Yes, you read right – Plog, not blog. So, what is is?
Well, during one of our sessions we came up with the term plog: a professional blog. You might remember reading in one of first posts, the challenge I faced as to whether I would write professionally or as the true me. I chose to write as the true, informal me with no hint of professionalism. Or so I thought!
How wrong was I! In the process of being vulnerable, I ended up finding my own professional writing style. One that I hope relates to people, emotions and the learning journey. Which interestingly has been my biggest learning curve during ONL191.
I have always been a sensitive soul and have always prided myself in my own level of EI. The question that remains to be asked is- did I ever really understand the role that emotions and social presence play online? Quite frankly, I don’t think I did understand the mechanisms behind it. But to see how it unfolds in an online group and the role it played in our group was truly magical.
What I will walk away with today is much more than understanding the methodologies that drive student engagement but the importance of how they can shape the emotional journey and accessibility to learning online.
I’ve just loved the various tools we have used and am using them to drive engagement with my teams. What wonders it has made for working with my team from a distance.
So maybe this is my last plog of 2019… or maybe not š
Thinking back to my past life as an L&D consultant, blended learning has been part of my routine for about the past 10 years. When starting out my learners had to complete their online content, which was content heavy and laborious. Then we would go to class and go through the same information all over gain but with the aid of PPT … dare I say it “death by PowerPoint”.
Thinking more recently, I can see how my style has changed. I used the LMS as an information repository and build the content so they would learn online in a fluid manner that would take the students through content, videos, assignments and then test their knowledge through scenario based MCQ’s. In class we would tackle case studies and projects. In theory this is great – however I noticed that sometimes a project would work with one group and not the other. Same project, different group, so what was I doing wrong?
It wasn’t until the end of topic 4 that I realised what the missing component was: social presence at a granular level. By this I mean, the groups as whole participated and engaged however groups that had an unspoken but dynamic scored about 10% better than groups that seemed to have a missing element.
According to Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013) in Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry, social presence is driven by personal communication, where a group is able to express emotions and learn in a risk-free environment. Therefore creating their own identity.
When I put them in groups I did not factor in the different personality types, the different learning styles and communication styles of the learners. Sometimes it worked, but more than often it didn’t… So what did I learn this week – it’s not just about dividing the group up into odd and even numbers or groups of 4, randomly. We need to consider who is present and comfortable online opposed to who is present and comfortable face-to-face. Either requires a level of social presence.
Ice is back with a brand new invention…I loved Vanilla Ice as a kid and weirdly every time I think of collaborative learning these words pop immediately in my mind. It took me a while to disseminate why. Originally I thought the key word was collaborate, just as collaboration should be the key work in collaborative learning, but it’s not.
The word is listen. I will admit as engrossed in the topic as I was, I couldn’t connect with it. The conversation and discussion were logical and made perfect sense. However, somehow I felt we were missing a vitally important component, that, yes we touched on but didn’t fully interrogate. But then again maybe I wasn’t listening š But all jokes aside, I believe that if we want to create a truly collaborative learning experience we need to thoroughly discuss the importance of listening skills, because let’s be honest – its hard to listen online!
According to Siemens:
“Connectivism (Siemens, 2005) recognizes that in the online learning environment, seeking and constructing knowledge is most often accomplished through interaction and dialogue. ”
The key word listen is a red thread that runs through each of these separate topics: “constructing knowledge”, “interaction” and “dialogue”. The crux of this is that listening is a vital component of communication and communication is key in providing staying connected and working collaboratively. BUT – if we don’t listen we can’t communicate and transfer knowledge and we can’t connect with others.
So, what is the role of listening in Siemens four stage continuum? Well let’s take a look at the four stage quickly:
“Communication People ātalking,ā discussing
Collaboration People sharing ideas and working together (occasionally sharing resources) in a loose environment
Cooperation People doing things together, but each with his or her own purpose
Community People striving for a common purpose” (Siemens).
If we want to get our learners to engage online we need to really understand how the learning styles translate to the digital space. Our programmes will require a complex structure that not online includes a discussion room, a webinar and some notes – we really need to take it one step further. We need to see how various learning styles are deeply rooted in digital natives and ask ourselves: what get’s them to actively listen? Is it the tasks they participate in? Is it the videos they watch? Is it the interaction with their peers? Either way, a digital native has the ability to filter through much digital noise – something a non-digital native cannot do.
In a very round about way – what I am trying to ask you is:
Would an active listening workshop for online, based on the profile of a digital native (yes -I know this requires much research) not be the starting point to truly build a collaborative learning experience?
We do it in our face-to-face environments, in the corporate world but in education we don’t seem to really hone in on it. So, I believe we are missing a fundamental step in creating a world of digital collaboration and connectivity, and that is building our learners digital listening skills.
I worked once with an educational organisation that had put together a strategic plan and shared it to its employees. They were bringing FREE education to all based on the principles of OPENNESS. The information was free and PDFs were easily accessible to the students on the internet without enrolling. At that moment in time I thought it was pretty cool: “Finally, an educational organisation that committed to bring education to those that cannot afford it!”
Unfortunately my excitement was short lived, about a millisecond, as the words “we are all going to be millionaires” and “students would be charged a minimal monthly fee to again access to assessments and exams” became imprinted on my mind. I found this highly conflicting as they were driving FREE EDUCATION and to me to free means at zero cost.
According to Weller the originators are “despondent about the reinterpretation of openness to mean āfreeā or āonlineā without some of the reuse liberties they had envisaged. Concerns are expressed about the commercial interests that are now using openness as a marketing tool.” And I couldn’t agree more – open does not mean free in my eyes. I do believe students should have access to information – quality education for all is the starting point of creating an equal world in my eyes. But I don’t think it equates free – how can it in a digital and institutional space?
Information that is free = to a certain extent yes…
Information should be = open (and I love that)
Students experiences and support = no it can’t be free or open
We’ve got the technologies, we’ve got the knowledge but student learning never reaches its full potential through a content dump. The world of learning is moving away from knowledge and to a paradigm that encourages experiences, let’s not confuse open with free because its simply not sustainable.
Last week was a complete and utter nightmare for me, both personally and professionally. In South Africa we are currently experiencing load shedding – which means 1-2x per day we are left without electricity for about 2.5 hours each stint. I have never felt so isolated in my life!
At work I couldn’t call anyone but luckily I had WIFI and a charged laptop but trust me that battery doesn’t last nearly as long as it should when you are running a webinar. The pure anxiety of watching your battery deplete and hope that it will last those last few minutes or that the electricity will switch on so you don’t get cut off last minute and leave your participants hanging.
At home I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t watch the webinars, attend my group ONL session on the public holiday as my WIFI at home shuts down when there’s no power, my kids were scared of the dark and…you might have noticed my frustration.
BUT despite my frustration I am now concerned. In a world like ONL – MOOCs – LMS’s – we need to be connected. So, how do we share in a world where there is no connectivity? No electricity = no openness = no learning. It’s not intermittent connectivity that we need it’s full on, 100% per day 7/4/7. We need to be able to access information when it is most suitable to us and according to our schedules.
We discuss openness as if its a given, but the issue is it’s a privilege. Many people in the world today still don’t have access to the internet. According to Emily Dreyfuss (2018):
FOUR YEARS AGO, the United Nations predictedĀ that more than half of the global population would be connected to the internet by 2017, buoyed in part by āthe fastest growing technology in human historyā: mobile broadband. The world missed the mark. Now the UN expects to achieve that goalĀ by the end of 2019, and that still leaves an estimated 3.8 billion people offline.
That’s a lot of people we need to connect in a world that is not fully connected. But these people also have the right to embrace the openness of learning and its information.
So yes, I guess I believe that we should be open with our content and share our knowledge. For me, the more you know the more powerful and valuable you are but having said that. I also believe you need to pay for the experience – because the learning experience is like going to the movies a concert or broadway show: you have to pay. So, I guess we’ve moved away from the importance of content to a big push to deliver on the user experience!
Hopefully I will have more clarity on opennessas we wrap our topic this week.
These last two weeks have been super interesting for me in the ONL group, maybe because I was lead and co-lead with my awesome side-kick Patrik. But I have also learned a phenomenal amount on engagement and collaboration.
In one of our readings “Developing digital literates” (JISC) it states that:
Beetham and Sharpeās framework (2010) describes digital literacy as a development process from access and functional skills to higher level capabilities and identity. However, this will change depending on the context so it also reflects how individuals can be motivated to develop new skills and practices in different situations (JISC).
The question that arises in my mind is: how do we keep people motivated and engaged in our group? How do we as facilitators support our group members in building an online identity that they feel comfortable enough to share what they know and what they don’t know.
I’m not sure I have the answers a this stage. Patrik and I really tried to engage our audience, get them to participate in asking questions, collaborate in document creation, and share their thoughts and insecurities. In some areas I think we did really well – especially when it came to the quality and depth of the content we as group came up with. But there is a little nagging little question in the back of my head that keeps on asking “are they really engaged or was our approach still to old school and a blend of instructivism and constructivism? Did we reach a level of connectivism that we need to make our online group work?
Honestly, I don’t think we are quite on a “connective” level as yet. I think we need to go back a step and try and “re-connect” and rebuild our group identity through reflection. Having said all that, I sure do think we are on the right track! The people in my group are phenomenal and each come with a wealth of insight and knowledge, that I honestly look forward to hearing and experiencing.
What has stuck with me the most this week is how important the “support” component is in “inspiring” others in the online learning space.
On that note – I’m signing off – Happy Sunday all.
So here goes my first blog, EVER! I feel like I’m about to embark on a roller coaster ride. I’m excited and freaked out all at once, very much like the scenario we are discussing this week. I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the things discussed during our sessions and there is one area that keeps popping up in mind (at really weird times if I may add) the ‘professional me’ versus the ‘home me’.
It is one of the reasons I have decided to challenge myself and write this blog as the ‘home me’. Which means you’ll be subjected to my: very bad sense of humour, my no-filter opinion and an emotional side that can cloud my judgement. As I write them down I realise I have been convinced to believe that they are bad qualities in a professional life and that there is no place for the ‘home me’ at work. However, I have matured over the years and I’ve come to learn that these are the elements that actually define and make me the person I am today. My bad sense of humour often breaks the ice and makes people feel comfortable with me. My no-filter opinion helps me get to the root of the problem and my emotional and sensitive side allows me to be empathetic to others.
Trust me, this reflection hasn’t just dawned on me as I write this post at 6:44 am on a Sunday morning but it has come with years of being knocked down for being me. Years of trying to figure out that I need to OWN these traits. Years of building confidence by experimenting with how much of my ‘home me’ do I bring to work. But you know what? I bring all of me to work, I’ve come to realise that my work me and my home me make me: ME, it just depends on the situation.
So on that note, back to ONL#191. I’m owning being ‘me’ and looking forward to learn how that flies in the online space. How much empathy is too much or too little? How does that look in the online space? How much humour is appropriate and when? How does my level of no-filter go down with others online?
On that note, Happy Sunday I’m off to eat my breakfast!
Inspire 