Anticipating Uncertainty: The case for blended learning. Anne Forster: Adjunct Associate Professor UNE and UMUC Macquarie University: Learning and Teaching.

Anticipating Uncertainty:The case for blended learning.

Anne Forster: Adjunct Associate Professor UNE and UMUC

Macquarie University: Learning and Teaching WeekCentre for Open Education Session Friday 24 September 2010

The Earth Provides acrylics, metal leaf, and oil stick, 100x230 cm

Artist, Carol Dance

Study in Blueacrylics

180x120 cm

OUTLINE

1.Unpacking the title2.Workload issues3.Supporting learning and teaching4.Design and the art of learning and teaching5.Community building6.Challenges ahead

Anticipating Uncertainty• Anticipate: To take action in advance, to forestall, to consider

before the due time• Uncertainty: Doubtful, dubious, not definitely known, unspecified,

what if...?• Anxiety: troubled about some uncertain event, being in disturbing

suspense• Calm: free from agitation or disturbance• Treatment: Exposure: face the fears, get control

• Taleb (2007): The Black Swan Theory: high impact, hard to predict, a rare event eg 911, the Global Financial Crisis

• Treatment: build systems that are robust, not too big to fail, apply resilient architecture, act on experience and data

Individual Knowledge in the Internet AgeLarry Sanger (2010)

• Don Tapscott: unnecessary memorization• Tapscott and Williams argued that we should “adopt

collaborative learning as the core model of pedagogy,” • Is fostering an online social life a replacement for

reading boring old books?

• Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur• Maggie Jackson’s Distracted• Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation• Jaron Lanier’s essay “Digital Maoism.”

Larry Sanger founder of Wikipedia

I fear that....in the place of a creative society with a reasonably deep well of liberally educated critical thinkers, we will have a society of drones, enculturated by hive minds, who are able to work together online but who are largely innocent of the texts and habits of study that encourage deep and independent thought.

Flowacrylics

106x77x74x62x59 cm

Blended Learning: design

Designing programs to meet needs.•Technology enabled.•A mixture of media, methods and modes of delivery.•Live and/or asynchronous.

DESIGN: the arrangement of parts, details, form etc, so as to produce a complete and artistic unit (Webster)

Blended learning: getting the mixture right

• New pedagogical approaches, collaborative, networked.• Learners more responsible and co-producers.• Alternative and authentic assessment techniques.• Activity based learning environments.• Emphasis on resource based learning, design once and

repurpose.• Adaptive and responsive to campus growth and revenue

issues.• Leverages existing tenured faculty.• Grows by using flexible, sessional, or casual faculty and

professional staff.

Shea (2009)

The Educational Experience: Presence

Support is critical to learning effectiveness

• Cognitive presence: The extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry.

• Social presence: The ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g. course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities

• Teaching presence: The design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes

Shea & Bidjerano (2008)

The New Atlasacrylics

160x108 cm

Workload Issues

•Enterprise level•Program level•Students•Instructors •Global 24 x 7

Enterprise level: (Sporto 2010)University of Maryland University College

Online enrollment > 177,000

Head count > 86,000

Enrollment > 272,000

2nd largest state institution in the US

> 100 degree programs fully online

UMUC Enterprise level servicesCourse Delivery

LMS

IT infrastructure24 x 7 support

Digital library

Operational T&L supportSyllabi, schedulingCourse and faculty evaluationsRobust systems

Administrative faculty services and supportRecruitment & ContractsServicesPay officeTrainingStudent assessments data

Administrative student support:MarketingAdvisingRegistrationGraduationsSelf service

The Committeeacrylics

107x162 cm

Program level: Master of Distance Education and E-Learning: UMUC and Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany

• Oldenburg– Foundations– Costing and Budgeting– Learner support– Multimedia in DE– Assessment– Globalization and

development

• UMUC– DE Technologies– Training at a distance– DE in K-12– Library and copyright– Instructional design– Leadership– DE systems– Business in DE

Course development partnership

Sporto, 2010

Program co-ordination: MDE example

• 1 FT Director: Partnership and UMUC leadership, UMUC courses and people, social networks

• 1 FT Co-ordinator Oldenburg courses and people, research series

• 14 courses, (5 core), all online• 3 specialisation streams: technology, training, policy• 239 students: leaders, instructors, designers, all sectors• 16-20 global adjunct faculty, virtual• 6-10 teaching assistants, local and virtual• 6-10 expert visiting faculty, virtual

Social presence: Example

MDE & eL Social Networks

• MDE Hub• MDE Blog• MDE Faculty Forum• MDE Lounge• Capstone wiki : e-

portfolios and research projects

• New technologies wiki• Allison’s toolbox

• Buddy system• Internship program• Orientation• Alumni network• Faculty professional

development and shared projects

• Itinerant video: 10th anniversary

Sporto, (2009)

Cognitive Presence: The student experience

Helena

Distance education student with an Australian university

Lives in Vancouver, Canada

Helena2.mp4

Teaching presence: example

Dr Gila Kurtz, DirectorBar-@-Learn Center at Bar Ilan University, Israel.

The center is responsible for developing and assimilating new e-Learning methods by incorporating state-of-the-art technologies into the on-campus courses at the university.

Dr Gila Kurtz

Web 2.0: Characteristics and Challenges for Education

Adjunct Associate Professor, UMUCAdvanced Technologies in DE

http://www.biu.ac.il/bar-e-learn/fr_english.html

Ask a Busy Personacrylics

140x190 cm Graeme Innes AM (Human Rights

Commissioner)

Workload and “lifeload”The Individual

Supporting the workforce: part-time and dispersed

Adjunct: something added to another thing but not essentially a part of it; as, water absorbed by a sponge is its adjunct (Webster, 1983)

Disintermediation > outsourcing

The RED Report ( 2008)Recognition-Enhancement-Development16 Australian Universities15 % EFT are casual 40-50% of all teaching is done by sessional staffDisguises the head count and supervisory load eg 62 people collapse into 2.64 FTE

A Common Threadacrylics

175 x 140 cms

Firing the Imaginationacrylics and gold leaf

235x180 cm

•Designing great learning experiences

•Re thinking student and faculty contracts

•Quality enhancement depends on everyone including sessional teachers

•Identifying and recognising new roles, not just absorbing more and more

•Taking action and responsibility

Thinking within and beyond the classroom

Community building: lessons learned Stella Sporto, MDE & eL, (2010)

Thinking beyond the classroom

• Need for active leadership and moderation.• Mix interactive and one-way, public and private

communications.• Enthusiasm is contagious and experimentation critical.• Students want to be involved but need a helping hand,

willing to lead projects.• A few active participants, most choose to observe.

Stay Focussedacrylics and gold leaf

92x140 cm

Challenges Ahead• Target by 2012, funding based on actual

enrollments - no limits.• Target by 2020, 20% of HE students will be from

lowest socio-economic quartile.• Target by 2025, 40% of 25 – 34 year olds will be

HE qualified.• Target by 2020, we will need the equivalent of 20

new universities with 12,000 students each.• Consequence, growth of private sector providers

and corporate universities.

The Focus is on QUALITY

• Improving cognitive, social and teaching presence will be critical.

• The increased participation in DE and eL will drive better support systems in the need to satisfy and retain students and faculty.

• Some students will not get a return on their investment in education - defaults on loans will be a brand issue.

• 2011 TEQSA : Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency with increased audit powers.

• Will accredit and evaluate performance of all providers, will register and de-register.

BL empowers ingenious designs

• Learning and teaching is an art.• There is a palette of colour, form and media from

which to choose.• A focus on design is a focus on creativity and

innovation.• Embrace the reality of the digital world.• Strengthen personal management skills.• Leverage the trade-offs that are now available.• Anticipate uncertainty.

Me, Myself and Usacrylics75x101 cm

References• Taleb, N.,N., (2007). The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York, Random

House• Sanger, L., (2010) . Individual knowledge in the Internet age in EDUCAUSE Review, vol.45, 2, pp 14-

24• Sporto, S., (2010) presentation at the USDLA'2010 Conference, St. Louis, May 4, 2010, found at

http://www.slideshare.net/sporto/usdla-2010-sporto-4510206• Sporto, S., 2009, presentation Using social software in the MDE , found at

http://www.slideshare.net/sporto/using • Shea, P. & Bidjerano, T., (2009). Community of inquiry as a theoretical framework to foster

“epistemic engagement” and “cognitive presence” in online education. In Computers & Education 52, pp 543-553Shea, P., (2009). Presentation at SLN SOL summit meeting, February, , found at http://www.slideshare.net/alexandrapickett/peter-sheas-community-of-inquiry-ii-new-research-on-the-future-of-online-learning

• Percy, A., (Ed), 2008. The RED Report: Recognition, Enhancement, Development. The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education. The Australian Learning and Teaching Council an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

• Webster, (1983). Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition.

The Art of Carol Dance

http://www.caroldance.com/index.html

Marianne Newman GallerySuite 1 / 1 Albany Street Crows Nest NSW Australia 2065www.mariannenewmangallery.com.au

Questions

ContactAnne Forsteraforster@forgib.com