Exploring elearning pedagogy

Summary of week 15 reading

‘Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models’  Mayes and de Freitas.

Mayes and Freitas deconstruct the possible elearning approaches. It should start with the learning outcome intended, and then move to design or choose activities and assessment methods.

	Learning Outcomes	Design Principles	Pedagogy	Assessment
Associationist (Learning as activity)	Task analysis - Learning competencies	Organised activity, clear goals and feedback	Instructional. Simpler units build up knowledge. Learning hierarchies.	Knowledge or skill components
Cognitive (Learning as achieving understanding)	Meta cognitive – learning how to learn	Interactive environments for construction of understanding. Encourage experimentation/ support for reflection	Learning by Doing – relating to own context. Learner-centred. Interact with materials. Coaching/modelling; scaffolding; guided discovery; opportunity for reflection.	Performance, conceptual understanding
Situative (Learning as social practice)	Disciplinary practices	Participation in social practices of enquiry and learning. Development of identities as capable confident learners. Development of learning relationships	Wider Community. Building up set of knowledge (eg CPD)/ expertise Or Learning group-social context Or Individual relationships	Participation, practice and peer assessment

How does this compare to my experience? We certainly have elements of the associationist and the cognitive in our training. 'Learning by Doing' is an underpinning value of Scouting, and I have really considered how much we ask our volunteers to reflect on their knowledge. Each learning experience tries to put knowledge into a practical scenario, that relates to the roles that volunteers need to do. The assessment part is validation of that knowledge, by putting it into practice, which sometimes needs the help of a training adviser. When I think about how we construct the learning experiences, they are meant to be a guided tour, taking the learning objectives and creating a stimulating experience. Sometimes this involves demonstration - which is where the skills base comes in, but often it is about understanding or explaining things. Certainly where activity training comes in, this is about displaying competencies, but interesting, we also look at competencies in our trainer training. One would expect this to be more focused in the situative, professional skills, which is does have hints of, as through the trainer training people can build up skills that can be transfered across to professional body affiliation. Interestingly, one could say that all of our training is peer assessed,and that we are the community of learners, as we have volunteers training volunteers.

Learner Centred pedagogy Terry Mayes

In ‘Learner Centred pedagogy’ Terry Mayes looks at the need to recognise individual variances within the bigger picture. Is it possible to match pedagogy to individual ability? There are difficulties in determining if individual’s preferred style or what they really need. Also mismatching might be useful so that the learner experiences different learning styles and become stronger. Is it possible to use learning styles to encourage learners to think about their learning thereby increasing self-awareness and metacognition?Learner tracking can help with this, so that both learner and tutor get a better idea of ways of studying, but the learner decides it's worth. This could be an approach that makes learners question their styles and challenge the way they approach learning for their own self development.

As Mayes points out, matching pedagogy to individuals is a labour intensive action. Again, a principle we adopt is that learning is based of the needs of learners. This materialises as having a number of methods from which learners can chose from, so as Mayes suggests, isn't truely learner centred. However one of the things I have been exploring is how we address the different methods and how learners choose, trying to give some guidance for learners to make a more informed choice.

Student experiences of Technologies Conole et al
Here an interesting array of research has been conducted to highlight the changing nature of students engagement with technology in all aspects of the learning arena, from research to communication, processing data to preparing assignments. This is the kind of research which is particularly useful both before and after learning experiences and it offers some great insights into students' personal experiences. The choice of what technologies are used generally fall into those are easy to use, fast, effective, and useful for the task in hand. It also highlights some chararcteristics of learning activities.

Assimilative - reading information. This happens in many different ways and many different locations. My own experience is that I tend to print of reading where possible so that I can read on the train. . Forums I often read using my mobile, so that I can stay up to date with what people are saying. I also like to look around for other material, not suggested by the course notes, to contextualise and get a greater clarity around a subject.

Information handling tasks - Most students used word to help them write notes and summarise information. For me, I then add this to my blog - so that I have somewhere that helps to form narrative of my developing ideas. Within our learning activities, we are asked to process this to check out understanding.

Adaptive - using technology that models or simulates data. Although we haven't really experienced this, the environment simulation we used in the illuminate sessions, could be a good example (if it actually worked!)

Communicative - Often the students adopted their own communication methods, rather than using discussion.This is interesting, and I think this does depend on the study. So whereas these students might use MSN alot, as they also see each other in the face to face world, for us on H807, it is unlikely that we would email each other and communicate as informally through other routes.

Productive - using technology for the learning artefacts - assignments etc. Mostly these students used Word or PowerPoint, which in my experience are the toold that many people find easy to use, and I myself have used for preparing blogs and assignements.

Experiental - exploring and applying concepts which included practicing, applying undertanding etc (which will will be doing in Block 3). As highlighted early on in our forums, there is often a need to try out the things that have been learnt, which is especially true when the study relates to work based or situational practices.

Thinking and reflection - range of opportunites for students to manage their learning, with many using a blog as a main reflection tool.

Experience and activity - engaging in authentic learning experiences as well as being connected. The staying connected to what is going on is important, and harder when there are less interactions with others online. I wondered whetehr we have truely explored this within our forums. In the early weeks there was lots of activity and exploration, now it has slowed down alot.

Conversation and interaction - many of these were integral to the students' learning process, as by interacting with each other they could reach a better understanding. Certainly for us, it is an integral part of the colloborative elements of learning. Interaction gives you different opinions and choices and allows you to explore more.

The recommendations highlight a number of things that one might also want to consider when designing elearning experiences:

• take into account free content available, that will be used alongside the course material
• consider encouraging central repositories for resources to help the above
• flexibility in activities - so that students can decide how they interact
• clear idea of the social aspects, maybe using social software
• assessments need to clearly meet the intended learning outputs
• the ever increasingly use of mobile devices need to be considered, it is appropriate and have we designed to support this medium
• centralised systems need to be easy to use

Conole, G., de Laat, M., Dillon, T. and Darby, J. (2006) Learner XP project – Student experiences of technologies, Final Report [online], Bristol, The Joint Information Systems Committee.

Mayes, T. (2004) ‘Learner-centred pedagogy: individual differences between learners’ [online], Bristol, The Joint Information Systems Committee,

Mayes, T. and de Freitas, S. (2004) ‘Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models’ [online], Bristol, The Joint Information Systems Committee