Session Information
06 SES 06, Teacher Education and Digital Media
Paper Session
Contribution
This research builds upon a study by Normand and Keatch (2007), into the efficacy of discussion fora in promoting and enabling collaboration amongst participants on an innovative online professional development programme for college lecturers delivered by the University of Dundee (Teaching Qualification (Further Education) or TQ(FE)).
The tenets of Social Constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) are fundamental in the design of the TQ(FE) programme’s VLE, which is provided via the Blackboard™ platform. Learners are encouraged to engage in peer discussion, within an online community of learning via a blog, an ideal environment for supporting social learning (Britain and Liber, 1999). It is the authors’ view that the social conditions in which learning takes place are essential and that learning take place on a personal cognitive basis tempered by social negotiations (Wenger, 1999; Paschler and Daly, 2009).
Like Davidson and Goldberg (2009:39), the authors argue that higher education can be envisioned ‘as part of a continuum with... the collaborative, participatory, networked engagements that our students participate in online today’. As busy practising lecturers themselves, TQ(FE) participants have the opportunity on the programme to improve their media fluency and introduce learning tools such as blogs into their own classrooms.
The potential for ICT to revolutionise learning and teaching is recognised in a wide range of European policies and initiatives as pertinently summed up here: ‘A particular effort is called for on pedagogy, to develop the innovative teaching and learning tools made possible by ICT... It can empower learners in new ways. It can facilitate learning-by-doing, inquiry learning, problem solving strategies, creativity, and complex decision-taking and other competencies for innovation’ (EC, 2008). The notion of ICT transforming education has become somewhat prevalent in European culture today; studies such as this, into the efficacy of social networking tools in the field of adult professional education will help to harness the potential of these tools to play a definitive part in the prosperity of the knowledge economy.
The current study charts the progress of efforts to involve programme participants in online collaboration and professional dialogue since the initial study. Navigation within the VLE has been hampered at University of Dundee due to problems arising from the recent upgrade to version 9 and the authors decided to provide an alternative blog, outside the Blackboard™ system, in order to investigate the possibility that a more easily accessible blog would improve frequency – and, importantly, the intellectual activity - of participants on the blog.
The key research questions are as follows:
(1) Why do so many participants not take advantage of the opportunity offered via the blog(s) to engage in programme/practice-related discourse with their peers?
(2) How does this relate to ‘learner characteristics’, (Prinsen et al (2007) and ‘self regulated learning skills’, Wang and Lin (2007)?
(3) Given the well-documented learning advantages of social interaction, how can educators best encourage learners (in this case adult professional educators) to make best use of this opportunity?
(4) Would a blog external to the Blackboard™ environment attract more interest and productive participation?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anderson P. (2007) What is Web 2.0? Ideas, Technologies and Implications for Education, JISC Report. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/ tsw0701b.pdf Accessed 10.01.10 Britain, S. & Liber, O. (1999) A Framework for Pedagogical Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments, JSC Technology Applications Programme, Report: 41 Council of the European Union (2008) The May 2008 European Council conclusions on promoting creativity and innovation http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc/vocational/council08_en.pdf Accessed 15.01.10 Danacher, P.A., Hickey, A., Brown, A., Conway, J.M. (2007) Exploring elements for creating an online community of learners within a distance education course at the University of Southern Queensland. In Luppicini, R. Ed. Online Learning Communities. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing Davidson, C.N., and Goldberg, D.T. (2009) The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. Cambridge, Mass: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hemmi, A., Bayne, S. and Land, R. (2009) The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in Higher Education. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 25(1): 19-30 Normand, C. and Keatch, B. (2007) New on-line teaching qualification for college lecturers: An evaluation. In Hall, N. and Kumpulainen, K. Eds. Journal of the European Teacher Education Network (JETEN). Greenwich: University of Greenwich and ETEN Paschler, N., and Daly, C. (2009) Narrative and learning with Web 2 technologies: towards a research agenda. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 25(1): 6-18 Prinsen, F., Volman, M. L. L. and Terwel, J. (2007) The influence of learner characteristics on degree and type of participation in a CSCL environment. British Journal of Educational Technology. 18(6): 1037-1055 Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press Wang, S.L. and Lin, S. S. J. (2007) The application of social cognitive theory to web based learning through NetPorts. British Journal of Educational Technology. 38(4): 600-612 Wenger, E. (1999) Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.