OK - so I am not the most consistent blogger in the world. Infact it is right down at the bottom of my list of priorities at the moment. I have a new job, my MSc studies take up a lot of time, and I am also embarking on a new business venture that is stressing me out a little, so there is ver little time left in my day.

However, as part of my current module we have to direct a learning event, and take part in the Learning event of others. The first one I have done in my group was to create a blog. Easy - I thought. Done this before. And indeed it was easy - blogs aren’t rocket science. But it did make me realise that I actually miss writing in my blog. In my first module we had to keep a private blog that I wrote in almost daily. Then I started this one to replace that, and I have been lax with this too. But there is something relaxing in writing stuff down - like keeping a diary that you can hide under your bed so your Mum can’t see what you have been up to.

So my (LATE) New Years resolution is to try to keep up the entries in this blog a little more regularly. Lets see if it lasts as long as the resolution about chocolate…

I am a girl - obviously, because Sarah would be a silly name for a boy. As a girl, even in this modern world of enlightenment and womens lib, there are still many expectations as to how I should live my life. One of those areas is the way I use technology.

Designers seem to asume that girls don’t ‘get’ gadgets, and that in order to get us to buy one they have only to paint it pink and we will be tripping over our little kitten heels to get down to Dixons to lay our manicured mitts on it. I have to admit (rather shamefaced) that my PSP is pink, but only because it was the most cost effective bundle and I find that I try to hide it when out in public.

We do not need to tempted with ‘girlie’ colours - we love a good gadget for the same reasons the boys do. And the same with games. I don’t want to play a game with kittens and fluffy puppies - I AM NOT SIX! I want a game with strategy and challenge.

I am a keen girlie-gamer and I am not alone - recent figures show that in the US in 1998, 48.6% of PC entertainment software buyers were women, while 51.4% of console software purchasers were women. Now that is a big but mainly silent market. And we dont all play “female-friendly” games.

I am a big fan of World of Warcraft which is a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) which you would expect to be male dominated because of the quest based “shoot ‘em and gather” theme of the game.

And though male players still outnumber female, we are increasing in numbers, slaying dragons and freeing fair maidens as we go

There are even websites specifically geared towards women gamers, like WomenGamers.com

http://www.womengamers.com/ and GRRRLgamer.com so watch out boys, here come the girls!!

Having an assessable element to contribution can be hard to measure. Do you, as the tutor, grade based on the number of postings which is easy to measure but doesn’t measure value of contribution and is therefore meaningless as a method of group cohesion. A better (and fairer) method of assessment would be to measure quality rather than quantity of postings. However, this involves more work by the tutor and is less easily manipulated by learners. In this scenario it is vital that the user has clear guidelines concerning what is expected of them prior to undertaking the discussion group or they are less likely to actively contribute and therefore achieve good marks. In my experience as a learner, a well designed discussion group has become a very valuable resource with sharing of ideas and references, while other courses I have attended without active groups jealously guard references from each other. This is an outcome that be avoided when the benefits of collaboration have been fully described to all users.

With the continuing march of technology available to learners, we as educators have a responsibility to update our teaching practices to reflect new demands. However, simply adopting new technologies to maintain our existing current practices may lead to internal efficiencies for us, but will probably not lead to new learning experiences for our learners. Younger learners are accustomed to using technology to augment all areas of their lives for both work and social aspects. They expect to be able to collaborate and form groups for all areas of studies too. Young learners also expect to be able to access information immediately and from multiple sources - gone are the days of spending hours in the school library and of finding sources checked out by other learners.

So how as educators do we expect to pass on knowledge in a medium that we ourselves are new to and have not experienced learning using them ourselves? The answer is that we need to be imaginative in our approach. I think that the first step is to encourage collaboration between students. In the e-learning environment that means creating a group sense of identity and mutual support. A discussion group is a good start but there must be some discernible benefit to the user or they will not wish to get involved - there must be a payoff! Whether that payoff is demonstrated as a learning outcome to the user(Collaboration in itself is a valuable outcome), or as an assessable element (which has it own issues and will be discussed later). Left their own devices, with considerable workloads, extra work will not usually be undertaken without some form of reward. Another consideration is the amount of input undertaken by users because if a learner posts but receives no response they are unlikely to post again. This encouragement of collaboration outside the tutorial space was not something that was previously possible to such an extent prior to introduction and adoption of new technologies.

If you are interested in e-learning you cannot possibly have missed the interest in Second Life! Businesses are falling over themselves to establish a presence in this vitrual world. The ‘hip’ value of this means of advertising will not be doing any of them any harm.

One possible area of development has been using th virtual world as a learning space and some users have embraced the possibilities . Others are waiting for the hype ‘bubble‘ to burst.

My interest in this discussion is why are we so excited by it? Is it ’shiney new toy’ syndrome or does it hark back to a real need that e-learning sometimes misses out on - the need for human interaction?

I have experienced two different forms of e-learning, one that creates a real group dynamic and a sense of community, and one where all the information I required was available online but the group identity was only half-heartedly encouraged and tutorials were available but not compulsory. Both courses where interesting and I achieved quite good marks. However, the more focused web-based course that I am doing now has worked hard to encourage a sense of group identity between the students and it has really added a new dimension to my learning.

Conversations with peers has open new avenues and concepts that I would have missed on my own. To encourage this group identity, connection has been through a vibrant discussion forum, messenger meetings and Second Life sessions. The discussion forum has proved useful when I have had problems that do not require immediate resolutions. The messenger and second life sessions have fostered a more ‘face to face’ approach.

This is all very interesting, but does the interaction aid us in learning, or simply make learning more interesting? I think that the possibility is the second - it improves the experience. As long as the content is good and the topics interesting, interaction is not a necessity but a bonus. Interaction can never make bad content good, but it can make good content better - and that has to be a bonus for the learner.

There is a school of thought that lack of interaction between tutor and pupil engenders a lack of authority, but I have yet to see that in my own experiences. But if that is true, can that relationship be re-created in the virtual world? I am a big fan of online gaming (world of warcraft is a particular favourite) and I can see the benfits of using such an environment to communicate with others, but I find Second Life is difficult and unweildy. The technology seems slow, with many stutters in movement. The graphics are not brilliant and communication can sometimes be a struggle. This does not need to be the case, and I feel that this is a serious limitation with Second Life. Games like World of Warcraft and Everquest are enourmous enterprises, with millions of players and yet the graphics are slicker and the communication and movement controls faster and more intuative. I can appreciate that Second Life offers many opportunities for individual expression but I can’t help thinking that the slow technology diminishes the importance of this virtual world. If SL becomes more like a ‘game’ I think many more users will be attracted to it and use it to the maximum potential for more human-like interaction.

In conclusion, I believe that Second Life has many exciting opportunites to offer us as learners and as tutors, but I think that it is not yet ’slick’ enough to tempt those casual users who cannot see past the ‘clunkiness’ of the interface. To become a real tool for learning I think that this needs to be overcome before it can really live up to the hype.

So this may be outside the remit of this weblog but it is an interesting concept. I recently received an email about a new e-learning game called “Tomorrow Calling”:

“If a relative from the future asked for your help to protect the Earth, what would you do?

Of course we hope that the game should be engaging enough to sustain your interest, but as an additional incentive, we are offering a fancy3D mouse as a prize to the first person to finish. Your feedback is more than welcome at any point in the game, though we won’t be blackmailed for clues!” with a link to youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYeSxNccO60

As a big fan of Perplex City I thought I would give it a try. If you don’t want to read about my clues, stop here! A few days later I got an email saying that I had a message from a future relative and to log onto a site to listen to it. I did, and the message itself was uninteresting, but imbedded in it was a string of numbers and a web address (which I struggled to make out despite listening to about 50 times, but a very helpful colleague at Edinburgh Uni helped me with that part.)

Initially I thought that the number may be a telephone number, so I added a 0 to it an called it. I got a message stating I had dialled an incorrect number, but strangely, later that same day I had a missed call from that number. When I did call back I got the same ‘incorrect number’ message. I am pretty sure that this has proved to be a red herring.

So next step was to try the website suggested by the ever helpful A-M at Ed Uni. It was one I knew but the number turned out to be the BCID number of a book left in Edinburgh. The book in question was also displayed in the video on youtube. Now I was getting somewhere!

So what are my clues so far!
1 Chuck Vanderberg - After the Sunshine
2 WENCON
3 Asphyxinet Telecoms
4 Gaia Force, leadership of Kendra Paralexo and Tabor Connecticut
5 Book left at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh

In the comments about the book was a site name and password so time to follow the white rabbit!

It led me to an email hosting site where you can log in to view emails. But I can’t find a log in name.
Tried:
Kendra
Paralexo
Kendra Paralexo
GM
Ginkoman
GMan
C
Tabor
Arthur’s Seat
TKP
T
That
Too
Gaia Force
GaiaForce
Gaia
ChuckVanderberg
Chuck
Vanderberg

So that white rabbit left me at a dead end… will have to come back to that.

I decided to google Chuck and found this site: http://bindusblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Now the youtube shows images of Bonsai trees which are mentioned here… maybe another lead…

Well as a game I am finding it quite intriguing. I have not learnt anything yet, and I don’t know how much longer I will dedicate to it, but I am curious to see the learning outcome. I will continue to post here if I get any further!

Well my first module is over now and I handed the coursework in at the beginning of the month. So now I find myself with lots of free time on my hands. The last three months have been hectic, with the first module and work being mental at the moment. And tho it is even more hectic at work I am missing my studies. I am really looking forward to the next step now that I have caught the ’study’ bug. I find that I have continued with the reading dispite the fact that I don’t need to. I also missed writing my blog, which as you can see I have decided to continue to maintain.
So now I have a summer of free weekends and evenings spreading out ahead of me… perhaps I had better get some gardening done…! Roll on September!

So what is all the fuss about? Surely learning is learning? Well not exactly. It is well known that people learn in different ways, and that some methods of learning are more effective than others. In most case, deep learning is really the one you want to encourage.
So what is ‘deep learning’ and how does it differ from ‘surface learning’? These were two types of study originally identified by Marton F and Saljo (1976) and they describe two different learning styles.
Surface learning is basically a memorising of facts, figures and processes etc. with a focus on task completion for assessment purposes. Deep learning involves understanding the processes and applying and linking them to previous knowledge and apparently unrelated experiences. Deep learning is often a more exciting approach to learning because it involves developing a different understanding of reality and often occurs because the learner already has some kind of engagement with the ideas/topic. This is the type of learning that prepares the learner to use that knowledge in ‘real world’ situations and is the most beneficial to life long learning. It is important to consider that it is a learning approach, and not an individual type that we are discussing here. Therefore as educators we should be concerned with encouraging our learners to be ‘deep learners’ rather than surface learners simply guided towards passing assessments. Deep learning equals better learning.
It seems to me that one way of doing this is to engage the learner is using new technologies.

So how can e-learning encourage deep learning?
1. Access to information – the internet. The internet is a huge mine of information and can be used to access a wealth of interesting reading.
2. Encourage collaboration between individuals (using wikis, discussion forums, weblogs, etc). This encourages discussions between people who may never actually meet and stimulates the development of new ideas and concepts. This technology also offers a ‘level playing field’ when considering the relative ‘weight’ of the contributor.
3. Removing barriers to education including time constraints, geographical, social and economical issues. Users can access education from anywhere and it is often possible to start course as any time giving maximum flexibility to the e-learning consumer.
4. Linking ideas. Technologies like e-portfolios and hypertext allow users to create actual links between knowledge items which often would not seem related. This enables the user to link between their ideas and the ideas of others. This is a main function of deep learning because it develops a mapping element between experiences and knowledge.
5. Making learning fun – fun learning is better learning. Just look at the way children learn through play and adults are just the same. It is possible to make the most mundane tasks interesting if they are presented in a fun way (as I know as a keen World of Warcraft player). This is an idea which is gaining ground with the development of learning games and simulations for adults. It also offers the opportunity to ‘learn by doing’ because a simulated environment can be created where a real-world situation would be too costly or too dangerous to recreate in a learning environment. For example, the French government has released a game called “cyber-budget”, which allows citizens to pretend they are in charge of the nations finances. This is designed to give them some understanding of the decisions that need to be made by the government in order to ensure that the economy works. This would not be possible in the real world and can facilitate a better understanding of their own taxation system.
Obviously these benefits are only really experienced through good e-learning courses. Problems that can be experienced by learners:
1. Boring content. Just because the course is provided online does not mean that the content is well designed. A course based on a collection of word documents will not promote deep learning any more than giving the learner a huge pile of paper to wade through.
2. Technology. If there is not adequate access (i.e. access to decent hardware or broadband) the user will become frustrated and demoralised.
3. Isolation. I believe that it is important to foster some sort of social element between learners to replace that face to face contact that they would achieve in a classroom environment. This encourages discussion between learners and allows the exchange of ideas, and avoids the sense of isolation that can occur when studying alone. I am currently taking an on-line course at Edinburgh University and I have found that the sense of community we have built up has added to my learning experience, opening me up to different points of view, and sometimes just saying ‘I know, I didn’t understand that either!’
4. Learning outcomes. Good learning should really be supported with a clear understanding of the intended outcomes of the course. I always ensure that learners are clear on what these are prior to the course so they understand what they can expect. This is just as important with e-learning, especially as the resources available to the e-learner are so vast. Some sort of guidance is also required to prevent information overload occurring while surfing!
So in conclusion, I think that a well constructed online course where students are adequately supported enables us as educators to encourage a deeper level of understanding in a topic. This arms the learner with the tools to apply skills learnt to different situations and enhances their learning experience.

Read about the Cyber budget here

MARTON F and SÄLJÖ (1976) “On Qualitative Differences in Learning — 1: Outcome and Process” Brit. J. Educ. Psych. 46, 4-11

In my last post I lamented that the lack of facial expression in a digital world would create a barrier between learners and learning providers. And as usual, technology was one step ahead of me! Hiroshi Ishiguro is a reasearcher who has created a remote control copy of himself with very accurate looking facial expressions.
View it here
Hiroshi plans to send the driod to meetings in his stead and speak through him. The droid is very impressive, down to making all those subconcious little hand movements we all make when we speak. Perhaps this is the future - instead of attending meetings we will pack up our droid and courier it to the site instead while we sit our office and watch it all on a video screen.
What I did find interesting was my own reaction to the droid. I was impressed but detached until someone prodded his face and he responded with a look of distaste. At that point I felt like they were being cruel, like poking a puppy. Which is rediculous when you consider that he is a machine. But if a machine looks and behaves like a human, how do we in all conscience treat it with anything other than respect? Will we have to have a new class of rights, human, animal and robot? Who can guess but maybe we will look back and see this moment as the point where it all changed! Or maybe I watch too many sci-fi films and read too many Asimov novels!!

Well my course is over now. I will hand in my web essay in the morning and that about wraps it up for my first module. So this is the opportunity to tie it all up and conclude what I have learned over the last 3 months.
Technology - I have been introduced to a number of new technologies in the last few months including WebCT, Labyrinth and a couple that I already knew about like wikis, hypertext and online gaming which had new implications for learning that I had not considered before. Throughout this course I have gained confidence in using these new technologies and also been able to critically view these technologies with their strengths and weakness and evaluate how useful I think they would be to an e-educator. I would not have felt qualified to do that previously. I feel now that I am armed with an understanding of lots of possible areas of development. I have learned new skills that I will be able to transfer over into my work life.
I have learned a lot about alternative learning styles and how they can all be amalgamated into a single blended learning approach.
This course has also made me realise that the future is a very exciting place. I work in IT so I generally keep up with the latest technologies (or I thought I did…). I also use the internet a lot but many of these changes have passed me by. Now I can see that there is even more on the horizon. The development of gaming to be used in training is one such move. I have already discussed some of the new technologies that allow facial expressions to be accurately portrayed in games making the experience more realistic. SL has frustrated us at times because it is slow and unrealistic but I think that this will be a major development in the future. As technology improves, so will the ‘look and feel’ of the virtual world. When this happens I think we will see an explosion in the use of this technology for business as well as for learning. I have been reading ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson about the virtual world of Metaverse and there was a passage that I thought is a portend to where we want to be:
“they all came to the realisation that it … was Juanita’s faces. Just ask the business men in the Nipponese Quadrant. They came here to talk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it as good as face to face. They more or less ignored what was being said – a lot gets lost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the people they are talking to. And that’s how they know what’s going on inside a person’s head” ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson (1993 pg 59).
This seems to me to be the major stumbling block to replacing face to face with e-learning for the inexperienced user. I have thoroughly enjoyed this course and can see how a full online provision can be made to work, but I am also very comfortable using technology. Less confident users will still provide f2f until we can provide a clear streamed personal approach to their learning. I think the virtual world as it can be in the future will give us that opportunity.

Where do I go from here? I recently had an interview for an internal post at my company for an on-line learning consultant. This is not a direction my company has previously taken but it would be a great opportunity for me to move my career in the direction I want it to take. So from here I want to move into an online role, and continue my studies. I am interested in the opportunities for online gaming, and I am also interested in the role of politics and culture in the design and implementation of e-learning and how it affects accessibility. These are two themes that I am interesting in pursuing further during the rest of my masters.

Well – that about sums it up. The course is over but I am going to continue using my weblog. I have learned an amazing amount this term and I look forward to the next one with eagerness and a conviction that this is where my future lies.