Postcard from Budapest

I'am in Budapest for the annual eTwinning conference, with around 600 teachers, pupils and support staff from across Europe. These conferences are always great events for networking and for meeting pioneering teachers using technology in the classroom, but this year was made rather special by the presence of pupils from schools involved in eTwinning projects.

We had an inspirational presentation from Tim Rylands with an array of free web 2.0 tools that can be used by teachers to inspire children and to encourage them to be creative, to collaborate and to share. His presentation was notable for me on for three points:

• inspiration: how good teaching can inspire pupils and this is precisely what I remember from school
• standing still: the need for learners to stop every so often, to simply take in what is happening around them and to reflect
• getting beyond the 'wow factor': raising the level of pupil's engagement and critical thinking beyond the simple enjoyment that they get from using technology; this again resonates with the work I am doing in my research, although I am mainly focusing on adults (the teachers themselves)

Tiina and I held a workshop entitled eLearning 2.0 in which we combined our thinking on learning online, in communities with peers. Rather than focus on web 2.0 technologies, much to the disappointment perhaps of some participants, we looked at the pedagogical and organisational consequencies for teachers. Tiina presented good practice from her perspective as an expert teacher in this area and I reinforced this with results from the Learning Events held with teachers last year. My contribution was purposefully non-academic and perhaps more direct or prescriptive than one can be in an academic journal. Any way it went very well, according to the feedback we received; so well we did it twice addressing around 80 teachers in total. Phew

My thanks to Tiina for a great collaboration. It is always a pleasure to work with her :)

Brian

Critical friends

I've just spent a few days at Lancaster University, meeting with my supervisor and with my fellow students. I am struck again by how valuable it was to meet with fellow researchers who are happy to listen to my ideas, critique my approach and offer me useful suggestions. This mutual support was also extremely valuable for reinforcing my confidence that I am on the right path.

It is important now for me to focus my work around my two original research questions:

In a virtual environment for teachers’ continuous professional development:

°     How does an online community support the development of teachers’ competence in online collaboration and discourse?

°     How do social aspects, such as social presence and social ties, contribute to this collaboration and discourse?

These questions should act as lenses through which I analyse the data that I've collected and write up my results. The end may be still some way off, but I can nevertheless see the light at the end of the tunnel - thanks to the support of my critical friends in Lancaster.


Brian.

Coding an online forum

I've been applying the Community of Inquiry (CoI) conceptual framework (Garrison et al, 2000) to the online discussion forums of the eTwinning Learning Event (LE), coding the dialogue in an example discussion thread according to cognitive presence (Garrison et al, 2001), teaching presence (Anderson et al, 2001) and social presence (Rouke et al, 1999). Figure 1 below shows an extract (click on the image to see an enlarged view), with the participants names blocked out:

Figure 1. Extract of the example discussion, stored and coded in Atlas.ti 



In the example I have used the message as the unit of analysis, coding each with what appears to be the most relevant classification from the three presences. If there is no evidence of a presence in a particular message, then I have coded it as Other. Figure 2 below shows the coding results from the example which contained 11 messages in a single thread:

Figure 2. Summary of the coding for the example discussion

 It has been a useful process and I have noted the following from this first trial:

• Coding is a very subjective process and the results will depend heavily on my interpretations. This is not made easy by the fact that one only sees the explicit part of the learning process, that is surfaced by the learners and codified in their messages to the forum. I am sure that a lot remains tacit and unexpressed.
• Reading Garrison et al's paper again (2001) helped me to see the messages not as individual, unconnected thoughts, but as part of an ongoing process. To be successful at coding you need to see what happens before and afterwards
• The cognitive presence model of Garrison et al (2001) is premised on learning involving critical thinking. Nevertheless it reminds me rather of single-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978) and in line with the thinking of Persico et al (2010), in their application of the CoI model, I added an additional code to capture meta-cognition. Meta-cognition is important for competence development.
• Social presence is very difficult to assess and intuitively I feel that a message which starts with a 'Hello Carla' or 'Hi everyone' but makes no other reference to people or the group, does not exhibit sufficient social presence to warrant coding.
• Teaching presence seems more straightforward, however one needs to be vigilant for mesages reflecting support and encouragement by peers, as these are also valid examples of teaching presence.
• Atalas.ti certainly helps with the management of the process. It does not help with the coding, however, which remains an intellectual, time consuming activity.
• I chose an example thread to code which is quite long (eleven messages) but yet representative of what we can see in the forums. The results of the coding (Figure 2) suggest that critical thinking took place, as there are three messages reflecting integration and resolution. In addition, two messages suggested metacognition, with the teachers reflecting on what they had learned as a result of the LE. This suggests that the LE did indeed lead to competence development.

So overall a positive first foray into the world of online discussion coding.

Brian

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Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. & Archer, W. (2001) 'Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context'. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5 (2), pp.1-17

Argyris, C. & Schön, D. A. (1978) Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective, Addison-Wesley Reading, MA.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (2000) 'Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education'. The Internet and Higher Education, 2 (2-3), pp.87-105

Garrison, D., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (2001) 'Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education'. American Journal of Distance Education, 15 (1), pp.7-23

Persico, D., Pozzi, F. & Sarti, L. (2010) 'Monitoring collaborative activities in computer supported collaborative learning'. Distance Education, 31 (1), pp.5 - 22

Rourke, L., Anderson, T., Garrison, D. & Archer, W. (1999) 'Assessing Social Presence in Asynchronous Text-based Computer Conferencing'. Journal of Distance Education, 14 (2), pp.50-71

Pearls of wisdom

I've been spending a lot of time of late transcribing the interviews that I held with a few teachers after the Learning Event (LE) last year. It can be quite a laborious task which brings you close to the data but risks creating a feeling of 'I cannot see the wood for the trees'. Today I had the pleasure of writing up a long discussion that I had with a more mature teacher via Skype with a camera. I feel that the quality and depth of the dialogue is a reflection of the stronger feeling of connectedness and intimacy that we had, thanks to being able to see one another.

Several reflections were provoked by the discussion:

• It is perhaps harder for more mature teachers to express themselves online and to feel connected with their peers via their writing. As my interviewee said "may be this is a matter of being an older generation, but anyway I find it really funny just writing my ideas all the time and sending them, as if I were a writer instead of a teacher". She mentioned that as a teacher she has spent thirty years of her life talking and therefore moving to writing is not easy for her. She had noticed that it seemed to be more natural for the younger teachers. This can make online collaboration quite a frustrating experience for the more mature teacher, especially if they have little time to spend online.
• Despite the lack of time for participation, reading the contributions of others and seeing what they have to share can be very useful (lurking). It can be motivating to see that some teachers have clearly mastered the use of technology with their children and are really adding value to learning "I could get this from the level of the conversation they held". That said, in order to really learn something you need to be applying it: "it is very difficult for me to build-up an ability unless I am using it everyday".
• Developing a community is more than just posting messages and replying to people, "I suppose I still can’t feel the web community as a real community"; "Simply reading or writing to someone else doesn’t mean we are in the same room or in the same train of thought, and we are understanding each other in the way that we are supposed to really". On the other hand, the LE did engender a feeling of connectedness and it was interesting to see some teachers still posting messages to the forum once the event was over: "at the end there were messages of people asking for help saying 'what is going to happen now?', 'are we being left on our own?', 'is it finished?' ".
• The situation in some countries concerning the availability of internet connected PCs is far from ideal and for my interviewee she explained that there is only one lab in the school, with ten PCs which often have problems maintaining their internet connection. She is able to use the lab for only a few hours per week and this changes both the opportunity for learning with ICT and the way one learns: "They have to plan everything in their books, in their exercise books. We plan everything ahead, we write, we draw, we do everything by hand and then we go to the PC".  So what we see in these circumstances is that the children are not using the PC to create and produce ideas in situ, but rather they use it to transpose what they have already produced in advance. So ICT is not transforming learning but transposing it.
• Despite the resistance perhaps of colleagues and parents to using PCs and the internet, my interviewee was convinced that ICT could help to bring teachers and pupils closer together: "even ten years ago they (pupils) were much nearer to us, now they are really just going away because they are using different tools as a means of getting to know each other or just playing around".This concurs with the feedback that I have received from other teachers on their experience of using web 2.0 tools: it seemed to increase pupil motivation and the respect they have for their teachers (pupils are impressed with their 'cool' teachers who know about technology).
• However, my interviewee reminded me that simply using ICT doesn't improve learning, "being happy with your being very skilled with all the tools that you have learned to use doesn’t mean that you are empowering the way you are teaching children". She reminded me of the fundamental values of teaching and of the need to ensure that we use ICT appropriately to add value. This is why it is important to allow teachers to try out what they are learning in their everyday teaching practice and then to reflect on it with peers.
• She reported that she had found the staff room useful as a familiar place to come back to and reorient oneself "I found myself going very often back to the staff room just to be able to understand what was going on, because I thought that was the best way, the best place to try and understand if I was being left behind by my lack of time or whatever"
• Finally she suggested that the LE could be improved by embedding activities which demonstrated progress to the participants, in terms of their own skills, and by having occasional synchronous meetings with visual contact for the round-table groups.

Food for thought indeed.

Brian

eLearning 2.0

A paper by Lim, So and Tan (2010) compares learning online using web 2.0 technologies (what they call eLearning 2.0) with learning before the advent of social media (eLearning 1.0). They remind us that web 2.0 brought with it a paradigm shift in the way users interact with content, moving from consumers to contributors in a 'social and participatory web'. 

They suggest that to put eLearning 2.0 into practice we need to understand how tools that are primarily aimed at entertainment can be used for educational purposes. Moreover, the underlying learning philosophy needs to embrace the web 2.0 ethos of participation and community-based social practices. However, this may be at odds with formal learning where the emphasis is often on traditional literacy practices, individual learning and personal performance; what the paper refers to as a cultural contradiction. 

We may also face a ‘”digital dissonance” in which neither teachers nor students fully recognize and use the potential of emerging technologies for learning’ (p.206). Indeed, if one is used to learning in a conventional way it may be difficult to change your ‘cultural belief’ that teachers are authoritative sources of knowledge:

To transit from eLearning 1.0 to eLearning 2.0, it requires a shift of learners’ identity to that of a knowledge builder and a shift of teachers’ identity to that of a critical friend or co-learner. In terms of power and control in learning, learners need to embrace empowerment given the space to construct learning, while teachers need to become comfortable with fluidity and uncertainty. (Lim et al, 2010, p.208)

This is hard to achieve if teachers continue to instruct, give lectures and direct discussions. And if instructional designers continue to determine learning paths, focus on individual learning and assess individual performance. ‘Our notion of knowledge and knowing should shift from an epistemology based on possession to an epistemology of practice’ (p.207). 

These messages concur with those give by Ryberg (2010) in his presentation at a workshop at Online Educa last year that focused on new ways of assessment, where he emphasised that simply using web 2.0 tools for learning does not imply that the underlying process is following the web 2.0 ethos. One has to move away from knowledge as acquisition to knowledge as participation. Referring to the work of Dohn (2009) he asks the following pertinent questions:

What happens when:

-       Internal goals of participation, communication, knowledge construction, and knowledge sharing subsumed under external goal of acquiring the knowledge and competence necessary for their future working life

-       Dynamic and distributive views on knowledge and competence enrolled in an individualistic, objectivistic view of knowledge and competence

-       Learning as participation understood as a means for realising learning as acquisition
                                Ryberg (2010, slide13)

Lim et al (2010) go on to present the results of their research on a course concerning the integration of web 2.0 into the curriculum for pre-service teachers and in particular a three week period in which they worked together on a wiki. Their observations show a propensity for the teachers to focus on grammatical edits and changes to the form of the text, rather than ‘knowledge edits’ that reflect critical thinking. In addition, there was a tendency to cooperate in a task-orientated way rather than collaborate to build collectively knowledge. They noticed an absence of higher order discourse that would encourage reflection and critique, and remarked that changing someone else’s text was at times perceived as being rude. 

They note that these results concur with other research which suggests that peer-to-peer interaction in online communities mainly focuses on lower-level cognitive tasks than on critical collaborative discourse. They go on to suggest that that the instructor can influence the level of discourse by encouraging learners to use dialogue that questions, critiques, challenges and builds upon the contributions of others. 

My experience of the recent eTwinning Learning Event for teachers and the results emerging from my analysis seem to concur with these arguments. Left alone to discuss informally how to carry out activities, the teachers would often take a pragmatic approach in which the first ideas to emerge were adopted by the rest of the group and the focus was on completing the activity. Whereas in forums where initial questions were presented in a manner that encouraged reflection and critique, and where the tutor would participate in the dialogue (if he/she felt it was necessary) the discourse reached a higher level. Here there was evidence of critical thinking with participants building upon the contributions of their colleagues and adding in their own experience. In other words, an appropriate level of teaching presence seemed to act as a catalyst for critical collaborative discourse. And by appropriate I don’t mean instruction or the tutor leading the discussion, but rather preparing an environment that is conducive for collaboration and contributing to the dialogue when it falters or to encourage reflection through questioning; leading learners to autonomy – Boud (1988). 

Brian.

Boud, D. (1988) 'Moving Towards Autonomy ', in Boud, D. (Ed.), Developing Student Autonomy in Learning, pp.17-39, London: Kogan Page

Dohn, N. (2009) 'Web 2.0: Inherent tensions and evident challenges for education'. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 4 (3), pp.343-363
 
Lim, W.-Y., So, H.-J. & Tan, S.-C. (2010) 'eLearning 2.0 and new literacies: are social practices lagging behind?'. Interactive Learning Environments, 18 (3), pp.203 - 218

Ryberg, T. (2010), 'Social Media Practices and Assessment Irreconcilable Differences or True Romance?', Assessing Learning in a Digital World, Online Educa, Berlin European Commission. (ONLINE - http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/events/2010/online_educa_conference_berlin_2010_en.php - accessed 20.01.2011)

Social presence supports cognitive presence

Shea and Bidjerano (2009) conducted a survey of more than 2000 higher education students participating in a fully online learning network across 30 different institutions. They wanted to know whether teaching presence and social presence are linked to cognitive presence, as suggested by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison et al., 2000).

Using statistical analysis of the results (factor analysis, Structural Equation Modelling - SEM, and chi-square automatic interaction detection - CHAIAD analysis) they posit that their results show a correlation: ‘As predicted by the CoI model and confirmed by the SEM analysis, both teaching and social presence play a major role in predicting online students’ ratings of cognitive presence.’ (Shea and Bidjerano, 2009, p.549). They argue that 70% of the variance in cognitive presence can be linked to the students’ reports of their instructors’ skills in fostering teaching and social presence, and that the latter (social presence) is dependent on the former (teaching presence).

The authors further posit that the social presence element associated with comfort in online discussion was the most significant item correlating with cognitive presence; low levels of comfort in online discussion were strongly correlated with low levels of cognitive presence. In other words, in order to achieve critical thinking (high cognitive presence) students need to feel comfortable with discussing online. In addition they report that cognitive presence is significantly influenced by the participation of the instructor and by his/her attempts to focus the discussion.

These research results suggest that instructors have a significant effect on the success of an online learning community and the ability of learners to experience epistemic engagement

.. it is crucial to assist learners to gain comfort and confidence in the online discussion format in order to foster cognitive presence. Without this comfort, epistemic engagement in online learning suffers. A sensible approach would be to encourage students to reflect on their comfort levels with online discussion. If some students report lower levels of comfort, one strategy would be to promote reflection on why they feel this way and how they might overcome this discomfort, at the same time emphasizing that facility with online discussion appears essential to productive learning in this environment.
                                     (Shea and Bidjerano, 2009, p.551)

These results are similar to what I experienced during the Learning Event last year on web 2.0 tools and I wondered to what extent this is reflected in my results: in my final questionnaire is there a similar correlation between social presence and cognitive presence? In one of the survey questions, question 13b, I presented the respondents with a list of five activities and asked them to rate them in order of importance:

13b - Which statements best describe your experience of posting messages?

Number them in order of importance, from 1 to 5 (1 = most important, 5 = least important)

I enjoyed reading the comments of others

I enjoyed posting comments and giving feedback

I enjoyed receiving feedback

I enjoyed asking questions to clarify my understanding

I enjoyed socialising and making friends

It is likely that those who put the last of the five options - socialising and making friends – first (i.e.1/5) in their list of choices felt comfortable with online discussion. Whereas we cannot argue the contrary for those who put it last (5/5), it would be interesting to see the relationship between these answers and cognitive presence.

Cognitive presence is associated with critical thinking (Garrison et al., 2001) and the final reflection that we held at the end of the LE was a specific activity aimed at encouraging the sharing of experience, reflection on practice and increasing understanding. One of the questions in the survey, question 31c, asked respondents whether or not they found the final reflection useful in this respect. The question was posed as a dichotomy of two equally valid responses and the respondent was asked to what extent they agreed with one or the other:

31c - What best describes your experience of the time allowed to apply ideas in your own teaching practice and the final reflection activities in the Learning Event?
Statement E	<...........?.........>	Statement F
I found it not very useful to share my experience with others in the final reflection		I found it really useful to share my experience with others in the final reflection

It is likely that those who chose statement F rather than statement E experienced higher levels of critical thinking. So how do the results of question 31c relate to those of 13b? The graph below illustrates (click on image to make it larger):

 

The graph shows that the majority of respondents who indicated that they mostly enjoyed socialising found it really useful to share their experience with others in the final reflection. Whereas those that put socialising with others at the bottom of their list of preferences were less certain of the value of the final reflection. These results neither prove nor disprove the arguments put forward by Shea and Bidjerano, but they do correlate with the idea that social presence supports cognitive presence.

In my research I am using my final questionnaire to guide my qualitative analysis and whereas I am not intending to use statistical analysis, I found the paper by Shea and Bidjerano interesting. One area where I would tend to disagree is with the emphasis on the involvement of the instructor. It is true that the instructor or tutor can greatly influence the performance of an online community through their design of the environment and the cognitive activities. However, when it comes to participation in the community, much of what is prescribed by Shea and Bidjerano as being instructor intervention can be achieved equally well by the learners themselves providing the teaching presence by leading a discussion, guiding others and threading the discussion in their contributions.

I finish with a final observation from Shea and Bidjerano:

Additionally, qualitative research that examines the nature of the discourse in online threaded discussions would shed light on the kinds of instructional conversations that lead to social and cognitive presence as well as those that result in lower levels of engagement and learning. It is only through such varied research approaches that we will gain further insight into the ways that online education can benefit from ongoing advances in technology, pedagogy, and the science of learning.             (Shea and Bidjerano, 2009, p.552)

Indeed.

Brian

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Garrison, D., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (2001) 'Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education'. American Journal of Distance Education, 15 (1), pp.7-23

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (2000) 'Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education'. The Internet and Higher Education, 2 (2-3), pp.87-105

Shea, P. & Bidjerano, T. (2009) 'Community of inquiry as a theoretical framework to foster ‘‘epistemic engagement” and ‘‘cognitive presence” in online education'. Computers & Education, 52, pp.543-553

BERA Annual Conference 2011, 6th – 8th September, Institute of Education, London

I am thinking of submitting an abstract for the British Educational Research Association (BERA) annual conference in London in September. It looks like a good event to present my work and the process  of producing a paper will give me something for which to aim. A short abstract is due by next weekend.

I may also have the opportunity to work with Tiina again for a workshop at the eTwinning conference, scheduled for 31 March - 2 April in Budapest, Hungary. This would be great as the recent Learning Event has given us a rich source of material and experience to call upon when discussing web 2.0 and moderation skills.

Brian