‘Online learning’/‘Networked learning’?

When you hear the words 'online learning' what kind of images does that conjure up for you? What kind of things does it make you think of? Perhaps correspondence learning, distance learning, remote learning come to mind? You may have read the headline recently ‘Rural schools may be forced into online classes as they struggle to hire teachers’ (RNZ,) suggesting that online learning is a poor second. You may have taken a correspondence course in the late nineties or early two thousands and have this as your mental model of online learning.

I would argue that in fact rather than being cold and remote and a poor second to face to face learning, online learning can be incredibly dynamic, innovative, interpersonal, and even exciting. However, and this is a big however, this takes very intentional learning design, a shift in thinking, and a shift in how we define online learning.

Let’s be clear about what is meant by this. First and foremost, we need to acknowledge that learning is a sociocultural endeavour (Vygotsky, 1978). Students are so inextricably networked in their social lives and in their online lives, it would seem counter-intuitive and perhaps a backwards step to ignore this within their online learning. I firmly believe that learning is not just about the content. If that is the sole focus of teaching, it misses the point. To quote a colleague of mine who I greatly respect ‘jamming through content does not equal greater learning, it just equals content covered’. Deep learning does not happen when we try to cram ideas into our students, and this is doubly true in the online setting. NLEC propose the term ‘Networked Learning’ (NLEC, 2020), this comes from a philosophy of connection. That is connections between learners, between learners and teachers, and between learners and learning resources NLEC (2020, p6). The learning community has to be at the heart of the matter. I really like the way that NLEC (2020, p3, para. 3) set out the points of difference for networked learning.

• An insistence on the importance of human relationships opens up questions about trust, power, identity, belonging, difference, affection, reciprocity, solidarity, commitment and time. 

• An interest in how technologies shape and are shaped by human activity, with a recognition that tools, artefacts and infrastructure are assembled or reconfigured in complex ways, provokes questions about the socio-material, affordances, instruments, access, appropriation, ownership, etc. 

• A commitment to collaborative inquiry and joint action in the face of shared challenges raises questions about knowledge, values and action, learning and doing, meaning-making, negotiation, shared projects and praxis, scale, scope, pace and duration and the capabilities needed to shape a world worth living in.

For those of you who teach for NetNZ, or maybe even have dabbled in Knowledge Building Communities this may be starting sound very familiar. For some of you this may be an aha moment. For me it affirms a pedagogy that has intuitively guided me for the past five years and will form the basis of my teaching inquiry heading into the future.

Within NetNZ community and connections have guide practice. NetNZ describes the advantages of being an e-learner amoungother things as ‘Access to a broad, flexible curriculum, anywhere, anytime; Learn to develop greater ownership of your learning; Connect and learn with students across the country’ (NetNZ, n.d.)

At a recent online teacher’s hui we spent some time unpacking some of these cornerstone ideas. I facilitated a group discussion around the connections and community side of things. It was really heartening to hear the kinds of things that teachers valued despite time restraints of online courses. As a whole teachers felt that developing relationships and connections between their learners to be highly important, ‘a foundation to learning’ and vital to establishing trust, safety and a sense of belonging within learners and in the teacher. The ability for students to share ideas, collaborate and work as a team, was highly valued, to the extent that teachers would devote considerable time to establish this at the start of the year and keep coming back to this each week, despite the time restraint of one or two Zoom calls a week. In general, this centred around people, getting to know students as whole people, allowing room to share on a human level, having a sense of humour, making space for student agency and ownership of the course and much, much, more. 1

Anecdotally students really respond to this kind of approach. My own course is highly collaborative and centres around a networked approach with students working as a community of art historian researchers. They are a team. The ideas are developed communally. Although this takes a lot of getting used to for many who are used to education in New Zealand as being highly individualised and somewhat competitive, this is soon valued by students. I have had students make comments like ‘I felt like I was a part of the class’, ‘I enjoyed being able to bounce my ideas off of fellow students’, 'my ideas were valued', the teacher is interested in all perspectives'. 

It is worth noting that within this approach, although the learners within the community are absolutely central, the teacher is an essential component. They enable and develop the kind of learning environment where students are able to connect. With each other, with their own learning, with the larger concepts in the course. This all takes very strategic and subtle design, which would be worthwhile unpacking on its' own.

1.  The ideas teachers come up with about why connections and community were so important and strategies they used to develop these are too numerous to mention here and will be posted separately.

References

Gerritson J.  (2020, December 07). Rural schools may be forced into online classes as they struggle to hire teachers, originally published by RNZ republished with permission on Stuff.co.nz. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/300176726/rural-schools-may-be-forced-into-online-classes-as-they-struggle-to-hire-teachers

Networked Learning Editorial Collective (NLEC). Networked Learning: Inviting Redefinition. Postdigit Sci Educ (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00167-8

NetNZ. (n.d.). Why NetNZ? Retrieved December 09, 2020, from http://www.netnz.org/why-netnz-2/

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Reflecting against inquiry goals: 'To develop reflective capabilities in visual art students' & 'To use a knowledge building approach to engage online learners'

At the moment I am working on developing template that give students prompts for reflection, as I found students wrote well about their work when there were scaffolds around the reflection to guide them.
I think this is necessary, it is quite a skill to reflect about your thinking or your progress.
I know that I need guiding questions for inquiry.  My entire Master's thesis question and methodology set out the plan for my inquiry and gave me a set of criteria to reflect against. This took a large chunk of time and stress to develop and I am an educated adult.
I think inquiry and reflection need to be taught and supported. If I throw my students into an inquiry with no/little guidance, this is like putting a kid on a bike for the first time with no training wheels. They are going to fall over.

Ultimately I want my students to have epistemic agency - but there is a lot of learning and development to get to that stage. This is a goal that will sit over multiple years of inquiry.

Reimagining teaching and learning - self effiacy

http://ikit.org/fulltext/2002AERAAnn.pdf

So I've been thinking about the learner's role in knowledge building. It's quite a different dynamic to traditional, more transactional modes of learning where the teacher is the conduit and all learning flows from them.

Knowledge Building which I have been tinkering with in one of my classes for a few years, puts the student at the center of their learning - they are agents in it and as legitimate knowledge creators in our learning community. It is really scary for some students as they haven't known anything other than direct instruction. But the rewards are huge for when they get it.

I guess the question is how to empower students to see themselves as being capable of inquiry ... and also how to scaffold them so we're not throwing them in the deep end before they've learned to swim!

So in my inquiry, I'm thinking about 'learning how to learn'. How can I give my students the skills that they need to create knowledge? How can I give them the tools that they need to reflect on their learning and be empowered as epistemic agents?

For those of you who have been working with knowledge building and collaboration for a while, how do you support metacognition in your students? Are there particular resources or tools that are really effective?

My inquiry hunch is that knowledge building will improve self-efficacy over time.
To identify a shift I will need to gather qualitative data over time. I was thinking of using the Learning Dispositions survey that we often use with NetNZ students. Teachers, can you think of any other good ways of getting a picture of students as learners? The main thing really is that I'm collecting student voice about their learning as self-efficacy is defined by the learners' beliefs about their abilities.

Please share your thoughts, ideas, and feedback with me.

Inquiry research

I am wrestling with how to form a really good question for a literature review (part of my Mindlab study this year)

I am planning to focus on my online art history class. We collaborate using Knowledge Forum a lot (Kwok-Wing Lai, 2014), to explore big questions and construct an understanding of art history concepts as a class. 

I am a bit hesitant to box myself in with the term 'knowledge building' in my research question. I guess I want to be able to compare other collaborative models with knowledge building, which will require a more open question.

I am interested in how collaborating in an online setting can affect engagement (lots of barriers in online teaching) and epistemic agency 

I've formed a few possible questions, that you are welcome to critique:

1. How can use of 21st-century technologies and constructivist models enhance student engagement and epistemic agency in the online environment?

2. How can collaborative tools increase epistemic agency in the online environment?

3. How can knowledge building communities enhance student engagement and self-efficacy in the online environment?

Feedback, please! I'm trying to write a really rich question that's neither too broad or too narrow.