[ED257A] Week 4: Social Constructivist and Sociocultural Theories of Learning

#LearningUsingSocialMedia

Adapted from: http://cristianaziraldo.altervista.org/debating-social-media/

This week's reading is based off of:
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Bennet, et al. 2012 "Implementing Web 2.0 technologies in higher education: a collective case study" Computers & Education 59 (2012) 524–534

Manca & Ranieri, "Is it a tool suitable for learning? A critical review of the literature on Facebook as a technology-enhanced learning environment." Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (2013), 29, 487–504

Warschauer & Grimes "Audience, Authorship, and Artifact: The Emergent Semiotics of Web 2.0"
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2007) 27, 1–23.
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Our class discussion on the usage of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) in the classroom greatly highlighted the importance of understanding the appropriateness of a tool to a task.
We learned from Bennet, et al. that even using the same activity (e.g., posting photos on Flickr as a class exercise or writing a blog) can lead to varying degrees of success. The same can be said of other technologies that have emerged from the Web 2.0 with the rise of user-generated content. The theme of a "square peg into a round hole" appeared several times (i.e., forcing the usage of tool for a task it was not designed for), and highlights the need that as instructors, we need to critically think about how to use the plethora of technology now available.

Manca & Ranieri propose the possibility of Facebook as a technology-enhanced learning environment. My knee-jerk reaction upon reading this was that this was not a good idea. It would mix people's social and academic lives, and it would introduce so much uncertainty in the student-teacher relationship (e.g., do you friend the student or not?). As someone with more STEM leanings, I was also hard pressed to think of times at which Facebook would be appropriate. However, I thought the in-class example of using Facebook to facilitate intercultural learning between students was fantastic. Because Facebook facilitates more informal social networking, it was well-suited to facilitating a more natural interaction between students of different cultures. This was a great example to enforce that while you need to think critically about the appropriateness of a tool to a task, it is also important to keep an open mind.

Although this was not discussed in class, I was also intrigued by the article from Warschauer and Grimes about the underlying social context behind social media. For example, several studies found a correlation between cultures with high power differentials and low frequency of editing of Wikipedia. That is, if a hierarchy of authority was more ingrained in a culture, people tended to edit Wikipedia less. I thought this was a striking observation- it implies that in-class activities cannot be treated as closed systems between student and teacher, but that other complex, confounding variables are at play. I wonder, have you as the reader observed this to occur in your experience?

I was really excited about the emergence of Web 3.0. Web 1.0 was mostly focused on building the internet (e.g., building the protocols, interface, formatting) and generating content. Web 2.0 shifted towards user-generated content with the expansion of the internet to mobile devices. Now, it is predicted, the internet will evolve again into Web 3.0, a more adaptive and intelligent form of the the internet, which includes but is not limited to: semantic web, microformats, natural language search, data-mining, machine learning, recommendation agents. These all (to varying degrees) stem from the manipulation of huge amounts of data and extracting useful information. While the technical details would be impossible to cover in the length of the class period, I found this upcoming stage of the web to be exciting. What do you think? How do you think it will affect the classroom? Will this redefine how we teach or what the role of the teacher is?

[ED 257A] Week 3: Cognitive Theories and Multimedia

Learning how to learn

Source: http://www.digitalistmag.com/files/2015/10/Prospect-Mortgage.jpg

This post is based off of the following readings:
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Miller, 2014, Ch. 7 "Incorporating multimedia effectively"

Ocepek, et al. 2013. "Exploring the relation between learning style models and preferred multimedia."
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This week was quite enlightening for myself as a student and instructor. We learned this past class of the different learning styles that have been proposed (I'm experimenting with media type 3 from Ocepek. Please let me know it's going :) ): 

• Kolb's learning style: 4 modes of learning, most commonly applied in e-learning, which can be combined into dominant modes
• 4 modes: abstract conceptualization (AC), concrete experience (CE), active experimentation (AE), and reflective observation (RO)
• combinations of dominant modes: assimilator (dominant modes AC and RO), converger (dominant modes AC and AE), accommodator (dominant modes CE and AE), and diverger (dominant modes CE and RO)
•  Rancourt’s learning styles model (RLS): 
• “a characteristic mode of way of manifesting cognitive and/or affective phenomena”
• rational (R), empirical (E), and noetic (N) style (subjective insights)
• Hemispheric dominance and learning styles (HLS)
• right-hemispheric (simulations, experiments, intuitive reasoning, creative thinking), left-hemispheric (facts, logical reasoning, working with numbers), and integrated learning style
• this is the left-brain, right-brain model
•  VAK learning style model (VLS) (reduced VARK, with reading)
• visual, audio, kinesthetic learning modes

I was most familiar with the VAK learning style model, and used to identify as a primarily kinesthetic learner. Because of this, I always wrote things down and did loads of practice problems in order to make up for the PowerPoint presentation heavy lectures (even for derivations!) in school. Perhaps this ended up being the self-fulfilling prophecy we discussed, in which if you believe you cannot do something, you won't. As the reader, have you ever found yourself in a similar position? Last week's class was a great clarification of what it means to learn, i.e., learning how to learn.

There were particular insights from our small group and class discussions that I think are worth mentioning. The first is the difficulty in measuring the effectiveness of media in the classroom. Not only are there huge numbers of variable to control (e.g., time of measurement, demographic, finding a representative form of multimedia, discipline-specific challengest), but also confounding variables to account for (i.e., correlation, not causation). This is a common trait among all fields of research, but is a good reminder that just because the results say something, it does not necessarily reflect reality. That is, even if there is research that says one particular form of media is good or bad, this does not mean it is the panacea or poison of education. We always need to be vigilant of our results.

A second insight is to focus less on learning styles and more on learning preferences. I would like to add, perhaps it also makes sense to focus more on understanding the learning preferences each form of media enables. In other words, it is not necessary for a specific form of media (e.g., simulations) to fit in a specific learning style (e.g., right-hemispheric thinking). Of course, this complicates the picture, but it also opens some opportunities to think of forms of media in a new light (e.g., using simulations to go through a thought experiment, which requires logical thinking). Along the same vein is how to measure the successful implementation of media in the classroom. The biggest realization is the lack of congruence between teaching with media and testing without media. The example given in class I think illustrated this point well: for a foreign language class, changing the test to include more contextual and picture-based questions as practiced led to better retention. 

This led me to rethink the class on Materials in Energy Technologies course I'm helping to teach this quarter. Our goal in this course was to make materials science accessible to the non-materials scientist and to make connections of energy-related technologies with concepts of materials scientist. In order to do so, we've included many interactive activities (e.g., think-pair-share) to encourage our students to think about how materials science impact their everyday lives (e.g., how does understanding materials in extreme environments impact our ability to provide the electricity you use everyday? ans: it lets the turbines work at the extreme temperatures and pressures needed to transform the mechanical rotating energy from pushing steam into electrical energy). We've also included many guest lectures to show that all the theory we talk about in class has real-life applications and are still open-research questions. However, we still have a final at the end of the course planned. I feel we could very easily fall into same trap of testing in a different mode than our teaching.  Do you have recommendations/suggestions? Have you had a similar experience where the test and teaching methods didn't match up? I'd love to hear about your experiences!

[ED 257A] Week 2: Learning Theories

The Art of Presentation is...

Source: 99% Invisible Podcast

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This week's reading is based off of:

Chris Dede. "Theoretical Perspective Influencing the Use of Information Technology in Teaching and Learning" International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education, 43–62. Springer Science.

Atkinson & Mayer (2004) "Five ways to reduce the PowerPoint overload"

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Design and storyboarding is a fascinating topic (especially hidden design of everyday objects; see 99% Invisible podcast). Good design is undetectable and is intuitive for the user but is painstakingly difficult to achieve. What makes a good presentation is all the decisions and thinking the audience doesn't see, but will appreciate. I would like to share a few things I've learned in my side-quests to find the ultimate presentation techniques in hopes that they may help someone. And please, feel free to add your own tips! A quick disclaimer though- I come from the STEM side of things, but I would be curious to know if similar concepts could be applied in the HFA and SS fields.

I'm sure we've all seen the pitfalls of PowerPoint: cluttered slides, tiny fonts, blurry images, outrageous animations, terrible animations, content that is skipped over without explanation. However, these can all be avoided through two things- planning and practice. Planning is perhaps the biggest factor for what makes a good presentation. One of the most helpful things I learned was from a seminar from Jean-luc Doumont, an engineering PhD turned instructor and invited speaker on all-things related to designing clean and clear presentations. (Side note: He occasionally comes to the UCSB campus to give such seminars.) Basically, plan the story of the presentation outside the medium of the presentation. This could be on a piece of paper, using sticky-notes, or using a storyboard but the point is to move away from the implicit constrains of thinking slide-by-slide and to think more big picture. Having a big picture makes sure every slide, every image, every word has a purpose (does it build the big picture?). The hope is that the speaker does not fall into being an accessory to the presentation, but rather the presentation is a tool for the speaker. From personal experience, this has changed the way I approach presentations and I feel it has really helped me hone in what is relevant and what is not relevant in a presentation. But I'd like to know your thoughts as well! Would this be a useful technique for you to build presentations?

The second tip is practice, practice, practice. The first run is never that great, the second run is better, and by the third run, you have a rhythm. I attended a workshop offered by Grad Div that aimed to teach theatre techniques to graduate students in STEM. At first, I'll admit I was a bit skeptical, but towards the end it was really fun. We re-enacted an excerpt from (I think) Henry V and added interpretive movements. I think the exercise really connected what you're thinking of next to say with your body and voice, and connecting these three are what truly makes an engaging speaker. This naturally requires forethought and, most importantly, practice. While I won't be doing dramatic pauses or fake-sword-fighting gestures in my own presentations, I think the lessons of unifying all types of visual and audio media (including yourself) are important. What are your thoughts?

And unrelated but highly enjoyable to watch, to help prep for speaking:
From whence the "Wonder Woman" pose for confidence came. 

Your body language shapes who you are

  

[ED 257A] Week 1: ICT Literacies

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This week's reading is based off of:

Kennedy & Judd, 2011 "Beyond Google and the 'satisficing' searching of digital natives"

Lai & Hong, 2015 "Technology use and learning characteristics of students in higher education: Do generational differences exist?"

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We started our first week with a brainstorming session on desired characteristics of instruction and instructional materials followed by a discussion of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and course management sites.

Kennedy & Judd highlight a growing trend in the current generation of students (dubbed "Digital natives" or the "Google generation") of "satisficing" their studies through cursory online searches are just sufficient to complete the task. This I thought was an apt observation of how students today approach their studies, regardless of field, in light of the emergence of the Internet and ubiquity of information. Indeed, we saw this trend in our own class demographic when polling for digital learning characteristics of ourselves and the undergraduate population we teach. The poll is taken on a scale of from 1= Strongly Agree to 5 = Strongly Disagree. For example, many of us are comfortable with a several forms of technology.

Perhaps because of our digital literacy, we are also guilty of "satisficing" in expecting to find an answer to our question quickly. Often times this is through a Google search, or nowadays, Wikipedia.

 In being digital literate in so many technologies, we have adopted the mindset that multitasking is the way to accomplish and learn. However, research has suggested we don't truly multitask, just switch between tasks quickly and that switching process could be cognitively costly. Certainly food for thought.

While the ubiquity of information is certainly powerful, it can hinder good habits. I observe this in my own field. A current trend in materials science is high-throughput computing (for example, the Materials Genome Initiative). The idea is because we now have powerful supercomputers, we can now do massive number of calculations on arbitrarily complex systems to identify new materials. We have all this data now, but the question is, can we reasonably screen our data without error? Are we losing information by throwing it away based on some pre-determined criteria? Before the advent of big data, much of research in condensed matter physics was driven by physical intuition and the ability understand general physical concepts. While high-throughput computing affords us a great tool, I believe it is important to understand the limitations of a tool. The same applies to using the Internet for educational purposes. It is important to be critical of what lies in front you.

We also covered the tools in course management sites, such as our own Gauchospace. In starting to teach my own course MAT 188, Gauchospace has been an extremely important tool to communicate the course and provide supporting material. It was enlightening to learn about all the effort that goes into Gauchospace. From my own experience in graduate classes in the engineering and sciences, Gauchospace is underutilized. It was not until I took courses in the Education department and had to build MAT 188 that I was made aware of all the features that Gauchospace has. Perhaps this is a manifestation of what Lai and Hong alluded to in their study of whether generational differences exist in the usage of technology in higher education. That is, the technology divide occurs not so much across generations but rather across fields of study (and gender). What are your thoughts on why this occurs? Offering courses that graduate students from all disciplines can participate and exchange perspectives is a great avenue to lessen this divide, and I'm excited to partake such a course this quarter.

Welcome again!

Welcome again to my technology in education blog. This Fall 2015 quarter, we'll continue the discussion of the usage of technology in the classroom with ED 257A: Teaching and Learning with Digital Media, here at UCSB.

This quarter I'm particularly excited since I will be simultaneously helping to teaching an undergraduate course MAT 188: Materials in Energy Technology. The objective of MAT 188 is to give participants an overview of how materials science impacts energy technologies, such as batteries and solar cells. It is a course that is organized by enthusiastic graduate students, and I am happy to be a part of the effort. Stay tuned!