Learning 101 for the online era
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Presentation on "The pedagogy of online education: historical overview and future directions" at the VU 3rd e-Learning and Distance Education Conference (ELDEC) conference.
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Learning 101 for the online era
- 1. The pedagogy of online education: historical overview and future directions Junaid Qadir Associate Professor, InformationTechnology University (ITU), Pakistan Learning 101 for the online era The pedagogy of online education: historical overview and future directions
- 2. About me Have taught an online course (MOOC?) for VU Experienced teacher (~8 years of experience)
- 3. Despite the accessibility of a wealth of information in the current era—through books, universities, or online MOOCs— most students fail to learn as much as they can (despite the intent and will to succeed).
- 4. Our focus—both in research and practice —is more on pedagogy and content (rather than on empowering learners with reliable learning know-how.)
- 5. noun The method and practice of learning ? The lack of focus on learning can be seen from the fact that there is no widely accepted (single- word) name for the science of learning Why isn’t there a focus on the method and practice of learning? Is it because all of us intuitively know what (does not) works for learning?
- 6. Our intuition of how learning works is unreliable and often counterproductive. Bob Bjork Paradoxical nature of learning (Desirable difficulties) It is beneficial for learning to create study conditions that make learning difficult and slow. This is in conflict with the quick-fix desire in learners and instructors to see quick improvements.
- 7. Learning 101 (the missing basics) “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue” —Antisthenes.
- 9. Rereading text, and massed practice---the most popular study strategies of learners--- is also among the least productive, since 1) it is time consuming; 2) the knowledge gained is transitory; 3) and it contributes to an illusion of learning. We need to put in the right kind of effort (technique). Fixed/ Growth Mindset: views intelligence as something that cannot (/ can) be developed through effort. Carol Dweck
- 10. To learn, you must forget Practice before forgetting is wasteful … while practice after forgetting leads to longer lasting learning
- 11. (Some) difficulties are desirable “One of the most striking research findings is the power of active retrieval —testing—to strengthen memory, and that the more effortful the retrieval, the stronger the benefit.” “by spacing or interleaving the practice, retrieval is harder, your performance is less accomplished, and you feel let down, but your learning is deeper and you will retrieve it more easily in the future.”
- 12. Cognitive benefits of disfluency? Easy come, easy go? It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
- 13. We don’t like failing/ making mistakes, but failure is the key to success.
- 14. Open issues relating to MOOCs
- 15. MOOCs for the developing world? “Technology amplifies human capacity and intent; it doesn't substitute for them.” ---Kentaro Toyama Digital dividends depend on key “analog complements” that include appropriate policies, incentives, accountability, and capable human workforce.
- 16. MOOC’s performance metrics? HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses, Fall 2012-Summer 2013 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11987422/1%20HarvardX%20MITx%20Report.pdf
- 17. The ideal MOOC may be the one that elicits the maximum attrition. MOOC’s performance metrics?
- 18. Effectiveness of OER in Pakistan How to incorporate OERs into standard university course? -- Blended Learning/ Flipped Learning approaches. How to incentivize student participation? Benefit of diverse models
- 19. Conclusions Optimizing learning and instruction often requires going against one’s intuitions BOB BJORK Online learning is a tool, just as the textbook is a tool. The way the teacher and the student uses the tool is what really counts. Online learning provides great opportunities and also great challenges. junaid.qadir@itu.edu.pk
- 20. Credits/ Acknowledgments Figures from various sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus http://www.psychologicalscience.org/redesign/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/bjork_robert_web.jpg http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/Images/roediger.jpg https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11987422/1%20HarvardX%20MITx%20Report.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/ Various icons of MOOCs (e.g., Coursera, Udacity, TED, EdX) Books WDR 2016, World Bank. Mindset, Carol Dweck Geek Heresy, Kentaro Toyama These resources have been used in these lecture slides for educational purpose under the fair use doctrine. The ownership of these resources, if copyrighted, is retained by their respective copyright owners.
Editor's Notes
- -) mixing the order of task for practice (rather than providing the tasks in a blocked fashion); -) varying the frequency and timing of feedback (rather than immediate feedback); -) providing erroneous examples; -) delayed feedback (rather than immediate feedback)
- https://www.explorethefaith.com/concrete5/blog/hermann-ebbinghaus-and-forgetting-curve/ We stigmatize forgetting, but some forgetting is powerful (in particular, practice before forgetting is wasteful … while practice after forgetting leads to longer lasting learning).
- Each one of us is a stakeholder in the field of learning and education. Despite our familiarity through the trials and errors of everyday living and learning, our judgement about learning and metacognition is flawed (Bjork, 2013). Research has shown that our intuitive understanding of how we learn is not only poor but also in some cases flawed (many of our established intuitive notions about learning go against what research is telling us about the mechanics of learning). This is partly due to the paradoxical nature of learning (as we shall cover shortly) and partly due to the fact that educational research focusing on such matters is not known widely outside its own specialized community.
- Much of the hope — and hype — surrounding MOOCs has focused on the promise of courses for students in poor countries with little access to higher education. But a separate survey from the University of Pennsylvania released last month found that about 80 percent of those taking the university’s MOOCs had already earned a degree of some kind
- An important question that needs to be investigated is how do we evaluate the effectiveness of MOOCs? The first metric that comes into mind is to see the productivity of the MOOC (how many students were taught or managed to complete the course). For many purposes, this is an insufficient metric because it does not inform about the quality of the MOOC or the quality of the learning experience. There is a need o develop a metric that can quantify what learners are able to do by the end of the course (in terms of the defined learning outcomes). There is a need to gauge through an appropriate metric how engaged the students are with the content and resources that the MOOCs present. The typical metric adopted to gauge the performance of a MOOC is the course’s attrition rate. This rate is dismal for most courses—and it is typical to have less than 5% of the enrolled students complete the course. However, this unflattering figure can be explained on the basis that since students do not have to invest anything in these MOOCs, most enrollments are casual, with the learners only browsing the resources without any intention of completing all the course requirements as a serious student. This is a necessary outcome of the `free’ nature of MOOCs: since it allows all learners to enroll—many non-serious, or casual, students will enroll. To be sure, we should not dismiss the quality of a MOOC on the basis of a dismal completion rate. In fact, the use of attrition rate for gauging a course’s quality is flawed since ``quitting'’ a course can be due to faltering in the face of desirable difficulties; also learner’s impression of their own learning can be flawed. According to the research of Bob Bjork (which has discovered the importance of effortful learning or the importance of some desirable difficulties), it is possible that if we design an optimal, personalized and adaptive MOOC, people will opt out even more. We need more metrics to measure how personalized/ or adaptive a MOOC is.
- The typical metric adopted to gauge the performance of a MOOC is the course’s attrition rate. This rate is dismal for most courses—and it is typical to have less than 5% of the enrolled students complete the course. However, this unflattering figure can be explained on the basis that since students do not have to invest anything in these MOOCs, most enrollments are casual, with the learners only browsing the resources without any intention of completing all the course requirements as a serious student. This is a necessary outcome of the `free’ nature of MOOCs: since it allows all learners to enroll—many non-serious, or casual, students will enroll. To be sure, we should not dismiss the quality of a MOOC on the basis of a dismal completion rate. In fact, the use of attrition rate for gauging a course’s quality is flawed since ``quitting'’ a course can be due to faltering in the face of desirable difficulties; also learner’s impression of their own learning can be flawed. According to the research of Bob Bjork (which has discovered the importance of effortful learning or the importance of some desirable difficulties), it is possible that if we design an optimal, personalized and adaptive MOOC, people will opt out even more.
- Examples of OER include full courses, course materials, modules, open textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, Massive Open Online courses (MOOCs) and any other tools, materials, or techniques use to support access to knowledge. Pakistan is facing serious challenges, stemming from education gaps that affect the quality of life, economic growth, and equal opportunities to its citizens. By the end of 2015, Pakistan aims to achieve an 88% overall literacy rate. According to Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey 2012-13, Completion/Survival rate in Grades 1 to 5 is 50% and Literacy Rate for 10 years and above is 60%. Different projects have been started in Pakistan to promote and to contextualize OER pertaining to the curriculum. Punjab is the first province to provide open access to science and math textbooks of grades 9 and 10 to students. The textbooks are augmented with videos, animations and simulations to help the students to interact with the text. Translation of Khan Academy videos is done in Urdu on topics pertaining to the mathematics curriculum of public school students.