Terry's Learning

I mentor a couple of people at present and talked to one mentee last week about challenges she was facing in her organisation as she sought to influence colleagues to move forward in e-learning. Those who know me will not be surprised that I took us to look at the Cohen-Bradford model of influence without authority.

I find this model so helpful in my own work situations and when supporting others who want to influence others – and most of us do at some time. In some ways it seems sad that we have to resort to advice from others rather than just naturally knowing how to engage with others and negotiate through our differences. The flip side is that I have found it so helpful to have a framework to guide me when I have got to the limit of what I can achieve  through my natural tendencies. Rather than giving up, this model gives me alternative strategies to work with to still achieve what I believe is helpful for the organisation.

My friend and I talked through the individuals she was frustrated by and I sought to understand from her what she believed their currencies were. We looked at page 70 of the article The influence model: Using reciprocity and exchange to get what you need.

It was interesting to talk about her currencies as well as their currencies and see how different they were. This possibly explained why she was not having as much influence as she wanted. She is driven more by inspiration currencies with a bit of reputation thrown in, trying to influence a very task-related currencies manager and position-related currencies colleague. Given that the whole theory is about reciprocity and giving to others in a way that they perceive to be a gift so that they then feel like giving back, this then raised the question of how my friend might work against her natural tendency to give in certain ways and give in ways that her colleagues value more.

With this currency thinking in my mind, I then applied it in another work setting where I am involved supporting a major change initiative. Team members are experiencing pain to varying degrees, as their colleagues, roles and ways of working change, and they feel less secure. One team member commented to the change leader that she believed team members needed to feel more valued. When I reflected on what I observed happening, I concluded that the change leader is more driven by inspiration and task-related currencies and less by relationship and personal-related currencies. I communicated to him that team members who are also driven by inspiration and task-related currencies may be feeling more positive about the changes than those for whom relationship and personal-related currencies are more important. All credit to him, as a result he is changing some of what he is doing to better cater for currencies which are not so important, and therefore less natural, to him.

Having observed others, I reflected again on what my own currencies are. I struggled with this, as I seem to have bits of all currencies – inspiration, task, reputation, relationship and personal. I think I readily influence others and wonder if this is because I can deal easily across a fuller range than some others do. In fact I can feel like a chamaeleon where I slip into one or the other. Or maybe I am not self-aware enough to see what I prefer. It does seem that it could be an advantage to naturally be able to operate in multiple currencies – like speaking many different languages.

I find this framework very helpful but I can see I still have much to learn about applying it in real live settings.

I have enrolled in George Siemens and Dave Cormier’s free online course ‘Introduction: Emerging Technologies, Africa’. Our first reading is Digital Literacies: Policy, Pedagogy and Research Considerations for Education

From what I can understand the key point Lankshear and Knobel are making in this paper is that it is more helpful to view digital literacy from a sociocultural than from a skills or technique perspective. Now, if you are anything like me, you will not have a clear view of what the difference is so here is how I make sense of it.

A skills and technique approach seeks to define digital literacy as an ‘it’ or ‘thing’ i.e. defined competencies or skills that can be taught and measured. Richard Lanham is quoted as saying

under contemporary conditions ‘literacy’ has extended its semantic reach from meaning ‘the ability to read and write’ to now meaning ‘the ability to understand information however presented

The value of digital literacy is that it makes us adept at suiting the medium we use to the kind of information we are presenting and to the audience we are presenting it to.

Gilster’s view is presented as digital literacy involves ‘mastering ideas, not keystrokes’ with four key competencies i.e. knowledge assembly, evaluating information content, searching the internet, and navigating hypertext.

Using Gilster’s work, Lankshear and Knoble introduce a competencies continuum with mastering keystrokes at one end and mastering ideas at the other. At the keystrokes end, they describe ‘standardised operationalisations’ of digital literacy, such as, computing fundamentals, key applications, and living online.

The Computing Fundamentals test items involve such tasks as asking learners to click on all the ‘output devices’ from a list containing items like joystick, monitor, speakers, keyboard, etc.; to choose among four items (one thousand, one million, one billion, one trillion) for the number of bytes in a megabyte; to create a new folder on the C drive within a simulated file manager, and to match ‘operating system’, ‘application’ and ‘utility program’ to three provided definitions. The items testing Key Applications use a range of simulations and ask learners to insert content from the clipboard at the designated insertion point, change the width of columns in a table without using click and drag, and exit Word without using the close box. The items assessing knowledge and skills related to Living Online include the use of simulations to have respondents enter a subject in an email message and send the message, go to a specified address on a web page, and locate the history of sites visited in a web browser.

Another framework at the keystrokes end of the continuum has seven competencies – define, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create and communicate. As an example, communicate comprises

The ability to communicate information properly in its context of use for ICT environments’ and includes ‘the ability to gear electronic information for a particular audience and to communicate knowledge in the appropriate venue. Examples of activities here include: ‘Formatting a word processing document’; ‘Recasting an e-mail’; ‘Adapting presentation slides’ and ‘Preparing a text message for a cell phone’.

Lankshear and Knoble claim that these approaches confine digitality to roles concerned with information, and being truthcentric i.e. ‘digital literacy is about interacting with information, and interacting with information is about assessing its ‘truth’ (or validity), ‘credibility’, ‘reliability’ and so on.’

A sociocultural view does not focus on competencies, considers more than information and recognises that mcuh of the digital activity on the internet is not concerned with ‘truth’. Rather, it views digital literacy as context specific, with a focus on the purpose and social environment and recognises that using the tool can be a relatively minor part of the overall experience.

The equivalent in traditional literacy could be students learning to decode letters to read print. However, having mastered this literacy individuals may interpret text differently (cf Lankshear and Knobel’s example of differing views of a biblical text) and may use the skills they have mastered quite differently when writing an academic essay, email or text message.

There will be multiple social practices and conceptions of searching, of navigating links, of evaluating credibility of sources, of ‘posting’, and so on. These will vary according to how people ‘identify’ themselves: according to the values they have, the social groups they relate to, the affinities they invest in and attach themselves to, the purposes they see themselves pursuing, the kinds of images they seek to project, and so on.

Lankshear and Knobel also comment that many learners have already developed digital literacy skills in informal contexts. They say ‘in the case of basic digital literacy ‘competencies’ the irony is that these are readily acquired in situ and (like print functionality) readily mystified when ‘taught’ out of context.’ More than that, they claim that ‘The experience of disjuncture on the part of learners who invest informally in ‘Web 2.0’ when faced with ‘Web 1.0’ within formal settings of compulsory learning is debilitating, confusing and, ultimately, destructive.’

Lankshear and Knobel do suggest some policy, education and research responses to taking a sociocultural perspective.

At the policy level, in New Zealand, our Digital Strategy recognises the importance of people for the strategy and defines digital literacy as  ’giving New Zealanders the skills and confidence to use digital technologies’. The same section recognises that ‘Mäori create digital content with unique mätauranga, tikanga and kaupapa’ – some sociocultural recognition. As a whole the strategy focuses on government’s role in providing the infrastructure and creating content or sharing information, rather than the people component.

The New Zealand government also has a major emphasis in its tertiary education policy to build literacy, language and numeracy skills. It has invested heavily in upskilling tertiary teachers to be able to embed literacy and numeracy in lower level programmes, but with no thought for digital literacy.

Recent changes to the curriculum for the compulsory sector identify five key competencies – thinking, using language, symbols and text, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing. The description under ‘using language, symbols and text’ recognises a sociocultural perspective.

Students who are competent users of language, symbols, and texts can interpret and use words, number, images, movement, metaphor, and technologies in a range of contexts. They recognise how choices of language, symbol, or text affect people’s understanding and the ways in which they respond to communications. They confidently use ICT (including, where appropriate, assistive technologies) to access and provide information and to communicate with others.

It is interesting for me to reflect on all this and what I believe is an appropriate response at national and institutional level.

As usual, I can see both sides of the argument. I do see value in trying to define what we are aiming to teach/develop in others. I find frameworks helpful. Also, as someone who tries to get different members of teams working together to achieve a common goal, I am convinced of the value of defining what our goal is whenever more than one person is involved in an activity. So, I find the definitions helpful to think about what digital literacy might be, and to feel that I could move forward in helping another become more capable, something I am doing with a team at the moment.

However, I have found the sociocultural perspective thought-provoking. I can see that just defining ‘it’ as skills risks missing the point, and limiting ourselves to things we can measure is even more risky. As Jane Davidson said

Approximate answers to the hard questions have more value than accurate answers to the easy ones.

Right now, I see the solution as being to try and define digital literacy in a way that helps me work with it, but recognises the many different end uses and contexts in which it will be relevant, and builds on any earlier experiences of learners outside the formal learning situation.  The big push in New Zealand at the moment is about embedding literacy and numeracy, rather than having it as a separate focus. I think this is another application of the sociocultural perspective i.e. have a purpose for using whatever tool, rather than promote learning about it for its own sake.

Interestingly enough, the emerging technologies course that started me reflecting here is this sort of developing digital literacy as a stand alone ‘thing’. But I and others chose to do it, so it has value too.

To help me know what I am trying to assist others with, I begin with Lapham’s emphasis on communicating in whatever medium is appropriate for the audience. So, my first cut at a definition is

Digital literacy is being able to communicate in a full range of digital options, being able to assess which medium is most appropriate given the message and the audience, and then being able to find and use a suitable tool to work within that medium to achieve the identified purpose.

How would you define digital literacy? Or would you not want to define it?

Michael, evaluator for the slenz project, is talking to me today about my reflections on the project, so I am thinking out loud here beforehand.

How did I get involved in this Second Life pilot?

I got involved because Clare Atkins approached me after a recommendation from my friend and colleague Dave Sturrock who works with her at NMIT. I worked with Clare and others on the proposal with some scepticisim but trying to keep an open mind. I am so glad I did.

What previous experience have you had with online teaching and learning?

I tripped into e-learning nine years ago at the Open Polytechnic in a project manager role and have worked in this area since. I have worked in a range of roles but they have all had a managing aspect. My key interest is strategy, organisational change necessary for e-learning, how to work effectively in teams and building the capability for e-learning across an organisation.

What previous experience have you had of online games and virtual worlds?

My previous experience was minimal. I had never been in Second Life, I had tried to play games with my kids but found it frustrating because all four of them are so much better than me. The only two I have enjoyed have been wii and singstar.

Please describe your role in the SLENZ project.

I am co-project leader with Clare. Once we got the funding I talked to everyone about their skills and what their role should be in the team. When Clare and I talked we found that we both thought we would lead the project. Clare came up with a suggested split that has worked well – Project Leader, Second Life for Clare, which recognises her experience in and passion for virtual worlds, and Project Leader Real Life for me, recognising my experience in (and passion for) budgets, milestones and reports. We both care about people and processes to enable teams to work well together, and I have become passionate about virtual worlds and web 3D’s potential to enhance adult education.

What have been the most challenging aspects of the work?

There have been a number of challenges for me in my role.

1. The team working well together. Most of the team did not know one another and I had never worked with any of them before. We have a number of strong characters in the team, as I suspect is common in innovation projects. We had to form, storm, and norm before we could perform. The team spreads from Dunedin to Whangarei, so we have had to work virtually most of the time and this has created challenges, particularly in communicating. At times, I might have been aware of issues earlier on and been able to resolve them earlier if we were, for example, in the same office or I could pop in on the team each morning for a quick chat. I have had weekly skype calls with each core team member, as well as our weekly meeting in world, and that has worked reasonably well. I have also brought others together in skype to discuss specific things when that seemed helpful in taking the project forward. Having Clare to talk with about how the team was going was great in the early stages, especially during our storming phase.

2. Being an innovation project none of us had done this before. I spent a lot of time at the beginning talking to the team and clarifying roles, which seem to have worked pretty well over the project. There have been some changes to roles but relatively minor. It was good to understand each person’s own perception of what they could offer and work with that. We had to design the best processes we could think of by which we would work. Then we had to design processes for capturing our thinking on those processes. And then we had to use them! We also wanted to refine them as we went and capture that. I don’t think we have done so well at the last part, because we came up with a pretty good first cut and because we have been so busy doing.

This is the most recent me in front of the foundation build

3. At a personal level, I have been on a steep learning curve in terms of understanding Second Life. I am actually reasonably confident in there now but still hesitate to promote that too much. I remember spending a Saturday night trying to come up with my in world name so I could create me. After several hours I had nothing to show for it. This shows I was up tight. Clare suggested I choose something similar to my own name and I thought of Tere straight away – it is Maori for ‘fast’ – not that I was then. Meeting in world each week was the key to building confidence for me. First, it was enough to arrive, sit down and talk. Then, especially once there were builds to look at, I had to get better at walking, going through doors, working my camera etc. Aaron particularly has been so supportive and patient. Also, I am not a developer, so it was great to have Clare lead that part of the work. However, this meant some things slipped between us. We worked them through but having two people involved introduces this risk.

4. Trying to work across the sector and working across institutions. I think we had a good process for selecting who to work with. One thing that was hard was that we really wanted to choose three but only had resources for two. The Project Steering Group helped here. They insisted we only choose two, even though the team had decided to try for three. Looking back I am so glad – just imagine … Initial proposals indicated a higher number of institutions would be involved in pilots than eventuated. This was because at different stages through the project it became clearer what was needed and individuals within partner institutions decided we were asking more than they could offer e.g. access to Second Life on campus, educator to lead internally, time to learn themselves, extra time to incorporate the experience into their teaching, time to orient students within a full curriculum.

5. This leads me to a fifth challenge – working with finite resources. This is life, but remember nobody had done this before, so it was harder to estimate how long things will take. I gave it a go, but my original estimate of hours for this or that tended to be inaccurate. Fortunately, some were lower and some were higher, so ti came out okay overall. We used a staged approach i.e. three separate stages, each of which would produce something usable, so that if we found we ran out of time or resources, we would still have something for the pilots with students. This has worked well. We got to the second stage for both midwifery and foundation.

What do you regard as your biggest successes?

1. Personally, that I have helped a virtual team of strong personalities from many institutions work effectively together and deliver what we promised plus some. Also, that I was willing to put aside my personal reservations about MUVEs and be willing to learn, and so have learned an incredible amount and have an exciting new tool in my repertoire of possible tools for learning.

Which world class build shall I fly to first?

2. As a team, that we have

• produced two world class builds with supporting resources for learners and teachers that the national and international adult education community can use, as they are or take them and customise them or make them even better
• been committed to learning. We have piloted use of these builds with over 100 students and are committed to sharing what we can learn from that – warts and all. We have openly shared our thinking and our ways of working so that others might learn from how we went, again – warts and all. We will work on this more over the last few months of the project.
• created a greater awareness of the potential for MUVEs in adult education and a fledgling community of educators with an interest in and some experience of Second Life. Again, we will work on this more over the last few months.

What barriers are there to using MUVEs in tertiary education? What has been done to overcome them?

See Barriers to using Second Life

How have intellectual property issues been addressed?

We have been committed to Creative Commons from the beginning. I think different members of the team have different reasons for this. Some are committed to this philosophically at all times. I am less sure about that. I think our challenge is to understand different models of IP and apply the right one at the right time. Easier said than done. Organisations and individuals need to make a living too. However, I believe strongly that projects, like this one, funded by the government of New Zealand should make their outputs available to all New Zealanders. I also believe that the high cost of developing builds to support effective learning experiences in Second Life mean that we really need to get our heads around collaborative design, development and use. Our commitment to Creative Commons has proven challenging at times e.g. we could have bought some objects to use for ourselves and saved time, we had to limit ourselves to full permission objects. We agreed some compromises, e.g. our developer added some of his plants, that he sells commercially in world, to our build that will not be available in the version to be copied. But they make our build look lovely – and New Zealand.

What are the key factors influencing the design of MUVE educational environments? How do you develop MUVEs to embrace various pedagogical approaches?

• I believe we still need to learn what MUVEs are good for. We came up with a list of half a dozen ideas but really only piloted role plays in our project. Maybe that is what they are best at but really good and that’s ok. The more experience we have in world the better we can assess that.
• We need to think about the learners and their access issues, but we still have to learn what that means, and of course they vary so much and we can’t ask them when they don’t know themselves – like asking me if I like Antarctica
• We tried to think about using the artifacts one can create from Second Life, to enable learners with no or limited access to still benefit. This also showed the potential of Second Life to be a cheap production environment for images and videos to support learning e.g. midwifery video about the birth unit. I think it is too expensive to build for that purpose but once they are built I think that is a valuable use e.g. seeing a 3D cell struck me as a biochemist who for years pictured cells as flat pancakes. The world is 3D but we learn about it 2D.

What do you think could have been done better in the design and development of the programme(s) in SL?

Two things stand out for me

• allowed more time – it was pretty stressful for those involved
• better sharing of knowledge between team members. As a team we have discussed this and have different views. My view is that it is not possible to expect the educators to immerse themselves in Second Life so that they become experts in how to use it. If we demand that, we will not be able to use it in all the ways it could add value across our institutions. We had one who fully immersed herself and one who didn’t as much. I think we did not make the most of the team members who were immersed in advising the educator who was not immersed. I believe this was exacerbated by working virtually, the number of people involved and that the team members with the experience wanted to be respectful and work with her ideas, which is a good thing.

What do you think was done well?

• commitment to working together even when it was difficult, reasonable acceptance of differences, compromises
• commitment to completing in time, above and beyond what might be expected, commitment and passion carried the team when nothing else would
• good processes, sincerely trying to apply the literature review
• ongoing learning and reflection
• great results, products and student experiences.

What do you see as the advantages of using MUVE environments in teaching and learning?

The main advantage that I see at the moment is fun and engagement and I don’t think you can believe it til you experience it (see Fun learning). I have been amazed at it for myself, such as feeling like I am in a Jetsons movie just because of beaming up into a room in a little space ship, or the power of interviewing students and feeling like I know whether or not I want to offer them the job. I see no comparison with role play in a real life setting. I am haunted by negative memories of role plays in real life, relatively recently. I would rush back to do the ones in Second Life again and I believe I learned more. I hope the project evaluation will add to my personal perspective.

What are the disadvantages?

• massive learning curve to get confident in the environment – for staff and students. The irony is that if we did lots of learning in there it would be worth it, but if we just do little pockets, it will not be
• closer to real than much of what we do, but some aspects give the pretend aspect away eg hand shake animation
• some strong resistance, but we make lectures ‘compulsory’ even though some students vote with their feet , and we know they are limited in their effectiveness, and we invest large sums of money in building spaces to support them.

What advice would you give another group wanting to produce an excellent MUVE educational experience?

• allow time to design and build
• meet in world to build your own skills
• allow time to build staff and student capability
• care about those with limited access but don’t let them drive all you do
• make sure you tap into the knowledge and experience of your immersed team members all the way through – push for it
• develop what you believe will meet the learning objectives and then promote it to others (internal or external) rather than expect them to understand beforehand; allow time for this in your plans
• take time to explore similar builds in world before you start, to not duplicate and to learn from those who have gone before. You may not need to build much at all
• feel the fear and do it anyway!

As part of the ACE online community project I am leading, we have decided to focus on whanau or family learning as the professional development focus for the launch of our online community.

Jennifer, our resource person has found 15 resources that talk about how people in New Zealand and overseas are working in this way. The team is meeting tomorrow to think about our online workshop design and in preparation the rest of us each need to look at some resources. I decided to process my four resources in my blog.

Iridescent is an inspiring Los Angeles based model with a mission to foster curiosity, confidence and a love for science and engineering in underserved children. Families learning together uses a co-operative learning model. The school runs five two-hour evening sessions per science topic. The whole family is invited, and the school provides food and a Spanish translator. The format is 10 minutes direct instruction from a volunteer engineer, a facilitated experiment together and 20 minutes reflection at the end. One parent drove 100 miles every Wednesday to be involved. Their topics are relevant, interesting and wholistic too e.g. biomechanics of break-dancing or science of sporting equipment.

Volunteer engineers are crucial to the success of the programme. They benefit too. Through the training they receive and their experiences, they hone their public speaking skills and their ability to communicate with large, diverse audiences with limited education and English-speaking abilities. Undergraduates can receive credits towards their university studies and they receive support to do the job well e.g. lesson plan templates.

In just under three years, the programme has trained 185 engineers and helped over 4000 children and their families. They are working on a new aspect to the programme to build leadership skills in the parents so they can continue the programme in their own schools.

In New Plymouth, the Bell Block Community Action Group use a more informal approach to help families learn together about gardening and healthy eating. Since 2005, the Action Group have been working on creative ways to make Bell Block a healthier place for their families. The Action Group ran the gardening programme during the school holidays, with more families wanting to be involved than they could cope with. The programme, targeted at children and parents, modeled healthy food choices with the morning teas and lunches provided, ran cooking and practical gardening sessions and played games that families could play back home at minimal cost. There was no negative feedback from participants about the programme. Positive comments talked about children learning to cook, parents learning to cook healthier food and families having ongoing fun together. Key advice was to include a wide range of community groups and involve parents to encourage healthy interaction in families.

UK examples in Stockport and Hampshire aim to help parents, grandparents, children and carers learn and enjoy themselves together. Courses cover a range of topics e.g. gardening, reading writing, maths, gardening, computing (where the children help the adults), art, parenting and just having adventures together. The courses run at different locations e.g. schools, adult education centres in schools, community buildings, nurseries, libraries, shops and cafes.

Wow, there are so many wonderful things happening, and this is only four of the 15. Personally, I am most inspired by Iridescent. My science origins is part of that for sure. I love seeing science made accessible. But I also love seeing different groups working together effectively and efficiently, so the involvement of engineer experts for free in a win-win way impressed me too.

It is interesting that our government is reducing funding for ACE at the same time as establishing 3000 new places on school holiday programmes and pushing a literacy and numeracy focus across the tertiary sector. I wonder if any ACE providers will build on their community links to offer whanau programmes in the school holidays, as others have done in some of these examples.

What whanau learning do you know of? What stories are out there that we could share in our online community to inform, inspire and enable?