Audio/Video Podcast: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners

Hi again all!

I came to the last big assignment for our Integrating Technology into Curriculum class with great trepidation.  I originally took this class because technology is one of my weaker areas and I would REALLY like to improve in it.  When I looked at the syllabus my heart dropped into my stomach and my knees began to shake...an audio/video podcast was way above my limited ability.  But guess what...I was wrong!  I actually made a video, spliced two recordings together and edited an original twenty-seven-minute interview down to eleven minutes.  I even managed to get some "slides" integrated into it.  Then after all that was done, I almost cried because the file was too large to upload to my institution website.  A little investigating on the web and I found an app that compressed it.  And, Walah, I had actually completed an assignment that I had originally thought was beyond me!  To say I was proud of myself would be an understatement.  For those who can get behind the firewall of the university. here is the link to my interview with Mr. Crisler on integrating technology into curriculum.  I want to start with my own personal pros and cons on audio/video podcasts for learning.

I see many more pros with this project than cons.  This project made me stretch my limitations in two ways.  First, the technology of making a video podcast was totally foreign to me.  And secondly, recording myself for others to see made me extremely nervous.  Now that I have actually done it though, I would like to do it again.  I think with more time and practice, I can continue to improve.  I not only learned from the process, I learned from my interviewee.  Mr. Crisler has a wealth of practical knowledge in instructing, curriculum, use of technology in distance learning, and adult learning strategies.  He retired from the military where he not only became the subject matter expert in his areas but learned pedagogy and andragogical concepts.  He made a statement that really hit home, just because a technology is "shiny and new" does not mean it has a use as a teaching tool.  His concepts really reminded me of the TPACK model (technological, pedagogical, content, knowledge) that I helped research for my Wiki project.  Each area needs to intertwine within the context of the course to be an effective use of the technology.

I also found the following concept very similar to TPACK in the article written by Hobbs and Coiro,(2016) Everyone Learns from Everyone: Collaborative and Interdisciplinary Professional Development in Digital Literacy.

Digital Literacy Curriculum Framework

(Hobbs & Coiro, 2016)

In addition to learning the technology of an audio/video podcast.  I learned a great deal from the subject of my interview.  Without prompting, he hit on concepts of adult learning that I have learned throughout my master's program.  Listening to him tie them all together validates what I have learned for the last two years.  As far as the cons go...  The frustration level was high when trying to find good editing software for a very amateur videographer (me).  Then trying to make sure the assignment fit the length requested but still keeping all the "meat" of the interview was another challenge.  All this I overcame though (after five different editing software downloads).  And, I can truly say in hindsight I enjoyed the experience.

King and Cox (2011) devote several chapters in The Professor's Guide to Taming Technology to teaching with and using digital media in adult learning.  In Chapter five, they mention some pros and cons.  "Such projects can be designed as capstone projects that demonstrate not only the students' understanding of the course content but also its application to real-life situations (p.72)."   They further go on to say audio/video podcasts give students a greater chance to synthesize learning, dig more into research, and demonstrate transfer of learning.  And in the case of my project.  I was able to collaborate with someone outside of my class see how what I have been learning is applied to real-world situations.  Hobbs and Coiro (2016) explored curriculum professional development classes attended by teachers.  They noted how by pairing up the attendees, they were able to collaborate and approach the curriculum development by using the "flower model" shown above: context, purpose, content, pedagogy, assessment, and task or activity all connect.  One set of teachers from two different schools had their students create short video tutorials on how to use their cell phones for educational purposes, not just as social tools.  The students then shared the videos with students from the other school allowing them to extend their audience.  The con side is similar to Wikis and blogs.  There is a lack of privacy unless completed behind firewalls.  If set up behind firewalls, the institution must have the infrastructure to handle the large files.  Additionally, students must have the tools and apps to create the product.   Lastly, Instructors must create valid rubrics to accurately set expectations for the podcasts and grading standards.  

For a project I dreaded so much, it turned into being something I would do again.  In an article that a fellow student shared, MacPhail (2019) mentions how much writing and work is still put into these projects.  Just because I did not write a 15-page paper, does not mean I did not write and script my part of the project.  Then the time it took to edit the final product, a paper may have been easier.  But, I really think I have enjoyed doing it this way more.

King, K. P.. & Cox, T. D. (2011). The professor’s guide to taming technology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Hobbs, R., & Coiro, J. (2016). Everyone learns from everyone: Collaborative and interdisciplinary professional development in digital literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy: A Journal from the International Reading Association., 59(6), 623.  Retrieved from https://ila-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.er.lib.k-state.edu/doi/full/10.1002/jaal.502?sid=vendor%3Adatabase

MacPhail, T. (2019, April 9). Tell me a smart story: On podcasts, videos, and websites as writing assignments. Retrieved from https://chroniclevitae.com/news/2183-tell-me-a-smart-story-on-podcasts-videos-and-websites-as-writing-assignments?cid=VTEVPMSED1

Links to an external site.

TPACK.Org Image retrieved from https://matt-koehler.com/tpack2/tpack-explained/Links to an external site.

Wikis for Collaborative Learning, Knowledge Construction, Critical Thinking, and Contextual Application

Hi again,

During our class we have had a discussion on whether Wikis are actually collaborative or not.  My take is they are a collaborative tool that can be used in collaboration with other tools, i.e. discussion boards, texting, email, etc.  The tool itself though allows for all members to share their thoughts on the project and inject as much or as little as they see fit.  As I shared in the pros and cons, each person gets out of the project what they put into it.  Below is what I believe could be a good use of a Wiki in a classroom setting.

Several months ago, in a previous class, I developed a class for Government Administration and Law.  I had not originally thought about putting a Wiki into the course design.   But, after reading King and Cox (2011) this week, I think a Wiki would be a great collaborative tool for students to use in preparing for the final debate project already included.   The Wiki could add to the application of Bloom’s Interpersonal learning domain (p. 53).  Not only do King and Cox support the use of Wikis but Carroll, Wu, Shih, and Zheng (2016) found that students who used a Wiki-like program called Piazza (Piazza.com) felt the online discussion helped them think about issues more critically.  Piazza is an “online learning infrastructure intended to enable collaborative development of high-quality question-answer pairs through a sophisticated user interface, functionally similar to that of Wikipedia…(p. 139)”  Carroll et al. reported that students felt the collaboration on Piazza allowed face-to-face discussions to be more interactive and fast-paced.  Additionally, students felt more motivated to find additional sources to strengthen their arguments (p. 145-6).  Students felt they garnered a more complete picture of the problem by hearing not only the author’s views but the many differing views of their classmates (p. 146).   These are precisely the type of outcomes I would be looking for in the debates of the class I previously put together.  So, below is a revamped version of how I would like the 8-week training plan to look.

Government Administration and Law (Proposed New Course)

This course explores how the legislative branch of government fits into the overall law-making process.  Learners will look back briefly at the history of legislation starting in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Learners will learn the steps by which a bill passes back and forth in the legislative branch before making its way to the executive branch to be signed into law.  This course will not only cover the mechanics of lawmaking but explore some of the nuances and political influences that determine whether a bill even makes it out of committee, to begin with.  By the end of the course, the learner will know how the political parties influence bills that are made into law. Learners will get the chance to try to pass "their" bill through to law in the classroom. This course bridges from the factual lawmaking to the metacognitive knowledge of how politics affects the law and the learner.  This course would assist in preparing the learner for later political courses and/or a political internship.

Target Audience –  The learners would vary anywhere from newly graduated high school seniors to mature adults wanting to learn more.  I believe this course could attract learners from very diverse backgrounds, from students wanting to go into government law, to civil rights activists, to immigrants wanting to learn more about the country.  This will make the introduction phase of the course especially important to see what background each person brings to the class

Learning Objectives and Outcomes - By the end of the course, learners will be able to:

1.       Explain the scope of the legislative branch's role in making a bill into law.

2.       Compare and contrast the fundamental platforms of political parties

3.       Critique how political views of legislators affect the passage of laws (never passed, passed with major revision or passed relatively unchanged).

4.       Construct a mock bill in committee, pass it through the legislature, and bring it to the President for signature, identifying possible roadblocks and potential "fixes" to get the bill passed.

5.       Reflect on how a recent law affected the learner and how he/she might have worked on the bill.

Why Use the Wiki – The Wiki would be used during Learning Objective 4.  The project originally called for forming teams with classroom collaboration and ending in a debate.  The original course was designed as a full semester course.  By shortening it to 8 weeks, students will have to collaborate outside of class and a Wiki space makes sense for this particular project.

Learning Objective 4 - Construct a mock bill in committee, pass it through the legislature, and bring it to the President for signature, identifying possible roadblocks and potential "fixes" to get the bill passed.  This objective is critical to the course and will use Research/Wiki/Role Play/Critical Debate to reach it.  Work will start in week three.  Twenty minutes at the end of each class will be dedicated to face-to-face collaboration and strategic question and answer sessions about the project. 

Role Play/Modified Critical Debate -  Two current semi-controversial topics will be chosen.  Students will be broken into four committees to research and write a bill to bring to the Congressional floor for debate.  Once the topics are chosen, students will choose which topic most interest them and choose the conservative view or liberal view.  The students will then be assigned to join the committee of their opposing view.  Each "committee" will author a bill and determine their strategy for getting it passed.  (The actual verbiage of the bill is not the important part to the outcome, it is the critical thinking that goes into how the students research their arguments and plan to bring it before the floor and get it passed).  Both "committees" will bring their bill to the floor and present it to the floor in a debate.  At the end of both presentations, the "floor" (whole class) will vote. 

Timeline - Groups will be chosen at week three.  Each group will be assigned a Wiki page with their topic and their viewpoint.  After small groups are chosen, the last twenty minutes of each class will be used for in-class bill research/composition/debate preparation.  This will be a time for students to face-to-face collaborate and ask any questions needed of the teacher.  Students will use the Wikis to complete their research arguments and write their bill/debate strategy.  The instructor will give feedback on research arguments after week five of class.  Students will have between week five and seven to finish writing their bill to present.  The debates will be presented in class seven.  In the last class, week eight, the bills will be discussed and the process will be reflected upon to hypothesize what would happen to the bills in real life after the votes (killed, returned to committee for rework, forwarded to the Senate and on to the President, etc.)

This activity will allow students to take all the information they have learned about committees, bills, legislative procedures, and debate, and put it in to practice.  Students will be able to demonstrate what they have learned throughout the class in an intellectual/dialytic and physical sense.

How the Wiki will be used – The Wiki will be used as the collaborative tool the group members use to write the research on their topic.  The wiki will be the written collaboration of information for the project.  Each group will have a work page and final project page.  The final project will be where they will write their “bill” to be presented for debate.  Although students will be assigned to one view on the topic, they can create links to other pages that will point/counterpoint what they think the other team’s views may be. 

Not every student has exceptional oration/debate skills, the Wiki will help the instructor assess how well the group could work as a team, how well students learned to think critically about a view that was not originally their own (Brookfield, 2012b), and how well they applied the knowledge they gained in the course to the problem at hand.  The debate, being the end product of the collaboration, will be a tangible mirror to the work that was put into the collaboration on the project.

References

Brookfield, S (2012b) Teaching for critical thinking: Tools and techniques to help students question their assumptions.  San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass

Carroll, J. M., Wu, Y., Shih, P. C., & Zheng, S. (2016). Re-appropriating a question/answer system to support dialectical constructivist learning activity. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(1), 137-156. Retrieved from doi:http://dx.doi.org.er.lib.k-state.edu/10.1007/s11423-015-9405-6

King, K. P. & Cox, T. D. (2011).  The professor’s guide to taming technology: Leveraging digital media, Web 2.0 and more for learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.

Creative Commons Image retrieved from https://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/photos/bb28846d-b778-486f-9241-68b058963b66

Wikis: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners

Hi everyone!   

Here I am again to give my "two cents" about another excellent adult learning tool...the Wiki. The word wiki comes from the word "wikiwiki" and literally means quick in Hawaiian (King & Cox, 2011).  A Wiki, for those who may not be as familiar, is a website that allows anyone (or almost anyone if the site has restrictions) to add, remove, or edit available content (King & Cox, 2011).   Arguably, the most famous is Wikipedia.  There are fans of Wikis and opposers.

Wiki Pros  

- Not only is it the first one I mention, but it is also the number one reason I see for using Wikis - they are a great collaborative tool for small group projects.  (Hazari & Moreland, 2009) (King & Cox, 2011) (Park, Crocker, Nussey, Springate, & Hutchings, 2010), (West & West, 2009)
- Students learn as much from each other as they do from the research.
- I have used wikis for both face-to-face classes and distance learning classes.  The ability to work synchronously and asynchronously lends itself well to both modalities. (Hazari & Moreland, 2010)
-Wikis can also be used in conjunction with other learning tools like discussion boards.  (Hazari & Moreland, 2010)
- Students have different learning style preferences, wikis give students the freedom to be creative or sequential on their page, to be more reflective or active, or sensing or intuitive.  When students work together they can bring their strengths to the project. (Park et al, 2010).
- Wikis "open the door to brainstorming, group problem solving, critical evaluations, synthesis, idea refinement, and group consensus (West & West, 2009, p. 5)."
- Most Wiki programs are intuitive to learn to use and free or almost free (King & Cox, 2011).
- Students get out of the project what they put into it.

Wiki Cons  

- Technology does not always work correctly (Park et al., 2010).
- Group work is not always completed equitably amongst students. (Park et al., 2010, p. 317)
- When Wikis are posted to the web, there is a hidden audience to an editable document (King & Cox 2011, p. 123).
- Wiki users have a collective perspective, so have a collective bias (King & Cox, 2011, p. 123).  Most higher education institutes will not allow you to use a wiki as a reference source and now they are asking a student to create one as a source of collaborative knowledge?
- Students get out of the project what they put into it.

Wikis can be a great collaborative learning tool with caveats.  An instructor needs to know how to guide the students in startup and through technical issues.  It does not need to be the only learning tool, not everyone learns well in groups.  And, feedback is important, as it is in any learning tool.

In my experience with Wikis both face-to-face and online, my group partners have always assisted and did their part.  Everyone used their strengths and the products created were better than what would have been created by an individual.  I personally learned from my own research and my partners.  Communication is key to the learning process.  Without it, it is just a document that several people put information on.  What has been your experience?

References

Hazari, S., North, A., & Moreland, D. (2009). Investigating pedagogical value of Wiki technology. Journal of information systems education. 20(2).

King, K. & Cox T. D. (2011). The professor's guide to taming technology: Leveraging digital media, web 2.0, and more for learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc.

Park, C. L., Crocker, C., Nussey, J., Springate, J., & Hutchings, D. (2010). Evaluation of a teaching tool--wiki--in online graduate education. Journal of Information Systems Education, 21(3), 313-321. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/docview/815957876?accountid=11789.

West, J. A., & West M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=553635">Gerd Altmann</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=553635">Pixabay</a>

Blogging: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners

King and Cox (2011, p. 91) stated, "Knowles asserted that adults have a deeply embedded need to be self-directing through learning that addresses real-life problems or situations encountered..."  I believe blogging could be one of the tools used in this learning.  Over the past week, I have read quite a few articles on what blogging is, how to create one, and how it can be used as a tool in a learning environment.  I have read some of the pros and cons. But, I think I can see some real benefits to using it as a teaching/learning tool.  With the benefits outweighing the disadvantages, I think I would like to use a blog as an instructor.

Blogs allow a student to be creative but within the confines of realizing instructors, peers, and strangers will be reading the posts.  Jo Ann Oravec (2002) mentions that blogs can empower students to become more analytical and better critical thinkers.  They will open up with their perspectives on the topics presented knowing others will be reading it.  Blogging can assist English as a Second Language (ESL) students to practice their skills with an audience outside of the school environment.  Vance Stevens in coordination with some teachers from Venezuela, Argentina, and Slovenia conducted an education study using blogs for ESL students called Writingmatrix.  Students from these countries at the directions of their teachers blogged and responded to blogs in English using the tag writingmatrix to track each others' blogs.  Although it started slow, the blogging picked up and was considered a success.  Students were not only able to practice their English, but they also practiced learning about other cultures and learned more technology skills in the process.  I have found a few of the blogs still are online today.

There are a few problems that must be overcome with using blogs as an educational tool.  Oravec (2002) references that fact that weblinks become "dead" over time.  This is one of the reasons I have her referenced here and not linked.  I could not find a public link to the below-referenced article.  Another drawback of using blogs for educational purposes is privacy.  Blogs are public.  They are public because that is their use, to be a searchable information log.  Shelbie Witte (2007) and her school's administrators found a way around this by using the school's network.  Orevac (2002) also warns that instructors must address concerns of the appropriateness of posts with their student before starting a project.   Sharing information in a digital age will always garner supporters and detractors.
 
Using blogs for information sharing is the essence of continuing the learning experience.  With the ability of back and forth communication and the knowledge that the information is public, students should want to post quality, insightful writings.  This increases the knowledge for everyone.

King, K. & Cox T. D. (2011). The professor's guide to taming technology: Leveraging digital media, web 2.0, and more for learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc.

Oravec, J.A. (2002). Bookmarking the world: Weblog applications in education. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45(7), 616-621

Witte, S.  (2007). That's online writing, not boring school writing: Writing with blogs and the Talkback Project. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51(2), 92-96.