Via Twitter this afternoon I learned that Creative Commons Australia will be running a series of Roadshows in several capital cities around the country. If you’re not familiar with the ideas of Creative Commons, open licenses and sharing of knowledge these events are a fantastic way to learn.
For Sydneysiders, the local event will be held at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) on September 15th from 10 to 3:30. NIDA is located just across the street from the University of New South Wales on Anzac Parade.
Attending the Sydney CC Roadshow? Help us spread the word and get the discussion going by using the #CCRdshow10 hashtag on Twitter, the http://bit.ly/aP6o1u shortlink for the CC Roadshow main page and adding yourself to the attendees list for the Facebook event.
I’m feeling pretty under the weather today, so this reflection may be relatively short. Yet I always try to devote some space and time to contemplating things that I’ve been learning as I find it a really important way to solidify concepts in my mind and synthesize them in a way that’s relevant to my context.
The Importance of Reflection
The importance of this process was clear to me during the first exercise of the day yesterday, when we were asked to review what aspects of the previous session had resonated with us the most. I quickly realised that the aspects of the session that came to mind were the ones that I’d discussed in my weekly reflection the week before. Aspects of the day that I hadn’t written about didn’t come to mind until someone else brought them up.
The reflective process for me is absolutely essential for retention of information and sense-making. If I don’t take the time to contemplate what a concept or idea means to me I am far less likely to remember it, or be able to apply it.
Topics and Concepts
Generally speaking the day was divided into two parts. The first covering our personal philosophy on teaching and effective ways of working with small classes; the second on digital literacy and educational technology.
While I was of course more familiar with the subject matter in the second half of the day, I found the first portion equally interesting.
Personal Philosophy of Teaching
While I’ve never really thought of it as such, in hindsight I have spent an enormous amount of my philosophical energy developing a personal philosophy of learning and teaching. So this portion of the day was more an exercise in formalising existing ideals than coming up with new ones. I also found it quite refreshing to see how many people seemed to express similar philosophies to my own.
We were asked to design a visual metaphor for our philosophy on teaching. I’m not the least be artistic visually speaking, but my initial impulse was quite immediate – I drew a basic sketch of a network diagram, comprised of a series of nodes, each of which interacted freely and equally with the others.
In hindsight the notions of “passion” and “enthusiasm” weren’t represented in the visual (which I do feel are critical to the learning and teaching processes), however the key ideas of uninhibited flow of information, communication and collaboration were there; as were individuality and diversity and a flat ontology.
For me learning and teaching must be founded on freedom to explore and experiment in contexts that make sense to the individual; for each person to be encouraged to envisage their own learning goals and approaches, and to seize hold of their learning experiences; and for an open forum to exist in which each person shares their experiences and understandings with everyone else.
A great deal of this is implied in the visual I came up with; but it makes sense to me and I guess that’s the significant part.
Tam’s Journey of Discovery
The absolutely highlight of the day for me was hearing Tam Nguyen speak about her experiences and journey in educational technology. I’ve heard a lot of people speak about their paths in this regard, but her’s was the most insightful, articulate, and relevant for people new to the digital landscape. It was a phenomenal introduction into the diverse nature of educational technology, why you would choose some tools over others, and ultimately why the process of learning and teaching must always play centre stage in the process.
She set the tone from the standpoint of the academic, faced with a large teaching load and expectations of research output; classroom issues that had begun to arise with regards to attendance and diminishing engagement from both students and teacher alike; and the ultimate realisation that she needed to try new approaches to her courses.
She talked about how she went out and experimented with everything under the sun, finally deciding on a course wiki in the first session, followed by blogs the next, then Blackboard, and ultimately Ning most recently. In every case she discussed the impact the systems had on the learning and teaching, how the opportunity to develop a community and culture facilitated significant outcomes and engagement amongst students; and how going over-board in tool adoption in fact got unwieldy in a few instances.
The significance of student profiles and opportunities to express aspects of personality and individuality was a key point I took away from her presentation; likewise with the difficulties that arose from a distributed system of blogs, the fact students seemed to prefer having a hub or portal for the course, and the notion of a course community.
I would have loved to hear her go on further, but the session was running out of time and there were several other presenters to come.
Tam shares her experiences in a number of videos available on UNSW TV, but the following video in particular was quite representative of what she discussed during her talk:
Yesterday was day two of the 5-week course on Foundations of University Learning & Teaching (FULT) I’m attending, and this particular session was devoted largely to the nature of assessment. As expected, I had a fair amount of trouble relating much of the subject-matter in my own practice, because I don’t incorporate assessments in the summative sense (nor really in the formative sense either) and don’t rely upon any formal ongoing course structure. My work is very needs-based, and highly intermittent.
Indeed this is one of the greatest challenges I face in some ways. Without any recurring events that incorporate the same people each time it’s very difficult to build upon anything in any systematic way. This has the unfortunate effect of keeping the learning relatively surface and superficial. So I worry about never getting to the meat of the discussion.
Constructive Alignment
Yet there were some important ideas that I took from the session that I’m trying to integrate in some form. The big question, as always, is how. Constructive Alignment was one of the key, critical elements that came up time and time again, and relates to the idea that assessment, learning activities, and learning objectives and outcomes must all relate to one another for a course to make sense and have any real impact.
As an unschooler I must admit I struggle with this idea. I like to approach learning in terms of what others want to learn – and how – not so much what I want to teach them. Of course there are elements that I believe are important and which I like to strew for discussion – but the nature of my role is such that teaching staff come to the sessions with their own ideas and their own pre-existing course contexts and learning objectives. So it’s difficult to design anything of substance in a vacuum. Everyone’s needs and aims are different.
Internalising Constructive Alignment
I suppose the notion of constructive alignment need not be limited to course design alone. It can – and arguably should – be something that’s internalised by learners themselves. When I view it in this light the concept is far more aligned with my own philosophies that assessment should be a personal and internalised process as much (if not more) than an externalised one.
The key, then, is to integrate opportunities for people to design and discuss their own strategies for learning which align with their own objectives. Based on the video we watched of a student panel, this seems to echo the desires of many students as well. One of the key points that emerged from this clip was the idea that there needs to be space for personalising learning – seizing ownership over it – as well as incorporating creative or innovative solutions to a given assessment task.
The students spoke of a proposal process in which they articulated their design ideas for their own project and then sought feedback from instructors on how it could be improved, or elements that should be integrated to ensure the experience met the course criteria. This seemed to serve to establish a greater sense of participation in the process from the perspective of the students. Several students indicated this made the experience far more memorable, and more valuable than the basic memorisation of facts.
In the context of my work, this internalisation of constructive alignment is perhaps more relevant because most of the experiences academics or teaching staff have with educational technology will occur independent of me and any workshops I’m facilitating. So their ability to assess their own progress, and areas of strength and weakness needs to rest on something – or someone – other than me. Certainly I can help in the process, but it’s critical that they drive it, and own it.
Learning Partnerships or Learning Networks
An obvious issue that arises when thinking about internalising constructive alignment will be how to effectively assess something you’re not sure you know to begin with, and it’s here that the role and significance of Learning Partnerships/Networks comes into play. By engaging and interacting with our peers on a shared learning journey we’ll be better equipped to examine our own learning because we’re incorporating feedback from others and an external perspective on the process.
