Last week during class we had a guest speaker teleconference in to give a lecture on the use of technology in education. The lecture had some interesting parts, but I felt that much of it was pedantic and outdated, and it sometimes felt that he didn't quite know that he was speaking to a room of people that are generally well versed in the magic of YouTube and the internet.

The professor made some interesting connections between the technologies that have been used in the past and their more contemporary counterparts, but largely it was an exploration of tools that have been around for many years and are widely known. I felt distracted during the lecture by his almost insincere excitement surrounding ideas like blogging as a pedagogical tool.

My favorite part of the lecture was his examples of work being done in the field, because it did show some unique implementation of the current technology.

In other news, the work on my project is going well. I am trying to clean up my prototype so that it is cleaner and clearer for the expo on Wednesday. I am a bit concerned that the prototype will really not be functional by the expo, because I simply don't have the time to build the back end and put in the time to design the learning activities, but I am hoping that the prototype as is will do for now.

The lit review, however, has been a bit more difficult. I am at home in Seattle right now, and getting information when I don't have the Stanford library handy has been a bit difficult. I have, however, gone onto the libraries site and grabbed about 30 sources that are oriented toward chronic unemployment solutions, vocational training, adult learning, and internet job searching. Some are scholarly journals, but most are books and government reports, so I hope that I can synthesize them into something readable in the few days after I get back.

Alright, time to get back to reading.

This past week was a great step, I feel, in my understanding and motivation for online learning environments. We all presented our Digital Artifact 2, which was to be our own ideas on the use of technology in learning for a underserved population. As an extension of my work in Digital Artifact 1, I created a product to be used by homeless adults to improve their job skills and get a job.

My project has a few parts to it, because there is a lot more to the need then simply providing training, although that is where it starts. The participants would go through a short assessment of their current skill level so that the training that they receive is relevant to their needs, and then start in on a custom training plan to meet their needs. This could be done similarly to the Edison Learning example, with modular training pieces that can be mixed, matched, and rearranged depending on the assessment.

The training and assessment pieces have built in modules that lead to the 3^rd part of the program, building a resume. Those pieces actually gather the critical information for the resume and put it in there for the participant. However, at this stage, the participant can edit and add to their resume as much as they’d like. This gives them a head start on a vital document that they may not have felt comfortable making on their own.

Finally, and probably the lynchpin in the plan, is that the project would partner with local businesses looking to hire, find their desired skill sets, and match potential applicants. The participants would have received training in interviewing skill, and this is their chance to use them. There is even the possibility that local governments or organizations that have an interest in getting homeless people employed could subsidize the wages of the people at these companies, further incentivizing their employment.

I am currently looking at a program in the spring called Launchpad at the d.school. It’d be an opportunity to take these ideas and concepts into fruition as a real company. I plan to redesign the prototype with a better demonstration of the andragogic function pieces, and use the event on Dec 2^nd to network for possible funders.

This may very well turn into my master’s project, I feel it has a lot of potential for growth and success, so I will do everything that I can to make the demonstration on the 2^nd effective.

This week’s discussion of learning theories was informative and very helpful for this class and other courses with learning elements, as it allows me to conceptualize the ideas that influence learning and design.

With that in mind, we took a chance to evaluate some online learning tools on the six principles and see how they faired.

My group evaluated Elluminate, an online collaboration tool for leader-led learning. The tool allows a teacher or educator to lead virtual lectures and discussions, push files and websites out to students’ computers, and accommodates students working with one another during the class. The tool succeeded in 5 or the 6 principles, but the design was lacking a bit. Many of the unimportant elements were very prominent, and some of the more important pieces were small or hard to find. Overall, the tool seemed like a good compliment to an online curriculum or a classroom looking to add electronic elements.

The other products that were evaluated seemed to suffer more from fundamental problems. For example, the site for the video series to combat bullying seemed difficult to navigate, and poorly utilized. The company seemingly did not put much effort into establishing it as a major advertising resource for the project.

Life has been crazy, and I’m still not sure how I’m going to pull off my 2^nd digital artifact in a little over a week.

Last week’s class was an interesting case study in how an e-learning project can get up and running, and the work that goes into designing an effective and successful one.

Edison Learning started with an idea on how an underserved population could better benefit with the use of technology – so right off the bat, they started with a problem in search of an answer. From there, it became clear that they’d need to make it flexible, and so the content was designed to be modular, which helped them to break into new markets with relatively little work. Finally, they found opportunities in the technology to change the way the information was presented, and even more importantly, how the students were evaluated on their learning. The evaluation process seemed as important as the content itself.

All of that made me think a lot about what my project for this class will be, and I’m still struggling a bit. I would like to stay with the idea of serving the homeless population with job training, and my biggest challenge is the “Condition” step of the ABCDs. Homeless people rarely own a computer to access the content, and their access to computers can be quite limited. However, setting up a specialized center with computers (as they did at the iSchool at UW in Seattle, WA) is costly (both in terms of money and time) and small-scale. I have considered access at libraries or other public resources, but many of those require an address, something that homeless people do not have by definition. I tried to contact the library about exceptions, but they have been unavailable, so that will be something that I follow up on.

After hearing about Edison’s program that uses state funds already set aside for their program and the materials that the student needs, I thought this may be an option (given enough funding) for my program too. However, these people may not have a place to safely store their computer, or even keep it from getting wet/damaged. For that matter, it may be the case that the computer is sold or traded, instead of used for the learning.

Additionally, because these people will be working independently, and learning is often done better as a collaborative process (as demonstrated through multiple examples, including the Edison Learning example), I will need to find a way to incorporate collaboration in the system itself.

Finally, I will need to make my program modular and adaptable to multiple skill levels. Some people may be entirely illiterate, while others may just need help on how to write a good resume. This is probably the biggest challenge, since it effects the fundamental way that content can be delivered effectively.

Finally, getting people onboard to use the system may be harder then simply making it free of cost from the participant. Many of the homeless people that I’ve seen videos of from my research are largely concerned with being hungry and cold – you can’t very well expect someone to want to learn to read or write a resume when those basic needs are not yet met. I may need to take this into consideration as part of my design, and provide some kind of environment that is more conducive to learning. At the very least, I would need to very effectively show how this can quickly and greatly benefit them in the search for a job and a life off of the street.

I am a bit concerned that I won’t be able to do this project justice in the short time frame that we have, but given these considerations, I will do my best.

Last week’s presentation of Digital Artifact number one was very interesting, and I thought it showed a good example of some of the work already going on to help underserved communities through technology.

My project was on the use of technology to help homeless adults become recognized and assisted with food and housing and, subsequently, assist them in gaining the skills to get a job. I had identified two services that help with visibility, and two that help with job training.

I was definitely most impressed by two presentations: the one of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, and the presentation on ADD/ADHD.

The presentation on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict was a video, well done and narrated by Jacob Klein. He covered some of the technologies used to facilitate communication between the two sides of the conflict, including a site that positions two videos side by side, to make each side’s position easily comparable to the other.

The second technology though, a game on how to solve the conflict, was even more intriguing. The game insisted that a two-state solution was the only acceptable option, and it was intended to get past a lot of the propaganda that had interrupted the process of peace for so long. The company even handed out free copies through the newspaper in the two countries.

The presentation on ADD/ADHD was a PowerPoint with narrated dialogue, and it used the idea of a journey through the daily life of a person with ADD/ADHD as a method to present the technological innovations that people of that community can use. Most surprising was that there was a belt that was intended to resolve some of the affects of the disorder because it corrected the physiological aspects that happen when ADD/ADHD take effect.

Overall, the presentations were both entertaining and informative, and I look forward to the 2^nd round in a couple weeks, when we’re designing our own.

Day 3, Fundamentaler

This week’s class covered some more systematic ways to look at designing technology for education, including the ADDIE method for design and evaluation and Bloom’s taxonomy.

The ADDIE method is a complement to the ABCD(E) method we’d learned earlier, as it covers the process of creating the instructional element itself. It goes as follows:

Assessment: You must assess the needs and the conditions – this is largely covered in the ABCD(E)s.
Design: The actual design of the product, as a result of your assessment.
Development: The production of your material.
Implementation: Putting your material into practice
Evaluation: Compile the results and determine the effectiveness of your material.

It’s very basic, but it’s a great outline to follow during the process of creating these things. I’ve done some of this in the past, I just didn’t know I was following these steps (and, sometimes, I wasn’t following all of them). In my HCI class this quarter, I will likely fall back on these steps when we’re producing our iPhone app, since that will follow the same lines, even though it’s not specifically for education.

Bloom’s taxonomy is largely helpful in the last step, the evaluation of the effectiveness in educating the participants of the training. Bloom split the dimensions of learning into three categories:

Cognitive: being able to reason with the material, knowing the concepts (ie I know that 2+2=4)
Effective: emotional learning, the attitude that a participant possesses about the material or the subject (I am good at math!)
Psycho-motor: the physical/motor skills that a participant has following the training. (I was so good at math that I became a pilot and I can land a plane)

Professor Kim argued that a fourth, Social Learning, could be added to talk about their ability to pass on the information to another person.

When a piece of training is evaluated on these concepts, rather than simply the stated objectives (which may, or may not, follow the same lines), you get a better idea on the entirety of it’s effectiveness. If a student is learning the psycho-motor and cognitive skills, but has little self-efficacy in the effective dimension, then the training may still not produce the desired result.

Using these, and the things we’ve talked about so far, we met in four groups to design and propose a learning solution for a given situation. I thought the activity was a bit sudden and I wasn’t entirely sure on what we were expected to do – whether he wanted just an ABCD analysis of the situation, or he wanted an actual product design, or even how much time we had to finish it. In the end, however, I think the activity was still helpful, as it allowed an application of these concepts while they were fresh.

We have our first artifact due in a couple days, so I am current researching and compiling resources and organizations that work with homeless adults to provide job skill training, and I look forward to presenting that to the class on Wednesday.

Day 2, fundamentals

Class today was a bit more on fundamental principles of web-based learning environments, but the concepts seemed to apply to practically any learning environment. Professor Kim suggested that successful learning environments take into account and excel in four primary categories:

1. Audience: You must understand, in detail, who it is that you’re designing for. This should be as specific as possible in order to make the material effective. Without a clear audience in mind, the material could wander off base, or more likely, simply not properly take into account the people for whom it is meant to effect in the first place.

2. Behaviour: What kind of behaviours are you looking to change, and specifically how. These could be formed as “’Audience’ will be able to…” statements in order to show what behavioural outcomes are expected as a result of the learning environment or material.

3. Condition: What physical, technological, and social conditions will your material be used it? For example, will there be electricity readily available? How fast will the internet connections be, if at all? What is the local view of technology, and what are the local uses of it already? All of these things could take a very well-designed piece of material and make it completely unusable if not taken into consideration.

4. Degree: This one hinges largely on the behaviours listed in step 2, but now it is time to add some quantified metrics to those in order to measure success. If the behaviour change desired was that the audience should be able to complete a rubik’s cube, then the metric applied in this step may be the amount of time it takes to complete that puzzle.

These are the ABCDs (clever, right?) of educational design, and I really appreciate the succinct clarity they have over basic design functions. I’m a bit frustrated at the seeming fluidity between some of them, because it seems like a certain statement could be classified as practically any of these four given different context. I think a good portion of that is just my mind, as it is learning, trying to conceptualize through putting everything in it’s own neat little box.

The other important part that I found out of lecture on Wednesday was the evaluation methods – cognitive, meta-cognitive, and attitudinal. When looking at how successful a program was, it is often the case that you can’t simply look at the raw material learned (cognitive), but that you must also evaluate the learner’s perception of their learning (meta-cognitive) and how they felt about the experience (attitudinal). The three together provide a much more complete picture of the effect that a piece of educational material had on one’s life, and a better platform for revisions to the program for future participants.

Here’s to week 3!

Initial impressions of the course

Coming into this course, I wasn't sure what to expect - would we be expected to program? Are we going to talk about technical specifics of the systems required to support web-based learning? What exactly is the essence of this subject anyhow?

Pleasantly, I was surprised to find that this quarter will be very involved in finding a way to better the world, as well as how to make money from this kind of work. I spent the majority of my undergrad concentrating on the former, so I'm excited to revisit those roots - but I have little experience in the latter, and that will be a big help to my understanding on the subject (as well as my student loan payments!)

The essence of web-based learning design is in bringing new experiences to new people. From those that live in an area or community of the world that don't have computer technology or internet access, to those living in large wealthy metropolitan areas with almost unlimited access, there are benefits in cost and the level of comprehension. Additionally, giving access to new information and resources to a group that previously had little or none can greatly improve their development, competitive edge in a world market of goods and labor, and their social capital for cultural understanding.

On the matter of profit in this work, the professor seemed to have a great model: make some money here, so you can use it here. Much of the work that is needed isn’t well-funded, and making those products happen depends on someone that can work for little or no pay. To do that, you’ve got to make the money elsewhere. I thought that the choice to use these skills in that way is perfect, I hope that I can work out a similar arrangement in the future.

I’m especially excited to see where this work can take adults – they are often looking to learn more complex and finessed information that I think web-based learning environments can suit and supplement well. The piece I like most about adult learning is that they’re often not starting from the beginning. With children, you often need to work on the fundamentals before you can build on that, but adults bring a wealth of experiences that you can use to build on. Even if those experiences aren’t a perfect match for the current topic, allowing them to use what they already know to do something new is the best way I’ve found anyone to get excited about learning.

I’m hoping to get more ideas for how web-based environments can be successful, and even more importantly, what NOT to do. I’m very aware of the tendency to in a technology-related field to use technology just because it’s cool and the new fad, not because it is actually helpful. In education, because each topic builds on the last progressively, if something is taught in a poorly-constructed way it can jeopardize the person’s future learning as well.

I’m excited to get started.