Month: June 2011

“None of us are defined by our circumstances, nor are we defined by how others people perceive us. It is up to each one of us to define ourselves and that is a life’s work….Each of us has the ability to lead a dynamic life by pursuing our unique goals and dreams. There are no limits to what you can do.” –Stedman Graham

After re-reading my first blog about this class, I realize how truly wrong I was about Robin the instructor. She is a true scholar and taught her heart out during the course. Once we talked, I found her to be compassionate, highly intelligent and an extremely good teacher or instructor, minus her problems with anything technological. Had I missed her course, I would never have forgiven myself. As for Bellevue College, it is the best college to learn in! Your course instructors are knowledgeable and have great teaching records.  The college is learner oriented and focuses on providing what their students need. I am very proud to work at BC and be a student on campus. It is about the learner at Bellevue College. It truly is exceptional, in my educated opinion.

After reviewing my blogs, I think I can safely state I am not a self-directed learner yet. I may be moving in that direction; but I have a lot of education to get past. I am motivated by grades to a certain extent. I know they are what counts to employers…in some corporations or institutions. But, I think many potential employers would be far more likely to hire someone with a “B” average than a person with a perfect grade point average. Most importantly, they are looking for people who can do the job. Also, they are more interested in the course content you’ve taken. Grade point averages vary from college to university and may by more bias from one institution to another. Finally, I am a scholar plain and simple. I love to learn! I love the challenge…but most importantly, I love the result and putting the knowledge to work for me.

My blogs tell me I struggle when I learn. I push myself beyond the material offered in the course. Sometimes, I am a bit too honest about where I am in the process. I am open when I write about myself. I dislike secrets or not saying what is on my mind. I try to temper that with concern and consideration for the audience and the people I am writing about. I am not always successful; but I try to be. I do not like to hurt people. I want to move them forward, not slap them down into place.

When it comes to skill or assessing learners, often I see things that are best left unsaid. The trick is to move them from the old habits and beliefs they often cling to. I would much rather put something out there that grabs them and makes them think, even if they don’t agree with me. I appreciate a good argument. It increases my learning as well. Teaching and/or learning is a two-way street. My learners will teach me as much as I am teaching them if not more. Also, once I got to the 800 and 900 level courses in my university studies and began working on developing a theory, I realized how much we really don’t know. It is a very disconcerting experience.

I loved backward design and cannot stress the importance of assessment enough. But, I do not agree with the old ways of testing. Using ill-structured problems and formative and summative assessment techniques will eventually accomplish what we want from our students. The point is to refine what we have and change with the times to some extent. If change is too fast it will have the opposite effect of discouraging students and governing institutions. Progress often comes too slowly in this world. Yet it must be the end we’re working toward.

One thing I noticed in the end of term project presentations was, the people who were teachers or had teaching experience presented their projects while standing at the front of the room where the attention was directed toward them. They read or spoke through their presentations. I wanted to demonstrate a new way of communicating this information based on what we have been learning the past three courses. That is, to put it into a presentation you could give to students on-line…with the focus off the person standing at the front of the room. That is one of the older ways of teaching and not what we were learning for on-line teaching.

Also converting a classroom course to an online course needed a bit more thinking in my opinion. Some of the students in these courses said they wanted to learn some things they could incorporate into a course they already had in a classroom, instead of thinking in a new way and redirecting the course for online use, based on what we were learning. You need proficiency in online tools to do this. Your students will not trust you to teach them if you do not use technology well. They are digital learners and know nothing else. They were raised with these tools.

The big ideas came to me. The end of the term project or capstone project was a rare jewel Robin worked us through each module. It all made sense at the end and took a lot of rethinking  to get right.  I think I did get it right. Rubrics need to constantly be reworked to measure what you want them to, simply because they lack reliability and validity. You cannot build a rubric like you can a scientific experiment. You cannot quantify and test in separate groups as readily or easily as a sociological experiment. So, I will leave the true test of my understanding to time and using rubrics to assess students.

Since I love blogging and reflecting on learning in a blog, I truly enjoyed the writing of them. It was not easy; and I had to think deeply about what I wanted to say. I only wish I had this tool when I was working on my masters and doctoral degree. So, what did I learn?…well I learned I love blogging!  I love the concept of portfolios on-line! I loved everything about the course…especially the challenges and hard work. I love backward design and thinking in that way to design a course. In the end, it is not what I have learned; but how well I use it. Teaching or facilitating an online course is a learning process and not a finished producted. That is what keeps it interesting, challenging and productive. It is a double-edged sword that you cannot escape. You are the learner and facilitating the learning of others. Sometimes it is difficult to know who is doing what.

Finally, I learned how much I appreciated the feedback my fellow learners gave me through out the three-quarters of this certification process. I had shared myself with them and they have shared with me. This built a bond and an appreciation for where they are and were at and where they are going on this journey we call life. Community is a very powerful energy! It can build or destroy. Whenever I posted something totally off the wall, they simply did not respond or view it. If it struck their interest or they disagreed with it…they posted fast and furious. You have got to love that! I did. I hope I never have to miss them. I hope we will all stay in touch with each other and network.

Finally, the person who set all of this up is Norma. I will not disclose her name online. She is the brains of the project. It was her baby. She is an exceptional person. Her personality and great skills were present in each course. Our instructors were top-notch and it takes someone who is to pick others like themselves. She is attending a more in-depth course of study in online teaching through my alma mater the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I give her kudos! I would not have missed this whole certification process for the world. It was top-notch all the way through. There is one more quarter to get through…then the real work will begin, as we work toward securing teaching positions or developing our skills further.

I am placing my final project in this blog. No matter how many times I did re-takes…I simply could not get it where I wanted it to be. That too takes time and practice!

It is a beautiful sunny Sunday. Here I am sitting in this chair fuming. I want to be outside or going to the store to get the supplies I need. I reflected on the project I need to turn in on Tuesday, most of the week for hours. The most difficult part of this project was writing learning objectives and asking myself if they could be measured with the rubric I had created. I still don’t know and probably will not, until I use it in a real class. I do know I will have to rethink most of what I have presented when setting up the course in a Learning Management System.

The second part of all this was thinking how to put the information into the forum I want to hand in electronically to the instructor. Seeing what I had started in the first few courses, I feel deep humiliation. I see how truly naive I was. Even worse, I see what a novice I am! If I had some of the knowledge I have now, I could have done a far better job of constructing the course. I have learned so much; but still wish I had a magic ball to peer into. Every step of the process is going to be difficult and though provoking. The real challenge will be collecting and putting the information into a learning system staying true to the big idea and course objectives.

The worst part of all this is, the certification process is only for one year or four courses. I would have liked as much time as it takes to get a Associate degree. We have only begun the process of putting a course on-line. I am not the only person in the class that finds one summer quarter is not quite enough time to learn all there is to learn, with guidance. I guess even self-directed learning might not get me past this obstacle to learning.

I sit on this computer chair and can hear Jen’s (Essentials of eLearning instructor) comment, “…have fun!” She said this to us at our last class meeting, when she knew we were going to take the assessment course. I figured the way she said it, this course would be a challenge. Well, little did I know! I think I have put more thought into the course then I have put into anything, since I was in my doctoral program. My brain is smoking!!

The video says it all…music soothes the savage beast!  I been thinking about something! It is the chorus I like…”I been thinking bout somethin.”

I have just read a blog from one of the learners in my class. He went into the subject matter and analyzed it thoroughly. I spent over ten hours working through my project for Tuesday and the other material for the final. It took me many hours this week trying to narrow the objectives to those that might work with the rubric. Then I worked with the rubric. This work kept me from going into depth about the Higher Education policy in Europe and nationally. However, I got familiar with some of the basic concepts and ideas. My course mate’s blog helped clear some of what I read up for me.

My problem with this assignment is, I am working on assessment for my proposed course and trying to write objectives and rubrics that are doing what they are supposed to be doing, helping me assess my students and helping students to assess themselves. Finally,  trying to find assessment tools to help future student through the course material is a task and is about all I can, really, handle. Thinking globally about assessment makes my head hurt! This much I can say, the world is concerned with achieving the education goals that are set for the students. At each level, globally, nationally and at the state level, boards are getting together and asking themselves what needs to be learned, at what level and how best to test for evidence of this learning.

Herein lies the dilemma. The very people who got us all into this mess in the first place are trying to figure out how to get students out of it. From what I have heard and read so far, students are not the people making these decisions, nor do them seem to be consulted as to how they understand schooling at every level. Time and time again, we have seen experiments about student learning. One of the underlying concepts is students will learn if given the autonomy to learn what they are interested in with minimal guidance. That is the bottom line.

So what is the fuss here? It seems these academic intellectuals and state legislators and teachers are starting at the top and working down to achieve an answer and set up a new blueprint for teaching and learning. Why don’t they start from the bottom up and work from there? Why? Because, the world today’s potential students are facing is far different from anything anyone over the age of 35 has even conceived of. Learners are using difference parts of their brains to do different tasks and using technologies never used before. Everything I have read about the institutional moves to change institutions and programs of learning and the assessment of todays programs and institutions…has little to do with what the digital learner is all about or what corporations will need in the future.

Having spent five years as a graduate student and three of those years in one of the best political science departments in the US, I am seriously concerned with all the emphasis put on theories and theory building. Even more perplexing to me is the whole emphasis on assessing what colleges and universities are teaching. Granted they want to see results or they want students to be prepared for the world and its problems…but they have no idea what it will look like. Therefore, they want to give students the skills to problem solve, think critically and work in an environment they can only imagine at this point. My question is this, what do you think you are changing? You are trapped within the parameters of your own learning world and your learning experiences of the past and cannot possible create a new system that applies to upcoming learners,  without their input in every step of assessment regarding institutions or schools and programs of learning.

Think about this thought…what if learners and students did the work your trying to do in assessing schools and programs of study?  What would the outcomes look like? What kind of assessment would you have and what would the results look like? How can the older ways of doing things change with the assessment your using? I am open…go ahead! I have years to hear your thoughts on all of this. In sum, because I was a high school drop out and dropped out of my doctoral program (making me a university drop out), even when I knew I could finish and do so with honors, I know what today’s learners are saying and doing when they drop out…engage us or we leave! Or, let us follow our interests in the way we are seeing them through the screens of our computers, while looking into global cyberspace. Our instincts are good and mostly likely we see much further into the future than you can, simply by sitting at our computers in our own homes. Are we ready to listen to them?

Our corporations and businesses of the future are really going to dictate what we need to teach students and the skills they will need to be employable in the years to come. How many corporations and corporate board members are sitting in on your assessment parties when policy is being considered? I actully think Euporean institutional assessment is slightly farther ahead of the United State’s efforts. Please view the last two videos. They talk about what is needed and what would not work in a college or university. I took futurist courses in my undergraduate studies of sociology. Professor Patrick Dixon is a futurist. These are his ideas and that is NEW IDEAS.

Post Script:  I forgot to add a comment or two about assessing the learning backgrounds of learners who have a rich background of experience on the job and in the world. Although this was suppose to happen (somewhere in the 60s), colleges and universities seldom seem to understand how to assess life experience. As a result, most people do not get credit for the things they have learned on the job or in other ways. I have always figured it was because universities are corporations and want to make money. Not accepting credits from other colleges or giving credit for life experience, they require students to take more of their courses and spent more money in their institution. Please see the link on assessment: http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Life-Earns-Credit-/64618