Virtual Canuck

Table of Contents

Editorial

Research Articles

Field Notes

Book Notes

Technical Notes

CIDER Notes

George Siemens and I are putting the final touches on a doctoral and faculty seminar that TEKRI (at Athabasca University) is sponsoring here in Edmonton at the end of June. The seminar features presentations by Athabasca faculty – including George,  Kinshuk, Jon Dron, Dragan Gasevic, myself and special guests Allison Littlejohn Stephen Downes and others. The seminar runs for five days (June 21-25) and features social excursions around Edmonton each evening. For details see the seminar site at https://tekri.athabascau.ca/dr_seminar/ or the seminar poster at Doctoral Seminar poster

The seminar is designed for graduate students and faculty interested in an indepth look at social networking research in education from ed tech and information science perspectives. There is still room and time to register, so please consider coming to Edmonton- it actually is a beautiful city and the solstice summer evenings are wonderful. Also I would be grateful if you would forward or post the poster to colleagues!

Thanks

Terry

I just returned from 10 great days in New Zealand, knocking off a couple of keynotes (Distance Education Assoc of New Zealand and Moodlemoot) and two very fine visits and talks at Massey and Otago universites). Like most visitors I was impressed by the scenery, hospitality, friendliness and strange pronunciations (I couldn’t get used to being called Teary).

A highlight was learning about  Ako Aotearoa (Maori for teaching/learning in New Zealand) the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.

I encourage all readers to spend a few minutes on the Ako Aotearoa web site where you will be rewarded with a host of features, resources and ideas including:

Resources: These include reports listed by topic and by discipline. Many of these were commissioned by Ako Aotearoa and written by New Zealand authors. I found the recent Taking The Lead: Strategic Management for e-Learning of particular interest and value for all of us trying to get our heads around the business of e-learning in educational institutions.

Projects: Funding for small scale research and development projects is critical to stimulate innovators and early adopters to explore and define effective use of new technologies and pedagogies. This area also lists calls for and results of small-medium sized ($10-100,00) research projects.

Communities Though the e-learning forum doesn’t seem overly active, the opportunity to ask questions, voice concerns and other ways communicate with colleagues in the development of a network of practice is critically important for real change.

Awards Ako funds National Excellence in Tertiary teaching award competition with individual awards up to $30,000 (OK, they are New Zealand dollars but still….)

Regional Hub Activities Though by Canadian standards, New Zealand is a small country, they still recognize regional differences and thus support staff and activities in three regional hub cities.

Maori teaching Hub Maori language, culture and opportunities permeate New Zealand popular and institutional culture in much more visible and profound ways than we see First Nations influence in Canada. This is reflected in a set of resources for teachers from Maori background.

Good Practice E-Book. Ako funds post-secondary faculty members $3,000 each to compose 2,000 word good practice chapters on a host of topics relevant to teaching and learning in tertiary education. The results are a very impressive e-book with 30 chapters online  and still growing.

As you will see after a few fruitful moments on this website, New Zealand is doing a great job of supporting the development of high quality teaching and learning in tertiary education. By contrast in Canada we have no National support for teaching and learning at any level and none of the provinces come close to matching the resources and services available in New Zealand. Ako Aotearoa’s 2008 Annual report lists a budget of $4,729,000 (approx. $3.2 million Canadian) for all of the services noted above. One can contrast this with the ill fated Canada Council on Learning (CCL) which was allocated $85 million (though I understand they even failed to spend it all! ) before loosing further support from the Conservative government. Admittedly, CCL’s mandate was much broader than tertiary education, but there accomplishments, as measured by New Zealand standards were much less.

I only hope we can learn from New Zealand and manage to devise a strategy, rather than the current tragedy, to leverage the ingenuity, technology and resources of Canadian higher edcuation system to not just compete but really lead globally in the critical function of lifelong learning for the 21st Century.

I’m sitting at the Wellington Airport 3/4 through the visit and 4 keynote speeches on a whirlwind trip to New Zealand. In the lounge copy of Australia’s New Scientist magazine (Vol 206 no 2757)  I am reading a fascinating article about brain activity when engaged in prayer. Now first I should say that I don’t think many listeners to my talks are engaged in deep prayer (unless in hope that the end of the speech comes quickly) but the article identified parts of the subjects’ brains (using MNR technology) that are associated with skepticism, seem to shut down when they listened to the prayers of what they  believed were spoken by esteemed “healers”. The effect did not appear when the subjects were told that the prayers were being spoken by non believers or ordinary (non healing) Christians. It seems that people’s expectations of profound insight allowed their normal sense of critical appraisal to be shut down.

Now why I mention this is that the introductions to myself and my work before these speeches are often very flattering (and occasionally slightly embarrassing) in their complementary content. I know that the truth is often the first victim, when you are introduced by a friend, but I realize now, that perhaps some of the kind words I received after these talks, arise because peoples critical thinking capacity is reduced by the fervor of the expectation set by the introduction.

All of which leads me to advise readers to remember that all truth is relative and contextual and to be advised to not take anything for absolute truth from snake oil salesmen, Goldman Sachs executives, preachers, or distance education keynote speakers – it may just be your brain shutting down!

For those non Canadians reading this, a hat trick results in hockey (and I learn from Wikipedia, in other sports) when one scores three goals in one game. Well, the academic game lasts considerably longer than three periods, but I was both delighted and surprised to score a hat trick this week.

The week started with a call from Chere Gibson (emeritus professor from Univ. of Wisconsin) saying that I was to be awarded the “Wedemeyer Award for Excellence in Distance Education Practice. This award will be presented to the practitioner(s) who most exemplifies excellence in practice in distance education in North America”. The award will be presented at the 26th annual Distance Teaching and Learning conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

The next day, after insuring my head hadn’t swelled beyond the size of my bike helmet, I pedaled to work to receive an email from Canadian Network for Innovation in Education president Ray Whitley, that I was to be presented with the CNIE annual award for leadership at thr CNIE conference in St John this May. International awards are very nice, but recognized by one’s peers at home is especially gratifying.

The final goal was notification that myself and Bruno Poellhuber from the University of Montreal had won a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities  Research Grant for $140,000 over 3 years to study social networking interventions in self-paced distance education programming. Now the amount of this grant may not seem much (especially when spread between 3 institutions over three years,) but those knowledgeable about Canadian funding for ed tech research programs know that we are in an extreme political drought and that any funds for research is rain from heaven!! Actually Bruno and I failed in our first two tries at this competition, the second time because reviewers found that we had not not provided justification for conducting this research in French and English – can you believe we live in Canada??

Anyways, weeks like this come very infrequently in academic, and I hope you will forgive the self promotional flavour of this post.

Terry

I have often had problems helping students learn to analyze qualitative data such as interviews, meeting transcripts, field notes etc. It seems common understanding is to read and extract the themes- but what does that actually mean and how do you know if you are doing it correctly?

I thus was motivated to order two books from Amazon that arrived yesterday.

The first is the 3rd (2009) edition of well know qualitative author Harry Wolcott’s “Writing up Qualitative Research” (big chunks of the 2nd 2001 edition are available here from Google Books) The book is written for researchers facing a gigantic pile of transcripts and suffering from both writer’s block and anxiety. It has chapter themes like ready, set, go  then linking, tightening and getting published – thus it is a VERY practical book written for the student researcher. The main theme is to “get it down on paper” (ok make that on the screen), unless it is written it can’t possibly be edited into publishable text. I like the way Wolcott emphasizes ‘telling the story”-his way. He talks about taking the time to do a full draft of a qualitative writeup before asking the opinion of anxiety stricken dissertation writers like himself, or even his committee members. He also talks of techniques, sorting on paper and on machines files, creating the outlines and other practical content. His approach is not radical, critical or overly focussed on subject’s voice, but rather seems to be a gentle guide to writing the type of qualitative narrative that gets by supervisory committees and makes it into the academic press.

The second book The Coding manual for Qualitative Researchers by Johnny Saldana (2009) is alas not available for Google Book Preview. This book is a reference book that looks at 29 different (well marginally different) ways to code qualitative data. For each ‘method” he gives a source reference, a description, typical or suggested applications, a rather lengthy example (using data from hypothetical interview or observation transcripts) and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of that method. The book begins however with two introductory chapters – the first defining just what a “code” is and why and how they are used in qualitative analysis. The second chapter details the function and value of writing analytic notes or memos to oneself (which can and should be coded as well), and may end up in the finished work, but help get the writer to that finish line!

I think these two books complement each other well. Wolcott’s is one of many general qualitative methods books, written with a fatherly voice to help get this hardest part of the research process completed. And Saldana’s reference is very useful for someone looking to find a way to examine data that clicks with their own view of the world and intent of their study.

I was shocked last week to read a story in Globe and Mail that they were allowing Inukshuk Wireless (a telephone company owned by Rogers and Bell) to discontinue its funding of educational multi-media projects.

By way of background in 2000 the federal government offered bandwidth that was being reserved for educational use, to the private sector. But one of the conditions was that the winner had to propose a funding arrangement to return value to the education system. This bandwidth had been allocated to education back in the days when everyone thought that educational TV would be a big deal. In Manitoba and Sask, they were using the bandwidth, so they were not made to give up the bandwidth, nor reap any compensatory services.

So Inukshuk won the bid, began issuing calls for proposals to develop educational media and developed a system to administer this funding. The 2009 call offered $2.4 million for projects, as per the terms of the agreement. Naturally, Inukshuk would rather not have to cover this expense, so I assume, went whining to the federal government. Our Conservative government, not wanting to get involved in business nor displease their corporate backers, allowed them to cease funding the programming. This was done without consultation nor notification, beyond that the fund was no longer operational.

I realize that Canada is plagued with a system that does not allow for national learning programs, but why on earth – except for ideological bias, would a government allow a company to renege on a contractual agreement, that has brought needed investment to Canadian education?

I hope other Canadians  will join me in writing to Industry Minster Tony Clement, asking him who he is governing on behalf of and to demand that this contract be fulfilled as negotiated.

I have been neglecting the ‘Canuck’ lately and wanted to take a few minutes on this last day of 2009, to share a few odds and ends that I’ve been meaning to write about.

Earlier this month I had a great time in Second Life doing a guest appearance with Ross McKerlich in a  Danish Education Masters Class with Mariane Riss blogged by her SecondLife Avatar Mariis Mills at http://milmariis.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/case-mil09-didactic-design-discussion-4/. I was presenting on Community of Inquiry Model and our work on identifying COI indicators of social, cognitive and social presence in immersive environments. Technically the presentation went well, slides and audio was clear and then we had fund answering questions by positioning our avatars on a large wheel – with 5 point Likert like scale inscribed (see Mariis blog for a picture). Having to move and see where others clustered (and changed our locations) gave a more real expression of individual and collective ideas and gave opportunity to talk or whisper to others with same answer. A simple but engaging illustration of the value add of immersive contexts.

This month also marked the release of another distance education related book from AUPress. Dietmar Kennepohl edited Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance that focuses on the unique challenges of teaching science (including labs) at a distance. I haven’t read all the chapters, (OK, I skimmed through my own ) but thought the book has both theoretical and practical insights into the special challenges of teaching science when physical labs and face-to-face interaction are not possible. Like other AUPress books, the full text is available online and paper copy can be purchased for $40 (Canadian).

I also noticed this week a new online journal (published by the E-learning Network of Australasia, using the Open Journal System) Impact: Journal of Applied Research in Workplace E-learning.  I have often thought that we focus too much of our time and energy as DE researchers on formal education, ignoring the value and impact of Net based learning in the workplace and informal learning. The first issue features articles on Connectivism, Heutogogy (the study of self-determined learning), a good lit review of e-learning the workplace and a couple of good articles on evaluation. I look forward to following this journal into the future and congratulate the editors on offering a quality, open access journal in an important area of study.

Finally, I see that Gilly Slamon and her colleagues in the Beyond Distance Research Alliance at the University of Leichester are offering their 5th online/F2F learning and research festival. Positively Disruptive: Learning Futures Festival Online The week long affair features Elluminate keynote sessions, break outs and lots of blog and twitter action. Seems like good value and likely good learning for 70 pound registration fee

Well, Best of the season and New Year to all!

Terry

I’m always interested in learning from the prognosis of the New Media Consortium‘s Annual New Horizon Report. The 2010 preview (7th annual report)  is out – with still a few weeks to go in 2009!

As usual the report categorizes new educational technologies in three time frames.  And the winners are :

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

• Mobile Computing
• Open Content

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

• Electronic Books
• Simple Augmented Reality

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-Based Computing
• Visual Data Analysis

Rather than squint into my own crystal ball, to attempt to validate or refute this latest publication, I thought it might be fun to look backwards to the first New Horizons Report issued in 2004.

(more…)

This has been quite an eventful last week. It started with the 16 hour flight to Melbourne and the publication  of a short article in the Journal of Distance Education.  A Rose by Any Other Name: Still Distance Education – A Response to D.R. Garrison Implications of Online and Blended Learning for the Conceptual Development and Practice of Distance Education. In the article, I challenge Randy’s assertion that distance education is really only independent study and that e-learning has a completely different epistemological history. I came out in favour of the inclusiveness of the term “distance education” to encompass print, mass media, conferencing and other web based mediated forms of teaching and learning.

But since being in Australia, I see that the term distance education is quite out of favour. I spent three days at a symposium at Deakin University that focused on flexible learning. Flexible learning is defined very broadly  at Deakin but MAY (where appropriate) include pace, place, content, approach, form of interaction, teaching types, content etc. We spent some time trying to clarify the “where appropriate” and realizing that sometimes flexibility is either too expensive or not even desired by students – and then of course a teachers’ perspective on flexibility may be radically different than students’.

I then prepared for a presentation on Boundless Learning” for a group from Haaga-Helia University of  Applied Sciences in Helsinki Finland, that I presented using Adobe Connect. I won’t whine about the performance of Connect, except to say the sound quality, not to mention the dropping from the system, leaves it far behind competitive web conferencing systems. After a few reboots of both my own machine and the Connect server, I managed to do the show, but it wasn’t great. I tried to explore some of the potential of OERs, open publication, open courses etc the need to form some sort of boundaries – on the boundless and often overwhelming opportunity of learning in a new infused society.

All of which, made me realize again that “distance education’ at least when considered from a geographic notion of distance, is but one dimension of flexibility, boundlessness and openness. Maybe I will have to give up the term, but then, to be inclusive, I’d have to become Canada Research Chair in Boundless, Flexible, Open, Customizable, Adaptable, Configurable, Learner-centered, and Distance Education! I think I’ll keep with the status quo for my last 2 years as Canada research Chair in Distance Education!