Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA) – Page 5

TELEDA and text; without visual clues the game is played differently

Sue Watling / April 11, 2014 / social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The current iteration of TELEDA is over. I shall miss it. Nothing is as effective as applying theory to practice and when it comes to e-learning – there is a lot of theory out there. I learn more about the challenges of teaching and learning in a digital age every time and I hope colleagues do too. Feedback suggests it’s a useful experience but what can’t be predicted are the outcomes. This is what I’ve started to call the Pedagogy of Uncertainty. When you begin to teach and learn online, you are up close and personal to the unknown and very soon get to understand there is nothing cost cutting or time saving about digital education. Retention within virtual courses is traditionally poor. It’s easy to see why. Without the physical timetable of lecture, seminar and workshop events, online learning is invisible. Easy to ignore. Without the face to face stimulus of personal communication, you are dependent on text. One of the first lessons is how easy misunderstanding occurs when the only language is letters. Not everyone is comfortable with writing rather than speaking.

Online its more difficult to get to know people. Over time, virtual colleagues develop a unique voice and personality but it takes a while for online community to develop. The risk is people leave before this tipping point occurs. It isn’t easy to teach or learn online which reinforces recent calls to recognise elearning has failed. The early promises of transformation were never based on real world experiences. Rather they evolved from the techie experts or those who mandated use without getting their hands digitally dirty. What’s always been missing is the lived experience of staff who teach and students who learn in physical classrooms. When they find themselves on a virtual brick road instead, it’s where the problems begin. The theory was never written with them – only for them by others.

Face to face offers clues to identity but online we are reduced to text. Now TELEDA has a sister. TELEDA1* and TELEDA2** both have learning blocks which focus on communication and collaboration. TELEDA1 is text based. TELEDA2 will use video like Skype, Google Hangouts and Blackboard Collaborate. I want to keep it this way. Part of the TELEDA1 process is to encourage colleagues to reflect on the limitations and advantages of text. It’s about stripping communication down to the essentials. I suppose it’s a bit indulgent on my part because I’m intrigued with subjectivity – postmodern style – in particular how we see and present ourselves online.

Postmodernism has always been contentious and it’s brief period in the spotlight was prior to the rise of social media. elearning might not have lived up to it’s early hype but if anything has had its transformation promise realised, it’s social media. Instant, continuous connection across all boundaries of time and distance. Is there were a way to combine the two – or are the words social and educational always oxymoronic.

Postmodern theory suggests we are the products of ideology; located within discursive power structures, giving away our social position through language, replicating and reinforcing our own oppression. I’m not a Marxist. There are more forms of oppression than one.

The body is a powerful delineator of social position. Cultural attitudes towards gender, ethnicity and disability produce marginalisation and dis-empowerment which cut across class difference and economics. But online no one knows who you are. Without visual clues, the identity game is played differently. This is a layer of TELEDA which offers the potential for equality. By keeping the video out of it, I hope it also offers a valuable transferable experience.

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* TELEDA 1 – Teaching and learning in a digital age; design and delivery

**TELEDA 2 Teaching and learning in a digital age; eresources and social media

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Staying safe online; the most important digital literacy of all

Sue Watling / April 4, 2014April 4, 2014 / conference, digital literacies, social impact of the Internet, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

This week I rediscovered my feminist roots. Behind Closed Doors was a student led Conference at the University of Lincoln which tackled the subject of domestic abuse. With colleague Jim Rogers, I ran a workshop looking at Digital Danger: the dark side of the net. Jim and I co-authored Social Work in a Digital Society a book examining the impact of the internet on higher education and health and social care professions, in particular those involving social exclusion and disempowerment. For me digital literacies have to include identity and inclusion but now I’m thinking they need another element – awareness of digital abuse.

Preparing the presentation was a consciousness raising experience. So far I’ve escaped serious digital danger but I’ve been lucky. For many, the insidiousness of internet connections offers new tools for exercising power and control. Think before you Tweet is the least of it. Online there are no walls, no doors, no boundaries, nowhere to hide. Text messages, social media statuses, emails, photographs and video are all ways to hurt vulnerable victims, sometimes with fatal consequences. Whatever you call it, cyberbullying, stalking, harassment, it’s when the fun stops and the hating begins.

Stolen identity, threats, blackmail, rumours, abusive comments, inappropriate images – the permutations are endless. Myself and colleagues talk to students about the difference between personal and public online identities but digital abuse frequents private places as much as open ones. In 2011 the Guardian claimed Cyberstalking by strangers was ‘now more common’ than face-to-face stalking but it’s frighteningly common from ex partners – with or without a history of domestic violence.

Digital Stalking: a guide to technology risks for victims by Jennifer Perry is a free publication downloadable from Women’s Aid who have other supporting resources about staying safe online. Twitter and Facebook offer advice about online safety. The Digital Stalking website has a range of free materials to help victims of digital abuse.

The internet is a virtual mirror, reflecting the good, the bad and the ugly. Free from traditional boundaries of time and place, it’s the most powerful communication and information tool ever, with infinite capacity for supporting the darker aspects of human nature. What it means to be digitally literate should encompass the affordance for evil every bit as much as the positives. Staying safe online is fast becoming the most important literacy of all.

Missing my MOOC. Goodbye TOOC. It was great knowing you.

Sue Watling / March 28, 2014March 28, 2014 / #tooc14, MOOCs, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

I miss my mooc. It was good to feel part of the TOOC14 learning community, in particular from the student point of view. It’s a sign of positivity when you feel sad about an ending but I reached the point where something had to give. In this case it was the mooc. For the tutors at Oxford Brookes on TOOC14, here’s my feedback.

I always felt my contributions were valued.
I liked the individual-ness of responses.
It was helpful to have additional questions built in. I felt tutors were interested in what I had to say. These questions also stretched my thinking and enhanced the learning.
What I really liked was knowing tutors had experience and expertise in managing online communication. As a consequence I felt it was ok not to know something, ok to get it wrong or even not get it all.
On TOOC14 I felt a real sense a community of shared practice and inquiry was building up.

It was a mooc but not as you might know it from coursera, udacity or khan academy. Not all but mostly, they can be impersonal. You feel like a grain of sand on a beach.

Online education is never an easy option. It takes time and commitment for staff and for students. Resources need redesigning. Retention is low. Text talk easily misunderstood. The advantages and disadvantages of virtual learning environments are about even. I think the team at Oxford Brookes have got it right. I’d have liked to complete.

I’m using the phrase tutors but am not sure this is the right word. When it comes to online ‘tutoring’ what should we be called? When the pay scale says Lecturer, how does that translate to online environments. I’ve submitted a conference proposal this week suggesting greater attention be paid to the role of e-teacher. The word e-learning has worked its lexographical way into the vocabulary of education but we rarely come across e-tutors or e-lecturers.

Who am I online?

Teacher, Tutor, Trainer? Lecturer? Facilitator? Moderator? Just someone passing through?

The pedagogy of uncertainty which underpins all online courses is also one of invisibility with regard to participants. I wonder if this is indicative of the lower status attached to virtual learning environments. It feels like they remain the second best option. Learning online is what you do if you can’t get on campus. Supplementary. Other. Students are students where ever they are but the identity of those who virtually teach remains much more of a mystery.

Educational Design Research or Educational Action Research – what’s the difference?

Sue Watling / March 23, 2014March 24, 2014 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Action Research

Educational Design Research (EDR) looks like Action Research (AR) by another name. On first encounter it’s not easy to tell them apart. EDR aims to produce useable knowledge. AR to produce actionable knowledge. Both are essentially practical rather than theoretical; aiming to find solutions for real world problems. Both take time. They share an action reflection reaction process which can’t be rushed. It’s as long as it takes. No short cuts allowed which conflicts with publish or perish imperatives driving academic research. No quick wins which is good because reflection on practice can’t be rushed and if research cuts corners it isn’t worth it.

So what about their methodologies? An ED Researcher typically identifies a problem and uses a framework of analysis (to understand the problem), design (to literature review and create a potential solution) and evaluation (for testing and revising the design accordingly). An Action Researcher identifies a problem, develops a potential solution, practices, evaluates and reflects before revising and repeating. The theory generated by both is based on empirical rather than hypothetical practice. They look so similar you have to dig deep to separate them.

Digging deeper I find a paper by Wang & Hannafin, 2005, saying EDR ‘…advances instructional design research theory and practice as iterative, participative and situational rather than processes ‘owned by operated’ by instructional designers.’ So rather than designing instructional techniques and methods in isolation, EDR is a collaborative process taking into account the real world environment of the classroom. The teacher identifies the problem. Calls on the ED researcher. They devise the research project in collaboration rather than isolation. Sounds promising. Especially if it narrows the divide between the technology and the pedagogy. Techies and teachers should walk a mile in each other’s shoes. I’m sure it would help.

Digging deeper still, I fins a paper by Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2005, which claims EDR emphasises content and pedagogy rather than technology. If your research involves educational design and it’s using technology for education, I’m not sure how you can separate them. The original problem of elearning remains i.e. rifts between the technology and the teacher. I can only think the authors are dismissing the technology because they’re so familiar with it, they don’t see it an an issue whereas for most teachers, it’s the technology itself which is the barrier.

It’s possible this is pedantic rather than paradigmatic difference or comes down to continental linguistics like you say instructional I say educational. We have virtual learning environments, you have technical solutions. Like Blackboard Learn™ is an education technology platform and we call it a vle.

This is fine detail but research is as much about the small as the large and the similarities and differences between EDR and AR are relevant. While both offer academically rigorous paradigms for the empirical study of teaching practice, one is research into your own teaching practice while the other is research into the teaching practice of others.

So by this definition I am an AR not a EDR even though both address existing significant problems (rather than research for its own sake), define pedagogical outcomes, develop learning solutions and emphasise interaction and community (Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2005: 110). The primary difference for me, I think, is AT can address any social situation whereas I’m applying the principles to educational practice and this reinforces the parallels with EDR. It’s necessary to spend time interrogating the differences and similarities. Part of the process is finding connections and using them to highlight and confirm my research questions. In the time stressed environments we all work in, I think this has been time well spent.

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Reeves, T. C., Herrington, J., & Oliver, R. (2005). Design research: A socially responsible approach to instructional technology research in higher education. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 16(2), 97-116.

Wang, F., & Hannafin, M. J. (2005). Design-based research and technology-enhanced learning environments.Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(4), 5-23.

If technology’s the answer what’s the question; shifting from e-learning to e-teaching

Sue Watling / March 23, 2014 / #tooc14, Blackboard, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

A bad back has been useful. I wouldn’t recommend it but enforced rest has been an opportunity for a phd catch up. I can see how doctoral pauses are beneficial. Without realising it’s happening, your brain continues the research process, which includes reflection as much as reading, noting and data collection. Reflection itself is a bit mystical. Like meditation, you know it works but are not entirely sure how. Since my last burst of phd activity, there have been three areas of work which – with hindsight – I can see have been subconsciously influencing my progress.

TELEDA is reaching the end. The taught period is over and colleagues are compiling their eportfolios for submission in three weeks. This is the time for me revisit the discussion forums and activity wiki. Not only as course evaluation, but as reflection-on-action which is integral to my action research methodology. The second TELEDA module has been approved. This will cover social media for teaching and learning, e-resources and synchronous communication technologies, so as well as concluding TELEDA1, I’m gathering content and revisiting learning design for TELEDA2.

All of which connects nicely with my MOOCing. I’ve been dabbling with Oxford Brookes First Steps in Teaching and Learning FSLT14 and Teaching Online Open Course TOOC14. These have been invaluable for repositioning me as a virtual student with all it entails; getting lost in Moodle, misunderstanding instructions, tackling my own digital shyness and virtual discussions with staff who support teaching and learning online.

The third area is the ongoing VLE Implementation Project. I find myself in a situation familiar from discussions with colleagues in other institutions but new to me – of being project managed. I’m not entirely sure what this involves other than a different way of working and additional staff but all departments other than my own. It seems to be about containers rather than content. A bit like the search for a perfect eportfolio which focuses on function over pedagogy. But it’s ok. I know everything will be fine. We’ve been here before, have always survived and will do so again. The synchronicity is relevant and useful. I’m writing a paper revisiting the early rhetorical promise of elearning and how it failed. Because I’m…er… um… older, I remember Dearing and early VLE embedding. Having a formal implementation project is reminiscent of those days when techies talked to techies and staff were told here it is, get on with it. I think, looking back, VLE have always been the technologist’s dreams and the stuff of teacher nightmares.

All this is helping my phd to settle down. Themes are repeating which suggests I’ve found my research area. The pilot interviews have helped too. They’ve reinforced how an information repository model dominates vle use. This view is supported by the Blackboard stats. My research is investigating the influence of teacher education on the shift from campus to online delivery, from inaction to interaction on Blackboard. Upgrading, adding Mobile, Collaborate, Connect and other bells and whistles is fabulous for me. I love the affordances of synchronous communication over traditional barriers of time and distance. I enjoy the challenge of teaching online. What’s missing are the bridges between the technology and the teachers. As Donald Ely wrote in 1995 about the challenges of education for 21st century; technology is the answer – but what was the question?

The answers lie not in the technology itself but in the people who decide about the purpose of its use, the way in which it is used and the manner in which we evaluate the consequences of our decisions. (p16 author emphasis)

Determinism has frequently been the primary driver of technology enhanced learning across the sector. TELEDA and the new Educational Development and Enhancement Unit (EDEU) at Lincoln are opportunities to prioritise the user experience instead. We need to move from inaction to interaction and prioritise e-teaching as much as e-learning.

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phoenix image from http://murraycreek.net/return/book2/wilderpt2.htm

Toocing the mooc! Get a life Sue, it’s called the WEEKend not WORKend

Sue Watling / March 14, 2014 / #tooc14, MOOCs, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Like buses – you wait for ages then two come at once. I’m MOOCing again, still with Oxford Brookes and this time with the Teaching Online Open Course #tooc14. It’s been a busy week but what a great start for the tutors and TAs. 77 individual posts in the new arrivals lounge with more likely to be browsing around seeing what a MOOC looks like and wondering about joining in. It will be interesting to see how many make it through to the end but with MOOC I’m not sure completion is the name of the game. Participation is what counts. Getting theMOOC experience, dipping in, dipping out, a taster for – or reminder of – what online learning is about.

TOOC14’s first subject is induction. Something close to my work-life heart. It’s been nearly ten years since the idea of pre-arrival support for new students via the University of Lincoln’s VLE was first suggested. Today, Getting Started is a whole institution initiative led by teaching and learning, the student engagement office and made technically possible through the enthusiasm and expertise of Matt Darch in ICT. So it’s with great personal interest I’ve been following discussions and taking part in the best ice breaker activity I’ve ever seen.

But what a challenge to the digitally uninitiated this ice breaker is. First of all you need a google account. We’re not yet at the point where google registration is ubiquitous like a national insurance number. If google has its way, the day is not far off. There’s something spooky about collaborative working on google docs where everyone can see what you’re doing. Like digital text stalking. A taste of the mighty google’s omnipotent eye. Every digital step you take, Big G is watching you. Digital footprints are permanent. Online has no boundaries, no secrets, nowhere to hide. This is digression into a my digital danger sessions – or less digression and part of the social impact of the internet. This covers OER and MOOC as much as digital identity and the ways we present ourselves online. The start of any online course is a test of digital competence and TOOC14 is no exception. It highlights how virtual participation requires digital capability. I’ve learned to be brave in online environments but it’s taken time and practice and I mean brave rather than confident. The screen which protects me also creates a virtual mirror image, one which doesn’t go away. A digital slip is a lifetime online and for many this awareness remains a barrier to be overcome.

Of all the comments I’ve read this week, the one which has stayed with me is nothing to do with induction or MOOCing – at least, not directly. It was from tutor Greg Benfield who wrote: ‘Our general line on this is that we tutors and TAs try to have a life. So participants in our courses should not expect us to be around on weekends. One of us will check on things from time to time but we won’t actively intervene on weekends except in some kind of emergency.’

Wow, an off-line weekend. No catching up with email or the tasks you meant to do last week but haven’t found time for. No – dare I say – research activity, or paper writing or transcribing interviews.

A life.

Do I still have one which is not in some way or other work related? If I take anything from this MOOC it should be this reminder – weekends are not workends – so tomorrow I go to the beach with my camera to reflect on sea, sky and fossils. Sounds like a plan!

One platform to rule them all – the impossibility of eportfolios

Sue Watling / March 7, 2014 / eportfolios, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Eportfolio. The name needs to go for a start. How remote are the chances of a five syllabic moniker catching on?

TELEDA has reached its penultimate teaching week and eportfolio is a word of the moment. These collections of digital artefacts challenge the monopoly of traditional text based assessments. You can’t submit a multimedia assignment through Turnitin (yet). How do you assess differential digital literacies? Which platform do you use? The TELEDA answer to the last question is anything you want.

An eportfolio is a digital narrative – a journey – a story – usually from the past to the present with directions for the future. It’s about the content more than the container. How it’s presented is less important than the message it carries. There are two components to an eportfolio. Reflection on – and evidence of – learning with hyperlinks between them both at appropriate places.

Eportfolio have been around for some time. Conceptually at least. They represent everything wrong with elearning over the past decade. A perfect example of trying to find a one size fits all technical solution to digital ways of being. One platform to rule them all. The perfect capture of digital identity in a virtual world. A place you can keep for all time with control over visibility of its different components. The search has been on for ever yet google have been doing this for some time.

Impossibilities seem to be centre on the transfer of digital content from a password protected network into the hands of individuals. A pack up and go solution with total protection built in. But nothing online is secure. Nothing is more nor less safe than the real world. Eportfolios have overtaken the needs of the individual. They represent the clash between private and corporate ownership of information and communication technologies. It’s time to rethink the eportfolio future, in particular where it’s a tool for teaching and learning or professional practice. In the war to find an all-singing-dancing technical answer, the battle of critical thinking and reflective developmental practice is being lost. This obsession over a new, as yet undiscovered, answer to collecting artefacts detracts from the purpose of a story being told, the narrative of a learning journey and the personal over coming of obstacles and challenges along the way.

The power of the internet to enable digital story telling is immense. Those who want to push their creative digital boundaries can do so through the mass of free multimedia software. Personal information can be anonymised. This is the evidence. The core of an eportfolio is reflection; a synthesis of learning. This is the text. Keep it simple. We have the tools. Let’s start using them and work forwards from there.

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image from image from http://www.scieng.ed.ac.uk/LTStrategy/eportfolio.html

The future is virtual and one of its names is Blackboard

Sue Watling / March 1, 2014March 1, 2014 / #iloveblackboard, Blackboard, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Virtual Learning Environment

I was in a Blackboard session this week. The plan to show case good practice, to be inspiring, supportive, but the plan failed. Examples of innovation were overshadowed by negative comments about the technology. At great speed the focus turned from positive enhancement to lets knock Blackboard. It spread like a virus. The potential affordances for learning were unable to break through the Blackboard attack.

Maybe I should have expected it. Lulled with TELEDA and the FSLT MOOC at Oxford Brookes, my immersion in the advantages of VLE have imbued a false sense of security. I worry my ‘I love Blackboard’ campaign will be equally infected. I’d forgotten the extent to which Blackboard is unpopular.

No one likes it. I feel like a lone champion in a world of resentment and frustration. I can quote the negatives; unattractive, clunky, boring, confusing, difficult and students prefer Facebook. I can count the positives on one hand with fingers to spare. Er, um, well, maybe not even that many…

Discussing this with colleagues it was suggested Blackboard is an easy target. It can’t answer back or defend itself so is a useful scapegoat for wider dissatisfactions, not just about the role of technology in higher education but also life, love and the universe. Sounds possible. Surveys and focus groups tell us students would prefer more consistency across modules but they like rather than dislike their VLE. The anti-Blackboard movement is staff led. I have to ask myself apart from the politics, the rage against the machine and anti-automation movements, what is it about Blackboard which causes hostility and can any of it be changed? Can we get beyond form to function?

I agree some things about Blackboard are a pain. I’m not immune to its failings. No matter how well you format a course or group email it arrives with odd spacing – this annoys me. It looks like I don’t know how to lay out text. There are still formatting issues with the Content Editor. The notifications don’t pick up new activity in groups. You have to grade a wiki to get notified of new content and this can’t be applied retrospectively. The blog tool is dull. So is the reflective journal. Forums aren’t great for large numbers of participants and like most people I think Blackboard could do with a make-over. It doesn’t look as good as it could.

BUT…….

….the majority of UK HE institutions have teams of people managing the Blackboard experience for staff and students. We don’t. This is changing but it will take time to reverse the damage. We have to focus on what matters – the student and staff experience, one which takes the affordances of internet connectivity and utilises them for off campus access to teaching and learning experiences. Like not judging a book by its cover, we need to move beyond the appearance to what it does. An ugly pen still writes. Blackboard is accessed by thousands of people every day (including Christmas) and keeping it running takes priority. Once more resource is available we’ll be able to test and pilot tools like Mobile and Collaborate. Maybe reinstate themes so individual appearance can be customised. Explore templates. Enhance the DIY model with central support for content creation. Revisit the social media tools. Promote discovery through case studies and lunch time drop-in sessions. Increase online help and support. And listen to what everyone has to say. I’m happy to hear about all the things which are wrong with Blackboard but let’s make it a two-way communication. It’s not all bad. The future is virtual and one of its names is Blackboard.

Such a valuable learning curve I could almost enjoy it…but I’m not

Sue Watling / February 21, 2014 / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

I’ve got a bit FSLT lost this week. I don’t understand the virtual conference. I keep trying to get my head around it but it’s been a long week (excuse) and it’s nearly the magic Friday hour (best excuse of all!). As an exercise in reflection I’ve been exploring what I don’t know and it isn’t helping – I still don’t know it.

Is the Doodle Poll for presenting or viewing? Why the 8.00 am slot? Is this for early birds? I’m at my desk by 7.30 but will I be presenting to no one or viewing nothing? Why have some people signed up for multiple slots? If we’re uploading to a wiki what is Collaborate for? What are Creole and NWiki formats? What classes as html? A multimedia online exhibit could be mp4 or wmv. Does this mean saving powerpoint or Word as htm?

I’ve got in a mess. Missing something and I don’t know what – other than brain cells. This is the loneliness of long distance learning. You feel you’re the only one in the world who doesn’t understand what’s going on. FSLT14 has been quiet this week. I don’t know if anyone else is struggling. It’s easy to imagine they’re confidently competent while I feel digitally illiterate and dumb.

I tell myself this is a useful experience. Which it is. Muddles like these are the reason people turn away from virtual environments in favour of real ones. It’s a digital turn off. Not only a reminder of what students go through, it’s a timely memo of what students need. I don’t want anyone telling me it’s easy or simple because it isn’t. I don’t want to be told I should know this because I don’t. I’ve learned to be brave in online environments but I’m not feeling brave at the moment.

The problem is – as tutors we know the environment and the form. There’s a divide between our knowledge and the students. At the moment I’m on the wrong side of the divide and not sure how to cross it. The divide is the foundation of digital resistance and the part of the problem is its invisibility.

I did have one last try. Thought there might be examples from previous virtual conferences. Somewhere I’ve seen a link for FSLT13 but can’t find it again. On my travels I’ve just discovered a notifications page but now it’s got lost. When colleagues complain about Blackboard I try to have empathy and right now I have it in buckets because FSLT14 is on Moodle. Similar but different enough to fool me.

This is such a valuable learning curve I feel I should be enjoying it but I’m not. Instead I’m frustrated with myself for not understanding what is straight forward. For now I’ll put it down to tiredness, after all it has been a long week and is now well past the magic Friday hour. Have a good weekend and Cheers!

getting animated – not perfect but useful reflection on action…

Sue Watling / February 21, 2014February 21, 2014 / #iloveblackboard, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The advantage of creating mini-animations like this is the need to identify key points. Long v short has been on my mind. along with application of theory to practice and the value of reflection. TELEDA Learning Block Three set out to recreate an online seminar. Colleagues were asked to read two papers before signing up for group discussions. Participation was good and highlighted positive effects of virtual learning. Time to think about responses. To post and read when convenient. Reflection on practice was encouraged. There were exchanges about wider issues around group work and useful advice for facilitating similar activities in the future. So far so good.

But not all of it was positive. Blackboard came in for criticism again. Some colleagues find it unattractive and difficult to use. There were unfavourable comparisons to Facebook. These are valid points. Blackboard at Lincoln could look different. It has alternative communication modes which are not yet enabled. Not all tools are pretty. But for me, the activity highlighted a key problem with forums themselves. They are text heavy environments. If text is not your thing, then online learning is going to be a daunting experience.

For years I’ve promoted digital data as your flexible friend, inherently inclusive through text to speech and speech to text software. Expensive to buy, a challenge to use, but the technology for inclusion exists. Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong place. Maybe digital text is itself the barrier.

For education developers the standard advice is to chunk text up, use bullets, paragraph breaks, images, formative assessment questions, activities – anything to avoid lengths of dense prose. I don’t always follow this. The best feedback I got from the TELEDA pilot was how I had interesting things to say – but there was so much of it!

Learning block three has been a learning curve. I ask colleagues to participate online with no guidance or advice. It’s only when I started to read the posts I realised I wasn’t being helpful. I could give word limits. Raise awareness of the audio and video alternatives. Just because I’m happy with text doesn’t mean it applies to everyone.

Creating the PowToon animation while reading through the discussion forums has highlighted the long and the short of it. This PowToon presents in 49 seconds what I might have taken pages of text to describe yet it contains the key information. Aphorisms abound. Brevity is a virtue. Less is best. Keep it simple. Powtoon was also fun. After the first one they will be quicker to produce. Story board first. Keep under two minutes. Visit http://powtoon.com.

I need to engage online not create barriers. There is no substitute for reflection on action. I need to remind myself to reflect in action as well.

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The two papers were :

Roberts, T. S. and McInnerney, J. M. (2007) Seven Problems of Online Group Learning (and Their Solutions) Educational Technology and Society, 10 (4), 257-268 http://www.ifets.info/journals/10_4/22.pdf

Highton, M. (2009) Encouraging Participation in Online Groups (Originally written 2005 for University of Leeds. Updated 2009)https://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/teachingwithtechnology/encouraging.pdf