ABILENE, TX April 12, 2011 — In its continued effort to increase student engagement using innovative technology-enabled approaches, Abilene Christian University’s (ACU) mobile-learning initiative, Connected, today announced it was awarded nearly $250,000 from Wave I of the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) grants.
The grant money will be used to scale ACU’s mobile-enhanced inquiry-based learning (MEIBL) program demonstrating its effectiveness in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs at two schools — Del Mar College and California University of Pennsylvania — both that have low-income students who are at the highest risk of failing or dropping out. MEIBL is a blended learning strategy which helps creates an active and engaging learning environment, producing increased student engagement, independence, and persistence to course completion.
Research conducted through ACU’s Mobile Learning initiative, Connected, provides evidence that mobile device usage consistently results in creased ratings of student engagement (Perkins & Saltsman, 2011). Findings also show that student teams effectively use pre-class viewing of instructive podcasts to reduce in-class instructional time and to facilitate just-in-time review which fosters independent, collaborative and active learning processes in basic science labs (Powell, 2009; Saltsman, Crisp, Perkins & Powell, 2010).
“To provide new methods of learning to students who otherwise would drop out or fail is precisely the foundation of ACU’s mobile learning initiative,” said Dwayne Harapnuik PhD, Director of Faculty Enrichment at Abilene Christian University. “It’s an honor that the NGLC recognizes the benefits of our MEIBL program.”
Over the next 18 months, California University of Pennsylvania and Del Mar will implement MEIBL with students in biology, zoology and botany courses. ACU currently uses MEIBL with over 400 students in chemistry and biochemistry courses and will apply the MEIBL to additional classes with a portion of the grant money.
In this first wave of grant funding, NGLC awarded a combined total of $11 million to organizations developing promising education technology solution. The $20 million grant program is run by Educause and sustained mostly by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
ABOUT ACU’S MOBILE-LEARNING INITIATIVE, CONNECTED
In a world of search engines, social networking, and mobile computers, students have access to more information than one could process in a lifetime. In 2008, Abilene Christian University launched a mobile-learning initiative, Connected, which trains students to not merely consume these vast amounts of information, but to assess information, synthesize thoughts, generate new ideas, and contribute meaningfully to conversations of global importance. The university hosts live and online conferences for educators and administrators to engage in dialogue, research and idea-sharing. ACU was named one of “America’s Best Colleges” by U.S. News and World Report in its 2011 edition. In 2010, Forbes rated ACU in the top seven percent of colleges and universities in its “America’s Best Colleges” rankings. It enrolls 4,700 students, generally from 50 states and territories, and 42 nations. For more information visit http://www.acu.edu/connected
Moving your organization forward or encouraging your colleagues to join you in implementing innovation or change is an ongoing and challenging process that includes multiple steps and continued effort. Most innovation initiatives start with a proposal.
Your innovation proposal should focus on your specific audience who may include, but may not be limited to, the administrators who will be affirming the completed innovation plan, your colleagues or peers you are hoping will be inspired to join you, and/or other stakeholders who have an interest in how the innovation will impact your learners.
Ideally, your innovation proposal should take the form of a 1-page letter because it will become part of your overall plan that you will be sharing with your audience.
The innovation proposal should address the “Why” or purpose of your innovation initiative which is expanded on with the following 5 key points:
Opportunity or problem that you have observed – always focus on the opportunity perspective rather than the problem.
How you will address the opportunity or solve the problem.
What you are proposing to do (1.2. adopt a Blended Learning initiative…).
Benefits of this solution (summary of your why).
What are you asking for? (I am asking to pilot blended learning in my classroom… over what time frame)
Be prepared to revise and update as your ideas develop and your situation changes.
Document Format Example – Depending on your audience and their expectations more detailed documentation may be required and the following example followed the format that was required by these student’s district. Remember, this proposal must be developed for your intended audience.
A Comparison of the CSLE and the Traditional Teacher Centered Approach
Components
CSLE
Traditional Approach
Student’s role
The learner’s needs are the starting point. The learner is not only an active participant in the learning process; they are required to take control and ownership of their learning and work toward making meaningful connections.
Teachers start with the curriculum and determine what content that the student will be required to demonstrate that they have covered. The student’s responsibility is to regurgitate information and show that they are able to replicate assignment examples and processes.
Instructor’s role
The instructor functions as a presenter, facilitator, coach, and mentor and iresponsiblety for creating the significant learning environment that promotes learning. They are required to provide the guided discovery, scaffolding, and conceptual framework mapping to facilitate learning.
The teacher is the presenter of curriculum and content. The teacher will also demonstrate required procedures, process and standards and confirm that students can replicate those requirements. The teacher also functions as the gatekeeper of advancement through the use of standardized testing.
Social Networking
Humans are social beings and being part of, contributing to, and interacting with community and culture is a central part of the learning process. Social networking is leveraged to promote communication and collaboration
Teachers and schools system restrict students from using social networking in class and some settings require that phones and other connective and collaborative tools are turned off or are even confiscated.
Instructional delivery formats
To take advantage of our ubiquitous access and social networking and to respond to the learner’s needs, our learning delivery can be mobile, online, blended, and even when face2face, must be digitally enhanced.
Teachers primarily use the lecture to deliver content. The move toward the flipped classroom is generally a move to putting the lecture online and use the internet for content delivery. The delivery of content is the primary focus of instruction.
Instructional Design
Starts with the end in mind and focuses on how a course or program will change learners lives, how it makes them a better member of society, and contribute to solving a particular problem or “real world” need. Rather than be bound to a single theory or approach, learning theories and approaches can be interchanged. The key is that we design an environment that is learner-centered, engaging, motivational, contextual, experiential, and authentic.
Standardized tests, state standards, and district curriculum determine the instructional design. The priority is being able to demonstrate that content has been successfully delivered and that students are able to satisfactory complete standardized tests. Instructional design approaches that promote the decimation and regurgitation of information are used. The results are a teacher centered, passive, demotivating environment that lacks context and connection with the “real world”
Assessment & Evaluation
The focus is on feedback, mastery of knowledge, authentic learning, critical analysis and creative thinking which help the learner make meaningful connections
Summative assessments including tests, quizzes, standardized writing, and testing are used to show that the learner is able to replicate information and meet standards
Academic quality & standards
Future focus of preparing our learner to learn how to learn and how to adapt to opportunities and challenges that don’t even exist.
State standards, standardized testing, and college entrance requirements are the primary measure of quality and standards.
Technology & support
The focus is on using technology to help you do want you want and need to do. Learning technologies are just tools that we use to enhance and empower learning. The best technology empowers creation and ultimately disappears.
Technology is used for management and control of the delivery of content. Successful technology implementation means that the students has the technology and it is generally used to replace or enhance traditional information delivery and retrieval strategies.
Whether we are purposeful in its design or we just allow the circumstances to dictate its development, educators at all levels are providing some form of a learning environment. Rather than allow the environment to come together on its own and respond reactively to the learning dynamics that arise, we suggest that educators become proactive and create significant learning environments. If we start with a student-centered approach and purposefully assemble all the key components of effective learning into a significant learning environment, we can help our students to learn how to learn and grow into the people we all hope they will become.
The key to the CSLE is that it starts with the learner and focuses on their unique needs by giving the learner choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities. The role of the teacher is diverse and spans a minimum of four different responsibilities ranging decreasing degrees of control from presenter to mentor (Priest, 2016). The benefits of the COVA approach are fully realized through the proactive implementation of CSLE. The purposeful and holistic design requirements of the COVA and CSLE approach require that teachers look beyond the temptation to use a mobile device or other technology tools as a quick fix and focus on how the learning environment can be structured and how the learner can use the technology to further the ownership of their learning.
In contrast, the traditional approach is simply an information delivery model of instruction that is best managed with a high degree of teacher control. Since it is relatively simple to determine to what extent the information has been delivered successfully through quizzes and standardized testing, the traditional approach tends to use technology to control and manage the delivery of content. Paper-based worksheets and tests are replaced with digital worksheets and tests which confirm the claim of November’s (2013) one thousand dollar pencil.
References
November, A. (2013). Who owns the learning? Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press
Priest, S. (2016). Learning & teaching [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://simonpriest.altervista.org/LT.html#ES
Links to all the CSLE+COVA vs Traditional table comparisons:
In the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology article Engagement with Electronic Portfolios: Challenges from the Student Perspective the authors point to student disillusionment with the fact that they all too often are being asked to do something, create an ePortfolio, which most instructors have not done. The following response from a student focus group session reveals students frustration in the fact that instructors are talking the talk but now walking the walk when it comes to using ePortfolios:
In terms of promotion the problem is the people trying to explain it have probably never used it so in a way they have no clue what they are talking about, basically. To put it frankly – after listening to them you would be like, Okay so you as an outsider who never even used it is telling us we should do this because it is the best thing since sliced bread but you have never used it – you can’t find someone who did use it – you don’t have enough information to tell us how to use it – and now you’re telling us use it and we’ll grade you on it – this kind of makes it hard for students to accept or appreciate it.
I have been keeping an ePortfolio since the late ’90s. Unfortunately, my earlier work was maintained on sites that I did not control and when I left those organizations I was not able to take my work. Therefore my current site www.harapnuik.org archives only go back to 2009. Lessons learned — take control of your domain and site and ensure that you can take your work with you.
Rather than attempt to explain what goes into an ePortfolio I am going to offer the following list of examples. You will note significant diversity in the way the sites are set up, the content that is covered, and the levels of sophistication. The common factor is that each of these ePortfolio highlights the author’s personal, professional and social interests and passion for sharing their ideas and experiences.
Examples of recent graduates of Lamar’s Digital Learning and Leading and Applied Digital Learning programs work in the program capstone course – EDLD 5320 Examples
Examples of current Lamar Applied Digital Learning students’ ePortfolio coursework can be found in the Assignment Examples links in the course map table on the ADL Program Map page.
Graduate Students ePortfolios:
Roselynn Verwoord’s Electronic Portfolio highlights and shares the work that she is doing with a diverse community of educators, community-based practitioners and researchers, and policymakers, at both the local and international level. http://blogs.ubc.ca/rverwoord/
Rebecca Lynn Taylor – Graduate student teaching portfolio: Graduate student developing a portfolio for professional development https://rebeccalynntaylor.wordpress.com/
George Couros – The Principal of Change: Stories of learning and leading http://georgecouros.ca/blog/
Related Youtube Video – Blog as Portfolio #leadership20
Professors/Instructors and Academic Professional ePortfolios:
Tony Bates personal site for resources in online learning and distance education. Perhaps one of the best Academic Professional sites. http://www.tonybates.ca/
Karen L. Kelsky, Ph.D. spent 15 years as an R1 tenured professor, department head, and university advisor, and will tell you the truth about grad school, the job market, and tenure. http://theprofessorisin.com/
Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on K-12 school technology leadership issues. http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/
Kevin Corbett’s site highlights his professional interests as they relate to the Internet, education & media technologies. http://kevincorbett.com/
Michael Stephens – Tame the Web site focuses on emerging trends, tools, and processes driving change in library and information communities. http://tametheweb.com/
Tony Karrer’s eLearning Blog on e-Learning Trends eLearning 2.0 Personal Learning Informal Learning eLearning Design Authoring Tools Rapid e-Learning Tools Blended e-Learning Tools Learning Management Systems (LMS) e-Learning ROI and Metrics http://elearningtech.blogspot.ca/
Alec Couros – Open Thinking and Digital Pedagogy is Alec’s personal and professional blogging. Alec is a professor of educational technology and media at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/
Dr. Helen Barrett – No list would be complete without an acknowledgment of Dr. Barrett’s work with Electronic Portfolios and Digital Storytelling for lifelong and life-wide learning. http://electronicportfolios.org/
Luke Wroblewski – LukeW is an internationally recognized digital product leader who has designed and built software used by more than one billion people worldwide. The simplicity and elegance of Lukes’s site is impressive. http://www.lukew.com/
Innovative Educator – Lisa Nielsen is currently a director of digital engagement and professional learning and an advocate for changing the future of education. Her blog is a great example of a professional ePortfolio. http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.ca/
References:
Tosh, D., Light, T. P., Fleming, K., & Haywood, J. (2005). Engagement with electronic portfolios: Challenges from the student perspective. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie, 31(3).
My Educational Development Philosophy is an extension of my Learning Philosophy with the addition of a greater emphasis on leading by example. This type of leadership is captured by Mahatma Gandhi’s famous statement: “Be the change that you want to see in the world”. Since I have spent the past 20 years teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level, conducting workshops, seminars and other forms of professional development and have provided consulting services on creating significant learning environments, instructional technology, instructional design, and course/program/learning development, I am able to create the type of environment in which the learner (student, faculty, staff or administrator) can come to know, acquire knowledge and make meaningful connections.
I can model effective instructional methods in face2face, mobile, blended and fully online settings because I have learned and taught in all of these settings. More importantly, I can model effective instruction and learning facilitation in diverse settings because I function on both the personal and professional level in all these settings. People learn what they live and in particular faculty won’t bring technology or innovative methodologies into their classrooms or learning environments that they are not willing to use on a regular basis. I discuss this notion in greater detail in the posts “You Learn What You Live” and “Why Learners Should Blog”.
My instructional design process uses the following educational development steps:
Start with Why
Significant Learning Environments
Outcome based/Backward Design – 3 Column Table
Aligning Outcomes-Activities-Assessment
Making Your Course Integrated
1. Start with Why
Any form of educational development starts with answering the question “Why”. Answering the “Why” question is really addressing what the intrinsic motivation for the learner will be. When working with students you need to answer in advance why this course, material or work that they are asked to do will help them in the future. Similarly, if we don’t address the “Why” question when working with faculty it is extremely difficult to move onto how one applies active learning, or a flipped classroom or other student-centred instructional approaches. Simon Sinek argues that “people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it”. A full explanation of Sinek’s approach can be found in the Youtube video on the following blog post:
We design information systems, smart buildings, ecological friendly communities, and so many aspect of our society but we, unfortunately, do not apply this holistic approach to designing student-centered learning environments. Whether we are purposeful in its design or we just allow the circumstances to dictate its development, schools, colleges and universities are providing learning environments for their students. Rather than allow the environment to come together inadvertently and respond reactively to the learning dynamics that arise I suggest that educators become proactive and create significant learning environments that inspire, foster and facilitate deeper learning. The following mandala highlights the components that we need to consider when we are creating significant learning environments:
Creating Significant Learning Environment
The following links provide additional examples and reflections that reinforce this step:
The fundamental problems that many instructors face with their students lack of interest, poor preparation and poor retention of learning can be addressed by effective outcome based or backward design/redesign of their courses. The two more traditional content-based methodologies of listing topics or listing activities fall short because these approaches often fail to provide a context for deeper learning and seldom move beyond foundational knowledge. By imaging how a course will change a students life or prepare them for future endeavours an instructor can create a major course goal/outcome and then establish sub-goals which can then provide the context for assignments and formative assessments that will help the learner achieve the the major course goal.
Dee Finks Taxonomy of Significant Learning detailed in his book, Creating Significant Learning Experiences, provides an excellent format for this process which can be organized through a three column table that lists the goals/outcomes, activities and assessment and provides a foundation structure for the course development. While I have used the context of course development to explain the use of outcome-based or backward design, the significance of having explicit learning outcomes is equally important all aspects of educational development.
The following links provide examples and reflections on this process:
Next to having faculty grasp the importance of creating and using well defined learning outcomes aligning outcomes, activities and assessment is one of an instructional designers most challenging tasks. This task is often exacerbated if faculty have had difficulty creating effective learning outcomes because the course activities and assessment are directly related to the outcomes. The outcomes become the measuring stick for the activities and the assessment and if the outcomes are not specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely (SMART) then both the learning activities and the assessments will not align. If a learning outcomes requires higher order thinking skills like analysis or creation then the learning activity must be student-centred, active and dynamic in order to correspond with the outcome. A passive lecture or fill in the blank worksheet will not be the type of activity to move the learner into the deeper levels of learning that is achieved if they are tasked with making an analysis or in creating or developing a project. Similarly, using a multiple choice exam as an assessment tool in this instance will not provide an effective measure of deeper learning. Working through this process will also ensure that volume of work and rigour of assessment is neither too to heavy nor too light but corresponds to the activities and learning outcomes. The following image provides the conception perspective on the effective alignment:
Finding this alignment is one of the most important and rewarding components of the instructional design process and contributes significantly to the building of an effective learning environment.
The following links provide examples and reflections on this process:
Even though this development approach starts out with the broader perspective and I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of the holistic environment there is a tendency for people who are new to the process to get caught up with the pieces of the process and loose sight of the bigger picture.
It is not uncommon for faculty who get excited with a new active learning activity, or process to attempt to use their new favourite tool too often or in too many places. There is also a challenge with faculty who just want to add engagement or other active learning components to their existing course without taking into consideration all the other components.
It very important to help faculty to step back and consider the entire designed experience that starts with the learners current and potential needs, incorporates active and dynamic learning and aligns with clearly defined goal and outcomes. The key is to take the whole environment into account not just the smaller pieces or the classroom or campus but all aspects of the design if we hope to make the course integrated.
Perhaps one of the most effective ways for both the learner and the instructor to consider this level of course integration is to use a learning portfolio as a thread to connect all the course components or modules together.
The following links provide examples and reflections on this process:
