Feedback on Assignments

Please comment on this post to say where you are with your assignment using the format given in the session notes.

You can either put everything in the comment here or out a post on your blog and make a link to it from here.

Details required are shown below – transferred from the web site.

You might answer the following questions:

• who is your identified “audience”?
• what are the characteristics of these and what are their needs?
• what technologies do you intend using in your assignment and why?

These are only examples and you can say what you like as long as you give an update.

P. S. You might also refer back to previous messages on the module blog or your own blog.

Activity 1001[2] – Evaluating a journal article

The article I have chosen to review is

Schroeder, J., and T. Greenbowe. 2009. The Chemistry of Facebook: Using social networking to create an online community for the organic chemistry laboratory. Innovate 5 (4).

Available on-line at http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=625

(accessed April 24, 2009)

The article discusses how a group of chemistry undergraduates were asked to use FaceBook as a discussion tool for their course in place of WebCT (Blackboard) discussion forums. The latter having proved  unsuccessful at promoting discussion in previous years.

They found that participation was limited as only 41% of students took part but numbers of posts increased by 400% and that posts raised more complex topics and got more detailed replies.

It is suggested that the familiarity with Facebook and the reception of replies to posts made students more likely to use the system. Though some authors ( Beetham 2007)  suggest that student’s do not want to use their personal communication tools for learning.

However there is no direct evidence that student’s performance in assessments was improved by this discussion. However one might argue that time on task is a good proxy for learning and Facebook has encouraged students to spend more time discussing their work.

Reference

Beetham, H. 2007. Learners’ experiences of e-learning. A briefing for the PVC Network: e-learning Special Interest Group. July. London: JISC. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/elearningpedagogy/briefingpaperjuly07.doc (accessed March 17, 2009). Archived at http://www.webcitation.org/5fLO3qtLY.

Activity 1001[1] – Evaluating a journal article

The article I have chosen is Williams, J.B and Jacobs, J. (2004) – Exploring blogs as learning spaces in higher education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2004, 20(2), 232-247.

Available on-line at http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/williams.html

This article give a comprehensive account of how blogs might be used to assist in learning. There are some excellent examples given from the experience of the author’s and others and overall it provides a useful framework for thinking about how we might use a blog in our own learning.

It provides an interesting example of getting feedback from students about how they used a blog in their own learning. However I am not convinced of the usefulness of numerical feedback data gathered by a “tick box” questionnaire and prefer the richer data obtained by open ended questions. To be fair to this study it does use both types of data and the conclusions from each type back one another up.

They conclude “In short, blogs have the potential, at least, to be a truly transformational technology in hat they provide students with a high level of autonomy while simultaneously providing opportunity for greater interaction with peers.”

A conclusion that has been borne out in my own research.

Activity 901[4] – My fourth literature source evaluation – an example

In this post  resource I am evaluating  is Natalie Laderas-Kilkenny (2008) Using WetPaint to Create A Course Wiki , Design for Learning

Natalie Laderas-Kilkenny works as an instructional designer and she has written this post about the use of a wiki to help students learn.

There is a good overview of the reasons why a wiki might be a good environment for students to use for their learning. There is a particular emphasis on collaboration between students  and an interesting set of tips on how to keep students interested and willing to actively use the wiki for their learning.

It suggests that many of the thing that we may want to do on-line to enable students to learn might be easily done on a wiki and although this may be true the article does not really investigate the possible issues (apart from participation) there might be with using a wiki and whether other technologies might do the job better. Although there is a suggestion that a wiki (possibly because of it’s open structure) can be over complicated and difficult to use but I imagine that this can be alleviated to a great extent by god structure and navigation in the same way that one would use it for designing a web site.

Activity 901[3] – My third literature source evaluation – an example

This is a more general blog post which looks at a number of different web publishing technologies as an aid to learning.

For this evaluation I am using Konrad Glogowski (2007) Creating Learning Experiences Blog of Proximal Development.

Again there is a lot of useful information on this blog which needs to be looked at in more detail. However the main point being made here about the web2.0 technologies is the freedom they give for the user to make a contribution to the debate about a particular topic. It is the ease with which the ideas can be published and the way that the user is empowered and made to feel in control of their own  publishing environment which is seen to be important.

He argues that students become much more interested in learning because they become immersed in the learning experience and are a lot less concerned about seeking grades. Hover his students are fairly young and there may be some doubt as to how well this would transfer into the Higher Education Sector.

Activity 901[2] – My second literature source evaluation – an example

Again  I am looking at Facebook as a useful asset to enable a learner to learn more effectively by publishing using this site.

For this evaluation I am using Matthew Ashton (2007) Using Facebook for online learning Matt’s weblog for online learning.

Initially this post was a little disappointing. It had a useful summary of some of the characteristics that are needed for effective on-line learning but it did not discuss in any detail the degree to which Facebook had these characteristics. The list of attributes he gives could be a useful start for an evaluation but they need to be applied to the particular web publishing applications to be used.

However this is not the only post on this blog and it will be well worth trawling other posts to get some further ideas about how web2.0 technologies can be useful to enhance learning.

Activity 901[1] – My first literature source evaluation – an example

I am looking at Facebook as a useful asset to enable a learner to learn more effectively by publishing using this site.

The resource I am evaluating  is Tony Karrer (2007) eLearning Technology: Facebook as a Learning Platform , E-learning Technology Blog.

On this blog there is an interesting discussion of the way that students have been using facebook for their own purposes although he does suggest that they are more concerned with making money than using the site for learning.

The blog post contains a useful outline of what Facebook actually is and how it works and continues to argue that because so many students are now already Facebook users it is not so much of a problem to get them started on using the site for learning  as they are alreadyfamiliar with how to use it. he also maintains that it is easy to set up Facebook applications.

He finally discusses the use of Facebook as a learning platform  but seems to base his argument on the ease of use rather than going into details of exactly how the environment would be useful for learning.

Activity 801: Publishing using a web site

This is an example of some of the idea that might be considered when considering a web site as a publishing method. It is only a brief starting outline but it may give you an idea of some of the things you could note on your blog post. Notice that I have not given any specific reference to sources of information. We will look at how to this in the next few weeks, for the moment I am interested in you formulating your own ideas although you might want to read some sources to help you to do this.

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Before I can make any detailed comments about the advantages and disadvantages of using a web site I must consider two questions:

1. what is the purpose of my web site;
2. am I considering the web site from the user’s point of view or the creator’s point of view. [ or possibly both]

Let us assume that I am creating a web site to help students with their learning and I am looking at it from both a user and developer point of view.

You could consider the module web site as an example of this type of web site. [ Here I could make a link to an example on my web site.]

So how well does the site alone aid the student in learning?

To answer this I need some idea of the needs of a learner. Let us assume that they include the following which is a brief and not exhaustive list.

To be able to learn a student must:

1. be aware of the expected learning outcomes of the module and understand what they need to do to achieve these;
2. have access to the subject matter of the module;
3. be given an opportunity to test their own understanding of this material and share their ideas with others;

Next I might consider the general characteristic of a web site as a publishing method.

A web site might:

1. present material to the student and make links to further information;
2. provide examples to help in the understanding of  concepts;
3. present an interactive tutorial allowing ideas to be presented and tried out;

However there are some characteristics of a web site which might hinder it’s ease of use:

1. it takes time to learn the skills necessary to set up an effective web site;
2. there is a relatively complex process that must be gone through to update a web site;
3. a basic web site is “read only” and does not provide an easy way of creating a dialogue;

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Hopefully this post will help to get you started in producing your own posts

Some ideas about the assessment

The assessment has a number of facets you need to take into account.

You need to:

1. select which four of the publishing possiblities you are going to consider, you must consider a “standard web site” and a blog but the other two you may choose yourself. These might be, a wiki, a social site like Facebook, an image site like Flickr, a video site like Youtube or any other you care to consider. However you should make sure they are significantly different from one another i.e Facebook and MySpace are too similar as they are both social networking spaces.
2. choose a particular user whom you want to use your combination of sites and make sure that you research their needs throroughly. Also make sure that you make significant links to the literature to establish that your ideas are not just personal opinions.
3. you should also make sure that you have used the publishing technologies during the module so that you can make reference to your own experience (this might well be published on your blog so that you can link to it from your assignment).
4. all of this should be pulled together on a well designed web site which has appropriate information, good navigation and links to further information with full referencing.

Please comment on this post if there is anything that you do not understand ot need further clarification on.

Activity 501: Using different types of positioning – an example

I have set up this post as an example of what might be done for Activity 501.

By setting one box within another and giving the inner boxes relative coordinates with respect to the outer box we can allow such things as headers to be displaced from the content.

As relative positioning is being used in the inner boxes then the outer reference box can be moved to another part of the screen and the positioning will still work.

You can see the HTML by loading the example using the link above and using view source in your browser.

The CSS can be seen by linking to it on the wiki.