StripMining Facts

1
Strip-Mining Facts

• Meaningful Discussions in the Google/Wikipedia Era

2
Overview

• Introduction
• The Importance of Discussions
• The Blessing and Curse of Readily-Available
  Information
• Initiating and Guiding Effective Discussions
• My Conclusions
• Your Ideas/Comments

3
Introduction

• Who I am Dan Branan (Ph.D., University of
  Denver, 2003)
• What I do
• teach chemistry for CCCOnline (1.5 years)
• teach chemistry at USAF Academy (off and on since
  1996)
• active-duty Air Force officer (16 years)

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Introduction

• Remember when
• at least half your effort on a research paper was
  gathering a body of information?
• you had to pore over your wealthy neighbors copy
  of Encyclopedia Britannica for information?
• you needed a Reference Librarian to help you find
  facts?

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Introduction

• Google is like God. God is wireless, God is
  everywhere and God sees everything. Any questions
  in the world, you ask Google.
• Alan Cohen, president of Airespace, quoted in The
  World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman
• How do we engage students in a discussion about a
  topic when they can discover everything about it
  by spending a few minutes at the altar of Google?

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Importance of Discussions

• Constructivist Cycle
• conceptualize
• construct knowledge
• dialogue
• Dialogue provides the vehicle for conceptual
  movement. It facilitates the transition between
  the stages and the advance from one
  re-conceptualisation cycle to the next. To
  emphasise the central role of dialogue even
  further we now view it not as a separate stage,
  but as integral to the whole cycle.
• FOWLER, C.J.H., MAYES, J.T. Learning
  relationships from theory to design.
  Association for Learning Technology Journal, 7,
  3, 6-16 (1999)

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Importance of Discussions

• learning ismade more effective when it is
  social, is engaged learning happens best
  when students are activewriting, thinking,
  experimenting, creating and devising. - Malcom
  Brown, Mashing up the Once and Future CMS.
  EDUCAUSE Review, March/April 2007
• Many studies have suggested that actively
  participating in inquiry dialogue is beneficial
  and that the quality and not the quantity of
  inquiry is central.
• Pilkington, R., Analysing Educational Dialogue
  Interaction Towards Models that Support
  Learning. International Journal of Artificial
  Intelligence in Education (2001), 12, 1-7

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Importance of Discussions

• My own experiences
• Enthusiastic participation
• Survey of last class 91 reported that the
  discussions were Valuable to Extremely
  Valuable
• Comments
• The discussions definitely enhanced the course
• I loved the discussions, but they did not relate
  to the material being tested over
• Provided a more traditional classroom feel and
  reminds you that you are not suffering through
  this alone.

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Importance of Discussions - Summary

• Necessary for the constructive learning cycle
• Main source of social interaction in an on-line
  class

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The blessing and curse of readily-available
information

• Blessing
• You can find information rapidly and easily
• Curse
• Knowing ? understanding
• The ability to find lots of facts can lead
  students to believe they understand a subject
  this is a discussion-killer
• Issues with source reliability
• Students may not understand the difference
  between primary, secondary, tertiary and
  extremist sources.

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Initiating and Guiding Effective Discussions

• Starting things off
• Find topics that are current, potentially
  interesting, socially relevant, objectively
  important, and perhaps just a little
  controversial.
• Have FUN with the topic. Your interest and
  enthusiasm is contagious!
• Give substantial background information guide
  their data-gathering a little bit.
• Demonstrate the choice of reliable sources
• Take as neutral a stance as possible. Unless you
  want to drive them to an opposing point of view

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Initiating and Guiding Effective Discussions

• Starting things off
• If possible, link the topic to their course
  material
• Pose multiple questions
• CRITICAL Ask the student to decide or interpret
  something on a personal level
• This helps get them involved as an individual,
  and will help avoid pulling opinions off the
  internet
• Single most effective defense against know it
  all discussion killers everyone has an opinion
  and no one else can talk about what YOU believe

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Initiating and Guiding Effective Discussions

• Examining some topics (handout)
• Global Cycles
• 90 of the class was involved
• Postings per student ranged from 1 to 18 (Avg
  5)
• Similar results between two separate sections
• High interest among student population (several
  Boulderites, for example)
• Sources listed were fairly neutral on the subject
  of global warming, per se
• Students found many other sources surprisingly
  few were polemic or extremist in nature

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Initiating and Guiding Effective Discussions

• Genetically Modified Food
• 86 of the class was involved
• Postings per student ranged from 1 to 10 (Avg
  4)
• Similar results between two separate sections
• Also high interest among students
• Sources presented were both pro and con
• Many more student sources and positions were
  extremist on this topic.
• I had to intervene in one exchange and tell them
  to be more respectful of one another

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Initiating and Guiding Effective Discussions

• Gold!
• New discussion, few posts so far.
• Similar results between two separate sections
• This topic does not seem to be inherently
  interesting to the students
• Lack of background information is a problem
• Most postings are regurgitations or outright
  copies from relatively reliable sources
• I have had to interject several times and try to
  focus them on the deeper aspects of the
  questions.

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Initiating and Guiding Effective Discussions

• Guiding the discussion
• Be clear about your expectations and standards
• Rubrics are a good tool for this
• Your involvement and guidance are critical
• Provides standards enforcement
• Shows that you are interested in their opinions
• Watch for inappropriate references/comments
• Wikipedia is NOT a primary or secondary source!
• If they cite a Wikipedia article, ask them what
  the sources were for that article
• Be especially watchful for extremist sources and
  flag them
• Guard against inappropriate criticism

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My Conclusions

• Discussions are vitally important to learning
• Discussions enhance the social atmosphere
• Engaging the students is the big challenge
• Connect your topics to relevant, interesting
  ideas
• Pose a wide variety of questions in each topic
• Encourage personal involvement in the topic
• Guiding the discussion is critical
• Encourage appropriate sourcing of information
• Discourage inappropriate criticism

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Your Ideas/Comments

• Success/Non-Success Stories?
• Favorite Topics?
• Hooks or Techniques?
• Pitfalls?