We’re getting there! - Week 13

We’re getting there! This week is the final week of PXGT6308 and next week will be the exam day. Well, what can I sum-up for 14 weeks? What did I learn for the past 14 weeks? How did it change my learning and teaching?

Let me summarize about the class first. Since the first week of the class, personally I found that this class would be a challenging and demanding class. The expectations are high and honestly I’m struggling to meet the expectations of the facilitator and I know that I’m yet to reach the expectations set in the syllabus. Anyhow, I did learn a lot in this class compared to some other classes I took few semesters back. The facilitator (Dr. Tee) is continuously giving support and adjusting the teaching to suit the students taking this class.

Basically, most subjects under Education studies are revolve around learning theories, pedagogy, methods, approaches and learners’ differences. But, the difference is when the theories need to be applied, how to apply and its suitability to be applied in what circumstances. In this class, it’s all about applying whatever learning theories and concepts we know in the context of Distance Education. Hence, when planning or designing module to be use in distance education, consider your target audiences’ learning styles and preferences other than the technology and its content.

Question 1: What are 2 or 3 most meaningful things you have learned in this class?

I get to know and understand my learning style better. Every individual is special either in the way they learn or react on something. My prior knowledge, my learning style, my thinking and my understanding would be different from my partners and classmates. Before, I always thought that I can be a good Distance Education (DE) student (if I’m taking that medium of learning), that I’m always flexible with online studies, and will excel in the way the DE course wanted me to be. Unfortunately, I’ve come into conclusion that, I’m not comfortable and ready to adopt fully 100% distance learning. If need to it will be a blended mode so that I can be more focus and concentrate on the course. I started to evaluate myself, my presence and my contribution either during face2face (classroom) or during distance learning (online, elearning), and I notice the differences on the way I react and respond to the discussions and the impact of my participation.

In the classroom, the environment is engaging where as a learner I’m more comfortable when discussing face2face, where I can get immediate feedback, respond and reaction from facilitator and friends. This in contrast when using online medium (although I’m tech-savvy) such as wiki, blog and forum, in which I’m not really 100% active participation. But, in real life this technology does bring benefit to distance learners in improving communication and for collaborative works. Anyway, for my future learning experience, I will definitely going to use all available technologies to support my learning and acquisition of knowledge.

In this class, I learned to shape and train myself to become an active learner. This class was designed to enable learners to take full responsibility on their learning and share the learning with others as well. This is in consensus with Chickering and Gamson (1987) that suggests that students must do more than just listen: They must read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems. Most important, to be actively involved, students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

To become an active learner, my learning and knowledge is socialized with others (collaborative works in wiki), thinking and evaluating my learning (using blog, forum, discussion) and making connections on my prior knowledge and past experiences with what I learn today so it will be meaningful to my learning and life. I admit that I seldom blogging or writing my reflections on what I learnt on particular topic or issues, it’s not that I hate blog, I’m OK with blogging, but personally I’m having difficulties putting my thoughts into words or I can say that I’m not good on telling and describing my thoughts and pen it for others to evaluate my learning. But, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn anything for this semester, in fact I’m grateful that I’m able to apply my knowledge from my learning in this class to my work (doing instructional design for electronic mediums). Knowledge on how people learn, strategies for learning and various instructional strategies that I learnt when taking courses for Masters of Instructional Technology here in UM have been very useful for me when designing instructional materials for teachers, schools and other clients.


What will you do with the knowledge you have cultivated from this class?

I’m a designer by profession and always a passionate educator at heart. As a designer, knowledge is more powerful than skills, and from the new knowledge I gained from this course, it would certainly affect and improve my delivery of instructions and my design of instructional materials. To be able to produce good learning products or materials, I would adopt the same process of learning I acquired in this class into my job processes; that is evaluate the design, justify it, improve it and think of ways to do it differently but the impact to the learners is they’re able to get benefit from it.

This class also taught me to be creative to deliver meaningful contents and knowledge to target users (learners). By knowing how people learn, I will apply the designers’ instinct to be more sensitive to learners’ needs and preference on learning.

As a student, definitely I will improve my learning style to be more active and engaging so that I’m able to go far beyond my potential and giving it back to others (students, learners and communities).

Technology in Distance Education

Nowadays when we talk about Distance Education (DE) we would certainly relate it with distance learning and ‘online’ term will definitely attached to it. Terminology such as parcel notes, learning package and postal documents will not be in tune when discussing about distance learning. Why? Those are all communication tools, but why? Is it about the speed of communication? How about its efficiency? Does it determine the success of learning? Which is the best tool that can guarantee learning takes place?

When talking about distance learning … these terms will definitely click in our mind.

The communication tools for distance learning as mention above comprises of one-way communication type, two-ways communication type, collaborative tools, personal learning environment tools, multimedia tools and even 3-D virtual learning tool.

So, which is the best tool for distance learning to takes place?

Personally, I’ve tried almost 80% of the technologies mention either it’s related to my learning requirements or as part of my exploration on learning technology options. I do get fascinated with the technologies available for distance learning. In fact, I do feel envious with technologies in WWW nowadays because during my high school, colleges and undergraduates time, I’m deprived from all these technologies. It would be different I think if I’m able to access to all learning tools in those years. It would be different in the way I learn and acquire knowledge. It would be different in the way I look at certain problems by the way of searching different options to solve it. It would be a good diversion from being too cramped in lecture hall listening to 3 hours lecture. It would broaden my learning when I’m able to chat and discuss with others rather than only with classmates.

There are so much options and opportunities for distance learning to takes place in the WWW nowadays. As a designer and trainer, it would be a relief that all these technologies available on the Net and some are free for use. But how do we choose the best technology to deliver our teaching? How can we suit the contents to be delivered with the medium of technology we choose? What is the best instructional strategy to be adopted when we plan to deliver our content over technology we have choose?

When planning to select and use any online technology to deliver learning, we need to know who is our target user, their accessibility to technology we propose and learner readiness to use the technology. This is important for the facilitator to avoid future problems when learner decides not to cooperate with the technology.

How about our content? Does it suitable to be produce using the technology we choose? As instructor, we need to know the capability of the technology to support contents that we have. We also need to know how big or how deep the contents to be publish over the technology.

Now, we have the technology and the contents. How do we ensure that with these tools learner will get benefit from it? We need suit it with learning styles and instructional strategies that can best fit the learners.

Oppss, to achieve the learning outcomes, do we really need to use this technology? This will bring us back to our lesson plan and instructional design of learning to ensure that the best learning can takes place in the suitable medium.

Reflection on Activity 2 - Wiki

OK, we have a new Wiki! And there’s two Wikis: ‘PXGT6308’ and ‘Learning Haven’. For the purpose of collaborating virtually and completing Activity #2 for students taking PXGT6308 Instructional Strategies in Distance Education, the students created a Wiki on topic ‘How people learn in DE’ on 26th January 2009. Another Wiki is created by the facilitator on Week 8 to strengthen the collaboration among students, to engage students to participate actively and to focus the students on the topic about how people learn.

Why there are two Wikis? Is the first Wiki created doesn’t fulfil the learning outcomes specified for the students activity? And does the second Wiki complement the learning outcomes intended for the collaborative activity?

From my point of view, these two Wikis do serve as a collaborative tool for PXGT6308 students. I would like to give credits to Hana, the creator of the first Wiki and also to all classmates for their contribution to the first Wiki which kept ‘on-hold’ till now. The first Wiki didn’t make it to the stable version due to lack of cooperation and commitment from its participants, despite weekly encouragement and persuasion by creator and other contributors. Although, the first Wiki recorded 59 discussions and more than 300 viewed. Few interventions and injections by facilitator to control the focus of topic to engage more active participation, unfortunately it is still moving slowly behind the benchmark sets for collaborative work time frame. What went wrong?

Let me explore this in the perspective of its design and instructional strategies. The structure of the first Wiki begins with the open and freedom concept to put in any information as long as it is in the scope of distance education. There is a lot of thing to talk about in distance education and the scope is robust. Thus, the discussion will definitely be too broad or too thick to digest and it would stretch away from learning outcomes intended. The effort to streamlined the content based on one semester syllabus is appreciated and fully supported by the participants, and each topic have been assigned to all participants based on voluntary, interest and expertise. The instructional strategies in the first attempt to motivate learning and participation is in place and well-planned. During the first two weeks of its creation, participants add, edit, post discussion and provide feedback; collaborative learning is in progress. Then, the visitor to the first Wiki starts to deteriorate and fewer participants post and add contents to it.

Unfortunately, the first Wiki didn’t grow as planned, so, intervention by the facilitator to ensure that collaborative learning takes place by creating the second Wiki ‘Learning Haven’. The second Wiki was introduced to re-align and to focus the students to the topic that we were suppose to talk about; that is ‘How people learn in the DE context?’ The concept of contents in the second Wiki is structured and sequenced and there is a flow of learning the students need to follow in order to advance to the next activities. This is really in contrast with the first Wiki in which the second Wiki provides scaffolding and enforcement to process the learning compared to first Wiki which is more open and scattered. The second Wiki recorded more than 60 discussions, numerous entries of editing and the number of views increasing over the span of 5 weeks. The collaboration is progressing and learning process is at work.

The flow of learning in second Wiki is directed and sequenced, but participants responded it well, and this is contrast with aspiration of learning for adults in which they preferred learning to be more free and open; yet the collaboration is hard to achieve. At this point, I found out that, even in the concept of distance learning that enables learning to be free and borderless, the instructional strategies and learning methods need to be in place to suit the learning styles of adult learners. The second Wiki was designed and customised to suit the way PXGT6308 students learn, which at first the students are exposed to various perspectives of learning and then moved on to activities to relate the learning process and how to adjust the teaching based on how people learn.

In the first Wiki, my effort begins by taking part in discussion on content segregation and nominates myself to provide contents on evaluation and assessment in DE. I admit that I didn’t do much on providing quality contents and didn’t do much to share my knowledge and experience in the topic of evaluation and assessment. My contribution to some discussions mostly based on my prior knowledge about the content, my observation and few readings. Valid and supported contents that prove reliable and trustworthy to support my comments and feedback are the most part of contribution that I regretted not to include. After doing the second Wiki, I would love to improve and modify the first Wiki to suit the learning objectives and engage my classmates in providing good contents in the scope of distance education.
The second Wiki provides a basis and common platform for all students to begin with in collaborating over the Wiki. The contents slowly grow from the basic of learning, to how people learn, moves on to learn about learn, and then how to teach or design learning based on how people learn. It is more focus and the students are provided with learning track to move on to the highest Bloom’s taxonomy level. But, it is up to the learners’ effort and commitment to process the learning in order to leverage their knowledge to whichever Bloom’s level they’re able to.

My effort for second Wiki begins by following the step-by-step instructions indicated in all pages in the Wiki. I progress from page to page, view the videos and take notes, do the activities and try to synthesize what I observe and learn. My contribution in the second Wiki is more compared to the first Wiki, but I do think I still didn’t do much for the second Wiki. The quality of discussions posted by participants has improved and some have advanced to real synthesize in their learning process. At this point, I think my quality of learning is progressing and maybe lack of deep synthesizing because all my writings are based on observation, prior knowledge, experience and few readings. To be able to synthesize and write quality posting, so that the contribution is meaningful to others, I will have to do a lot of reading and analysing other articles or papers; so that I can relate it with my prior knowledge and experience to explain the contents further. I would love to see my writings on observation and experience supported by research studies and prove valid of learning process.

At the time of writing this reflection paper, the second Wiki is still not at its stable version, means that it is still without expert reviewing, language editing, segregating and compiling content that can become one good product of web resource for other learners of DE topic. This Wiki needs to improve and polish for to be able to survive and usable for other interested learners.

How can I improve the quality of the content? When the second Wiki was introduced, I feel like it is an assignment for me to complete before the end of semester. This is part where I’ll be evaluated in numbers of contribution of collaborative works. At first I didn’t feel the ownership of the Wiki because it is created by the facilitator and I just have to answer whatever questions being posted there. So, the quality of answer and comments based on questions posted; no synthesizing, no in-depth thinking and explanation. But, as the Wiki grows, and the learning process improved to be more critical, I notice that the quality of discussions improved and more synthesizing and reflecting takes place. I come to a conclusion that, when we feel the ownership of something and we hold it as dearly, we would give our best to make it grow and improve it, so that at the end of the day, we can be proud of what we do. And yet, I do feel shame a bit because I didn’t do enough to make the Wiki grows to its best.

But, it’s not too late because learning is life long. Even though, the dateline of the Wiki ends after finishing this reflection paper, there is always room for improvement. To improve the quality of content, I would love to include as many resources of learning materials or links as possible, so that learners can access to these references after we have validated its reliability and suitability with what learners looking for. The quality of contents can be improved by debating and correcting each other works and comments. On my part, I wish for the times to read lots of articles and journals to be able to provide supporting explanation when discussing or debating on particular topics.

This activity of collaborating on the Wiki gives impact to me on finding my own learning styles, knowing how other people learn, understanding how I learn and the difference of my learning with others, and also how I can give back and suit my teaching to other learners. In this activity, I can say that 100% collaboration do takes place (all students in PXGT6308) took part in the discussion and adding contents, but it is need to be improving. Collaboration supposed to be about sharing knowledge, where students share their experience, knowledge and observation with others; and students can learn from each other to make comparison and to find common understanding on particular topic (balancing and leveraging knowledge). In the two Wikis, the same obstacle makes the Wiki hanging and unstable; that is lack of collaboration.

I learn that, in the activity that needs collaborating such as Wiki, learners need to be technology-prepared, commit, self discipline; self motivate, and always are open to share your experience and prior knowledge.

I also learn that to be able to learn effectively, I need to be an active learner, socialise my learning and with other learners, and need to be more reflective, which is always evaluate my understanding and learning. When this happens, my learning would be more meaningful and I can progress and deliver my learning by the way of designing learning materials or teaching effectively to others.