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Models
by Steve Draper
Contents (click to jump)
This is a collection of notes, mainly for myself, on some related issues.
Related that is to:
Teaching collaboration,
Propagating learning technology in a university
CHI = Computer-Human Interaction a.k.a. HCI
CS = Computer (Computing) Science
EUROMET = a
project on meteorology.
HCI = Human-Computer Interaction
HEI = Higher Education Institution (e.g. a university)
LT = Learning Technology
MANTCHI = MAN Tutoring in CHI: a
project
OHP = OverHead Projector
T&L / TLP = Teaching and Learning / the Teaching and Learning Process.
(Actually, "Learning and Teaching" is more PC.)
The "Carey" model is for a whole course to be jointly designed, and the
same course delivered from/by multiple HEIs.
The MANTCHI model is to collaborate (only) on very small units.
The argument for small units is that this maximises re-use across situations
with very different constraints. The smallest unit size may be a single
learning objective, or a single exercise/learning activity.
The argument for a single course is that course design is work too, and
sharing one design saves work for just the same reasons as sharing smaller
units.
It may turn out that somewhere in between is best.
For more on this, see:
Cross-HEI collaborative teaching.
the "MANTCHI" model for reciprocal collaborative teaching
An attempt at a cost-benefit analysis
The measurement units are hours of learner time.
[30 mins.] EUROMET goes for single learning objectives (say about 30 mins of learner
time).
[8-10 hours] MANTCHI went for "ATOMs": student exercises 8-10 hours. Tom's larger case
studies.
[20-30 hours, over several weeks] A major seminar activity, including
writing and presenting a paper.
[100-130 hours] A module / semester / course.
Key ideas:
If you put technologists or technophiles in charge, you get glamourous
technology and few if any learning benefits. This has various forms:
- computer science projects (poor client service, judged by their CS
"content", not by whether they are useful to anyone).
- Learning technology projects, funded around the technology (not
learners' needs), and done by enthusiasts, even though not computer
scientists.
If you rely on teachers to implement things, change does happen but
slowly. Teachers have learned to use OHPs, word processors, spreadsheets,
and are now starting at least to refer to the web. But authoring tools have
got to be REALLY easy to use for this to happen, or to do other useful work
for the teachers.
If you reduce the technologists to a service, you don't get much call for
it, and you don't get much LT spread, and you don't get much vision of how
technology can help, because the teachers only think of old teaching methods,
and subject experts don't think of teaching at all.
The trick surely is to get interdisciplinary collaboration: not to have
either teachers or technologists in charge. That is because
- Implementation is still a serious barrier; (need compSci, tools,
authorware)
- Need a proper design method/approach: HCI, software engineering.
- Need subject matter expert, and teaching expert ("didactique")
- Need some educational design principles (not just software
design): untrained craft is probably not enough, as teaching
experience does not generalise enough to new teaching media.
And the guiding principle must be looking for a niche where the technology
can make an important difference. See:
Draper, S.W. (1998) "Niche-based success in CAL" Computers and Education
vol.30, pp.5-8 also at
http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/niche.html
Tom Carey is executing a real try at this. Organisationally, the original
twist is for the change agent to be someone hired as a "support" person i.e.
in Staff Development, but to put on a for-credit course, and use students to
identify niches, design and implement the niche-ware. A pyramid approach that
gets real leverage.
A learner-centred design idea kit for student/faculty teams: Scaling up a
learning technology strategy by
Tom Carey, Kevin Harrigan, Antonia Palmer and Jonathan Swallow;
University of Waterloo.
Where are the bottlenecks in designing authorware or other support for
teacher/authors?
It used to be in functionality. Building the first kit with the right
features used to be important.
Getting the right user interface to the kit is important. It used to be
that bad interfaces were done, but if you want a teacher to use it without
having to think about the computer (only about the teaching and the topic),
then a really effortless interface is needed.
But it may (now) be that the real bottleneck is in supporting the design
method. In getting users of the kit to think about pedagogy, not screen
design or clever functionality. Putting examples of the use of each feature
in there; perhaps making the user walk through an explicit method.
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