014

Learning contexts Padlet wall

The class is making a pad let wall, with little comments and reflections on hhow we think we learn best. Some have written about in which physical areas they prefer being at when they are going to learn something, others have written about the process of learning. I have done the latter, and have written about it on my learning contexts padlet wall


Who goes there?

The MOOC system is such that - as an massive, open, online course - you study along with a whole load of people from, literally, all over the place. Students such as myself come from all over the world, and though I am sure there are far more students following the course than the ones who chose to write a short greeting on the cite's discussion forum, the immensity of the student mass is clear. There simply seems to be hundreds of us.

Now, I do not know if that is true, that there are hundreds, and I would be interested in seeing the statistics on the course or courses such as these. I can't source it right now, but I believe I read that although there are a very large amount of students who follow or just sit in on the course, not so many actually go on to take the final or get their work assessed in any way. I found a Forbes article that discusses this briefly, and I think it is safe to say like the Forbes article indicates that finishing the course is in itself not the most significant outcome of taking a MOOC.

Don't get me wrong, it is great if you do; but the majority of people taking a MOOC seem to be doing it for knowledge aquistition (behavioural) or for personal gain (humanistic) reasons. Others may be doing it for the social aspect, although the community you become a part of online is a totally different kettle of fish than a college community or a professional community. What they don't seem to be doing according to the Forbes article, however, is taking it for a degree or some formal sheet of paper giving you the rights or not work in a certain profession or what have you. And in the case of the MOOC I am currently taking, What Future for Education, this is actually not an option.

So who are we, those of us who decides to take a MOOC? MOOCers would probably already have a degree in place - if not a higher degree such as a Masters or a PhD. We are in other words people who are already familiar with the formalised educational system. We are learning conscious in that we have actively set about a process which facilitates learning, and we are already familiar with the concept of reacting to that facilitation of learning (in other words, we know how to inexact with the learning material which is presented to us, and we have already been socialised into a learning continuum which ranges from task-conscious/acquisition learning to learning-conscious/formalised learning.

That is not as easy as task as it would seem. You actually have to learn to be a student, if for example, you have attended a 'stand-and-deliver' classroom all your life. If you are a pupil, you should learn to take responsibility for your own interaction with the learning episodes made available to you - if not encouraged by your own, intrinsic curiosity. Here it gets even more complex, because pupils may inadvertently learn to take responsibility for their own learning in order to please a teacher, or to fit in a group (a community or social interest in learning) - the milieu of the class. There are other reasons and reasonings as well, I am sure, but my point is that with these students the internal motivation for learning does not stem from their own belief that they can use that knowledge to look at the world in new and different ways, manipulate it and change it for others. I think.

This doesn't necessarily mean, however, that MOOC students are all academically good students either. You can of course have formal, academic weak results and at the same time be incredibly bright, yet in an autodidactic kind of way, be drawn to the guided episodes of learning that a MOOC offers. You may in other words be interested in the process of education, but have lost belief or access to the formal educational system which supposedly facilitates for the process. Sounds like Good Will Hunting. So unless there are hoards of unidentified math geniuses out there just waiting for guidance or intellectual challenges to be presented to them where the formal schooling system or their social setting failed, I think it is safe to say that MOOCs realistically offer (for the most part) those educated, more education, more tools, and more opportunity.

Therefore, I wasn't very surprised to find a Times Higher Education supplement article criticising MOOCs saying that MOOCs won't solve all the problems related to higher education on a world wide basis, but I would have to say it would be incredibly naive to think it could. It is not a far step between MOOCs and online, university run education either, unless we are to say that is is the 1:20/25 ratio which is the crux of the matter. And maybe it is - and if you were to look closer at who we are and who they are as well as at outcome motivational factors, I think we would come far in finding solutions to the greater educational problems of today.

tirsdag 30. september 2014

Videos and more

I am well on my way on this new MOOC I am taking. It's a University of London course through Coursera about learning called the Future of Education.

Today's work consisted of watching a few interviews about learning. They were very short - just 5-10 minutes each, so it was easy to do this in-between all the other things one has to do in a day. Funny that, as it is EXACTLY that of learning in-between everything else one does in a day that annoys me the most when my students tell me how they go about doing their course work! That makes it quite clear to me just how much times - and education (and students) - has changed since I went to college. I may consider promising to change the way I build up my video lectures.

With that onboard I also found it interesting that today's videos were about how we as individuals learn. Also, they specifically spoke about reflection journals and learning. I may not retract my stance on reflection texts, but I may be willing to modify it a bit. So reflection journals may be good, but I don't know if they ultimately result in generally everyone, or even specifically me, learning more than just by normal lectures (teacher delivery, didactic learning, as it was called).

If we assume that most students (not people in general, as that would give you a different base to work with all together) at my college do not learn best by didactic lecturing, then it is certainly interesting to tone down this type of delivery and - as discussed in today's videos - prepare courses more as a facilitator of learning. It sounds simple, but that is actually a complex enough idea in that it entails so much.

Also I have read some texts which are available online for this week's work. I liked this one, as it appeals to my visual learning preferences. But it is actually quite extensive and because of the mapped visualisation hard to navigate in any sort of chronological or argue-based order. It's a net resource so it follows the postmodern approach to information. One tasty tidbit from it, though, which is I fund very true. I can't help myself but put this in here, even though I could possible have reflected on far more things on that site...

"Sometimes there is a direct connection between the content of a course and the occupation it leads to. In my humble opinion, that is usually a second best, anyway. It leads to some spurious "subjects" being offered in universities, in which any self-respecting student will be a surface learner because the subject has no intellectual coherence."

Read more: For surface learning http://www.doceo.co.uk/heterodoxy/surface.htm#ixzz3EnLHH9SY
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives. I can recommend it, and source it as: Atherton J S (2013) Learning and Teaching; Angles on learning, particularly after the schooling years [On-line: UK] retrieved 30 September 2014 from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/

I am finding the workload - if taken seriously to be - quite time consuming, but I guess that is the crux of all learning, ultimately, no?

mandag 29. september 2014

First reflection task

I usually really don't like reflection tasks (read: hate em). It's the "no one knows how I feel inside" quality of such texts which I find incredibly boring to read. But, this MOOC I am following (What Future for Education?) requires that I write one. So I am cringing inside as I take to the keyboard to produce one myself. I will try to keep it to the point. So here goes:

This week´s reflection topic is:
Reflect on your previous learning experiences. Think about one particularly successful and one unsuccessful learning experience. Consider what were the conditions that made this experience successful or unsuccessful for you and what this tells you about your own preferred ways to learn.

The academic inside of me is annoyed by the imprecise language used in this question. My previous learning experiences? Like ANY of them? On a micro level I look at it, read it, write it and do it, and then it's in. On a macro level, however, I have to ask: In school, out of school, at music school, inn scouts, gymnastics, and the list goes on. I have to assume they mean from my formal education, but even this is difficult. Are we talking ONE specific experience? I sincerely hope that more than just a handful of people reading this has had more than a few specific learning experiences that are memorable and that have stuck with them as successful experiences. For the future of education, I seriously hope that.

It would be easier for me to chunk them up according to which level/grades I was in. Also, looking back on my formal education, I have a hard time saying exactly when I was (actually) learning something, and just having fun in class. That goes for more or less every school and grade I have been in - apart from maybe one school/one grade - which I found so incredibly boring I just could not bear it. Other than that one year, I did a lot of really fun things when I went to school.

I was in the GATE program and later I took the IB programme. And I learned a lot. Most of all, I learned to take full responsibility for my own learning outcomes. What you put in is what you get out. But if I were to chose my years at GATE or IB as successful learning experiences to reflect and comment on, I would have to say that it was because we were given so much freedom to learn, and the teachers trusted us so much that they let us do so (at our very crazy, experimental and bit out there pace).

I am sure, though, that not everyone has experienced the same type of learning environments and perhaps even within my class the kids could have experienced it differently. I am fortunate because I don't think I have been in a learning situation where the teachers didn't honestly believe that we were a bunch of smart, able kids. That type of trust is invigorating, but of course could only be given because we individually (not necessarily only collectively) had an appropriate knowledge base, and they had no preconceived notions of the limits of what we were capable of.

A bad learning experience is easier to pick out. Right here and now, however, I can only think of one, in one particular class setting. It lasted an academic year. Clearly the school was just the wrong school for me. I was so bored, so incredibly bored. It wasn't engaging, it wasn't interesting. It didn't build on anything, it wasn't challenging. The teachers didn't think we knew anything; which we didn't (collectively) since we were all from different schools and had different backgrounds and knowledge levels and all of this was different from what the teacher had. I was so uninterested that I fell behind in everything, making it twice as hard to stick with it. I had to quit and do something else.

Was it me, was it the teacher, was it the program? I don't know. But some main areas concerning my preferred ways to learn become clear from this. I like challenging, difficult tasks to work on either individually or in groups. I like to read, write, formulate, try out and question things. Freedom to develop and inquisitiveness are important factors, as well as trusting in myself and being trusted by omg teachers. 

My good and bad learning experiences ultimately have very little to do with learning, and much more about the situation and atmosphere in which learning can occur. 

What future for Education?

This week is the first week of the MOOC What future for Education, offered by the University of London through Coursera. It´s my first MOOC, so I don´t quite know what to expect - apart from that my enthusiasm may dwindle as the weeks pass. Luckily, though, it´s only a 6 week course, so once past the hump week of week 3, I am hoping I won´t have problems completing.

The structure of the course is divided into five sections, which are the same each week. It starts with a reflection assignment. My plan is to write out more or less all of the reflection assignments on this blog - and so the blog will live as long as I am in this MOOC (or, if all goes well, the next one, too). Some of it is activities in discussion forums and stuff like that. We will have to see if I blog on the other parts or not.

So why am I doing this? I am fascinated by the idea of non- and informal education - and what keeps people motivated to continue with informal education in a LLL perspective. And I thought I would try it out for myself. Going to a museum or what have you is a type informal education (if not also non-formal), but a MOOC suddenly very different. It´s not fun the way visiting a museum is. It´s actually a commitment, where you have to give and take and not just absorb what ever the museum (or teacher) is dishing out. It´s not formal so there is no system I have to be a part of - I do this totally by choice. So in effect it is really harder than formal or casual informal education.

If you don´t know what LLL is, I have added this from Ifed´s webpages. It´s where I found this definition which I thought would be helpful:


Lifelong learning was to be the ‘master concept’ that should shape educational systems (UNESCO 1972:182). What emerged was an influential tripartite categorization of learning systems. It’s best known statement comes from the work of Combs with Procure and Ahmed (1973):

Formal education: the hierarchically structured, chronologically graded ‘education system’, running from primary school through the university and including, in addition to general academic studies, a variety of specialised programmes and institutions for full-time technical and professional training.

Informal education: the truly lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educative influences and resources in his or her environment – from family and neighbours, from work and play, from the market place, the library and the mass media.

Non-formal education: any organised educational activity outside the established formal system – whether operating separately or as an important feature of some broader activity – that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objectives.
Also, truth be told, I added that link so that I will be able to find it again for myself in the future. The definitions of formal, non-formal and informal education confuse me at times, and they are mostly administrative, so it is good to have them here. Personally, I sometimes feel like non-formal education is a bit of an oxymoron. I have my formal education and I have my books, conferences, etc which are informal education. So I really wonder what this non-formal education initiative - this MOOC - will be like.

I haven´t quite decided if I want to do this for a certificate or not, but I understand that I can sign up for that later if I decide to do so. We will have to see. For now I am going to get started on the first reflection assignment.