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Laudable but misguided

• Philip C Candy
• NHS Connecting for Health
• philip.candy_at_cfh.nhs.uk

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Overview of this session

• Main themes and issues covered
• Not so surprising findings
• Intriguing insights
• Over to you
• A possible model of elearning (derived from
  self-directed learners)
• Conclusion

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Please write down

• one insight from this conference which has been
  entirely new to you, and preferably something you
  would not have expected (surprising, intriguing
  or counter-intuitive).

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Main sub-themes within the Next Generation
Learner theme

• Use of technologies to attract or appeal to
  students, especially those of a different
  generation from the teachers or educators
• Use of technologies to empower students in
  various ways (help them to make better choices
  take control of their learning give them a
  voice overcome disadvantage and disability
  develop employability skills fit learning into
  busy lifestyles etc)
• Social software, networking, online communities,
  group work
• Factors affecting the uptake and use of
  technologies (personality characteristics,
  previous educational experiences exposure to
  technologies outside of or before university)
• Experiences of learners when actually using
  various technologies relationships with
  resources, materials and technologies
• Course design teaching, mentoring and student
  support

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A few background issues

• Despite the theme, relatively few of the papers
  concentrate specifically on the learners their
  characteristics, preferences, backgrounds etc
  but focus instead on learning (or even teaching)
• Most of the presentations take learner to be
  the same as student and focus on students in
  post-compulsory (mainly higher) education
• Does next generation mean young students coming
  straight from school, or does it mean the next
  generation of students irrespective of their
  ages?
• Prevailing assumption that technologies are
  compatible with and even strongly predisposed
  towards self-directed learning
• Surprisingly little attention to informal and
  out of school learning, or to the linkages
  between elearning and knowledge management

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No surprises here

• Terms like ICT and Elearning are not necessarily
  meaningful to respondents and interviewees, and
  inquiries into the use of technologies therefore
  have to use plain language (such as computers)
  to make sense in research studies
• Technologies appeal to some students and not
  others a complex mix of personality
  characteristics, previous experience, learning
  preferences and motivation novelty factor
  influences student acceptance
• Technologies fit some instructional interventions
  and not others
• Opinions amongst learners are divided as to
  whether or not computers should be used in
  assessment events
• Some technologies seem awkwardly and/or
  artificially inserted into the curriculum and
  students play the game rather than really
  valuing or enjoying the opportunity to use the
  technologies (e.g., blogs threaded discussions
  forums)

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No surprises here (continued)

• Technologies seems most effective when they are
  (a) integrated seamlessly into social
  interactions and activities and (b) are the best
  way of doing something
• For staff and students alike, the uptake of
  technologies is unlikely to be wholehearted
  unless it feels right
• Books are rapidly being superseded by the
  Internet as a trusted source of information for
  staff and students
• Elearning fits better with some disciplines and
  curricula than with others and is viewed that way
  by learners
• The best intentioned efforts to help learners to
  learn in the digital environment may fail because
  they are based on the institutional (and not the
  learner's) view of how learning proceeds

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Last of the no surprises

• Schools are the supply chain for universities,
  and it therefore behoves academics to know more
  about the technology environments their incoming
  students are used to
• Learners follow complex, elliptical and recursive
  trajectories in working within an online
  coursework environment. This has been established
  using tracking software that follows their
  movements.
• Course Websites are most heavily visited in the
  week before exams.
• There is ongoing confusion about terminology,
  including digital literacy, media literacy,
  technology literacy etc

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Intriguing insights

• Generational differences are relatively
  unimportant in explaining comfort with
  technologies and, in any case, are commonly
  washed out within 6 months to a year
• Teachers and educators may have a tendency to use
  technologies to allow them to do faster or better
  what they have already done
• Many young students prefer Instant Messaging to
  email, which they may regard as old technology
  suitable primarily for communicating with tutors
  or lecturers but not with each other
• Formal education institutions may need to look at
  how people are using technologies outside the
  classroom in order to use them best inside the
  classroom
• Game-playing in early life does not seem to be
  particularly influential in the use of ICT for
  learning purposes

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More intriguing insights

• A learners preference for control may be a
  valid predictor of his or her digitalness
• Technologies may well be used seamlessly and well
  by more capable students, whereas many of the
  difficulties experienced and reported are perhaps
  amongst the widening participation cohort
• Web2 technologies are more fundamentally
  transformational than untethered or mobile
  technologies
• Paradoxically, technologies are simultaneously
  creating a sense of community and connectedness
  and of isolation and individualism in learning
• Academics may be seeking to use technologies
  both for teaching and for assessment to
  reproduce models of learning and social
  relationships that are in fact at odds with the
  real demands of most jobs and society at large
  (e.g., individual effort, circumspection,
  scholarly precision)

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Final intriguing insights

• Students make a distinction between the use of
  technology for pleasure and for learning just as
  previous generations separated television for
  relaxation or escape from educational TV
• There may be a paradox between learners making
  sense for themselves, while at the same time
  reaching certain learning outcomes (but see
  literature on learner control and self-directed
  learning)
• Technology fluency may turn out to be temporary
  and situational, so that a persons capability
  may increase or diminish depending on the
  opportunities and demands they are presented with
• Many students nowadays write hardly anything in
  longhand at all except exam scripts!
• It is possible that technologies are being used
  to compensate for the pressures of modern life,
  by amplifying learners capabilities, and hence
  give them the opportunity to tale study more
  seriously

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Over to you

• Take the topic you wrote down at the beginning,
  or something that has occurred to you since, and
  discuss it with the person sitting next to you.
• Discuss why you found it interesting, and what
  you would like to do about it (contact the
  author(s), do some research yourself change your
  educational practice etc)
• Take 15 minutes each (total of 30 minutes)

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Issues raised during plenary

• There may be merit in undertaking an ethnographic
  study of lecturers conceptions of online
  teaching or training, to understand better the
  pedagogic basis for decisions they make
• The learner journey provides a strand that
  connects learning at home, school, higher
  education and on into the workplace
• We should practise what we preach - the ALT
  Conference should (and will!) make better use of
  technology
• It would be interesting to know what kind of
  online learning is being undertaken by online
  educators as learners
• Given the focus on elearning, the conference
  concentrated too much on e and not enough on
  learning
• Further research is required to pursue the claim
  that, in the context of neuroplasticity, playing
  games does really affect the use of technologies
  to support learning

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A possible model of elearning

• based on a year-long study of self-directed
  learners (what people do when no one is telling
  them what to do)

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Why choose self-directed learning?

• self-directed learning occurs without the
  ideological or pedagogical overlay of teaching in
  formal education and training settings, and may
  accordingly provide a more direct route to
  understanding the relationship(s) between
  learning and technologies
• self-directed learning is the prototype of all
  learning and, since it has been extensively
  researched and documented in the pre-digital
  offline world it should be possible to make some
  claims about whether and how digital technologies
  are affecting learning
• there is a close and growing relationship between
  self-directed learning and that which occurs in
  formal education and training settings, in the
  sense that self-directed learning is commonly a
  precursor to, and even more often a consequence
  of participation in formal courses of study.

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Why self-directed learning? (continued)

• in the context of lifelong learning,
  self-directed learning is a principal way in
  which people keep up with change, and since we
  are currently experiencing unprecedented change
  on a global scale, the demands of a changing
  world are likely to impact on the nature and
  extent of self-directed learning that people
  engage in and, finally,
• evidence suggests that at least some forms of
  self-directed learning are particularly suited to
  the online environment and there is merit in
  exploring the linkage.

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Elements of a model of e-learning

• Engaging with the technology
• Locating, retrieving and utilising resources
• Evaluating sources and resources
• Assimilating new information and insights
• Reconceptualising - transforming understandings
• Networking - contributing to the community of
  learners

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Full report www.dest.gov.au/sectors/training_ski
lls/publications_resources/linking thinking.htm
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Looking backwards to move forwards Implications
of fifty years of e-learning research and
development

• We need to avoid the narrow pedagogies that are
  predisposed by available technologies, such as
  those dictated by currently available VLEs, and
  instead impose broader and more sophisticated
  pedagogies that address the necessary
  relationships between community, communication
  and cognition. Or, putting this another way, if
  we want to put the learning into e-learning
  then we have to treat technology as a mediator of
  what are, essentially, social learning processes.
  (Ravenscroft, 2002)