Web 2.0 based e-learning

I'm in the business of teacher education, and I am interested in using the latest technologies to support their learning. A few years ago, I began to use wikis as embedded module tools to encourage and support collaborative learning. Generally it was a success, but the approach also raised some interesting pedagogical questions and posed some operational challenges for my students and I. So I wrote about it. Several articles on my use of wikis have been published over the last 2 years, most recently in journals and book chapters. The final article in the series was published yesterday in a new volume edited by Mark W. Lee and Catherine McLoughlin. The book is entitled: Web 2.0 Based E-Learning, is about various Web 2.0 contexts in tertiary education, and is published by IGI Global, so it will be expensive. But if you can beg, steal (try not to) or borrow a copy, you will find chapters by not only me, but also from several old friends of mine, including Tony Bates, Thomas Ryberg, Denise Whitelock, Gráinne Conole, Henk Eijkman and Palitha Edirisingha.

Below is the abstract of my chapter, which has the title: Using Wikis in Teacher Education: Student-Generated Content as Support in Professional Learning

This chapter reports on the use of online open content software as a learning resource for students enrolled in an initial teacher-training program at a British university. It features a study undertaken to support the development of professional practice in teacher education for undergraduate and postgraduate students using wikis. The 14 cohorts of student teachers in the program (n = 237) approached the activities in blended format, using a wiki as both a repository to store and retrieve their work, and as a discussion space where they could engage in dialogue with their peers and tutors outside of the classroom. Those who responded to the online questionnaire reported on their perceptions of the wiki as a learning environment. The main findings of the study are that students generated a large amount of content in a short space of time using the wiki and enjoyed its collaboration and communication tools, but resented the added time burden of having to complete minimum core tasks online. Students also found initial use of the wiki problematic due to lack of familiarity with the tools and the concept of group editing. The introduction of a series of wiki activities provided useful scaffolding for structured support in professional learning.

Image source

Web 2.0 based e-learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Casting the pod

I have just been alerted to a new podcast available here that covers my presentation on self-organised learning and Web 2.0 that I gave in June at the St Virgil Centre for the Edumedia Conference in Salzburg, Austria. Edited by Andreas Auwarter (part of the Pontydysgu team), it offers links to my blog and also the powerpoint presentation I gave. I talk about mentoring, personalised learning, nomadic learning, and how blogs and wikis can be used in teacher education, and I explore the idea behind using social software to support professional learning. I also outline some of the findings that came from the MentorBlog project we conducted at the University of Plymouth earlier in the year. I also touch on the idea of using microblogs (such as Twitter) and images to show how students can capture their experiences whilst on their placements as student teachers.

It's warts and all - including asides, quips and interaction with the audience at the conference venue. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Young pretender?

There is more interest in my 5-stage wiki activities model (Left) - this time from Holland. A few days ago Wilfred Rubens (Utrecht) posted a brief commentary and now Paulo Moekotte (Enschede) has posted an image of the model alongside Gilly Salmon's 5-step e-moderation model. He argues that 'students would probably need some kind of e-moderating' (alongside the wiki activity). He doesn't feel that students get 'drawn in' to all collaborative learning activities on their own but often will require some kind of scaffolding. I tend to agree, but scaffolding can come from the built in features of the learning environment, which is where the wiki activities come in, and also in the form of encouragement from peers as well as tutors or 'e-moderators'. Anyway, this is the first time the two models have appeared alongside each other - is it sort of like the king and the young pretender? ....hmmm.

No, not really. For anyone who thinks they are rival models, they are not, and that's not what I intended. But there is probably some room for them to complement each other and I would be interested in hearing comments from anyone who has thoughts about it. In the meantime it looks as though I will need to do some more work to flesh out the model now that there is so much interest...

Wikis in Stages

I have had a lot of interest about the Wiki Activities 5 Stages Model I presented recently in Plymouth, Bristol, and Utrecht, Holland. By popular demand then, I have posted up the PowerPoint presentation I used at the JISC Higher Education Conference in Bristol on Tuesday which has graphic illustrations of all of the stages with some examples and a hyperlink to one of the live wikis. There is also some initial research data to support the use of wikis for collaborative and reflective learning.

You will also find the PowerPoint presentation about MentorBlog project on the same site. Any feedback from interested persons will be gratefully received....

Wiki activities 5 stage model

Tomorrow I'm in Bristol on the invitation of the JISC to present two papers reporting on recent research we have been doing on social software at their regional support centre conference.

One of my papers will detail my wiki activities 5 stage model. I have tried to develop a model which describes how students are gradually drawn into deeper cognitive engagement with learning whilst at the same time they are gradually developing their collaborative strengths. There has already been some interest in my model (see for example WebSphere Geek) and I anticipate and welcome discussion about its merits and limitations. See the wiki activities page of one online group for an example here.

The model starts with Exploration (where students are finding out about their new learning environment, discovering the do's and dont's and generally orientating themselves on the wiki). Next comes Exhibition - where they are encouraged to talk about themselves, to show and tell best practice and to reflect on their experiences. They are also asked to perform tasks such as 'Mining for Gold' - finding useful websites, online resources etc, that they can share with the group as 'gold dust resources'. Third comes Explanation - here they describe in deeper terms their ideas and provide other group members with more detail. They may for example, elaborate on why their 'gold dust resources' are so useful. Fourth, there is Elaboration - here students start to edit each other's postings and append arguments or discussions with counter arguments. They may expand upon their resources, or annotate each other's postings. Finally, Evaluation is where students place a value on the validity, reliability and relevance of their work. They judge the significance of their collaborative fruits and decide where they will go next in their learning journey.

It's no co-incidence that all the stages begin with an 'E' - not only is it easier to remember, but the more we can exploit the 'e' in e-learning, the better, in my opinion....

Chocolate coated raisins and termite mounds

I enjoyed a very interesting few hours over at the University of Southampton yesterday, where I was a guest speaker at the Higher Education Academy e-Learning Symposium at the subject centre for Languages and Linguistics Area Studies. The e-Learning symposium was small but intimate with around 65 delegates from about 20 universities. All of the plenary sessions were streamed out to the web, so those who couldn't attend at least experienced a flavour.

Jon Dron (formerly of Brighton University) who is at Athabasca University, gave an interesting first presentation on control and constraint in e-learning. Drawing on diverse sources such as Winston Churchill, termite mounds, Stigmergy, and chocolate coated raisins, Jon took us through a discussion on how ideas develop and learning processes work in online social environments. There was some debate over Personal Learning Environments and an interesting statement about the wisdom of the crowds vesus the stupidity of the masses. Unfortunately, we ran out of time, and so the discussion petered out.

Next up was Emma Place (University of Bristol) who talked about her concerns over plagiarism, cut-and-paste research and the general malaise that seems to be overtaking students in higher education due to digital laziness. Most of the audience concurred, and when a straw poll was taken, there was almost unanimous agreement that Internet research skills should become a part of the fabric of every undergraduate first year programme.

I gave my own presentation just before lunch (probably the best slot of the day) in which I covered some of my recent studies on wiki based learning, and unveiled my new 5 stage model of wiki activities. The model, which progresses through deeper stages of cognitive engagement and also a progression from solo to collaborative exercises can also be applied to just about any other online learning. It's easy to remember, because it's 'E' sy.... Students start by exploring, then progress into exhibition of some of their ideas, followed by explanation. Elaboration ensues in which all the group are engaged with trying to understand the ideas and this is capped by evaluation - placing value on the currency, relevancy, accuracy and other merits of the wiki content. It seemed to be well received, and at least one delegate blogged about it the same day.

After lunch there were two workshops, one on Second Life and MUVes in langaueg learning, and the other very much focused on a new tool for the creation of learning objects. Due to the long(ish) drive back home, I only got to participate in the first workshop, but the trip was worth it. And I met some interesting people, and had some interesting conversations, too.