ICTs in the classroom

In the "Emerging Technologies for Learning" article, the author writes that “teachers can and should be able to understand and teach where and how new technologies can add value in learning. To do this, teachers must learn what these technologies are and can do, and understand them, but without necessarily becoming proficient in their use.” My question is: how well can they understand a technology without using it? Can they decide whether or not a technology is appropriate without using it? How will they choose a particular technology over another one? And last but not least, we can’t assume that all students are tech-savvy students so can we rely on students to teach their peers? What about technologies with a longer learning curve (e.g. video editing or Flash)?

I’m perplexed about the analogy between ‘open book’ tests and ‘open phone’ tests. In the former case, students still need to look for the information and apply it whereas in the latter case, how can we make sure that students truly understand and do not simply write down the received answer?

I do agree that teachers and students need to work together and learn from each together “in order to figure out ways to use the technologies in service of learning”, but I wonder how willing the teachers are to learn from their students and to put at risk their image of authority...

The second article (on-line learning migration) emphasizes the importance of social presence in order for social learning to occur through social interaction. It also states that if CMC is used appropriately, it can be personal and foster social presence. “In other words, it is the perception of the users that matters even though the attributes of media do not provide the opportunity”. However, the author does not recommend ways of promoting social presence, which is a “complicated variable”… He does mention that features such as communication style, computer literacy skills and paralanguage skills influence the level of social presence but does not go a lot further.

Another point raised by the article is the potential difference between male and female students (and minority students). How do they react to online learning? Studies seem to agree that female and minority students tend to find benefits in an online classroom in which they are better able to communicate.

Final paper

I’m planning to do a literature review for my final project. I want to explore (maybe not all but at least some of) the following questions:

• How are interactions among learners being addressed in the online classroom?
• How do learners become members of a learning community and build an identity for the group?
• How do teachers and students need to adjust to the online classroom?
• What are the effects (both positive and negative) of online learning on the quality of the learning process?

These questions will relate to quite a few class topics, namely the use of computer-mediated communication tools and their impact in a learning environment, the construction and maintenance of a learning community, the emergence of a group identity, and more generally, how social factors affect learning.

I have already found a few articles that will help me in exploring the above questions. Some articles are theoretical, others are case studies conducted around the world. Here are a few articles that I will probably include in my list of references (although a lot of readings are still pending):

• Community development among distance learners (Haythornthwaite, Kazmer & Robins, 2000).
• Student role adjustment in online communities of inquiry (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes & Fung, 2004).
• Written interaction: a key component in online learning (Lapadat, 2002).
• Critical inquiry in a text-based environment (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 200).
• Finally I can be with my students 24/7, individually and in a group (Gahungu, Dereshiwsky & Moan, 2006).
• Examining social presence in online courses in relation to students’ perceived learning and satisfaction (Richardson & Swan, 2003).
• Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context (Anderson, Garrison & Archer, 2001).
• Impacts of college-level courses via asynchronous learning networks (Hiltz, 1997).
• The development of socialization in an online learning environment (Jones & Peachey, 2005).

Interaction

Towards the end of her article (None of this is real), Danah Boyd emphasized that “digital networks will never merely map the social, but inevitably develop their own dynamics through which they become the social”. I wonder if this sentence would still make sense if we replaced the word networks with learning environments and social with classroom… Let’s try: “digital learning environments will never merely map the classroom, but inevitably develop their own dynamics through which they become the classroom”...

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) adopted flat structures which created new issues in managing and negotiating social relations and thus people had to come up with new strategies. Digital classrooms have also created issues of their own and strategies adopted in the traditional classroom may not be adequate to these new learning environments. So once again, it seems like both teachers and their students will have to come up with new strategies. Are individuals ready to come up and adopt new educational strategies? I’m planning to take my first online course next semester and hence I’m looking forward to the experience.

In their article (The benefits of Facebook “friends”), Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe introduced three measures of social capital: Bridging, bonding and maintained social capital. Had I been part of their experiment, I most probably would have matched their results pretty closely. I “bond” with my close friends by sharing pictures and sending messages, I “maintain” acquaintances from high school and my undergraduate years and I “bridge” with people I briefly meet in face-to-face settings. It seems like it’s becoming more and more common to add people that you’ve just met to your Facebook profile. I feel like the question “are you on Facebook” is becoming part of the general set of questions that people ask when first meeting someone. Would the same be true if the first meeting occurred in a virtual classroom? This would then allow students to interact outside the virtual classroom and probably enhance their learning experience online.

Social networks

Up until this week’s reading, I have only been thinking about online learning environments as isolated social networks. But as suggested by Garton, Haythornthwaite and Wellman, people can be connected together by one or more relations. So if students are collaborating, whether online or in a face-to-face setting, and working towards a common goal, that does not prevent them from also being connected through a networking site like Facebook. This is especially true as it is so easy to connect with someone through a networking site.

Donath and Boyd argue that “a public display of connections is an implicit verification of identity”, which seems to imply that people will more easily trust each other. Trust is an important factor when it comes to collaboration, so does that mean that networking sites like MySpace or Facebook could enhance the effectiveness of computer-supported collaborative learning environments? This may be true for students but may also cause difficulties between teachers and their students (as networking sites display a lot of personal information).

A solution proposed by Donath and Boyd is “the ability to define a set of categories and designate each person as a member of one or more of these categories”. Thus one could differentiate a work colleague from a close friend, a family member from a stranger and a student from a teacher. I’m not sure if this design solution has been implemented yet, but it would be interesting to see if it could work.

Leaving this topic, Barabasi made an interesting analogy between a handful of people acting as connectors and a handful of websites considered as hubs (i.e. as very highly connected). In this light, democracy on the web seems to be an illusion. Most of us can publish, true, but most of us are invisible…

CSCL environments

This week I’ve focused on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments and many questions arose from my readings. I’ve tried to group these questions into the following three categories:

1. The formation and maintenance of an online learning community.
2. The factors influencing the building of communities in CSCL environments.
3. The impact of social interaction on learning outcomes.

It is interesting to see the amount of terms that relates to the notion of an online community of learning: distributed learning groups, asynchronous learning networks, collaborative learning social networks, etc…

Other themes also came up, such as the gender-related differences in CMC and CSCL environments, the difference between cooperative and collaborative learning, and the distinction between functional CSCL environments and social CSCL environments. This last topic introduced the concept of group awareness widgets (GAWs), which I need to explore more.

I also need to read about studies and experiments such as the Virtual Classroom project, which is a teaching and learning environment located within a computer-mediated communication system. Another example is the Collaboration Visualization (CoVis) Project. I also need to research on computer-mediation communication tools which are embedded in CSCL environments and whether their availability in a learning environment necessarily means that students will use them.

Social aspects of electronic learning environments

A recurrent theme of this blog seems to be the social aspects of electronic learning environments. My first set of questions drew attention to learners’ relationships on the Internet and the impact of ICTs on education. I’ve talked about online communities sharing ideas valuable to the entire community, and information thereby becoming a public good. I mentioned online communities being supportive even when people didn’t know each other in the “real world”. The section on identity highlighted issues, such as the anonymity of the Internet, which affected online relationships. This brings me to yet another question: Trust is an important aspect in learning environments, so how can trust be achieved online when people can choose to be anonymous?

My initial questions can now be made a bit more specific towards the role of social interaction in electronic learning environments. I would like to ask how groups and communities of learners develop and how do they interact and establish a sense of community of learning.

While reading a few articles in this area, I found a paper called: “Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: a review of the research” (Kreijns, Kirschner & Jochems, 2003). I might choose this paper for the article presentation as it covers both the positive and negative factors of online learning environments and it will lead me a bit closer to my final paper.

Identity

Even though I use skype, facebook, gmail, youtube, etc… I don’t think I have an “online identity” as such. My real life is definitely mapped online, but I don’t have a “virtual life”. People might think I’m missing out as I’ve never made friends online and never played with multiple personae. This brings me to my first question: what is it that FIRST drives people into virtual worlds? Curiosity? A need to escape? A need to join? A need to communicate? A need to create? Or simply, a need for something else? People invade virtual worlds for different reasons and this is probably why the virtual has various effects on the real.

I did renew contact with lost friends through the Web 2.0 and did make friends with people I hardly knew thanks to the Web 2.0, but I always physically met these persons in the first place. I think identity consists of body AND mind constantly interacting, which is why I would tend to disagree with the disembodiment hypothesis which assumes that online, we’re no longer tight to our bodies. I would have a very hard time getting to know a person online as I’m sure my imagination would play an important role in building that relationship. It would link thoughts, interpret emotions and even create a body, probably resulting in a picture far from reality. Furthermore, I think misunderstandings are more prone to happen online as it is impossible to translate things such as tone of voice into words even if emoticons do help. A positive element of virtual worlds is their potential to overcome issues of racism, sexism and other discriminations based on abilities and appearances.

I’m also uncertain what people mean when they refer to the notion of “multiple identity”. I tend to agree that an online persona might be a characteristic of oneself which is being projected and explored online, but a persona is not another identity. I believe that I’m likely to adapt to different people, which reflects multiple aspects of my personality, but this does not mean I have multiple identities. Depending on the context, people might show different characteristics of themselves, and the online world allows seeing people in different contexts, which is why a mother might be shocked to see her daughter’s MySpace profile. This is also why people have multiple accounts, as a stage name might only concern a particular audience.

Finally, I would like to mention OpenID, which is meant to solve identity theft and phishing. OpenID definitely solves the problem of managing and maintaining multiple logins and passwords, but I’m not sure if it is any safer in terms of phishing. Adding a third party to the process usually increases its complexity and increases the number of entry points for eventual phishing. Other interesting questions concern ethical problems about the amount of information being asked from people, sometimes irrelevant information. What about privacy? Is it too late? Is it a price to pay?