1.
Interaction & Empowerment
Through Three Generations of
Online Learning
Terry Anderson
Professor Emeritus
Athabasca University

2.
Values
• We can (and must) continuously improve
the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and
time efficiency of the learning experience.
• Student empowerment and freedom is
integral to life-long education and learning.
• Continuing education opportunity is a
basic human right.

3.
Is this your first virtual conference?
What is your most significant:
personal learning?
professional learning?
institutional learning?

4.
Be it resolved, “the Covid-19
Pandemic will have no lasting
impact on EDEN’s and my own
professional development.”

5.
1992 First
Online Conference
ICDE,
Anderson, T., & Mason, R. (1993). International computer conferencing for professional development:
The Bangkok Project. American Journal of Distance Education, 7(2), 5-18.

6.
Online learning
sucks
I love online
learning
Online learning
is boring
Online teaching
used to be better
What is the Pedagogy??

7.
• I kind of got better at teaching
online when I started asking better
questions: “what pedagogic
principles drive what I normally
do?” and “what online
platforms and technology can
help me appropriate these into
an online learning space?”.
• Samantha Elizabeth McMahon -
Sydney

8.
It’s all about Interaction,
Empowerment and Engagement
“Learning is experience,
everything else is just
information”.
Albert Einstein

9.
Interaction Through Three Generations
of Online Learning Pedagogy
1. Behaviourist/Cognitive –
2. Social Constructivist –
3. Connectivist
Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2011). Three generations
of distance education pedagogy.
IRRODL, 12(3), 80-97

10.
Gagne’s Events of Instruction (1965)
1. Gain learners' attention
2. Inform learner of objectives
3. Stimulate recall of previous information
4. Present stimulus material
5. Provide learner guidance
6. Elicit performance
7. Provide Feedback
8. Assess performance
9. Enhance transfer opportunities
Instructional Systems Design (ISD)

11.
Enhanced by the “cognitive
revolution”
• Chunking
• Cognitive Load
• Working Memory
• Multiple Representations
• Split-attention effect
• Variability Effect
• Multi-media effect
– (Sorden, 2005)
“learning as acquiring and using conceptual and cognitive structures”
Greeno, Collins and Resnick, 1996

12.
Learning Alone
• Maximizes Freedom:
– Space, time, pace,
• Allows and promotes
individualization
• Freedom from “group think”
• Power of auto-didacticism
• Freedom from groups

13.
Nature of Knowledge
Cognitive Behavioural 1st Gen.
• Knowledge is logically coherent, existing
independent of perspective
• Context free
• Capable of being transmitted
• Assumes closed systems with discoverable
relationships between inputs and outputs

14.
Technologies in 1st generation
• OERs, simulations, text books, One way
Lectures - with advancements??

15.
Asynchronous
text, video & audio
Interaction

16.
Customer - AI Interaction
Student

17.
Carroll says. “There’s a humanistic
connection through a chatbot that I would
never have expected.
Students are almost more comfortable
sharing those fears with a chatbot.”
Got Coronavirus Questions? Your College Chatbot May Have Answers.
https://www.edsurge.com/

18.
MOOCs 2019

19.
Open Educational Resources
Because it saves time!!!
OPEN Education Practice

20.
Read alouds, asynchronous teacher-student, auto grading, timing

21.
Learning Analytics - Dashboard

22.
• are rarely grounded in learning
theory
• cannot be suggested to support
metacognition,
• do not offer any information about
effective learning tactics and
strategies,
• have significant limitations in how
their evaluation is conducted and
reported.
Matcha, Uzir, Gašević and Pardo. (2020)
A Systematic Review of Empirical Studies on Learning Analytics Dashboards:
A Self-Regulated Learning Perspective.
IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, vol. 13, no. 2
Learning Analytics Dashboards

23.
Surveillance Capitalism In
Education
• Danger of cloud
computing owning and
selling our data.
• Privacy Issues
• Need for schools to own
their own social media

24.
Maximizes Delegation
• We turn over much of the learning
experience, as consumers, to the
responsibility of the teacher and learning
institution.

25.
Researching
Cognitive/Behavioural Pedgaogy?
• Often focuses on empirical data
• Do the new technologies really add value
– less the known and unknown side
effects??
• How does enhanced use of tech, effect
those with less technological and
economic flexibility?
• How does this pedagogy move beyond
high stakes testing?

26.
1st Generation
Conclusion
• Interaction is mostly one on one
• Large and important role of student-
content interaction
• Significant assessment and privacy issues
• Scalable
• OERs, MOOCs and analytics promise to
reduce costs and increase efficiency of
interactions

27.
30
2nd Generation
Constructivist Pedagogy
• Group Orientated, paced
• Membership and exclusion, closed
• Classrooms - at a distance or on campus
• Hierarchies of control
• Focus on collaboration and shared purpose
group
“Creating a successful online community is
dependent on knowing what works in the face-
to-face environment and implementing
effective parallels online”
(Cuthbertson & Falcone, 2014)

28.
Constructivist Knowledge is:
• Socially constructed
• Arrived at through dialogic encounters
(Bakhtin)
• “Dialogic as an epistemological framework
supports an account of education as the
discursive construction of shared knowledge”
– Wegerif, R.

29.
The Power of Synchronous
Learning in Groups
• Immediacy
• Pacing
• Social Modeling
• Comfort level for student
and teachers

30.
Immersion ??

31.
http://www.collaborativelearning.org/sciencebiology.html
OERs at work!

32.
Social Constructivist
Social Form
• Group based
• Limited in size
– Dunbar’s Max ~150 for a tribe
– Max. 50 persons/section in post secondary
• Mutual awareness of each other
• Teacher domination and dependency?
• Not scalable, Max student/teacher ratio
50/1

33.
Tools to Support Constructivist
Online Teaching
Online ABC LD in Excel
From Laurillard, D. (2012) Teaching as a Design Science.
Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology,

34.
Group Management
Enhancements
• Tools to allow
groups to work
effectively and
efficiently to build
trust,
collaboration and
work effectively
at a distance.
Messaging, file spaces, videoconference, collaborative editing

35.
Research Constructivist
2nd Generation
• Focuses on “lived” experience of participants
• Answers why or how? – not how many or
how much.
• Constructivism in practice – more than talk?
• Interviews and focus groups – now with
voice transcription and machine qualitative
analysis
• How much interaction is enough???
• What inhibits/supports group collaboration?

36.
2nd Generation
Social Constructivist Pedagogy
Summary
• Not scalable, expensive in terms of time
and money
• New group tools enhance efficiency
• Focuses on human development –
student-student and student-teacher
• Easiest pedagogy for teachers and
learners transitioning to online learning

37.
3rd Generation Connective
Pedagogies
• Connectivism - Siemens and Downes
• Heutagogy – Hase, S., & Kenyon, C. (2000). From
Andragogy to Heutagogy.
• Chaos Theory
• Rhizomatic Learning “The community is the curriculum”
Dave Cormier
• Communities of Practice – Etienne Wagner
• Activity Theory & Actor Network Theory (ANT)
– “systemic interactions of people and the objects that they use
in their interactions.”

38.
Connectivist Knowledge
• Is created by linking to appropriate people and objects
• May be created and stored in non human devices
• Is as much about capacity as current competence
• Assumes the ubiquitous Internet
• Is emergent
George Siemens

39.
Connectivist Learning
Persistence
Accessibility
Network
Effects
“Connectivying” your course
http://terrya.edublogs.org/2012/12/18/connectivy-your-course/

40.
NOT Learning in a Bubble

41.
Disruptions of Connectivism
• Demands high levels of net
literacy and presence of
students and teachers
• Openness is scary
• New roles for teachers
and students
• Issues of artifact
ownership, persistence &
privacy
• Too manic for some

42.
Dron and Anderson,
Teaching Crowds (2014)
Connectivist freedoms
• Location
where?
• Subject
what?
• Time
when?
• Approach
how (pedagogy, process)?
• Pace
how fast?
• Sociability
with whom (if anyone)?
• Technology
using what (medium/tools)?
• Delegability
choosing to choose
setnet
group

43.
Researching 3rd Connectivist
Generation
– Wang et al (2016) – innovating;
sensemaking; wayfinding; operating
– Examining and archiving of learning artifacts
produced
– Types and diversity of student’s net presence
– Need for design-based studies that can adapt
to ongoing change in tech affordances

44.
3rd Generation
Connectivist Learning Summary
• Born on the Net
• Locus of control shifts to students with
focus on student responsibility for their
own learning and building of their own
learning nets and sets
• Is emergent and disruptive
• For advanced learners only??

45.
The Social Aggregations of
3 Generations Pedagogies
• Individuals
• Groups
• Networks
• Sets
3rd Gen. Connectivist
2nd Gen. Social
Constructivist
1st
Gen
C/B

46.
Conclusions
• Students deserve the experience and the skill
development associated with all three
generations:
– Learning structured content by oneself (1st)
– Learning in groups and developing (2nd)
interpersonal skills
– Developing networks and network literacies
(3rd)
• There is no one pedagogical model, context,
depth, intensity or aggregation that supports
learning for everyone
• Multiple types of research needed.

47.
slides available on Slideshare
http://bit.ly/20nqXdt
Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca
virtualcanuck.ca
Skype: @terguy
Your comments and questions
most welcomed!

48.
The Social Aggregation makes a
Difference to Interaction
• Available from AUPress – CC
license