Category Archives: Professonal Development

The lessons @Chuxiong 2011

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Chuxiong in May 2011 was a return visit. In 2007 we did four three hour workshops over two days, mainly oriented towards staff.
This time quite different: three two hour sessions with students.  All studying to be teachers.

The aim:

  1. explore some physics concepts
  2. demonstrate some teaching strategies as alternatives to teacher talk, class unison responses or individual responses
  3. have some fun

This was the lesson trajectory:  Icebreakers (Role Play) > Brainstorm > Pair work on Problems, Drawing diagrams, Processes > Discrepant Event fun > Collaborative small group problem > done Continue reading →

Weiman article (Part 3) Engagement, Test results and Attendence

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A look at the Weiman Study (continued).  This is one anonymous comment on the Chronicle page on this article: “I have tried most of the teaching methods out there in the course of over 20 years of teaching. Many “experimental” methods are effective, but they ALL result in less material being covered. Moral of the story. A good lecture is the BEST means of conveying many kinds of knowledge and methods to GOOD students. For the not-so-good, it’s not so good. Who do you want to teach to?”

The good old “I’m a filter, not a pump” keeping the not so good students down where they belong approach.  “I’ll just cater for the good students”.

A rather cynical comment from Bernard Pliers, actually on Maths education:

It’s not used to elevate students, it’s used to thin them out.
And that’s done by the Socratic-hide-the-ball teaching style, with graded homework that excuses the teacher from, you know teaching, and separates the class into haves and have nots.
A’s are for people that didn’t need to take the class in the first place.

It is interesting to note that many “active engagement” (insert some of the other buzz words) teaching trials show benefit for the huge number of students in the middle.  Teaching, not telling.  (Of soapbox now)

Evaluating the trial in the Weiman study had three dimensions

  • Student engagement
  • Post-test
  • Attendance.

ENGAGEMENT

This fascinated me. So I reproduce in full from the supporting notes:

The engagement measurement is as follows. Sitting in pairs in the front and back sections of the lecture theatre, the trained observers would randomly select groups of 10-15 students that could be suitably observed. At five minute intervals, the observers would classify each student’s behavior according to a list of engaged or disengaged behaviors (e.g. gesturing related to material, nodding in response to comment by instructor, text messaging, surfing web, reading unrelated book). If a student’s behavior did not match one of the criteria, they were not counted, but this was a small fraction of the time. Measurements were not taken when students were voting on clicker questions because for some students this engagement could be too superficial to be meaningful as they were simply voting to get credit for responding to the question. Measurements were taken while students worked on the clicker questions when voting wasn’t underway. This protocol has been shown by E. Lane and co-workers to have a high degree of inter-rater reliability after the brief training session of the observers

E. Lane is referred to, but not referenced but is sure to be Erin Lane.

There is a diagram from one of her studies which is looking an Earth and Ocean Science class.  Physics is not the only discipline seeking approaches to improve engagement:

From: www.cwsei.ubc.ca/SEI_research/files/Geo_Ocean/Lane_QuantifyingStudentBehavioralEngagement_poster.pdf

From the report:

In the experimental section, student engagement nearly doubled

THE TEST

The test questions for this topic were agreed after the week of teaching, both instructors agreeing it was a good test of the objectives. (Whew!!) From the paper:

The average scores were 41 (+/- 1%) in the control section and 74 (+/- 1%) in the experimental section. Random guessing would produce a score of 23%, so the students in the experimental section did more than twice as well on this test as those in the control section

ASIDE: all the questions are included in the online report. They are HARD questions.

ATTENDANCE

During the week of the experiment, engagement and attendance remained unchanged in the control section. In the experimental section, student engagement nearly doubled and attendance increased by 20% (Table 1). The reason for the attendance increase is not known

What is significant

It seems obvious: pay more attention and come to class more and you learn better.  Maybe.  There is a complex relationship between interest, motivation, effort, time on task, the right kind of task (etc)

In summary: two teachers taught a well defined subject to two groups to all intents and purposes the same.  Different approaches.  They both tried hard.  One group’s results were far superior to the other.

What does this mean? you may ask.

Traditional Instruction vs “Deliberate Practice” (Part 1)

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The Latest Cark Weiman study
Summary: “Science” just published (May 13, 2011) a fascinating article:  Improved Learning in a Large Enrollment Physics Class, Louis Deslauriers, Ellen Schelew, and Carl Wieman
Carl is a Physics Noble prize winner, now working in science education.  The article is on an experiment they did in physics education.
They waited until week 12 in a traditional lecture course, and then changed 1 week of class sessions. They used what they called “deliberate practice”, meaning: posing good application problems for students, letting them see if they could solve them individually, recording their answers with “clickers”, talking about their answers with 1-2 other students, and getting immediate feedback from the teacher.
With just 3 days of those changes, they had the following impact in the experimental groups:

  • attendance went up 20%
  • student engagement went up 100%
  • student performance on tests was better (2.5X)
  • when students were later asked if they liked these changes and thought they would learn more if they were used in the whole course, said in essence: “Of course!”

This has resulted in fascinating discussion in the HETL group on LinkedIn and following a Chronicle article with an appalling and inflammatory title:  “Postdocs Can Be Trained to Be More Effective Than Senior Instructors, Study Finds,”

Two other different coverages in the press:

www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2011/05/12/interactive-teaching-methods-double-learning-engagement-in-large-undergraduate-physics-class/

www.nzherald.co.nz/the-changing-world/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502962&objectid=10725393

The article itself is three pages, has 12 references and comes with 26 pages of supporting material and detail (only online, not in the printed journal).

Unconferencing again: TeachMeets

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More on UnConferencing: UnConferencing meets Teacher Professional Development

In the posts on MirandaNet about the axing of BECTA one of the contributors, Leon Cych posted this comment:

I’d much rather see teachers who have developed “open” expertise, sharing it with each other at a social event in a transparent way, rather than traditional models of training. If someone has found an innovative and useful way of working with software or hardware then they often develop a highly developed generic expertise and forge new pedagogies round that and often ways in which it has not been thought of by the software companies themselves. TeachMeets are rapidly becoming seed beds for grass root talents sharing and disseminating 21st Century skills.
I have seen this time and time again at TeachMeets (teachmeet.pbworks.com) and that model is finally beginning to catch on.

From the TeachMeet site:

What are the tried and tested structures from Teachmeets?

  • 7 minute short presentation (sometimes 2 or 3 lined up)
  • 2 minute nano presentation (3-5 one after the other)
  • Break out sessions (@SLF 4 speakers took up 4 different locations, participants chose to listen to who they like)
  • Random speakers – Classtools fruit machine.

And this, from teachmeet.pbworks.com/Organise

TeachMeet is an unconference, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need organising. Early on, get a small group together to get everything sorted out for your event

. . . . and some structure/rules:

Some rules might be: no PowerPoints, micro-presentations must last no more than seven minutes, nano presentations no more than two, no selling of products, everything must be happening in a classroom now.

We all know the best parts of conferences are, of course, the coffee breaks and social events, where you get a chance to pore over someone’s laptop for 15 minutes and learn one new really cool thing you can actually use, have late-night discussions over serious stuff, helped along by a few drops of amber. Why not just make this the conference itself? Provide coffee and tea all day long, lots of muffins and biscuits

In other words, PD by the people for the people, what’s happening now, presented by the people doing it. A great structure for an UnConference.

A final comment from Leon:

“Training” is a bit of a cul-de-sac, or rather a one way street, in my opinion. It is a single function or pathway to doing things. Much better develop an independent mindset that can think and route around what resources are available rather than going down a proprietorial route.

A way ahead maybe?  Effectiveness, lower cost – and fun.

Kathy Sierra and Thoughts on Professional Development

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I have several times wondered what had happened to Kathy Sierra.  We used her blog post Crash Course in Learning Theory with several courses to try to break people out of merely parroting “Constructivism, Behavourism and usually one other” with poorly examined definitions and application.

I stumbled upon this post from Gardner Campbells blog Gardner Writes: Kathy Sierra Lives.

A little quote:

Can we find a way to work with our legacy brain to get cognition and affect to work together to get us to our goals?

I can’t help pointing out the John Donne connection here. T. S. Eliot wrote this about Donne: “To Donne, a thought was an experience: it modified his sensibility.” And I think the process will work in reverse.

Kathy notes that we must choose our cognitive/affect triggers carefully so we encourage relevant practice and not irrelevant personal tangents. I agree, though there’s real artistry needed here, as that legacy brain spam filter will skew “relevance” toward very narrow channels if we’re not careful.

Great point here: adopting a more conversational voice triggers the hold-up-my-end-of-the-conversation reflex in our minds. We feel we’re in a real give-and-take, not simply a one-way broadcast.

We are still in a time delimited workshop training session mentality in many respects.  In the dreadful staff development 90 minute sessions, can we find better ways to engage and focus without imposing a pathway, a straitjacket, a lack of mystery and magic and taking the minds in the room off creativity and originality?

A post worth reading.  I’m sure there are more seeds of Kathy’s recent thoughts floating around on the net.  The top of the Google search produced this from just 11 days ago, a nice 6 minutes that obviously includes some of the ideas in the presentation Gardner comments on:

She didn’t call her blog “Creating passionate Users” for nothing.

Too much on the go

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The initial rush is just about to die down here, with the start to courses here at Canterbury.  here are just to many things backed up.

The Australasian Horizon Report

The Horizon report was interesting. The report is based around six types of emerging technology/applications that these guys (a panel of 45 on the advisory board) believe will impact higher education in Australia and New Zealand:

One year or less:

* Virtual Worlds & Other Immersive Digital Environments
* Cloud Based Applications

Two-three years:

* Geolocation
* Alternative Input Devices

Four-Five years

* Deep Tagging
* Next-generation Mobile

POV technologies.

Hmm.  Had to Google this. I read the post by Alex Hayes in the TALO group. I think I get the idea.

But there is NO clear definition of POV technologies that I can find.  Mayb like this:

Technologies (maybe head mounted video camera) that enables sharing the point of view of a person, where an intimate sense of what they are doing can be seen.  Like an apprentice fixing a timing chain.

Random Links:Wikieducator | Flier for Leigh’s Trip to Aussie where he will talk on this (March 24th 2009) | EDUPOV a company supporting POV technolgies in Education | Sony product.  One at random.

Deep Tagging is one of the Horizon trends.  This will benefit any POVTECH activity.

Moodle

Got a lot to say here.  There is not much on the pedagogy out there yet.  On the affordances that Moodle offers.  If you are interested in some online workshops in experieincing Moodle, feel free to contact me.

Reflective practice

Presenting eight sessions on this over the next little while.

What is it? “Reflective practice is a concept used in education studies and pedagogy. It was introduced by Donald Schön in his book The Reflective Practitioner in 1983″ (from you know where)

The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. (p68)

In other words: a special kind of reflective thinking to assist us to learn and develop.

Why Bother? www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/RefPractice.htm

Misc refs: A defininition with more from Schon | On reflection, from the wonderful INFED site | A Higher Education Point of view

I’ll get my stuff on Wikieducator this week.

End of Long Dark Tunnel

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Basically, I can now look ahead. Our UCTL integration is complete (except that they are thinking of moving our new buddies at the Learning Skills Centre further away and out of the middle of Campus), we have a website (nearly releaseable), the LMS review committee is moving along, we have a wiki to play with, all classes have now started (except one) and there are some good things to look forward to – like this list, for a potential workshop later this month:

People were very excited about this initiative and all  the topics below had at least 12 - 15 keen responses.
Online communities
Wikis, blogs

Podcasting

Smartboards

E-portfolios

Video filming and editing

Video-conferencing facilitation

I’ve had a lot to do with some new applications

Drupal

We have a Drupal install at work. A fascinating product. I talked about this yesterday as well. From today’s surfing . . .

Scribus

The only open source DTP program I know of that really does serious stuff. I mentioned it last year. Now I am using it seriously.

Wikis

My interest in wikis continues. There has been a lot of debate on TALO about this. My original request

Is there a decent wiki that meets these criteria:    ???
  1. easy to install
  2. open source
  3. has a decent text editor (ie not using markup)
    1. insert images (and image handling) is easy
    2. insert link to other wiki pages: something decent maybe drop down list
    3. maybe several: my recent pages, recent pages, all pages in my 'workspace'
    4. Upload files
    5. usual bold, bullets . .
    6. Horizontal line
    7. {I can do without decent tables]
  4. Good discussions
  5. Good notify
  6. Good history
  7. good permissions model
  8. pref: several instances off one install
3 is really the problem.
Though we had something with Social Text, but not quite there for 1, nice ditor, then whammo: 'sorry, to upload an image you need to use the advanced editor (ie markup)'         :-( 
Media Wiki claims to have some WYSIWYG editors as plug ins or hacks. Wikispaces on our server would be great.

TALO [teaching and learning online, a Google group and some random mashups] is a great place for support for MediaWiki, but . . . ome of the TALO discussion is here.

Wikidot: yet another wiki . . .

I quote:
“Wikidot.com is a farm of Wiki Sites. Our mission is to provide free and professional wiki publishing, collaboration and communication solutions to anyone who needs it and wants it. In other words — we are giving away free hosted wikis (like your-site.wikidot.com) with lots of features!”

  • sandbox.wikidot.com/ (insert a pagename here) gets you straight into editing mode for a page.
    Not a WYSIWYG.
  • What they say about themselves – www.wikidot.com/tour:what “probably the most powerful Wiki engine available”
  • The syntax: www.wikidot.com/doc:wiki-syntax MW on steroids.
  • Some really cool features. Great forum style. Sad they have not put this energy into MW.

Diigg www.diigo.com/

Undecided about this. Kind of like delicious, highlighting, notes on sterioids, with a bit of facebook thrown in.

WordPress

Some more cool features in this cool blogging software. Version 2.5 now out.

Other things, Not software

China was great. May go back. The blog of the trip is here. The content of the workshops is here.

More on e-mail

I’ve found Luis’s first post (see yesterday).

Yes, I’m giving up on e-mail! At least, work related e-mail! That’s right, this week I have launched a new experiment, or initiative, at work where I have diverted most of my conversations into social computing and social software tools, both internal and external.

You did what?!?! Yes, I surely did!! Just like you are reading it. Last Saturday I decided that enough was enough and I created a post in my internal blog where I was mentioning that from that day onwards I would not be answering any e-mails, nor write any e-mails myself either, but instead I would make the most out of social software tools and social computing, in general, to get in touch with other knowledge workers and collaborate further sharing and exchanging our knowledge over there.

I know, you can call me crazy now! You can say I am out of my mind, but the truth is that I am now on the 5th day of taking such a radical approach to my daily workload and the overall experience has been tremendous!! In all of those 5 days I have received a total number of 45 e-mails. Yes, you are reading it right!! 45 e-mails!! When normally on a daily basis I would be getting, on busy days, between 30 to 45! A day!! But this time around, things have been different. I have been telling people I will no longer be responding to e-mails, because the more I respond, the more I get. I am sure you have seen and been through that already!

Blogging policies.

I’m not a great blogger. But we are needing some policies on blogging and wikiing. We have NO policies here @ UoC on the web, apart from web standards for official pages. But I have found some great links. I’ve listed them on AKOwiki.

In particular, the 4 key rules from CorperateBlogging.info.

Professional Development Workshops. (Have they passed their use by date?)

In spite of the fact that we are planning a workshop next month, we are looking at some better strategies (ie achieving longer lasting results in terms of real change) .

Launch of the FLLinNZ staff development toolkit.

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Confirmed.  Ten minutes ago: 19th October 2007.  Access Grid.

Venues: Auckland | Wellington | Christchurch | Dunedin

3.00pm.  Snacks provided.  3 brief presentations, and plenty of chatter/feedback and conversation.

FAQ: What is the Access Grid? It’s a room somewhere in the uni with bandwidth to burn.  Full duplex video.
How do I register? Details coming soon.  Meanwhile, e-mail me. (derek(dot)chirnside(at)canterbury(dot)ac(dot)nz)

For more detail about NZ AG, go here.

Educational Design

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We have just had our UCTL Open Day, five 30 minute sessions and a keynote from Sandra Wills, the director of CEDIR They are a unit with some similar functions to ours.

Their byline:

Centre for Educational Development and Interactive Resources

The University of Wollongong is committed to excellence in learning and teaching.
CEDIR facilitates and supports continuous development of high quality teaching and learning practices, products and services for the University of Wollongong community.

They are a very mature unit in the work they do, and we can learn a lot.

Met Sarah Lambert who came over with Sandra, who I had only seen as the name on a few papers, passed on courtesy of Lyn Williams. She has a strong project focus to her Educational design work (which she refers to as Learning Design), with three major strands:

1. A Project Model approach, consult, service agreement (we call them service level agreements), focus on teaching/learning outcomes – and evaluation, ownership, clarity . . . .

2. Task analysis when consulting with academics. The Learning Design Model (from AUTC, written up in Online Learning Design For Dummies: Professional Development Strategies For Beginning Online Designers – Ron Oliver and Jan Herrington, Edith Cowan University) elrond.scam.ecu.edu.au/oliver/2002/edmedia1.pdf

threefoldmodel.jpg

Ask the question: for each task, what support is needed, and what resources are needed. (Following on from Derek Wenmoth’s model, Resource and Discourse etc, I used t try to fit more into this analysis and approach than it can stand. The next bit helps enormously)

3. Interaction analysis. What they call the Pizza model. An analysis of interactions which can be used in a consultation. Based on the Learning Activity Model developed by Richard Caradine. Took me a while to find it on the web, it is being written up into a book soon to be published. I’ve had a look at an advance chapter, and it will be worth getting.

pizzamodel.jpg

There are five aspects: what interactions occur (self ie reflection, resources, facilitation and peers) and what resources are provides. Magic happens (according to Sarah) when this lens is passed over a course. More later.

Interesting: I use the Project approach and the Learning Design Model already – but it’s got a bit twisted as I’ve tried to make it fulfil another funtion (analysis of a course). Richard’s model (as Sarah uses it) is just superb. The time with Sarah here has helped me value what we do a little more.

Social software and My Life (Part One)

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Unfortunately, The Blogging challenge came one month too early for me. I had set September as my time to re-emerge into the world of blogging, internet accounts and social software after clearing my mind of this major project – the Online Workshop Toolkit (Hoped to have it sorted by the 31st August) – and then pay attention to my online life a little. But I got sick and fatigued, had a trip to ACODE in Brisbane and both were delayed a little.

The latest SCoPE discussion has been timely. Silvia Currie has done a marvelous job (like shepherding cats) of looking after a full schedule of workshops for some months now, and this little interlude has been to ask ‘Where Now?’ I’ve not really taken part, but I have been reflecting on some basics, and enjoying eavesdropping.

Some e-housekeeping:

  • I’ve changed my TALO subscription to each e-mail (rather than digest). Had to change e-mails from CCE to Canterbury. Teaching and learning Online. A great group.
  • I’ve tried to post to Nancy White’s Online Facilitation list, to find my address there was Netaccess, another account I’ve stopped using, fixed this.
  • I’ve sorted out my EDNA account. (Hmm. Not much there actually, lots of half finished stuff)
  • Joined Cathy Gunn’s Distributed Leadership group in EduForge.
  • Facebook. Joined some groups there, and discovered no RSS. (But you guys already knew that . . .) cpSquare, re-established some contact with Andy Roberts, Shirley Williams etc
  • Checked into ::FLNW 2:: and their trip to Thailand.
  • Pruned my Bloglines account a bit, added a few more friends blogs
    (Found the humanized RSS reader, but can’t figure out if it is available for use)
  • Upgraded software on icommunities.org and decided this site was worth keeping.
  • Shifted blog to Bluehost.com (still got redirection problems with the URL) #$%^&  – but much cheaper
  • Deleted a whole bunch of stuff, and re-started my Physics Education site
  • Tried to get Qumana going. (A work in progress).  This is the best blogging client I know of . . .
  • Backed up my four regular computers (work desktop, home desktop, old laptop, new laptop) into ONE USB HDD in readiness to rationalise and archive

Part of this was generated by the workshop work. What is needed to REALLY assist folk to engage with a constructivist, community oriented view of learning? What did I need to be doing? How can I also have a life?

Then I read a bit from Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. What information did I really want to take in each day? I stopped our newspaper subscription four weeks ago. (A story I have told a bit here on the SCoPE forum) Can I survive on RSS and Stuff.co.nz? Is my network good enough to get me what I want, what I need? (The answer I think is YES, but I’ve neglected this a bit – too many blogs with more than 6 posts unread in Bloglines, and not enough time given to it . . . )

And there is more to come:

  • cpSquare stuff:
    • Case study for cpSquare on funding
    • Finish after work-shop shopping posts with pics from Portugal: Sus Nyrop, Bron and Co
    • Plan visit to Sydney University and to see Bron when on holiday in October
  • Sort Flickr account, try Animoto, put stuff on slideshare
  • Get Qumana going to do better looking blog posts
  • Sort new backup routine
  • Reduce to 2 computers (desktop and laptop), get wireless keyboard sorted
  • Rationalise podcast subscriptions
  • Sort out my role in DEANZ. What networks are still needed here in New Zealand, and what effort is worth making?
  • Decide on focus:
    • Staff Development
    • Educational Design
    • Physics
    • Learning Communities, Communities of practice
    • Leadership
    • Web 2.0
  • Plan trip to China and CNU for physics workshop in December.