Learning styles in workstation room

[ElizabethECharl]

This is my initial thoughts on this topic

(1) Reflect on whether you accommodate these learning styles in your teaching practice. Do the technologies you use help you achieve this? If so, how? Or do they hinder it?

Quite a lot of my teaching is undertaken in a workstation room so all students tend to participate by working on PCs, as the sessions are on using databases to access licensed content.  The numbers of databases that are mobile compatible are increasing but the first introduction to these resources for our learners is via the PC. In examining this against the Kolb’s learning cycle and learning style I would say that the use of PCs allows me to achieve this.  I have access to classroom software that allows me to see what learners are doing if they have a problem or to take control of their PC to point them in the right direction. I do however prefer to move around and I tend to teach amongst rather than in front of the whole class. The individual learner may start in any of the quadrants of the learning cycle and during the session move backwards and forwards or jump from one to the other depending on their previous experience and how quickly they process what is required and how it can be adapted for their own personal use.

Diverging
– Introduction to the database to familiarise themselves with the layout/navigation is given
– A demonstration of how to undertake a basic search is given

Assimilating
– An explanation of how to refine search results and make use of advanced features is given
– A demonstration of how to undertake an advanced search is given.

Converging
– A practice search exercise is given and learners undertake this
– Any individual’s issues or questions are answered following the practice exercise
– Clarification is given and common points raised are shared with the whole class

Accommodating
– They are asked to carry out a search for resources they need for any essay or coursework, using the tips shown
– Any individual’s issues or questions are answered in light of applying this to a ‘real’ search

Although I have deliniated these as being separate and sequential it will be different for each individual and they may move between these states in random fashion based on their previous learning experience.

(2) What other types of technology works well with activities in these quadrants? For example, where do classroom clickers (mentioned in the Eric Mazur story in Week 1) belong? What about social media?

Diverging & Assimilating:

–   Clickers, mobile phones and/or tablets for interactive response in lectures:  get learners to vote for what they think the outcome will be multiple choice/suggestions as to what the outcome will be; or check understanding or whether I need to reiterate/clarify a particular point.

–   Lecture capture: could be used to capture the session for learners to review or if not able to attend at the given time.

Converging & Accommodating (with some elements of Diverging & Assimilating):

–    Web-conferencing: can be used alongside the delivery of the training session for those who were not able to come to the campus for the session

–    Social media:  can be used to get questions/feedback from learners during the session

–    Google drive/doc: to get feedback/questions from individuals, collaborative work

–    Learning objects (such as Xerte): produced to cover search skills in bite-sizes, could also include exercises (to be undertaken in real-time) and feedback questionnaire

[philtubman]

Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for this post describing your practice in such detail. I run several ‘workshop’ type sessions too (in using Moodle) and it certainly helps to give each participant the means to actively explore on their own (using 1 PC each). I find this difficult in some ways because the amount of freedom that is given to each person in terms of what they can do ‘stretches’ my capability to keep the lesson on plot, and also to answer every question.

It is undoubtedly useful though to let others learn through their own inquiries though, so i usually do structured exercises, which keep the interest level up whilst I am demonstrating, and then have a ‘free for all’ half hour when the ‘content’ has been delivered, and partipants can choose what they want to look further into. I am also lucky enough to have some support from our fantastic student eLearning Assistants, who are all Moodle-pros, which helps massively.

It makes me think a couple of things, when I examine that learning environment though:

1 – could I do this by ‘flat’ lecture capture alone? (ie just a video) – absolutely not, as most learning occurs by answering individual questions.

1a – could this be achieved by lecture capture + use of the public note taking channel on most LC systems (i.e. time-based asynchronous discussion) = possible, and worth exploring as an alternative to multiple f2f lessons. It would not engage those users for whom FEAR is the biggest challenge (FEAR of writing something wrong, FEAR as in needs lots of hand holding)

2 – how would this work on Adobe Connect or other system = would certainly ‘reach out’ to more users, but issues of 1a would still be there – some ppl just want their actual, not virtual, hand holding 🙂

3 – Clickers – not too relevant unless there are lots of learners in a class (more than a ‘show of hands’)

4 – Social Media use for community of practice building – this is not something I have tried at all, but I can see how it might work – participants to tweet their questions, and peers to ‘tweet’ the answers. Moderators to ensure no disinformation is getting out and gathering traction.

—- I like this approach (4) because it is taking on-board the questions, inquiry based learning, 1-1/f2f elements, making them ‘public’ and expanding the Community of Practice, possibly beyond the borders of the institution.

 

I cannot see any of the above REALLY working for me, today, in my practice, though, because the EXPECTATION of staff training is that they will see a ‘sage’ who will ‘deliver’ the most appropriate content for them. And that is a culture issue, that is strongly related to 1a, imho.

[James Kerr]

When I have taught introductory computer science courses to undergraduate students, regardless of their year, there seems to be an expectation of being spoon-fed the content, presumably because it is an intro-level course.  There is little exploration or self-discovery, but much “will this be on the exam”.  To help counter this, I have utilized exploration-based activities, similar to a web quest or scavenger hunt, but to exercise the students’ ability to explore on their own without specific, step-by-step directions.  These activities tend to allow the students to approach responses from their own perspective, rather than just the “by the book” answer.  Even though nine times out of ten the answers are very similar, it’s the one-in-ten response out of left field that we often use as a jumping off point to explore related but different areas.

This is drastically different from when I am running faculty and staff training sessions, when the objective is clearly “learn how to use this application”.  Those sessions are strictly directed and focused.  I suppose this starts to delineate between learning and training, but there are definitely different learning styles being emphasized.

Then, there is graduate-level academic work, which is different yet from the other two, based much more on experience and feeling/interpretation.

[ElizabethECharl]

Hi Phil,
Thank you for your feedback and how this might apply to your situation.  Yes it certainly can be difficult to attain a balance between instruction and giving control to learners and keeping to the lesson plan, hence why that part is left towards the end of the session.  You are lucky to have additional support from eLearning Assistants, as I tend to have to run these sessions solo.  I think with such sessions it is very important that all learners ‘do’ and actively undertake a search whilst I can provide support and answer question.  Otherwise the unspoken element of fear will take over, especially if they are novices in using IT – with the demographics of my learners who are mature students this proportion can be quite high and in direct proportion more hand holding may be necessary.

[philtubman]

this has been on my mind this afternoon, especially after watching Jim Groom describing what DS106 is all about…http://mediasite.suny.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=a028f4a4a61840eeb88544d7e50faa201d

I want to add a bit of DS106 into my ‘Using Moodle’ courses.

James, you are right that ‘learn this app’ is all about training, but I feel my ‘using moodle’ courses wouldn’t do it justice if i followed the same path.. so I started thinking about how I could add some storytelling into my course, and everyone have a laugh at the same time.

I’m still not sure about this, but my plan is to modify the part of the lesson where I say ‘you take section 1, 2, 3 etc. (one per participant) and do what you like’ to being more like ‘each section is going to tell part of a story, so i want you to describe your part of the narrative by use of a moodle activity’. This gives free reign to people to add whatever activity they like and link to youtube vids, add a picture, whatever, but also makes them think about using Moodle as not just being a place where they drop documents, but a place where they can have some creative licence

Craziness, no? I would appreciate your thoughts on this, and any suggestions of storylines I could choose.

Do you think there is room for a bit of DS106 in application ‘training’?

[ElizabethECharl]

Phil –

Thanks for the link to this resource it was very inspiring and how refreshingly different and I like the premise and think that the context of their journey through the course will need to be delineated thereafter the idea of allowing them to choose one activity at this stage is a good example of co-producer of learning.

 

The first storyline could be to undertake an activity in moodle that speaks to three stages using whichever of the x number of activities to bring out their creativity:

 

a) the past – how they initially felt/feel about the course they are enrolled on (excited, trepidation, fear, nervous, worried, concerned, optimistic, etc.)

b) the present – what issue/idea/philosophy/perspective they have come across that really grabbed their attention so far.

c) the future – what do they see their future as being, re the subject/course/work/life being like after the course – what would it look/feel/taste like?

 

Using those 3 options mean that there are no wrong answers and the answer is what the learner presents. Thereafter you could get the individual learner to chooseone/ two other submission(s) from another learner and comment/ augment/collaborate/make connections with them in a wiki, etc.,. . .

 
I am going to stop now as I may have got the wrong end of the stick.  These are my initial suggestions, I will give it some more thought and wait to hear from you.

[James Kerr]

Phil,

I don’t think your idea is crazy at all-using the tools in a preferred context is far superior from a sterile setting where, for example, one learns to use blogging by reading and responding to a blog.  Sterile, laboratory training settings lead to responses like “This is my blog post” or “I am writing this because I have to.”  If you could get the students to make connections into other coursework they are doing, in say a creative writing course, or an art course, or in fact, any area that interests them, they are more likely to be creative and have a more positive learning experience while learning Moodle.

Situated learning and experiential learning-much better than simple training, in my opinion.

Jim

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