The Siren Song of Open Course Ware

I was given the assignment of selecting a course from a free Open Course site and comparing it to the principles of designing distance learning instruction. I chose Public Health 253BEpidemiology and Control of Infectious Diseases from Open Culture.  
(That is, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcUmS03xnzA  from www.openculture.com.)

Does the course appear to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment?  No. The course is not designed as a distance learning course, and it is an observation, not a criticism, when I say that it does not adhere to principles of design for distance learning. The course exemplifies Zemsky & Massy’s (2004) Cycle 1 of 4 e-learning adoption cycles. “In this cycle, faculty introduce basic-level technologies into their courses, such as e-mail, Web resources, and PowerPoint slides, without fundamentally altering their instructional strategies” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012, p. 133). Public Health 253B is simply a videotaped lecture presentation. The instructor physically addresses the students in his classroom, not the video camera, as he verbally walks them through the syllabus, introductions, and the lecture, using PowerPoint slides to highlight key points and supporting graphics.

Does the course follow the recommendations for online instruction as listed in your course textbook? Not at all. Dick, Carey, & Carey (2009) suggest that successful design relies on the balance between the learners, the content, the method and materials, and the environment (technology).  Public Health 253B may be perfectly adequate for the student physically present in the lecture hall who has successfully completed the necessary prerequisites and is able to interact with the instructor, other learners, and hard-copy course materials. For me, from the perspective of a distance learner, the experience was frustratingly passive and unsatisfying; a classic example of shovelware  – “Shovel the course onto the Web and say you are teaching online” (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 134).

Did the course designer implement course activities that maximize active learning for the students? Not for the distance learner, no. 

This seems as good a place as any to go off on a topical tangent about Open Course Ware (OCW) as distance learning. By definition, distance learners are likely more interested in OCW than OCW sites are in distance learners.  Let’s compare.

Widely accepted principles of distance instructional design: Morrison, Ross, and Kemp (2004) “suggest that the learners need to grasp the intent of the instructor when participating in various types of learning experiences. When the learners have an understanding of the reasons why they are participating in a particular type of instructional activity, they are better able to use that experience to expedite their own learning” (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 156-157).

vs.

The nature of OCW: “The idea is simple: to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone” (Yue, 2013).

And so we see (hear) the siren song of OCW. Dizzying volumes of dazzling information are available for the taking. Yet many of the offerings make no effort to accommodate the unique needs of distance learners. I’m not saying they should. I’m saying that before we gorge ourselves, Templeton-like, at the feast of free information, we need to be clear about the different requirements of, and resources available for, distance learning, distance self-study, and distance indulgence of curiosity.

Sally Bacchetta

References

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J.O. (2009). The systematic design of instruction (7^th ed.). New York: Longman.
 

Morrison, G., Ross, S., & Kemp, J. (2004). Designing effective instruction (4^th ed.). New York: John Wiley and Sons.
 

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
 

Yue, D. (2013). MIT School of Engineering. Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://ocw.mit.edu/about/.
 

Zemsky, R., & Massey, W.F. (2004). Thwarted innovation: What happened to e-learning and why. Philadelphia: The Learning Alliance, University of Pennsylvania. Available online at http://www.thelearningalliance.info/Docs/Jun2004/Weatherstation_Report.pdf.

It's Not Just What You Say

Truly, it's not just what you say, but how you say it that matters. Check out Font Conference for a humorous look at the power of typography in your instructional design. 

Sally Bacchetta

Connectivism

The above is a mind map of my cyber network. It is a graphic representation of some of the many pieces of my life and the connections between them and me. Working on this assignment clarified for me that connectivism truly is the underlying scaffold of my life. 

In the days BC (Before Cyber-network), I had access to far fewer professional resources, informed peers, and opportunities to stretch myself mentally and professionally. I had to work harder to find credible information to challenge my thinking. Now, sometimes with no effort, I receive more information every day than I can usefully process in a week. 

The upside of this is that my work is richer and “jucier” than it was a decade ago. I am better informed on a variety of theories and applications, and I have developed technological skills much more quickly than I could have in isolation. My business has grown well beyond the local scene, and I am now a member of a truly global community. My personal playground has also gone global, and my networked life is enriched by cyber friends, peers, and near-strangers with whom I share perspectives, exchange opinions, and sometimes disagree. 

The downside (even as I write “downside” I’m thinking there is great value in the “downside” I am about to discuss) is that I need to question everything and everyone online. The advice to “Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see” has been attributed to Edgar Allen Poe, John Gotti, and Benjamin Franklin (http://thinkexist.com/quotation/believe_none_of_what_you_hear_and_half_of_what/154871.html), among others. Whoever said it, it is an apt caution for those of us who network in cyber-space. The ubiquity of “information” available online necessitates extra caution and circumspection.

The upside of that downside (are you still with me?) is that by being extra cautious and circumspect, I am a better writer, instructional designer and thinker, and so are you a purer form of who and what you are. “Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions,” (http://www.connectivism.ca/about.html), and my cyber-community is far more diverse (and opinionated!) than the community I physically inhabit.

Connectivism holds that “Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources,” and “Learning (in the sense that something is known, but not necessarily actuated) can rest in a community, a network, or a database,” (http://www.connectivism.ca/about.html). I haven’t found anything that beats an online search engine for connecting me with specialized information sources and communities I don’t know exist until they pop up in a search return. As with any source, cyber or otherwise, I bear responsibility for the research and cross-referencing necessary to vet my cyber-sources. 

One of my favorite tenets of connectivism is one that I subscribed to for many years before I ever heard of “learning theory.” It is this: “Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate impacting the decision,” ((http://www.connectivism.ca/about.html).

Yes! Amen! And for that reason, I say that my network has both changed and been changed by the way I learn. Every decision to click or not click a link, open or delete an email, post or not post to a forum, engage or dismiss an anonymous antagonist changes what is available to me, which in turn changes the next pool of decisions available to me, and so on. And so it is with you. You are changed for reading this blog post, and someone else is changed for skipping it, and your decision to post or not post a comment will change what I learn and what I may learn.

Sally Bacchetta