Sansblogue

For some people e-mail as well as offering the chance to think before "speaking" also offers a sense of "presence" (Photo by janetmck)

In this post I want to move beyond the earlier one “How’s my presence?” where I argued that presence is not a binary state, but a graduated one. We can be more or less present. Here I will summarise briefly some fascinating research by Steve Wheeler at the University of Plymouth, make some suggestions arising out of my understanding of his work, and so prerpare for discussing a course I am preparing and teaching in (a) future post(s).

Wheeler, Steve. “Creating Social Presence in Digital Learning Environments: A Presence of Mind?.” In Learning Technologies 2005 Conference: Combined Presence. Queensland, 2005. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.99.7721&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

Wheeler investigated 305 first year education students (272 females and 33 males so more women than would be typical in theology classes) most were mature students with full-time jobs, with a mean age of about 40. So apart from the gender imbalance not unlike the “distance students in my classes. They completed two sets of questionnaires, at the start of their studies and 6-9 months later.

Photo by timparkinson

The real surprise, it should not have been – with the usual 20/20 hindsight it makes good sense, was that students with different approaches to learning showed striking differences in their perceptions of “presence” in differing media. So autonomous and tenacious students had strikingly different perceptions and responses to face to face learning. Autonomous students “neither need nor experience a great deal of social presence” in this setting (p.6), while tenacious students do experience high levels. For e-mail the results showed similar tendencies. Curiously for telephone these figures tended to reverse, with autonomous students experiencing presence and preferring this medium. He speculates that this difference reflects an autonomous student’s need to feel in control of the process (student initiated telephone call).

At the least this means that different students will perceive “presence” differently with different mixes of media, and therefore a course that uses varied media will be more likely to promote a feeling of participation across any varied group of students.

All present and correct? photo by Ed Yourdon

When we discuss flexible learning (we call it “distance” but many of the students live near the college but become “distance students” in order to study at flexible times) many of my colleagues worry because theology is a discipline that requires personal engagement and distance students “inevitably” do not get that, and so also inevitably receive a second rate formation. I think my colleagues are wrong.

[Before I get into that, though, just a note that this view often means that people are willing to "try harder" - as the old Avis ads used to say, "we're number two so we try harder"!]

Back to the issues of personal engagement: the discussion usually ends up focused on “presence”.  On the view I am critiquing, presence is a binary concept, either someone is present or they are absent. In education the model of this view is the school register.

But is it true? Take the example of two people in the same room. They can be more or less present to each other. Imagine me sitting on the couch typing on a laptop, perhaps writing this post, Barbara is sitting at the desk playing Scrabble with our son in the Isle of Man. despite the distance he is more present to her at that moment than I. Unless I attract her attention. A casual remark in such a situation may well elicit a response, but often only a half aware response, like the “Uh Huh” with which I responded to much of the catalogue of their day that preceded this domestic scene. “Uh huh” indicated less than full attention on the account of the things various people said in an examiners meeting she attended. On the other hand another remark may get through and elicit full attention, and suddenly we are fully present to each other. Presence is not binary but a variable (and, at least conceivably) measurable quantity.

This everyday recognition has significance for flexible teaching, if presence is not binary, then “distance students” are not inevitably disadvantaged, even in this area!

Ebbinghaus forgetting curve from Wikipedia

We’ve known since the earliest memory experiments (or more personally, I’ve known since the first weeks of my first Psychology course) that left to themselves memories of teaching wither fast. While the shallow “forgetting curves” at the top do not look too bad, the typical case is nearer the bottom one. In bad cases 50% is lost in half an hour. Which would mean in a three hour class at Carey very little of the “content” would stick unaided to the end of the lesson time :(

There are lots of ways students can improve this, basically by either repeating the material, or better still by using it. Ideas and information that are used by worked on them or with them get remembered :)

Donald Clark has a post 10 techniques to massively increase retention (HT Jane Hart) which lists three of these, and also seven more things that teachers can do to help. I’m not sure all his ten are workable in my setting, so I’m selecting, and in one or two cases improving ;)

For students:

• blogging your courses: this has all the benefits of getting you to put the key ideas and information in your own words (see “take notes” below) it may also add interaction with others – not least potentially your teacher who may correct misunderstandings ;)
• take notes: Carey provides copious notes to students, we produce these books as replacement lectures for distant students, but give them to everyone – this helps ensure only “good” students remember the contents because most are not noting the ideas and information in their own words :(
• use loo summaries: summarise the material from each week onto one sheet of paper, keep this in the loo, there you will have peace, and enough time to cast your eye quickly over the summary every day, brilliant for memorising.

For teachers:

• repeat yourself: ideally do this less as you go along, though to some degree this is necessary, but do use the “tell them what you’ll tell them”, then “tell them”, finally “tell them what you told them” approach, and then summarise last week’s class before starting this week
• record the class: this allows even students to run over the material again (or at least the bits they need to). Even those who are poor notetakers (as I was) or too lazy to take notes (as most people are given the chance – like Carey’s big blue course books). It is easy to do, I used to use an MP3 player on the lecturn, now I use my phone (the noise reduction technology helps make a clearer recording). The only disadvantage of the phone is it records as AMR (a highly compressed format, that needs Quicktime to play) but I can just drag that to the Miksoft Media Converter and it makes an MP3…
• make students process the ideas: set assignments, or in class exercises, or online discussions… that force students to engage with the material, reuse it, do something new with it… that way they will forget less.

Let me end by admitting, I know I am not good at this, that’s why I have prepared this post – maybe this time I won’t forget, but will actually use this information ;)

Still from the Execration Texts video

Robert Cargill has been making interesting use of YouTube. Basically it seems (I am judging by the videos, I have not asked him) he videos class sessions (with the screen as well as the lecturer in shot) then later extracts interesting short focused segments of few minutes on a topic. As I write the most recent were on the Gihon Spring and the Triumphal Entry of Jesus and the Execration Texts and Jerusalem. He has also, as the screenshot on the right shows added “annotations” in YouTube which provide concise explanations of terms used and other technical matters.

I think both these two things make his videos more useful than the average recorded class:

• their short length and focus: means they offer people a manageable chunk that is on the topic they are interested in, not merely a record of a class – that is, you or I could point our students to one of these for a quick fix on their topic
• the annotations: make the videos more useful for both his own students revising, and for your or mine looking for a noddy guide

I’d love to try this, it seems like the next step up from my current audio recordings (for my students) and 5minuteBible podcasts (for the rest of the world). More work, but potentially richer (than the audio) and more reusable (than the class recordings).

HT: Jim West.

I am reposting this, because it has had an excellent comment added today :)

Photo by Hari Bilalic

Another teacher fires a round in the war against laptops in class “Computers in the Classroom…Not All They’re Cracked Up to Be?” Is this a “Dog Bites Man” headline, or what? R. Scott Clark talks sense about the fact that students who make handwritten notes are likely to do better than those who try to typewrite a transcription of the lecture. Students and other profs chime in to complain about the clacking noise… yada, yada, yada…

BUT, the whole conversation is again so wrong. The “lecture” should not ne something you can, or would want to transcribe! Think about it, if it is transcribable why not just buy the book, a $20 paperback costs far less per student than a teacher and you can read it when you want – and you can choose a “better” teacher ;-) The lecture as a means to transfer information and ideas (as data) is inefficient and inconvenient, compared to print. Use the “lecture” time to do more, add value, get students engaging with the ideas and information and long term they will learn more.

If one dictates a “lecture”, and students write a transcription (or even – though this is much better – makes selected notes) by hand or on a laptop then the teacher was replaced by technology over 500 years back! When Herr Gutenberg invented moveable type he made the printed book cheap – why take lecture notes, if the teacher just “lectures” save travel-time, boycott the class and buy the book….

HT to Joe Fleener