- My choice in digital technology was using Moodle’s Forum feature. I chose this from other social networking tools as it offered a traditional thread-like format, word counts, attaching and embedding multimedia and ease of archiving discussions. I found the forum offered a broader scope of usability to manage conversations and the flexibility of applying instructional writing, summarising, weaving and critiquing learner contributions. Below demonstrates the forum I created and the topics within it.
- To ensure that the Etivity had purpose and a structure for learning, I used Gilly Salmon’s Etivity invitation as demonstrated below. I made this into a two part activity that linked to qualification learning outcomes.
- As part of the invitation I briefly analysed and annotated some learning theories that are present in the activity. This is a good exercise I do when I plan online activities and materials as it enables me to effectively apply learning theory.
- After I had completed and refined the invitation, I created the activity which was the Moodle Forum. I then created two forum topics and copied both invitations into them. I then promoted the Etivities to the apprentices so that they could start to participate in them. I sent an email to them all linking to the topics. I did this a few times to remind them after they had a slow start.
- The apprentices started to contribute and replying back to one and another as required. I was checking daily if the apprentices were making contributions. It's quite exciting waiting for the first person to make a comment. But you can't pounce on them straight away, you need to allow momentum to build up and then make a purposeful reply back to direct discussion or give feedback and guidance. Below the apprentices are responding back to each other and I have gave feedback and praised a good comment.
- The whole eTutoring process involves a significant amount of empathy, motivating, prompting, challenging, weaving and summarising. Over the years I have developed a wide range of approaches through reading good practice and theories (which could lead to another post!). These attributes are needed in order to successfully facilitate an online discussion. Below I responded to an apprentice and developed their thinking by asking questions about their contribution. In the second example I asked an apprentice for further detail in which they replied back with.
- During the activity I kept a log of all contributions in Microsoft Excel. This was an interesting analysis and helped me assess interactions and evaluate the activity.
- After the activity had closed, I issued an online survey using Google Forms to evaluate the activities effectiveness. I could have asked more specific questions but I wanted to gain a deeper sense of the apprentices experience of participating in an online discussion.
- Below is the feedback from the online survey that I used to evaluate the activity and make improvements with.
- During this activity, I reflected heavily and created a brief plan that can help outline involvement and facilitation skills within an online discussion. The duration indicates the length of the activity from start to finish, the Etivity identifies the type of activity (and/or linking to any others) and the action outlines what the learner and eTutor is expected to do. However, the interactions will differ depending on learner numbers and the amount of replies they contribute. This example focusses on my recent experience of facilitating an online discussion and the amount of individual contributions that occurred.
MSc eTutoring report:
Online discussions
In this written narrative with guidance, support and encouragement of Gibbs’ reflective cycle (1988), I will discuss my experience of designing and facilitating a small online discussion that I used with seven apprentices as part of their course outcomes on the Level 3 Diploma in Digital Learning Design. The following assignment will start with a discussion of my design principles behind the online discussion activity, an explanation of my facilitation strategies, then onto to discuss the evaluation of the activity and close with a final conclusion of feedback from the participants (learners).
Design
My choice in technology was using Moodle’s (Virtual Learning Environment) Forum feature. A Virtual Learning Environment is “a system for delivering learning materials to students via the web” (Oxford University Press, 2014). I chose this amongst other tools like Yammer (social networking) as it offered a traditional thread-like format, word counts, attaching files and web links and ease of archiving the discussion. I found it offered a broader scope of usability to manage the conversations. Furthermore to this feature it offers the ability to implement instructional writing, summarising, weaving and critiquing learner posts (Salmon, 2011). Another reason is that the apprentices have a Moodle page for accessing their learning resources for their course, so including an overall forum offered a place for collaboration and discussion although this is mainly done in the Yammer group. Figures 1, 2 and 3 illustrate the forum that I created and the current topics (at the time of writing) within it:
Figure 2. Moodle Forum topic.
Figure 3. Moodle Forum topic.
My overall aim was to facilitate an activity that supported the apprentices to develop knowledge of a topic asynchronously; “activities take place outside of real time” (University of Wisconison-Madison, 2014). I wanted the apprentices to be able to learn around their workload, therefore at a time and place that suited their needs. This is flexible for the apprentices to contribute to and develop their understanding of a topic without needing a formal lesson (Salmon, 2011). The apprentices can then form a written account of their understanding onto their ePortfolios.
The underpinning principle of this activity is the social constructivist in which Bruner (1996) defines as learners’ building on their new and existing knowledge. However, this principle was combined with using Salmon’s idea of using invitations. Figures 4 and 5 are screenshots of the invitations I used to construct the learning activity (Salmon, 2013).
Figure 4. E-Tivity invitation.
Figure 5. E-Tivity invitation.
Figure 6 is an annotated E-Tivity to demonstrate where other learning theories are present and it identifies where traditional learning and current eLearning theories occur in the proposed activity.
Facilitation
During the online discussions, I was the facilitator in enabling the learning and motivating the discussions. The online discussions were given a deadline in which the apprentices had to complete their contributions to the activity. However, at first the apprentices were reluctant to make the first post to the discussion. As I am situated with my apprentices in the workplace, I was able to voice and give reminders about making their posts. Once initiation had begun, I was then able to fulfil the e-moderator role, which is an online facilitator (Salmon, 2011). Once apprentices were making posts and replying back to others, I was able to weave their contributions which is pulling together related contributions that needs to be discussed or inspected further (Salmon, 2011). Following are selected contributions that were made by myself and the apprentices. I am able to show the apprentice’s names by asking for their kind permission. I have not shown all contributions, but included the ones that clearly show my activity in the facilitation process. Figure 1 illustrates apprentices replying back to peers posts. Figure 2 illustrates weaving by me and figures 3 and 4 of me giving constructive feedback for motivation.
Throughout the online discussions, I used “weaving” (Salmon, 2011) as a way of acknowledging their posts and understanding but also to give feedback for further development. However, some apprentices were replying back to others as requested providing agreement or disagreement. I found that I was mentoring apprentices outside of the activity by face-to-face and via email reminders on what they could make their contributions on. This was both formal in our weekly course meetings and informally during work days. This allowed me to give face-to-face instruction and clarification on the task. However, I could say this weakened the activity as I was teaching and giving instruction outside of the intended activity, which might have defeated the initial purpose.
Figure 2. My reply from figure 1.
Figure 3. Me giving feedback.
Evaluation
During the initiation of the online discussions I was reflecting on action as Smith (2001, 2011) highlights in Schön’s efforts. After each post and reply was made I was thinking where am I taking this discussion? How far do I allow learners to go? If learners don’t understand some topics, am I going to have to give some face-to-face teaching? In participating in reflecting on action it gave me an indication if the activity was working as planned. In addition, I could simply relate to my previous experiences as a learner within in an online discussion to feel and know how I could react with the activity (Miller, 2010). I also participated in evaluating my effectiveness of the activity through Beetham and Sharpe’s E-Learning Practice Evaluator (2013, p 309 appendix 9). Through this reflection, I identified that I needed to level down the interaction with the information I give to apprentices so I can build them up to the knowledge. But most importantly I have realised that the underpinning pedagogy was not used effectively to meet the aim of peer networking. I needed to be guided in my approach, for example signposting and prompting often to keep apprentices engaged in the discussion and emphasising the assessment process. I have also realised that the technology might not have been suitable for this. If I had a function that allowed me to tag in individuals, that may have helped with signposting and prompting to make it more personal to an apprentice.
Figure 5 illustrates the interaction and participation that occurred during the activity. As identified in my design the underpinning principle was of the social constructivist (Duke et al, 2013). The most interesting fact is that the replies to other posts were very minimal. However, the learning outcomes were initially met through the new posts submitted. Furthermore, the rules of the activity were not met as some individuals did not reply back to others as stated. To review the impact of my activity, I conducted a survey as figure 6 demonstrates. I used it as a method to gain feedback of the activity’s effectiveness, which figure 7 illustrates. The feedback was positive and it shows that the apprentices understand the importance of the discussions as well as learning from them. However, a future recommendation could be to issue a survey to apprentices before and at the end of the activity. It would specifically measure mine and the apprentice’s position for pre and post implementation of the technology. This in effect would measure impact of the online learning activity. Overall, the activity proved to be a success as per apprentice feedback, however the results show that a recurring theme is the skills improvement of facilitating online learning.
Figure 5. Interaction of online discussion.
Figure 6. Evaluation survey.
Figure 7. Survey responses.
Figure 7. Continued.
References
Armitage, A, Evershed, J, Hayes, D, Hudson, A, Kent, J, Lawes, S, Poma, S, Renwick, M, (2012 fourth edition) ‘Teaching and Training in Lifelong Learning’ Open University Press, McGraw-Hill Education
Beetham & Sharpe (2013 third edition) ‘Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age’ Routledge
Bruner, J (1996) ‘The Culture of Education’ Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.
Collis & Moonen (2001) ‘Flexible Learning in a Digital World: Experiences and Expectations’ Kogan Page Limited, London
Collis & Moonen (2005) ‘An On-Going Journey: Technology as a Learning Workbench’ University of Twente
Driscoll, M, P (2002) ‘How People Learn (and What Technology Might Have To Do with It). ERIC Digest ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology Syracuse NY
Duke, B Harper, G, Johnston, M (2013) ‘Connectivism as a Digital Age Learning Theory’ The International HETL Review, Special Issue, 2013, Kaplan University, USA
Gibbs, G (1988) ‘Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods’ Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford
Laurillard, D. (2002) ‘Rethinking University Teaching. A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies’ London, Routledge
Mayes, T, Freitas, S (2004) ‘JISC e-Learning Models Desk Study: Stage 2: Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models’ Jisc
Miller, B (March 2010) ‘Brookfield's Four Lenses: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher’ Faculty of Arts Teaching and Learning Committee, The University of Sydney
Oxford University Press (2014) ‘Learn about Virtual Learning Environment/Course Management System content’ http://global.oup.com/uk/orc/learnvle/ (accessed 15 February 2015)
Salmon, G (2011 third edition) ‘e-moderating: The Key to Online Teaching and Learning’ Routledge
Salmon, G (2013 second edition) ‘E-Tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning’ Routledge
Siemens, G (December 12, 2004) ‘Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age’ elearnspace
Smith, M, K, (2001, 2011) ‘Donald Schön: learning, reflection and change, the encyclopedia of informal education’ www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm (accessed 18 January 2015)
University of Wisconison-Madison (2014) ‘Asynchronous vs Synchronous Communication’ https://tle.wisc.edu/blend/facilitate/communicate (accessed 14 March 2015)
