Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Learning

  • Teaching Online: A grammar of course development

    As a Professor in the Department of English Langauge and Communication, I could define my job as one of teaching students. I don’t. I consider it an impossible task to teach students a language in the context of the university classroom. (I can post the numbers showing this if anyone is interested.) Thus, a move to restructure the class, which means a restructuring of the interaction, and as we get more meta, a restructuring of the way I think about my job.

    I facilitate student discovery of new tools to develop thinking and learning with the goal to use new languages to get things done. (OK, that last part still needs work…)

    One of the toolboxes I use to develop those meta-skills is online activities. Where the most reliably researched correlation to language development is time using the language (time-on-task, if we only consider classroom activity), online allows (forces?) the students to spend more time, at different times, and keep the interval between exposure to the material short enough so that skills don’t get ossified between weekly classes.

    Developing courses to include an online component is a process that can be like entering a pool. You walk down the stairs, and hold your breath as the cold water reaches your crotch, or you jump in and surface sputtering from the shock, but completely immersed. Over the last 10 years, I have followed the first method, gradually adding more and more online components to my class. At this point, students are accessing the online component both inside the classroom and between classes. The crotch moment came when I required students to bring laptops to class. That was after getting wifi set up on campus. Now the only pain comes when a student complains about how heavy her laptop is. Otherwise, we are immersed.

    But developing a course for this environment has been a long and arduous process, one that has left students cold about the technical side of the classroom (why can’t we just talk in class?), and others where it has lead to very high student evaluations (see languagejapan.com for products of these classes.) They key for my students in Japan is to leverage the strenghts of online learning (infinite patience, intermediary in the communication, recursive support) while maintaining the excitement and fun in the classroom setting (I get to talk to that cute student in my new small group). The other key is making the online component a lynchpin to success in class. The students must NEED to access the information online to be successful in the classroom.

    This is the paradigm I am working within.

    This balancing of activities needs a structure, a grammar. Much like on a more granular (specific) level hypertext needs a grammar (when and how much to link), classes need a natural way to transition to and from F2F and online interaction.

    In my #PotCert Class I rated myself a “9” with lower scores indicating more student autonomy in the learning process. There were a couple of times I would have liked to rank myself with a lower score (more student autonomy), but felt it just wasn’t realistic. I also think that like the process of language learning in the classroom you take a chunk of language (or knowledge) and work with it, initially with a lot of control, gradually realeasing control to the students. So like wheels within wheels, the students learn to deal with a small chunk by themselves, and then also learn how to deal with any new language (knowledge) they encounter by applying a structure they learn in class, on their own.

    The online environment is a sandbox for language learners, one they can play in. When the want to want to wash off the sand, they can either gradually walk into the water, or dive in all at once.

  • elearning and mlearning

    Articlulate.com
    image from articulate.com. see discussion there

    Before any good discussion begins, everyone needs to be on the same page, using the same meanings for the same terms, or at least understand the differences. In the lead-up to the start of mobi.mooc and #potcert (Program for Online Teaching Certificate), spreading thoughts on differences between elearning and mlearning.

    Clark Quinn’s Learnlets showed up in my RSS feed this morning with a pointer to RJ Jaquez and discussion of this topic. Quinn talks briefly about learning augmentation, and gets to the crux of the matter,

    If your mobile solution isn’t doing something unique because of where (or when) you are, if it’s not doing something unique to the context, it’s not mlearning.

    Which is all well and good. He goes on to say that most people don’t use tablets when running to catch a plane (I do), and even though interface is a bit tangential

    it’s mostly about performance support, or contextualized learning augmentation, it’s not about just info access in convenience.

    So there IS the form factor, but it is not central to this issue of mlearning. Mlearning is in what the software does, not what the hardware looks like.

    Jaquez writes a list of requirements for mlearning, and he is specific about touch screens, screen orientation, content as navigation, sensors, and of course, location.

    All this is interesting, but shouldn’t a good elearning program these days be able to add in features of mlearning when needed or when the learner is capable of using them? OK, there are pragmatic concerns, and just adding mobile features to an elearning program is not making it mlearning, but can’t there be a way to segue from one to another seamlessly? And does it matter?

     

     

  • MOOCMOOC Week

    MOOCs. I’ve lost count. There was CCK08, then PLENK10 and Change11, then it starts getting fuzzy. DS106 stands out, and there is a mobimooc coming up next month and Learning 2.o Virtual Conference (similar to a MOOC), on August 20-24, just after this one ends.

    But this week, we have MOOCMOOC, a MOOC about MOOCs. Just perusing the self introductions, it looks to be a high powered week. Intensive too. The mooc is only one week long, far shorter than I have ever experienced.

    MOOCMOOC schedule
    Each day this week is chock full of MOOC stuff about MOOCs

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Thanks to Becky at rjh.goingeast for the pointer to the MOOCMOOC. It is memorial week here in Japan, where Tokyo empties out and everyone goes to their home town. I’m too far away, so I have some extra time. Perfect placement.

    My only concern is figuring out which day I am in, since I am about 16 hours ahead of California. We’ll see.

  • Japan a market so mature it is dying

    A good friend in the business has been long telling me that Japan is a mature market for language learning books, materials and software. The shrinking commercial areas at language conferences attest to this. Now, another indication I came across this morning. Mindsnacks is a new software for language games, with apps for iPads and iPhones. If you will notice below, we have a nice app for learning English as a Second Language (ESL). The interfaces for learning have lots of different interfaces. If you speak Spanish, Korean or Chinese, and many other languages, you have instructions in your language to learn English. The notable exception? Japanese.

    mindsnacks
    Koreans and Chinese can use Mindsnacks easily

  • The New University

    Coursera
    Coursera

     

     

    ……..

    It has finally arrived. The new university. The first update in 500 years. And it looks really good for learning. You get the best lectures and the best materials and the best classmates in the world, for free. Some people call it a MOOC, and there are some common elements. But the innovations bring people and computers, and all their strengths, together. All you have to do is work at it. It is up to you. Read this article about how it works. Or just go to the web site where the newest example looks like it is going to change education. Everywhere.

    I’ve been watching for this. I knew it was going to come. I figure I will be just be able to retire with the traditional university still intact, but decaying. The university as we know it will not last much longer. There will be a place for teachers, professors, and people that tell good stories. But it certainly will not pay as well as it does now. Except for a few “rock star” professors who will make millions. The future of course production will be more like a movie studio, and the organizations that can put the right producers, directors, writers and actors together will have hit courses. So we will see teachers in their 20’s gravitate to one or another of these roles gradually, deconstructing what a teacher is, over the next generation. I fear for them, but am also excited for education in general.