1.
:
Matching Technology and
Pedagogy to Create Effective
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.
• What has been your Covid experience
with Online Learning???

4.
Online learning
sucks
I love online
learning
Online learning
is boring
Online teaching
used to be better
“being online offers an escape
from being bullied at school”

5.
Link
“the key takeaway is that the pandemic did not threaten
but in fact accelerated the long-term growth, acceptance,
and desirability of online learning,”
US Based

6.
Source Tony Bates
https://www.tonybates.ca/2020/11/05/post-pandemic-lesson-1-online-
and-blended-learning-will-increase-substantially-post-covid-19/

7.
My
Response
Dr.
Taylerson
Tweet

8.
What is the Pedagogy??
Does the Pedagogy Match the
Technology?
Image Link

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

10.
Instructivist Pedagogy
• Early Online and distance education
• Modern Skill much Military training
• MOOCs

11.
Instructivist Pedagogy
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)

12.
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

13.
Nature of Knowledge
Instructivist 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.
Instructivist Technologies
• OERs, simulations, textbooks, Oneway
Lectures - with advancements

15.
Asynchronous
text, video & audio
Interaction
Student
Comments
& Questions

16.
Customer - AI Interaction
Student

17.
Moocs 2020

18.
MOOCs in Credited Action

19.
Open Educational Resources
it also saves
teacher
time!!!
OPEN Education Practice
“Students who use OER perform
significantly better on the course
throughput rate than their peers who use
traditional textbooks, in both face-to-face
and online courses”
Hilton et.al (2016) Maintaining Momentum Toward
Graduation: OER and the Course Throughput Rate. The
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed

20.
Learning Analytics - Dashboard

21.
Assessment in
Instructivist Pedagogy
• From a 2021 Systematic review of MOOC
assessment
– “consideration of the assessment of learning
outcomes at the beginning of course design
could support the formulation of explicit
assessment goals and, in this way, instruct
learners to work toward learning outcomes.”
Wei, X., Saab, N., & Admiraal, W. (2020). Assessment of cognitive, behavioral,
and affective learning outcomes in massive open online courses:
A systematic literature review. Computers & Education, 104097.
CLARITY

22.
Assessment
• Time management
• Student responsibility and initiative
• Complexity of content - the more difficult
the content, the more difficult student
assessment seems to become.
• Use Informal assessment when possible –
peers, formative -, pre submission, online
quizzes etc.
• Big Challenges with Cheating
Beebe, R., Vonderwell, S., & Boboc, M. (2010). Emerging patterns in transferring
assessment practices from F2F to online environments. Electronic Journal of e-learning, 8(1), 1-12.

23.
Maximizes Delegation
• We turn over much of the learning
experience, as consumers, to the
responsibility of the teacher and learning
institution.

24.
Teaching Using Instructivist
Pedgaogy?
• Personalize learning interaction whenever possible
• Send frequent emails (automatic and individual) - cueing
to the course timing
• Use OERs - especially those that support interactive
student-content interactions
• Frequent quizzes with feedback –right and wrong
• Peer feedback prompts, leading discussion prompts,
trigger questions etc.
• Video guest speakers
• Localized, product assessment
Kasch, Van Rosmalen & Kalz. (2020). Educational scalability in MOOCs:
Analysing instructional designs to find best practices,Computers & Education,

25.
1st Generation
Instructivist
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

26.
26
2nd Generation
Social - Constructivist Pedagogy
• Group Orientated, paced
• Membership and exclusion, closed
• Classrooms - at a distance and/or on
campus
• Hierarchies of control
• Focus on collaboration and shared purpose
group
“
Community of Inquiry

27.
• 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

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.
Students like Real time

31.
Most Cited Model –
Community of Inquiry

32.
http://www.collaborativelearning.org/sciencebiology.html
OERs at work!

33.
Social Constructivist
Social Form
• Group based
• Limited in size
– Dunbar’s Max ~150 for a tribe
• Mutual awareness of each other
• Teacher domination and dependency?
• Not scalable, maximum student/teacher
ratio 50/1

34.
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,

35.
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

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 Connectivist
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.
NOT Learning in a Bubble

40.
“In connectivism, the starting point
for learning occurs when knowledge
is actuated through the process of a
learner connecting to and feeding
information into a learning network.”
Kop, R., & Hill, A. (2008). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3), 1-13.

41.
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
set
net
group

42.
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

43.
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??

44.
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, all the time, for everyone.

45.
The Future of Online Learning is
diverse and uses multiple
pedagogies and technologies
• “there is more than one way to teach –
there are also multiple ways to learn”
Sean Nufer, an educator at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology

46.
Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca
Blog: virtualcanuck.ca
Skype: @terguy
Your comments and questions
most welcomed!

47.
• "Schools need to stop giving students the
fish and instead, teach them how to catch
them for themselves. Then learning at
home wouldn’t be such a problem.”
Todd Stanley edCurcuit 2020