Week 9 - E-learning in Action, 11/18

With Professor Kim on philanthropic hiatus in the Middle East, our weekly in vivo seminar took the form of an in silico e-learning session. Fittingly, the message matched the medium, as Dr. Curtis Bonk, Indiana University professor and author of The World is Open, availed of this pedagogical opportunity to relate his thesis that the emergence of the Internet and online sharing technologies have resulted in a world in which "you can have an [educational] impact on anyone anywhere on this planet at any time of day" (Prequil, p. 3). Bonk's refrain, "the world is open!" is not merely a descriptive message. Rather, it is a call to action to utilize collaborative technologies to promote the free and open sharing of ideas for global enrichment.

Message aside, a skeptic may point to this very session as an example of the perils of distance learning, primarily due to inadequate technology: a video-based WebEx conference with accompanying speaker-phone. Although we comprised two invested parties, a combination of poor audio and video fidelity compromised communication. This became immediately apparent when Dr. Bonk began referring to invisible slides, prompting an investigation of the technology itself. This resulted in an agreement wherein we would manually advance the presentation slides at his direction. More critically, we found it particularly difficult to pose inline questions, as most attempts to visually or aurally gain Dr. Bonk's attention were met with failure.

Nonetheless, further reflection suggests that this learning opportunity provided a net positive value, particularly given that we formed a mature, willing, and engaged collective. Despite technical difficulties, Dr. Bonk's message, and, more importantly, his passion, were evident to those of us in the audience. We clearly learned from this exchange, and at least one student walked away with an increased understanding of the state of web-based collaborative technologies and their potential to enlighten the world.

One example of the proliferation of ideas that would not have been possible without this exchange, commenced with Dr. Bonk's casual reference that multiple notable innovators (ranging from Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com to Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google) emerged from Montessori educational systems. This reinforced, in me, the critical role played by creativity in the advancement of society, and caused me to wonder if the Montessori curriculum expressed some of the elusive characteristics of the Creative Domain of Learning (which I proposed in Week 3, and expanded upon in Week 6). As a result of the transmission of a single idea, I commenced a cursory search of the Montessori methodology, and found the following relevant assumptions (source):

• Children are capable of self-directed learning.
• Children learn through discovery to correct their own mistakes instead of relying on a teacher to give them the correct answer.

It is not difficult to conclude that these pedagogical characteristics protect and foster inherent creativity, and likely contributed to the development of the aforementioned exemplars of innovation in our modern society. The codification of these attributes into a Creative Domain of Learning may be the key to affording likewise opportunities to all students.

Week 8 - Principles of Presentations, 11/11

As in Week 4, our latest course session consisted of participant presentations of custom digital artifacts. Rather than summarize innovative media or projects, our collective mission was to present unique solutions to the education needs of the most vulnerable, underprivileged, or marginalized members of society. Topics included comparative cultural timelines, culturally situated writing projects, language development through comic strips, school creation in rural India, video solutions in biology education, preservation of native languages, de-marginalization of senior citizens and foster children, pedagogical tools to address dyslexia, promotion of multicultural understanding via film, increasing music awareness in urban youth, empowering the homeless, combating ADD, bullying prevention, addressing childhood depression, healthcare resources for the elderly, and culturally appropriate disease prevention.

Following the presentations in Week 4, I utilized this space to evaluate the effectiveness of various media formats for web-based teaching technologies. In this iteration, I wish to investigate the particular concerns of presentations and the prerequisites for their success. Not surprisingly, an effective model in this endeavor is ABCD (described here). For example, an analysis of ABCD in preparation for the presentations of last week may have yielded the following:

• The Audience consists of the EDUC 391 course cohort and instructor. Members are sympathetic to the cause of addressing the needs of marginalized/vulnerable/underprivileged populations, and express a sincere interest in developing novel technological solutions to these needs.
• The desired Behavior is an understanding of the education need, empathy for the target population, basic comprehension of the proposed solution, and assurance that design and cultural principles have been incorporated into artifact creation
• The Conditions consist of an intimate classroom with technological support for a visual projection of a computer-based presentation. The presentation will be given in sequence with 16 others, restricted by a temporal limit of 5-7 minutes.
• The Degree to which behaviors should be achieved is a sufficient understanding and interest to promote at least one informed followup (as opposed to clarification) questions from all audience members (assuming an absence of temporal constraints)

Although these considerations appeared to be generally made by members of the cohort, the distinctive nature of each presentation reflected divergent beliefs in how best to achieve them. The greatest conflict lay between the conditional temporal limitations, and the desire to achieve the basic behavioral outcomes of comprehension, empathy, and assurance of rigor. For example, My approach favored a visual assurance of adherence to design principles, despite the fact that the content could not be adequately covered within the temporal constraints. In contrast, Paul Franz opted for an emotive visual presentation that attempted to inherently reflect a consideration of design and cultural principles. Although an assessment of the relative effectiveness of these two presentations is difficult, given that temporal constraints curbed the potential for questions, my observation is that the latter prompted a greater degree of engagement among the audience.

This exercise is helpful in preparing for the rapidly approaching final project exposition. Although the behavioral objectives for this event will be similar to those of the class presentation, the environmental aspects will differ greatly. To wit, the format will be that of a conference rather than a presentation, the audience will include interested members of the population at large, including socially active members of the entrepreneurial, educational, and corporate communities, and the temporal constraints of presentation time (at least with respect to engaging observers) will be on the scale of seconds. Consequently, the success of my exposition presentation hinges on the creation of an evocative display that conceptually and emotively conveys the problem and the unique solution in a way that will promote queries and deeper conversations with the audience members.

Week 7 - Complementary Needs, 11/4

As in Week 5, our cohort was presented with an opportunity to interact with impassioned individuals working in the domain of web-based educational technologies. The first group, viewxtreme, comprised of Stanford alumni, are attempting to launch a web-based, immersive distance-learning service for higher education. To that end, they provide a single, wide-angle video feed of classroom lectures, replete with interactive features such as selective pan, tilt, zoom, resolution, and annotation. They were followed by a single grantee, Kristene, who is in the process of developing a social initiative to assist low-income Chicago families in locating ideal schools for their children.

While reflecting on this experience, I was struck with the complementary nature of the needs and provisions of our class and those of the presenters. In each case, the two parties were able to provide mutual benefit by merely exercising their needs! To wit, as members of a class concerned with web-based educational technology, we are in constant need of inspirational, innovative exemplars and opportunities to practice the generation of ideas. This need meshed perfectly with that of our presenters who desired interaction with inspired individuals in order to develop the vision for their projects. Via organization by an outside party (in this case, Dr. Kim), our groups were united to our mutual benefit. Interestingly, this is the very model that I am try to implement in my course project, a description of which is to follow. However, a more detailed description of the concept of complementary needs is merited:



Complementary Needs


This diagram demonstrates the role of complementary needs in two traditional relationships, as well as a third that I have developed for my project. The top figure demonstrates the traditional relationship between producer and consumer in terms of the complementary needs of income (on the part of the producer), and goods/services (on the part of the consumer). In the marketplace, the consumer and producer exchange respective needs to their mutual benefit. Notably, this traditional relationship tends to exclude vulnerable populations, as it requires that the consumer possess disposable income.

The central figure in the diagram demonstrates the traditional relationship between vulnerable populations and charity organizations. In many cases, the volunteer entity is in need of moral edification, which may be provided by meeting the needs of a vulnerable population. Although this arrangement is accessible to marginalized populations, it hinges upon the continued devotion and resource generation on the part of the volunteer group. Furthermore, such a model does not guarantee the long-term growth of the vulnerable population, as the provisions may only alleviate conditions rather than promote underlying change.

The final figure in the diagram demonstrates the purest form of complementary needs. In this relationship, an outside entity recognizes and joins two vulnerable populations whose needs satisfy each other. Although this relationship is not restricted to vulnerable populations (see the opening anecdote), it offers a unique solution that is both sustainable (the resources, in the form of needs, are endemic to each population) and viable (the strength of the relationship is a function of the continued needs of the populations).

This concept of complementary needs arose while I considered ways to address the educational needs of children with insufficient familial or community support. Both Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Ecological Systems Theory suggest that scholastic success is dependent on a nurturing and supportive microsystem (i.e. the setting in which an individual lives). My insight, and the guiding principle behind my project, is that this need may be met by the needs of another substantial, marginalized population, senior citizens, many of whom are in need of ways to connect to the community at large. These two populations require only a forum in which to exchange the gifts they can freely offer (inspiration, stories, support on the part of seniors; purpose and connection to the community on the part of marginalized children) to satisfy their complementary needs of care, support, and a meaningful connection to the community.

Week 6 - Learning Theories, 10/28

The field of education is flush with multifaceted theories and paradigms, each with its unique perspective on the process of acquiring knowledge or skill. From Total Physical Response, to Field Dependency, to Principles of Encoding, the very existence of this multiplicity suggests that learning is both well understood and remarkably mysterious. Interestingly, the instructors of several of my Fall courses have been reluctant to promote theories of learning as lenses of assessment*, much to my dismay, and that of my cohort. Why is this so?

The answer is well-articulated by B. F. Skinner in "Are Theories of Learning Necessary?", published in volume 57 number 4 of The Psychological Review in 1950. Therein, Skinner argues of theories: "instead of prompting us to search for and explore relevant variables, they frequently have quite the opposite effect. . . . We are likely to close our eyes to [the problem of understanding learning] and to use the theory to give us answers in the place of the answers we might find through further study. It might be argued that the principal function of learning theory to date has been, not to suggest appropriate research, but to create a false sense of security, an unwarranted satisfaction with the status quo" (194). Still, I would suggest that even Skinner would be loathe to approach an assessment of learning in tablula rasa, without some semblance of a theoretical lens. His extreme position, nonetheless, serves as a clarion call for the use of theory as a vehicle to transport us to the edge of what is known, from where we must forge new paths of discovery.

As an exercise, our class utilized theories of learning to assess the websites and products of four companies addressing various educational and interactive challenges. Through this endeavor, it became clear that the application of learning theories facilitated rapid categorization and assessment of the products. However, when asked to consider what made these companies successful (or not), these same theories offered little support. As an additional exercise, we were asked to consider why Southwest Airlines or Federal Express were able to forge successful paths in entrenched markets. The answer (at least for the former), lies in their ability to understand the target audience and the conditions of the industry, and to apply creativity to determine a progressive solution (i.e. Southwest's concept of a uniform fleet servicing short, high-volume commuter flights).

Three weeks ago I proposed the Creative Domain as a missing dimension of learning in Bloom's Taxonomy. Professor Kim has suggested that my claim be augmented with a description of the levels of this domain, which, once established, could be used to inform as well as to assess creativity. Such an endeavor will require a great deal of observation and thought, but we can attain progress by working toward a definition of Creativity, as it applies to learning. Author Ken Robinson offers a compelling start during his TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talk in 2006: "[Creativity is] the process of having original ideas that have value." He argues that Creativity is the one aspect of intelligence that can address what is likely to be an unpredictable future. Furthermore, and most critically, he suggests that Creativity is unlearned rather than learned. If this is the case, then it has serious implications for the field of education. Specifically, in order to foster creativity we would need to protect and nourish what preexists, rather than attempt to build creative constructs. A learning environment that would achieve this effect would create opportunities for taking chances, promote a culture where it is OK to be "wrong," encourage interdisciplinary vision and thought, and honestly embrace unique expressions of intelligence.

* One notable exception is Professor Kim's enthusiastic promotion of the classical Newtonian formula, F = ma as a learning theory. In short, m represents a learner while F is a measure of action or learning. In order to increase F, we need only apply a, an accelerating agent, to the environment. The directionality of the Force is dependent on the educator deriving a "contextualized 'a' for each student" rather than relying on the generic prescriptions of an established learning theory. This exercise in applying Newton's Second Law of Motion to learning theory prompts the question of whether a dynamic learning paradigm could be constructed based on a collection of physical principles.