Jess’ E-Learning Blog

Once again, I am having troubles embedding these two … things … into my blog posts. I am really frustrated right now. I should have been in bed half an hour ago and I haven’t packed my bag, found clothes for tomorrow, had a shower, done my teeth or anything… purely because every time I try to embed something in this blog I cant do it. I’ve tried fifteen different ways, with different types of code (embed, link, just the plain url) with different types of embedding in edublogs and none of it is working!

I’m going to go to bed and leave this for tomorrow night… after work …

Good news! It is actually a storyboard, the way it is supposed to be done and it’s only missing two little boxes. Fantastic! One last screencap has to be started, but since it works on the same template as the others, it won’t take too long. And then all I have to do is write the 1000 word explanation/justification and I’m done. : )

One thing I am a little worried about is that it might be a little too large to embed directly into the assignment page I’ll create in my blog. From memory, any image in here can be followed back to its source (i.e. flickr) where it can be viewed in full size. If not, then I’ll see if I can post the image to my DeviantArt account and link to it in the assignment.

Today I’ve tried to finish both my storyboard and my screencaps for the final assignment, but I’ve had trouble figuring out the parameters of each of them. I’ve always looked at it as the storyboard is the process which the learner has to go through to accomplish the specified learning objectives. As in, first there’s pre-course training, then there’s a quiz to determine prior learning, which then tells learners if they need to participate in mod 1or wait for mod 2 or 3, etc.

But while the platform is designed to house the learning program, it has bits and pieces which are not reliant on the course. For instance, there is an area where learners can change their settings, such as background colours, patterns, headers, etc, if they want to explore and develop their technology skills. This has been incorporated as a way of facilitating development in a humanistic way and is in no way related to the course ’Understanding the Impact of Drugs and Alcohol’. So, my dilema is; if I am supposed to ‘imply’ the platform, does that mean that I have to put the settings page and the home page and things like that in the storyboard? And if I do that, then I’m not really storyboarding the program, I’m storyboarding the platform, so do I put things like ‘face to face interaction’ or ‘webinar’ in the storyboard as well?

I think I’m still a little bit confused. If we had been shown a completed ‘real’ storyboard or design or something, instead of the really basic, no-content ones we were shown at the beginning of module two, then I think I might have a better idea of what the storyboard is supposed to look like.

I just had a look at Twitter, mainly because I’d heard a bit about it in classes gone past and wanted to know what its purpose was and how it could be used. After watching the “Twitter: In plain English” video, I don’t hink I’ll bother signing up.

Basically, Twitter is a social networking tool where you tell people what you are doing at the moment. You have 140 characters to write in, and then it posts it, like a blog post, to your page. People who ‘follow’ you basically RSS feed you and get updates of when you write something, for example, “I am going to the shops”, or “reading [insert name of book]“. It’s like the tool on Facebook next to your avatar where you write what you’re doing. Once you write it up, it updates in the box below and shows up in all your friend’s faccebook profiles in their box.

What I don’t like about it is this: why hop on the computer every twenty minutes to say you’re mowing the lawn or going for a swim or something?  Why bother? Just go and mow the lawn or go for a swim.

Just forgot to add this in the previous post…

In terms of providing a pre-course training program, I want it to be situated on the platform which the program is on, so that learners learn exactly what they are going to need to do in the program itself. In addition, I would make any asynchronous parts of the pre-course training available to learners afer they have completed it. I would do this so that if learners forget something, then they can re-teach themselves how to do it. Failing that, I would then direct learners to ask their instructor or a fellow learner for help.

And also, I am using my blog at the moment to put down all my notes for this assignment because I’m not sure exactly how my assignment is going to look and it’s better to have everything down on (figurative) paper than running around and getting lost in my head.

So, I’ve decided to work on this assignment from both ends - the learning theories/content and the technologies available and suitable.

I’ve decided on technologies which could be used for the content I have. I’ve decided the possibilities are instant messaging, social networking, blogging, wikis, group discussion boards and webinars.

These technologies have been chosen largely for the following reasons. They support the humanist learning approach I am adopting in this program by allowing for individuals to form groups, support each other and relate their experiences. Secondly, they do not require a high speed internet connection, which means that learners with slow internet connection can still participate in the learning. Third this list has a mix of synchronous and asynchronous technologies, as well as asynchronous technologies which can be used in a synchronous manner. This is beneficial as the course can be divided into synchronous and asynchronous components. Lastly, these technologies are highly flexible in how they are used. Therefore, I can adapt them to almost any learning content which I have and get learners to do a lot of different stuff within the technology.

I want to use a platform which can support all of these technologies so that the learners do not need to go outside of the platform. I want it to be this way because the learners are not technology savvy and I do not want them to get confused, frustrated or lost. So, I want to use a platform in which this can all be embedded. However, the platform also needs to be flexible and user-friendly enough for DoCS to change the content or activities, etc when the program is reviewed.

Having everything embedded into a platform so that it all looks streamlined has additional benefits. Firstly, it will make it easier to give pre-course technology training to learners. They will only have to learn how to access, navigate and interact with the platform, instead of how to use each technology separately. This leads to the second benefit which is that the learners are less likely to become overwhelmed and distraught with all the different technologies they are using if they do not know that they are using them. This will make e-learning a less frightening experience for the learners.

I’m running late! I spent a lot of time on an assignment for Assessing Learning because my lecturer is a very hard marker and I want to do well.  handed it in early yesterday so that I could get on with my E-Learning Design subject… but I think that I should have done more on E-Learning, because there is a lot of work I still have to do…

So the next seven or so days are going to be spent crazily working on researching some justification for the e-learning program I have semi-designed…

-_-

Yesterday, I took the session plan for this program, separated all the activities and learning bits, and then put it all back together in groups according to the content of the activity and if it was linked or dependant on anything else. This is my way of getting my head around what the program is actually about. While doing this, I had a few thoughts which I decided to scribble down before I forgot them

The first thing I noticed was that there was a LOT of information being thrown at the learners in the two days that the program runs. It is very intensive and I wonder how much of it is remembered or used when the learners go back to work. Also, I wonder if there are any follow-up sessions or even surveys or quizzes a month or six weeks after the program to see how much is remembered. In terms of e-learning, I don’t think that it would be wise to teach this much in a period of two days, especially with learners who aren’t familiar with computers, let alone the Internet. They will become overwhelmed with the technology and this will affect how much of the content they actually learn.

In addition to spreading out the content over a larger period, like a week or two, I think that they should also hold courses to teach people the basics in computers. In addition to aiding them in the e-learning components of NGO Training Program courses, it may also facilitate a trust and reliance on computers which may result in actions such as no longer keeping a hard and soft copy of everything.

Another thought I’ve had is to suggest that DoCS personnel keep up with Internet, and particularly E-learning, technologies. This is for two reasons: firstly, the solutions we give will not be perfect, complete solutions and they should keep an eye out for anything which they can add to their programs. Secondly, I would advise them not to use the same technology we we recommend in ten years time, because it will be completely outdated and there will likely be something out there better suited to them.

Lastly, I just had this thought while writing this post. I don’t think that DoCS will like how much I’m going to move the program around. For instance, in one category, I have activities from the first and second day of instruction. They all cover the same topic area, but were previously separated into different parts of the program. I think that the way they organised it was okay, but there are bits and pieces which I think are better off being organised together which weren’t and other bits which should follow on from bits but didn’t.

 I thought that since this is the second time this semester this has happened, I should write it down and make a post of it. For the NGO Training Program project we’re working on in class, we have a liaison (Brett) who attends each class. He is supposed to communicate with Anne, our lecturer, who then tells us how we are supposed to complete our assignments. to keep both uni and DoCS happy. Sometimes though, what Anne says is different to what Brett says, which makes everything just confusing.

 The first time this happened was during the group project for DoCS, providing case studies of organisations using particular technologies. Anne told us that we only had to make the case studies relevant to DoCS’ context. However, Brett told us that they should all be ‘human service’ examples. Like aged home care organisations, drug rehabilitation centres, etc. We nearly had to rewrite three quarters of our assignment because of this, until we realised … Brett wanted us to use these examples so that he could take them to build a business case for whatever technology/ies they ended up using. So, we decided that DoCS cutting and pasting assignments that we hand in to uni would constitute a breach of Intellectual Property rules and therefore it doesn’t matter if they are not in the same industry as DoCS is.

The second time this happened was last week, when Brett ran the class because Anne was at a conference. In this class, we were supposed to choose a training program to use in an individual assignment. Over this week, we had to storyboard a high level e-learning alternative to the face-to-face program. The whole thing. Only, we weren’t told this by Brett. Brett told us that we had to think of e-learning alternatives to individual activities in the program. For example, ‘this bit of the program can be completed a week before the face-to-face program using this technology’. Apparently, DoCS’ aim is to reduce the face-to-face time (not necessarily to eliminate it) and to provide training ‘options’. This made storyboarding practically impossible - how do you storyboard an e-learning program which isn’t actually an e-learning program? So most of us spent last class in a confused stupor, wondering exactly what we were supposed to be doing.

My (long-winded, I know) point is that we are recieving two sets of direction and it is not helping us to work effectively. I think that the problem may lie in how well uni and DoCS have discussed their objectives, deliverables and particularly their assumptions in regards to this project. For instance, DoCS assumes that we will be able to find case studies directly related to their industry and that we will not be able to produce an entire e-learning program. They believe that the group work assignment is a deliverable that they can take for their own and their objective is to provide e-learning options, rather than an extensive e-learning program.

I have been looking at different storyboards for e-learning programs and how different learning theories affect the shape of storyboards. I know that when e-learning was first used, there was a lot of behaviourist learning style storyboards available because they were easy to design and build. More recently, there has been a shift to e-learning designs which employ other learning theories, and thus the creation of technologies such as m-learning, IM for learning and virtual worlds for learning. 

I don’t think that using any one of these technologies, or any one particular learning theory is really such a good idea. I think that the behaviourist model of learning (as much as I dislike it) is beneficial in that it provides structure by which learners are less likely to feel overwhelmed or ‘lost’ in their learning. Having said that, behaviouralist learning is boring and, if used too extensively, renders what could be an exciting e-learning experience no better than a three hour uni-style lecture on the wonders of nylon carpeting.

However, a storyboard based on constructivist learning is not much better. While it is beneficial that the learning is flexible in allowing students to do whatever learning they need to do in whichever order they choose to do it, what is to motivivate any student to do any of it? This apporach lacks the structure needed in learning which turns a giant program of an elephant into bite-sized bits of elephant learning. Many people, when faced with a large amount of work or learning are overcome by it’s vastness. It is through structure , which constructivism lacks, that individuals relise that their learning goals are achieveable.

In addition to this, a lack of structure means that learners have to be disciplined enough to do the work, with less direction from the instructor than in other learning styles. This problem is similar to one that students in my course sometimes experience when they complete a subject in Block mode (meaning three or four half-day classes during a semester) instead of having a shorter class each week. Students found that because classes were weeks apart, the work that they had to do between classes was often forgotten, half-done or completed a few days before class. The lack of teacher interaction and structure made it more difficult for them to be disciplined in their work. I think that this same pronciple can be applied to constructivist learning - learners in a program with little to no structure are not going to learn a lot any time soon unless they are genuinely interested in the topic and can motivate tehmselves to complete the work.