March 23, 2004

Notes from breakout3 groupG

Colston Symposium: Day 2: Breakout group G: facilitator – Ros O’Leary.

  

Oleg’s question:  What do teachers really want?

  • As learners, we have access to a lot of information, but it is more important to get in touch with knowledge communities than access information.  Moving into a field, want to get into a located (not necessarily physically) community.  Today, technology is offering information, but this is not what learners want, the need is deeper than that.  Perhaps SW is one approach to this deeper need.
  • Another view: What can technology offer me that is radically different / better than face-to-face?  Currently, as a lecturer, I use it as a resource / links base, plus multiple-choice quizzes.  Learners can potentially collapse a 12 week course into a few evenings, but the online component is not designed to substitute for attendence, which is compulsory.  But only 40% students ever log on.  So, I am looking for a benefit to sell to the students, because they don’t believe in elearning at the moment.
  • So, a key question is, “how do you get students to learn effectively and take some control over the process?”
  • A key role for technology might be in joining remote students, enabling them to learn together (like research practice); students do not see this possibility immediately.  But assessment is individual, so this might put a limit on this role.
  • As an ICT champion within an HE department, I get criticised for putting stuff online, maybe putting colleagues out of a job, plus IPR issues.

  • Oleg noted that teachers want help with lesson plans, and support for teacher’s expressiveness.  We agree, but VLEs are currently used mainly to substitute for lectures, textbooks, etc.
  • We want to be able to support tutorial-type activities online, with 300 students, in groups.
  • We want students to gain a certain amount of knowledge, then make links between it, and they then need to practice these skills.  But then assessment kills this process.  Technology is potentially good for this because it motivates students, like a (strategy) game.  But it is difficult to get appropriate software to do this.

Enrico’s question: To what extent to people believe that using the semantic web for learning services is feasible?

  • The main issue of internet content is critically reviewing that content, rather than accessing it.  The issue is one of trust.  SW may move in this direction, but not enough (yet).  It may speed up review, but it may not improve the quality of review.
  • SW sifts information, but who decides the criteria? (ontology?)
  • It is very difficult to express the complex context of a query to a tool – where is the interpretation?

Wendy (Grainne)’s question: How do you predict the unpredictable?  (When we solve today’s problems, tomorrow’s technologies will be very different)

  • Not possible to answer this – we have to start from where we are.  Practice in the classroom is very different to the research presented at this event.
  • Importance of mobile technologies for learning, and connecting small mobile technologies (eg texting over the phone).  Good for practicing language skills, collaboration, motivation.
  • But is this giving us (educationalists) the technology again, and we are again wondering what to do with it.  This is the wrong way round (see Oleg’s question).  Technology doesn’t solve the problems we have now.

Issues raised:

·        Importance of an activity-driven rather than a content-driven approach

·        Importance of student motivation

·        The need is for tools to support joining communities not gaining information

·        Students don’t do what we ask (they do strategic learning) – tools only work if students use them in the way we intend.  We have got to think how students will actually use this tool, and build tools which cope with strategic learning.

Questions

  • How can we make use of technology to create a more supportive environment for motivating students?
  • How much effort is involved in doing semantic annotation – is this scalable?
  • Is SW taking away a level of understanding about the web, disempowering us?
Posted by ilrt103v at March 23, 2004 12:49 PM