Epimetheus

Yesterday we actually MET one of the tutors from the Vietnam campus. This is not, believe me, a common event, and had to be pushed for. Our manager had brought him through the other day, waved airily towards our offices saying “this is the Ed. Design team”, then spirited him off to production where he was shown-and-told about things we’d done. Deb, my “boss” and colleague was furious- why weren’t we being INVITED to pick his brains, find out about the context we’re designing for, learn more about how our materials are being used?????

Anyway, Deb arranged for us to meet with him- and an interesting little meeting it was. I’ve felt for a while, based on the one meeting we had had with a Vietnamese faculty member, that teachers in the offshore programs were picking and choosing from the online material, and that we should be making it as easy as possible for them to do this. Brian yesterday confirmed this- in spades. In effect, they don’t use any of the material we put online- all they use is the assessment tasks (which they have to do). The things that have been most useful have been some interactive animated language-support activities that I designed last year- they are short (about 10 minutes) and can be used as filler activities. They don’t need an integrated program- in fact the embeddedness of our learning objects makes them unwieldy and uninviting “go to the study organiser, select week 5, scroll down to the bottom of the page” etc. They don’t think it terms of the modules in the study organiser- instead they think in terms of textbook chapters (or at least they do in his very textbook dominated subject).

How educationally valid is this approach? The modules often tend to come from the curriculum document- that fleeting and invisible document that no-one ever sees, which in turn reflects the content-expert’s overarching view of the main themes (is this part of Taylor’s expert-concept map?- could be). I’d be really loathe to set up online resources as a direct mirror of a textbook, given how frequently textbooks change in IT and Business. But I guess that textbooks themselves mirror a traditional and well-worn way through material, and if you compared several textbooks you’d find that they all move from the general to the specific, and cover much the same stuff in pretty much the same sequence.

Brian said that most of the offshore teachers have come from industry. Many of them are the spouses of expatriates working in Vietnam, or have themselves left positions in Western companies and seen a teaching job available and moved into it. Few of them are qualified teachers. Doesn’t this then make scope and sequencing even more important? Without being precious, but without downgrading our professional experience either, isn’t part of the educational value-adding that our unit provides part of this curriculum-crafting??

Does this mean that we should be developing a lot of disaggregated, short activities and objects? Not impossible at all- although how will the academics feel about this approach to their content??? I don’t want to spend all my time designing drag and drop animations- I’m thinking more about journal articles, case studies, animated graphs with targetted, specific activities directly related to the learning objectives. I'm thinking about the model that ANTA uses with their toolboxes- an integrated stand-alone package but intended to be disaggregated and tailored, with redundancy across products but all tied directly to learning objectives. We still have to design stand-alone online courses- the offshore partners have access to them, but it doesn’t have to be as a course in itself- in fact, it’s not because their delivery model has five face-to-face sessions built in, which changes completely the “on-lineness” of the course.

Anyway, a sobering meeting: especially as Deb and I had come directly from working on a very prescriptive, do this-now do that type of course.

If the modular structure is a difficult navigation vehicle, what alternatives are there? Grouping activities by type? (e.g. all case studies together: teacher directs them to Case Study 5.) A topic structure replicating the textbook? A week-by-week structure? Another metaphor (e.g. Toolboxes)?

Oh success at last- I think I’ve worked out what’s wrong with my computer!!!! I picked it up from the workshop, complete with its new modem, only to find that it disconnected every 20 minutes- so regularly that you could set your watch by it. Anticipating that it would be another trip back to the workshop, I moved my daughter's computer into the study to use hers. Just on a hunch before returning it to the workshop, I tried it one more time, only to find that I could stay on for hours without a problem. Five days- fine, so I let Martine have her own computer back again, only to find that the laptop started disconnecting after 20 minutes again. So back to the workshop again, where they swore they had it working without disconnecting for over 50 minutes.

Last night, 3.00 a.m. I was pondering the mysteries and dilemmas of this bloody laptop. What was different in the five days when it worked well, compared with now? All of a sudden I thought- it worked while Martine’s computer was in the study, but played up again once I shifted the computer back to her room. Although I am a devout devotee of THE MOZZ as an explanation for all evil in the world, it didn’t seem to cut it as a technological reason. Was her computer – and AHA! Her phone!!!- attached to the line causing the problem????????????????? (I had tried disconnecting our phone in the kitchen, but forgot completely about the phone in her room). So, this morning I disconnected the computer and phone from the outlet in her room- and have stayed online ever since!!!

So how has this computer glitch affected me? Apart from my burgeoning phone bill, I’ve spent the two or three 20-minute sessions every couple of days mainly keeping in control of my email in-box. Because I subscribe to lots of reading groups online, I keep a Hotmail account so that I don’t have to advertise my surname to strangers. The free version of Hotmail is miserly with its mailbox size, and I know that things were bouncing. So much of the 20 minutes was spent scanning and deleting as much email as I could.

I feel as if I have lost all impetus with the course completely. I broke the rhythm of daily check-ins, and even though I was reading printed versions of the readings, I was taking notes on paper rather than online. I know that I could have added to this log (and did a couple of times) to transfer it to Blogger later, which is what I do normally anyway, but there didn’t seem much point in even booting up the computer if I wasn’t going to have internet access.

I’ve always been rather suspicious of people who whinge and moan about access issues: Allan Carrington, for instance, spends most of a chat bemoaning the technical inadequacies of the interface, his speed, or whatever- obviously it’s a real issue for him but I’ve often wondered how much of it is just an excuse. But I’ve found that I have been far more disrupted by my own computer-woes than I thought I would be, and almost paralysed from working around the problem. I mean, there ARE ways I could have worked around it: I could have gone in an extra day at work or stayed later (although health-wise that would be an unwise option); I could have gone to the library (but would I be guaranteed of access to a computer?); I could have pushed Steve harder into letting me use his computer (but this has been an issue of not inconsiderable conflict between my relatively-new husband and I). In regard to the latter point, I wonder if part of my inertia and helplessness in the face of a recalcitrant computer has been heightened by my own emotional turmoil as I’m trying to learn how to disagree with Steve, finding a way for us both to leave behind our behaviours and defenses learned from arguing with our ex-husbands and ex-wives and working out a way to talk through difficult things better.

This is confirming in a way that, as we talked about as a principle of learner-centredness, learners are people with a history and an outside life, and the educational experience is just part of this life. What do I need now as a learner to get back on track? I need an elastic deadline for this next assignment- I need to still have a deadline but not just yet. I need a slab of time- which fortunately I have- to catch up on posts etc and feel as if I am back in the loop.

I'm posting this today, but I actually wrote it a few days ago.

I spent Friday going through the previously read notes, gleaning stuff for Assignment 2. I’m finding it rather annoying that I’m having to work backwards- I’d read this stuff earlier without the assignment in mind, and I’m having to retrace my steps. I also don’t know how far forward to go- intuitively I feel that the assessment task should only encompass the reading done so far (and not reading which is yet to be assigned), but I found when I read ahead to the Jonassen et al (1995) article, it really helped me to think more about Novex Analysis

In fact, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Novex analysis, and from a teaching point of view, the effect of having the author (the expert) available for questioning. I’m in awe of that Johan Van Eeden’s ability (and willingness) to engage in debate with him: I’m scared of seeming like a dickhead by my questions. It’s a bit like asking a question at the end of a lecture: fine if you’re a peer and engaging in peer-to-peer conversation, but less likely if you feel you’re out of your comfort zone. Perhaps it would be a better idea to set up an “off-line” student-only, supported group to test out questions before raising them with “the expert”. Or perhaps I’m just ceding too much deference and authority to “the expert”.

Anyway, a couple of my thoughts about Novex Analysis, which I’ll probably post to the Discussion Forum (if I’m game!)

1. Taylor’s depiction of expertise seems far more confident and defined than, say, Donald Schonn’s view of the swamp of professional practice, where problems are ill-defined and prompting an ongoing process of reflection and realignment.

2. I’m working at the moment on a Finance and Accounting subject which is part of an MBA. It is not intended to give students Accounting skills; instead it aims to give managers enough of the language and world view of accountants to be able to draw on and make the most use of accounting experts’ specific skills. In the interview with Glen, Taylor suggested that there are different levels of expertise, but this seems to be part of a progression from novice, intermediate, to relatively expert within the knowledge base of the domain itself.. But what about “informed outsider” expertise? Who is the expert here- the accountant, or the manager who is able to talk to accountants?

3. Given the increasing use of common core subjects, which are incorporated into different program, does this change the concept of “expert”?

4. I read ahead to the Jonassen et al (1995) article “Constructivism and Computer-Mediated Communication in Distance Education” where they discuss the symbolic reasoning paradigm of learning. Is this where Taylor locates himself? I can see where he has incorporated aspects of the situated learning paradigm (e.g. apprenticeship, connections), but the practical examples given to us of concept mapping, guided particularly by the expert’s concept map, seems to lean more to the symbolic reasoning perspective. What is Taylor’s response to “Learning Environments are constructivist only if they allow individuals or groups of make their own meaning for what they experience rather than requiring them to “learn” the teacher’s interpretation of that experience or content.” (p.13) Where have the major critiques of Novex analysis come from?

5. Why is concept mapping from the expert’s perspective seen as so powerful? I can understand the value of concept mapping for the person actually producing the map (just as it often seems to me that writers of scenarios work far harder than the recipients of their planning). But how does the act of receiving anothers’ map contribute to learning?

And now, a week later, I see that Jim Taylor has decamped, so I might never get round to posting these questions anyway. I'll have a look at the forum again, and then decide.