Our Journey Through OMDE-610

What five adjectives do you feel best describe your participation in this course?

·        Enlightening – new concepts and perspectives

·        Thankful – facilitators and classmates

·        Fulfilling – personally and professionally

·        Relevant – authentic learning experiences

·        Reflective – learning using a range of Bloom’s taxonomy.

What strength(s) do you feel that you brought to this course?  How/when was that strength exhibited?

My greatest strengths I brought to this course were a genuine interest in the subject, a desire to apply what I learned into my professional workplace, and a willingness to share my professional work experience with others.  My classmates would have experienced these contributions most significantly during the conference discussions while the facilitators would have also seen this in all four assignments.

What area(s) of weakness, if any, did you discover in your own learning?

My writing style is sometimes not in alignment with academic expectations.  Changing this style after so many years of practice will continue to be a challenge.

Describe one thing that you learned about yourself as an online learner through your participation?

For this particular class perhaps the greatest thing I learned were new areas of interest I would like to further explore.  While recognizing that improving one’s writing skill is a continual process, I am also interested in exploring the historical context of operations research from a management science perspective and to also deepen my knowledge of descriptive statistics, particularly as it relates to program evaluation.

A Case Study: Online Learning at Hagerstown Community College

Hagerstown Community College is located in western Maryland and offers over 100 programs of study leading to an associate’s degree, specialized certifications, and much more.  Over 61 percent of its 4,714 students attend part-time, a clear indicator that many students must balance the demands of work with their continued education in an online environment. Starting in the fall of 2011 the community college began to transition its online learning platform to Moodlerooms.  This platform offers an end-to-end learning management system adaptable to a growing institution such as Hagerstown Community College.  This scalable solution also provides for ease of transfer of existing course content; an important feature for this community college since it currently has a robust suite of courses already online through the Blackboard system. 

After performing an initial review of the new Hagerstown LMS site, it is apparent that the program has been configured to meet the branding requirements of the institution and also offers the flexibility to address the unique needs of individual offices and divisions.  Extensive student and instructor guides and videos are provided to ease the transition to the new LMS.  The Joule feature provides for automated enrollments and portals for 360 degree views of student progress.  Risk mitigation is ensured through a disaster recovery component and a particularly impressive “zero boundaries” feature offering support for up to 78 different languages, an important feature for a community college with a significant number of military students.

The advantages of Moodlerooms for college instructors is significant.  Features include:  automated grading, online access 24/7, Q&A capabilities including polling and surveying, instant feedback, individual course design opportunities, and Web 2.0 options. 

Hagerstown Community College was the first college of its type established in the State of Maryland.  Its transition to a new learning management system portends its continued recognition as a leading institution of higher education in western Maryland.  For further information about Moodlerooms and its capabilities, check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MoodleroomsVideo#p/c/2/OMYzsAurxHY

Perry’s Top Ten



Inspired by Robert S. Donovan’s article, 21 Things that will be Obsolete by 2020, this author is going to create his own list of changes for the American classroom.  So here we go, the top ten items or practices that will disappear by the year 2020:

Routine Classroom Arrangements – gone will be the days of routinized columns of desks in the classroom.

Social Promotion – students will progress for their educational prowess based on competency attainment from pre-established proficiency levels.

Report Cards – good bye to the As, Bs, and Cs; instead graphical interfaces will identify proficiency levels for multiple content areas.

Endless Lectures – instead, students even at the elementary level will have greater and greater input to what is learned.

Structured School Day – far more creative, external learning opportunities will be provided to students.

Theory without Application – theory, models, and concepts will be taught, but immediately reinforced with practical applications.

Lack of Practitioners – the huge number of retired baby boomers will be actively engaged to support the public school student.

Restrictions on Mobile Devices – instead of being viewed as a threat, mobile devices will be used as a tool to engage students.

Hall Monitors – who needs them when students are empowered with greater governance.

Neuro-science – it is time to recognize the stages of development for all learners and engage them at the stage that they are at!

Leading Change, Leading Others, Leading the Way as Educators

Kotter's penguins on the move.

John P. Kotter in his seminal work, Leading Change, postulates that change management is a key to organizational success in the 21^st century.  Recognizing the implications of globalization in the new century, he sees change as a tool that can be harnessed and used to any organization’s advantage, including that of educational institutions.  Kotter describes this management of change as consisting of eight steps:

·        Establishing a Sense of Urgency

·        Creating the Guiding Coalition

·        Developing a Vision and Strategy

·        Communicating the Change Vision

·        Empowering Broad-Based Action

·        Generating Short-term Wins

·        Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change

·        Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture

Kotter argues that the lynchpin for successful change management is leadership.  He goes so far as to say that 70-90 percent of any true transformation is dependent on leadership as compared to management.  So what are the keys to leadership?  According to Kotter, they are establishing direction, aligning people, and motivating and inspiring. 

So you may ask, how does Kotter’s work relate to the role of a teacher in an academic setting?  I would start by considering the definition of a leader.  Aren’t all teachers involved in establishing direction for their students, aligning student work to the curriculum’s learning goals and objectives, and motivating and inspiring students to be the best that they can be?  Yes, teachers are leaders.  And also, aren’t teachers involved in change management on a daily basis?  They work with students to create an environment to instill a desire to learn new concepts, new perspectives and ultimately new knowledge.  Yes, teachers are also change managers.

In recognition of the valuable role teachers perform for all of us, enjoy this short video clip on change management and allow it to instill in you a greater appreciation for all teachers.

Critical Thinking and the American Political System

So when is the last time you associated the term critical thinking with an American politician?  Critical thinking is one of the most important callings for higher education, right?  And if we were to consider the educational background of our politicians, as a group they are certainly highly educated as compared to the rest of the population.  So might one surmise that since there are a large number of highly educated politicians that this would translate into a lot of critical thinking?

Hmmm, . . . I suspect you would agree that politicians are most certainly the recipients of a great deal of critical exposition!  Yes, Congress has the lowest favorability ratings since the Stone Age (or more accurately, the 1960s).  So what gives, why are politicians held in such low esteem if indeed they are highly trained critical thinkers?

Perhaps an example comes into play.  Consider the use of the active versus passive voices in our written documents.  Academia advocates, with rare exception, that the active voice is the way to go.  It is more to the point, more concise, more clear.  But think about it, when was the last time you heard a politician use the active voice?  Let’s bring this into focus with an example; we’ll use a quiz question to press the point.

Select one of the following two statements that you believe would most likely be made by a politician: 

a)      I believe our debt crisis must be resolved through a combination of tax increases and service cuts, or

b)      Tax increases and service cuts must be used to reduce the debt crises.

Yes, the politician would more than likely choose option “b.”  Using the passive voice is so great when you want to muddy the water, avoid blame, and offer a long-winded pronouncement that keeps things nice and vague. 

So what is the learning point from this conversation?  Perhaps it is that our environments can impact how some of the tools gained from our college educations are actually used in the workplace.  It is not only the politician who has mastered the use of the passive voice, but it is the federal bureaucrat as well.  Avoiding the use of the active voice has been used as a shield for many years by a remarkable number of federal employees.  Perhaps partly in response to this disparity between the public’s expectation for clear language and their reality when engaging the bureaucracy, President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act of 2010.  This law requires that federal agencies use "clear Government communication that the public can understand and use."  So will the American political system successfully navigate the rocky shoals of intransigence that resides in many federal agencies?  We will see, but perhaps most telling will be the role the trainers of this new federal law take in facilitating not only the skill but also the human and organizational infrastructure to support this change effort.  The purpose of education and training should therefore be more than the acquisition of learning, it should also focus on learning outcomes as a part of meeting the strategic goals of public policy.

A Blended Learning Toolkit

The MDE-Lounge can come in handy.  Not only does it foster a sense of community; or should I say “social presence” in CoL parlance, but it is also a great way to discover new and handy resources.  One of the more recent posts in the lounge mentioned a blended learning toolkit.  I was prompted to check it out because last week while I was listening to the CBS Evening News there was the mention of blended learning.  This particular news segment focused on how the current downturn in the economy is negatively impacting school districts, but what especially sparked my interest was the interview with a principal from central Pennsylvania.  During this interview the principal mentioned that blended learning might be at least one creative way to address student learning needs in an environment where he didn’t expect any increase in funds for the foreseeable future.  Wow, blended learning to the rescue?!  While I am certainly not convinced that blended learning is “the” solution for all our ills in public education (nor am I implying that the principal thought this either), it certainly begs the question, What easy tools are available to implement blended learning? Well, the MDE-Lounge came to the rescue.

The toolkit I am referring to is titled The Blended Learning Toolkit and is a product of the University of Central Florida and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.  This web-based product is open source and is funded by the Next Generation Learning Challenges organization under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.  Sound familiar?  Yes, many of our readings in OMDE-610 have been provided from The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, an electronic open access format under a Creative Commons License.

The Toolkit offers a blog for user postings, a process section to help build your own blended course, effective practices, evaluation methodologies, faculty development, further research, and most valuable to me, a good number of model courses so you can actually experience some of these great products.  Go ahead, check out the site here:  http://blended.online.ucf.edu/. Although not all the courses are available to American users because of copyright restrictions from other countries, there are still many options to choose, particularly from the University of Central Florida.  One of my favorite sample courses is provided with a short introductory video by the instructor, Dr. M.C. Santana, who teaches a class on visual communication theory.  Check it out here:  http://engage.ucf.edu/v/p/pb6fvtW

Just listening to this short introductory clip makes you want to take her course, doesn’t it!  Feel free to “tool around” other classes and see what you think; another great one is provided by a philosophy professor from Yale, I’ll let you dig for this one on your own.

So is blended learning “the” solution for public schools at a time of diminishing financial support?  I am hardly prepared to make the leap and say it is, but certainly public educators should explore its capabilities in recognition that many of our students are super cyber-savvy customers. 

Connectivism, Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Semantic Web

Kop and Hill (2008) discuss the potential of connectivism as a learning theory. Built on the behaviorist, cognitivist and constructivist theories, Kop and Hill state that there is an alignment among these three validated theories and connectivism. Despite this, I continue to contend that connectivism is a valuable pedagogical tool and yet not sufficiently supported to be a learning theory.

As I was posting on our week #5 conference earlier today I started to consider the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy and how it may apply to Kerr’s (2007) contention that “knowledge is not learning or education” (p. 7). I conferenced with one of my classmates on how the levels of intellectual behavior in the Bloom Taxonomy could be applied to Kerr’s aforementioned quote. I argued that while repetition is a valuable learning tool as contended by the classmate, this learning approach would likely only address the most basic learning behaviors in the Bloom Taxonomy. I felt this was a rather easy argument to make, but because of my lack of prior academic background in education, I decided to explore the Bloom Taxonomy further. As a part of this research I discovered the work of Andrew Churches. Churches (2011) recognizes the original work of Benjamin Bloom in 1956 as well as the subsequent work by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl in 2001 which updated the taxonomy and the concommitant defining verbs for each level.

I then discovered a still newer taxonomy for Bloom’s work, that of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. This was a bit of a revelation to me, not so much because of the taxonomy itself, but because of its application to connectivism and the Semantic Web. While not changing any of the levels from the 2001 version, this updated taxonomy alters the associated defining terms so they are more applicable to the web environment. As an example, the 2001 verbs include define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce while the digital terms are social networking, social bookmarking, googling, searching, and bullet pointing.

While the uses of the different definitions are obvious, what I found most interesting is the similar way in which the Bloom Taxonomy and constructivist learning proposed theory provide the same pedagogical approach for the web environment. In both cases the approaches represent the dynamic nature of educational resources and the provision of valuable new tools for both the learner and educator. I found it powerful to recognize that a variety of educational tools can function to address the same purpose, i.e., improved pedagogical outcomes.

References:

Educational Origami. (2011). Blooms Digital Taxonomy. Retrieved from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Kerr, B. (2007). Msg. 1, The invisibility problem. Online Connectivism Conference: University of Monitoba. Retrieved from: http://Itc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=12

Kop, R. & Hill, A. (2008). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? In The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3), 1-13.

Do We Own Technology?

Sherry Turkle, an MIT technology professor, has recently published a book entitled, “Alone Together:  Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.”  I learned about the book by referencing the UMUC med-lounge causing me to attend a free webcast conducted by Ms. Turkle on September 28, 2011.  The essence of Ms. Turkle’s argument is that we must see technology as a partner and recognize its potential costs in the form of what she terms “addiction.”  Turkle makes the premise that as we ramp up the volume and velocity of communication facilitated by technology, we frequently become overwhelmed across the generations.  She describes these impacts as a new-found preference to avoid emotional exposure, impairment of critically important collaboration and innovation, and increased difficulty in developing mentoring relationships and learning experiences.  As still another example, Turkle states that the new technologies inhibit people from talking with each other in the form of successful negotiation and conflict management. 

Instead of becoming so wedded to technology, Turkle argues that we must value solitude for its regenerative and creative powers.  She confirms significant research that multi-tasking degrades performance, although interestingly she states there are times when it is necessary subject to one’s willingness to have performance degrade.  In the workplace Turkle discusses a need for staff to slow down, find sacred spaces, and establish new institutional rituals.  The Internet and all its permutations is not viewed by Turkle as the enemy, but instead a tool that must be managed.  Turkle states, “Just because we grew up with the Internet, we assume the Internet is all grown up.”  Her supposition from this statement is clear, the Internet offers the potential for powerful affordances and yet also the potential for serious costs. 


I found the presentation provocative and powerful; an important new perspective that should be further explored from the standpoint of distance education.

Rubrics and Performance Management Systems

Rubrics have a wide range of applications beyond academic assessment.  By definition they are rating scales used for performance assessment.  Mertler (2001) states that they consist of “specific pre-established performance criteria, used in evaluating student work on performance assessments” (p. 2).  While the application of rubrics in education are well documented and practiced, their use also applies to performance management systems.  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission manages such a system which is named the Evidence-based Performance Management System (EPMS).

The EPMS is a primary tool of the agency to improve individual and group performance.  The performance of individuals and teams are aligned to the mission and vision of the agency.  The EPMS consists of rating scales as associated with five critical performance factors.  These factors are based on pre-established standards for each grade, and in some cases, to specific occupational series.  The EPMS is an analytic rubric, although checklists may be used for specific individual or team task assignments.  A holistic rubric was not used, in part, because error in any single part of the process cannot be tolerated due to legal and employee/labor relations implications.  The rubric scores are tallied at the end of each performance appraisal cycle and converted to an overall rating.  These annual ratings form the basis for merit pay decisions and may also be used as a part of Performance Improvement Plans, reduction-in-force calculations, and award and disciplinary actions.

The EPMS at the SEC demonstrates that rubrics have a wide range of applicability beyond the educational environment.

References:

Mertler, Craig A. (2001). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(25).

Pierce, W. (2006). Designing rubrics for assessing higher order thinking. AFACCT Conference Presentation Columbia, MD, on January 13, 2006.

A Possible Application from my OMDE 610 Class

In a discussion at work yesterday I suggested the idea that we establish blogs based on a set of predetermined themes relevant to a segment of our workforce.  Security would be maintained through the permissions feature of blogspot, and highly confidential subjects would be excluded from the topics.  The initial target audience would be the Office of Human Resources and the blogs would be automatically linked to the OHR "family" Facebook page.  I expect to make this recommendation to the communications committee within the next few weeks.

The mission of the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. If you are interested in further information about the Commission and its employment opportunities, check out this video produced by SEC University.

I Did It, I Did It!

E-Learning as a Higher Calling

In one of our conference postings this last week there was mention of a fellow student's challenge in managing the interaction between a Palestinian and Israeli participant.  This post caused me to be reminded of an earlier OMDE classmate who had been a recent expatriate from Iran.  This expatriate and I started to build a cyber-based friendship and as a part of our discussions she described the repression of women in Iran.  She went on to talk about some of her challenges as a female in that country, including her difficulty in gaining an education.  E-learning was her only source of education while living in the country and it gave her at least a limited opportunity to learn.  As a white, middle-income white male who grew up in a rather protected suburb of Washington, D.C., I found the challenges she faced both disconcerting and yet also gratifying that should could have at least partially met her learning goals through e-learning programs.  E-learning has both positive and negative attributes, and certainly one of its greatest strengths is its ability to reach many who are underprivileged in our world.  While she provided a powerful testament to the value of e-learning, I recognize its applicability to a far broader range of learners throughout the world. 

In conclusion, I provide here a short video of the challenges Iranian women face today.

Is Theory Ethereal?



I started my first week of study in OMDE 610 with a rather skeptical view of the value of theory to become an e-learning practitioner.  I must admit, I still harbor some of those feelings.  But then I started reviewing the posts as a part of our conference discussions and reading the chapters by Ally and Anderson and began to question my stance.  Could theory actually have value to a practioner, especially in today's society when the expectations for immediate product development are so pressing?  And then I remembered an old story about leadership, and what it actually means when compared to that of a manager.  No, I don't remember the source; but I do remember the story.  It goes something like this:

There once was a manager of men whose job it was to build a road through a deep and inpenitrable jungle.  He worked his men hard, organized all his resources to ensure rapid progress, and within a month had made tremendous mileage through the forest.  One day one of his men came to him and said, but sir, look ahead, what do you see?  What they saw was a mountain range that was in the wrong direction compared to their target for the road project.  They had been productive; but had gone in the totally wrong direction.

While this story illustrates that you can be very productive as a manager, that doesn't necessarily mean that you will be successful.  It takes leadership, the ability to create an accurate vision as well as the fortitude to get others to carry it out that really measures success.

I share this story because of the value theory can bring to the leader as well as the practioner.  Doesn't the study of theory, and especially the understanding of theory and its appropriate application to a particular situation, offer the individual an incredibly important tool?  I think it does.  As my mother used to sometimes say to me when I was a child, "Chris, sometimes you've got to see the forest for the trees."

So have our conference postings helped me better understand the value of theory?  Yes.  The readings have certainly added to my appreciation of theory.  Perhaps as a capstone to this post I'll add this quote from Albert Einstein from our readings, "It is the theory that decides what we can observe." 

OK, OK, I think I'm beginning to get this.  :)