Mark Childs
I've been researching and teaching about educational technology for 20 years, particularly the role of digital identity and presence in online collaboration.
Location Aspley Guise
Activity
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Mark Childs replied to Ana Ovejero
This is partly due to time issues, and partly due to lack of awareness of the issues. With the mash-up culture that we're in, where people take an image, or sound bite, and modify it and re-post it, it's an easy mistake to make to apply that to more academic work. There is also the lack of confidence in their own ideas, and abilities, and it can seem like less...
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Mark Childs replied to Anna M
I think what it means is that there's a whole range, so for example, if you only visit very, very, occasionally, like for example, I go onto Facebook once a year to thank everyone for wishing me happy birthday. So I'm on one side of the spectrum. Someone who pops in once a week to look at a post or two might be just a visitor but close to the middle. But I...
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Oh like Andrew "Two-sheds" Jackson. :-)
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Ooh what about here though? Visitor or resident? Or right in the middle?
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It sounds like you are a resident in some fields and a visitor in others. So a resident of forums, but a visitor to social media. Resident in emails. nowhere at all as a gamer. I'm not sure where builder fits on the model though. Maybe we need a 3d grid?
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Mark Childs replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Yes! That is exactly the way to interpret Dave's model. We are all visitors and residents depending on the technology, and often it can change depending on the purpose we're using the technology for.
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And I think the way to engage is the same with both, which is find one thing that meets your needs, and develop that incrementally, rather than looking at the whole thing and being daunted by what you think needs doing. Ed tech expands so much in so many areas, at the moment I'm just looking at one (VR) and seeing what I can do in that which is useful...
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I think this is the strength of the visitors v residents model over the Prensky idea. It allows for the possibility that some people might be engaged with one aspect, but not another, and that it doesn't presume where someone is going to be on a spectrum by what age they are.
Also native v. immigrant has an implied competency difference to it, whereas...
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True, they *can* but in the networks I've been involved in, the co-operation outweighs the competitiveness. I think I'm lucky in the field I'm in though, in that ed tech is often overlooked within HE and those working in it have built up a stronger camaraderie as a result.
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Ah this is interesting ... I think we've identified a big distinction between the compulsory and the post-compulsory sectors. Unfortunately (maybe, or maybe fortunately) self-promotion is pretty much essential for educators in the HE sector, as that's how the networking, and dissemination of findings, and advertising of courses (like this one) happens....
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Those are good points. I think if I was going to use Twitter as an activity with younger people I wouldn't make it compulsory. I also would recommend not making it public, for safeguarding reasons.
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One thing social media has supplanted is the online forums. 20 years ago I spent much more of my online time in forums, which you had to register on, and would be dedicated to a specific special interest group (to be specific in my case, Star Trek). Those were much safer spaces, because they required registration, were moderated, and although free, were much...
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Ah - if there's one thing to take away from this week, it's that online is real life too :-)
One thing I've noticed with younger learners is that offline/online isn't a clearly demarcated thing. They will engage in school then continue those relationships offline and it blurs into one. Younger learners tend to refer to skype etc as face-to-face, something...
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And also there are the raised expectations from students that you should respond immediately to queries. I try and ensure I set aside a specific amount of time, for emails, mentoring and so on, but the elements I find tricky are stopping myself from drifting into work-related communications when I'm outside work. My one resolution is never to have email access...
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Social media does seem to lead to greater hostility from people. There's a tendency called cyberdisinhibition - which is basically that some people will be more prone to be hostile because there is less consequence to their actions. There's also a subset of people who view all online interactions as inauthentic, they think it doesn't matter what they write...
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I think this is really important and so difficult to do. Not only for creating a professional distance between you and your students, but also protecting your down time. I think the balance that we strike online doesn't need to be that different from offline interactions with students. In a classroom we will share some elements of who we are, as that creates a...
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I think Leigh-Anne's poll was coming from the perspective of once you've got the tools, what do you want to do with them. I agree that your options are limited by your knowledge (and actually your spending power, accessibility of the tools, immediate support).
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I think impostor syndrome is one of the hardest things to overcome. We have too many people in our lives telling us that our opinions aren't worth anything and other people have more value. And that's speaking as a white male cis het middle class, global north, educated, able-bodied person. So I know I got off lightly compared to most. Maybe blogging could be...
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That's so true. They don't just lead to a blurring between online identities, they lead to an inability to create firm lines between working time and relaxing time. If you use Facebook for work, then there's always the distraction of social elements creeping in. Similarly, even if I don't feel pressure to be connected, there's always the curiosity that leads...
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It's also not about the most recent technology, it's about what the form of social engagement you want to have is. I like small group discussions with selective family and friends, so like WhatsApp. I'm not interested in large generic pronouncements to all and sundry, so Facebook doesn't appeal. Twitter is good for professional contacts, and sharing news, and...
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Well the dinosaurs were around for a lot longer than we're likely to be, so aspiring to be a dinosaur is no bad thing, they were enormously successful. The problem I think is only when we try to chase the most latest thing in order to look "with it" to the students. In fact, in my experience that just jars with them and looks inauthentic. One thing having...
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Mark Childs made a comment
We're now in the fourth week (timewise) and it looks like many of you are still catching up with previous weeks (FutureLearn-wise). That's OK. I'm hoping to engage with you for a couple more weeks after the course is scheduled to end. So if you'd like to still continue with the course, engage with the material, and post your comments, I'll still be here...
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I would say it can if you do it right and your students are receptive (and able to engage). But there are plenty of new things that could take you to the next level if you do them right.
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I read "online reputation" as meaning a wider audience. However, I now see I was thinking of reputation as quantity not quality. Another hidden shallow revealed :-)
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I agree, even though I only teach adults, there's a blurred boundary there which is difficult to navigate. Maintaining these distinctions is hard though - I used to have a professional and a personal youtube account, and then accidentally started posting to the wrong one. As more and more platforms are bought up by fewer and fewer companies, which then try to...
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Actually, I think you're now ahead of the curve, it's now only the dinosaurs using FB. It's like any other fashion. Wait long enough and stick to your thing and eventually you'll be cool again.
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This is true. They are only on there because their parents are and their parents think they're using it to keep tabs on their social usage. It's a great example of how we construct different digital identities for different audiences. All the safe stuff goes onto FB and the real stuff is somewhere else.
What's interesting with all of these platforms is how...
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I think the best balance is to identify one for the class to work in that is tried and tested (and secure and supported by your institution) but allow the students to form their own groups for communication in the platform they prefer.
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I've learnt it can go either way with students. 12 years ago most of my students were into Facebook, it's why I joined it, but I found that many didn't want their lecturers in what they saw as *their" space. If you're invited in, then fine, but I wouldn't push my way in. Also many people (me included) have security concerns about Facebook. A third problem is...
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I think the structure of social media does have a lot to do with the sound bite nature of discussion, and the lack of nuance in a lot of the debates that preoccupy online discussions. Many sub-editors of newspapers traduce journalism by pulling out the most contentious element of a piece, even when this misrepresents the general tone of the article, which can...
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Maybe these issues are because we are in a period of transition due to the (relatively) new nature of social media. A teacher friend and I discussed this in a podcast recently https://www.pedagodzilla.com/dont-pivot-swivel-episode-2/ in terms of Goffman's The representation of self in everyday life. The online world makes our off-stage personas potentially...
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Hhhmm. Yes. But only if one would consider any form of self-expression arrogance? To be clear. I'm not dismissing the possibility that you're right. I'm doing an MA in Creative Writing at the moment, and the hardest thing to overcome is the feeling that I'm being arrogant by writing something and assuming someone else will want to read it. I wonder what made...
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Yes. Two things, 1) does this take care of participants and 2) does this result in some good for the participants? I think if you're going to take time from people, this is only really justifiable if it results in them benefiting from it in the longer term. Otherwise it's just for another publication on your CV, which doesn't seem ethical either.
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Probably not. I would have thought most marketing surveys were aimed at identifying the best way to make more money for people who already had loads. Maybe a marketing survey that asked the question, "do you really need more stuff?" could be disruptive. Maybe I'm just having a cynical day. :-)
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I think challenging preconceptions is really helpful, as long as you look for evidence that it's really helping before going too far. So often though "disruption" has been used by self-proclaimed disruptors to make themselves sound far more radical than they really are. Any really good idea is actually going to be disruptive, but in a small productive way...
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This is the standard one for educational researchers https://www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018-online and this is the one I recommend to my students specifically for online research (though I guess I should look for a more recent one as this is nine years old)...
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Another one for the information age. Lies are freely available while truth sits behind a paywall.
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there are a few fact check websites that are usually reliable. I often run a query through google scholar to see if there is evidence to back up a statement. Snopes.com is excellent to check out hoaxes as well.
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Ideally, yes. I think doing one alone is much more of a challenge to make fully effective, but in so many cases we have no choice but to do one or the other, either entirely offline because students have no access to tech, or entirely online because students can't access the physical space.
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Both numbers seem a bit low to me, ultimate answers notwithstanding :-p
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To begin with I totally agree. We need eventually to give students the skills to make these judgements for themselves. It's a key lifelong skill. Actually, with all the nonsense that was circulated around the pandemic, it's a skill that can save their life.
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I think pointing students towards google scholar rather than google is a step that can help. There's usually information there, and it is usually peer-reviewed and referenced. It's not as tricky as navigating publication databases. Unfortunately, so much academic literature is behind a paywall.
I think English is possibly the most contentious subject to...
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Yes there's an added level of complexity in deciding between two conflicting studies. Often all we can go by is looking at peer review, citations, and trying to read between the lines with whether there is an agenda or not. What is really worrying is that there are still a large number of people who don't even look for evidence to back up their position, let...
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Mark Childs replied to Beth S
Hi Beth, Leigh-Anne is busy writing another module at the moment, so I've looked into this. You're right, the disagreement is around the definition of the word included. I'd interpret this as just being a poor choice of words from the person writing it up, who might not have realised "included" meant part of the whole, rather than the whole. Unfortunately the...
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Mark Childs replied to Ana Ovejero
Those are really interesting approaches - I wonder what the online equivalent of those would be. What techniques can educators use to encourage people to have more confidence online? Maybe we could try a mini action research experiment here if we can identify one.
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Mark Childs replied to Silvia Fischer
I take your point, but I think the idea of looking at a platform no longer in use would enable people evaluating it now to do so with more distance and neutrality. Hopefully, we'll be covering enough new tools elsewhere in the course.
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Mark Childs replied to Ines A
The thing I struggle with online is cross-referencing - it is possible to open two sources on one screen but it's not easy to switch between them. Luckily, I have two laptops, a work one and a personal one, so I can get round it that way, but it's not an option for most of our learners.
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Mark Childs replied to Beth S
I've checked with Leigh-Anne and Martin to see what they think. When I get a response I'll add a pinned post to the relevant step.
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Mark Childs replied to Mark O
Number of citations helps. Although I was warned that it's not entirely a reliable metric (as the citations could just be people referencing it as an example of a really bad paper).
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Mark Childs replied to Pauline H
Here's one that sums up your comment, which I spent some time ripping apart in a conference presentation I did this week https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-students-to-pay-full-tuition-fees-even-if-universities-are-shut-3wn7f77m6 Obviously universities aren't shut, they're still working away, it's just no-one is on campus, but this truth doesn't...
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Mark Childs replied to Pauline H
Often the headline is written by a copy editor, not the author of the piece. So frequently the headline can end up saying something completely different from the conclusions of an article, simply to grab people's attention. With the tendency to share these on twitter etc, often people only read the headline, which is evident from the comments underneath.
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Mark Childs replied to Julia Jackson
Yes the Hawthorne effect is always an issue. The motivation I've seen in schools, just because a research project was taking place there, rather than because of anything specific we were doing, always needs to be taken into account.
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Mark Childs replied to Sophie Kay
Those are all very good points. There's also the question of if the validity of the design - can hopelessness be measured at all? It all would be an effective pilot for a study, laying out some of the issues, but it's too small to form any reliable observations from it.
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I had to stop using Facebook because the rubbish my friends were sharing was really lowering my opinion of them, which was having some serious impact on my friendships. Social media can be a source of some useful information too though. I suppose it's not just checking sources, but encouraging the people we know to check their sources. Sometimes just 30s on...
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I think what's surprised me about the reflections on online learning as a result of the move to online due to the pandemic isnt' so much that people have been selecting the research that agrees with their opinion, but more that there seems to be a lack of awareness that there is existing research. So many articles have written that there needs to be more...
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Information literacy is becoming more and more of a survival skill. I think the growth of fact-checker websites, and places which aim to offer places to debunk myths are a useful addition to the resources on the Internet. Retraction Watch is an interesting feed to follow (if you're on Twitter) as it highlights many of the dodgier reports. Unfortunately a lot...
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Having a tour to start with helps, but I find I only remember the stuff I need to know on a daily basis. I can use a platform for years and then get stuck when I have to do something for the first time in several months. The thing that annoys me particularly are when interfaces are updated, for no particular reason. If the techie people at Skype or wherever...
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There's a huge wealth of expertise to draw on now, a lot of it coming directly from feedback from students. Multiple formats for everything helps, it's surprising how many videos still don't have transcripts or subtitles, for example.
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We're not - I agree that blended learning offers more opportunities, however there are plenty of learners who cannot access learning in the same physical space, so complete online learning needs to be part of the mix of learning on offer. Of course at the moment, online learning is the only option, but hopefully that will be only for a short time.
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Mark Childs replied to Sophie Kay
Yes totally agree. It's about a general approach rather a list of technologies. And seeing adapting to different needs as a learning opportunity for everyone rather than a limitation to be worked around.
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I think Bill probably meant me. In which case it's fair comment.
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It would be really interesting to look at the range of responses by different educators, which ones were readily achievable by schools in general, and how effective they were. I suspect we may find there is a far wider difference in provision than there needed to be.
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Mark Childs replied to Melvin Din
Yes - it's a really difficult dilemma - participation is necessary to attain a particular standard, and we have to maintain standards to some extent, but demanding too high a level of participation is excluding students. One way to balance these needs is to identify different levels of participation and achievement, bare minimum, total engagement, and some...
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Mark Childs replied to Jane Whitehead
It varies so much - some students will be more inhibited online, some less (there's even a word for them "textroverts") and some will be the same. The ones who are more inhibited do find the permanence a barrier to engagement, the ones who are less find the medium of writing easier because they can rehearse (read through before they post) and revise (edit...
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I can so relate to this. I've always kept track of the hours I work (just logging on at the start and logging off at the end - goes back to my British Gas days) - more so I can reassure myself if I slack off at 4 occasionally that it's ok because I worked until 8 the day before (or whatever) - a weird mix of laziness and work ethic. But yes, I'd nip off for a...
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Mark Childs replied to Julia Molinari
This is particularly true for synchronous chat where speed of response is often necessary to be able to participate, and where several conversations might be going on at once. Also, in the course I'm attending, I persuaded one of my friends to join up too. He's visually impaired so often has a few mistakes in his writing as it's all touch-typed. In the...
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Mark Childs replied to Amira El-Soussi
That's true about having a mixed mode for conferences making them more accessible. It's also *really* hard to do well. So often I've been an online delegate at a conference and felt excluded because it was so hard to have any input. They can be done effectively, usually this requires an online chair monitoring the online activity and then feeding this in to...
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Mark Childs replied to Pauline H
Workload is a key element of learning design. Working out how many hours a week the work will take, and being honest about this in the course materials, is essential. It's easy to fall into the trap of under-reporting workload (or underestimating it) to encourage students to participate, and then have them go through your experiences. If anything,...
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Mark Childs replied to Julia Jackson
@SaraDavis The thing I learnt from being a student last year was to make a conscious decision about the level of engagement I could manage, and then aim for that. Otherwise I found I was oscillating between trying to do everything, and failing to do that, then becoming demotivated, then not doing anything. So my goal then became to do one online activity per...
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Mark Childs replied to Julia Jackson
In the UK some parents are suing local government for not supplying laptops - the rationale being that they are essential for education and it's the local authorities' responsibility to ensure their children are educated. It's a good argument. The pandemic is revealing a lot of inequalities that should have been addressed before now. Hopefully there'll be a...
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Mark Childs replied to Hannah Unwin
Yes we'd always have modules that have a specific run and recommend staying alongside the week by week schedule as much as possible (although I've spent way too long on the first week and am now trying to catch up). I think having a cohort of learners is really important, otherwise why not just by a book and read through that?
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Mark Childs replied to Anna M
I think I've learnt as much from being a student doing an online course than I learnt from the years of research and teaching I did before. Of course, there's a danger in generalising from my personal experience to all learners, but I'd recommend it to anyone who's a teacher to do the occasional course to feel what it's like to be a learner.
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Mark Childs replied to gwen mcauley
Aghh yes, the NHS firewalls. A couple of times I've been on NHS sites demonstrating some learning processes and not been able to connect to anything and it taking me a while to realise the links are blocked. It's not always apparent what is permitted and what isn't, which makes designing learning a lot harder.
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A key step is also to give students time to learn to use the technologies before they have to use them in a learning activity. It's really difficult to learn the tech *and* learn the thing you're meant to be learning through the use of the tech at the same time.
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Mark Childs replied to Sophie Kay
And also, (and I hope this emerged from the student persona section) designing for people with some additional barriers to learning actually helps all learners. In a recent survey https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/digital-experience-insights-survey-2019-staff-uk I read that twice as many students without disabilities use accessibility technologies (screen readers...
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Mark Childs replied to Jordan Smith
I think a lot of people can relate to that. I'm doing an MA online at the moment, and I'm going through dips of feeling less motivated, and then periods where I feel more. What's helped are other students who discuss their experiences in the discussion boards, and also I'm lucky in that a couple of other people I work with are also on the programme, and...
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That's excellent. I think those are examples that indicate the flipped idea is really effective when scaffolded with the right sort of activities.
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Hopefully you'll have seen enough of the comments elsewhere to see that largely everyone's in agreement. The video was selected precisely to generate this sort of discussion. Totally agree with all those points. And it's really cheesy.
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Asking a question in front of others is hard, even if you're invited to ask questions. There's the fear of looking stupid, or even just anxiety about talking in front of others. Weirdly I'm way to shy to ask a question in front of an auditorium full of people, but have no problem presenting from the stage. Maybe it's the roles we're in in those situations that...
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@BillStewart That sounds like an excellent mix. I think allowing for some randomness is important, it enables the students to lead for a while, and for everyone to see how the content of the curriculum is a choice, the reality is that knowledge is unbounded. Enabling that online is one of the more difficult things to translate from offline teaching.
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Mark Childs replied to Meca Fanega
Great. Yes, sometimes learning is as much finding out what you're already doing is the right thing, as much as learning to do new things.
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Padlet's neat in parallel with a lot of other platforms as it gives an additional set of activities for people to collaborate and share ideas.
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I've met Steve (Warburton) and Grainne (Conole) loads of times, and they are both people that find frameworks really useful ways to express themselves, whether it's on paper, at a conference or in a bar. I think both of them would see these as only starting points, as models just simplify what are quite complicated scenarios.
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At least if there is one technology they are comfortable with, you have somewhere to start. One-to-one teaching provides a lot of opportunities to adapt to the students' preferences, although that could be really time-consuming if they all use different platforms.
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Yes, I think we've all been there. I used to teach 16 to 19 year olds in a physical classroom, and some of the most active lessons could suddenly become passive when the students were unsure of themselves (in my experience whenever someone came in to assess my teaching). Trying to find ways to hand over some of the power you have as a teacher worked within...
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The problem is that MOOCs lend themselves most easily to individual passive knowledge forms of learning. Inserting social and active requires a lot more thought, and the various subdivisions of MOOCs (cMoocs and xMOOCs and so on) try and make these differences more apparent. Bringing in other technologies, and encouraging students to create their own informal...
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I think actually I personally feel more able to respond to changes if I have a plan. I know that if I follow something in a different direction then I can come back to the plan at some point and I won't lose the necessary amount of structure in the session. Actually co-teaching works the best for me, I can take the learners off-piste for a while, and my...
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I think frameworks like these can be really useful. It's not a good idea to follow them too prescriptively, but they can be a useful springboard for ideas. Does this need more social engagement? Does this need more activity-based learning? They can help challenge our habits about how to create learning experiences.
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I think it's worth remembering that Steve Warburton's and Gráinne Conole's frameworks also apply to non-technological learning and teaching too. Innovation doesn't necessarily need technology to be innovative :-)
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Yes lecture capture really only works for capturing the transmission part of the lecture, ie with the lecturer talking to the students. Not only are few lecture rooms fitted with the necessary audio to capture questions, the idea that they are being recorded inhibits a lot of students from asking questions. And if the students aren't being recorded, you might...
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That's an impressive range. The idea of "making thinking visible" is really valuable. I like mindmapping tools for particularly that reason. I've also been intrigued by ideation platforms but not yet had an opportunity to put them into practice. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/64225/
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Have you looked at the 2020 report? Both Esports and intelligent tutoring systems get a look-in in that one. https://iet.open.ac.uk/file/innovating-pedagogy-2020.pdf
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I'm just now experimenting with VR (I got an Oculus Quest for Christmas!) and the experience is so much more immersive than I expected. I think there are issues (it's quite physically demanding - the headsets are heavy, and quite a few apps induce motion sickness) so I'd have some health concerns with younger children, but the opportunities to see other...
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And also how supportive management is in innovation in general. Sometimes innovation requires a risk, and yet some institutions are much more risk-averse than others.
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Mark Childs replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Spaced learning is the one that stood out for me. It doesn't require any new technology, and yet the results stated here show a phenomenal improvement in achievement.
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best ones.
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When I've taught remote team-working, I've broken down the platforms the students use into conveyance (passing on information), convergence (bringing together ideas), and creation (a shared space where the outputs can be developed together). I got them to think about the different modes and which platform would be best - so conveyance would be passing on...
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We're lucky in that our library staff have a really good set of short courses on study skills. When we design our modules, we integrate activities throughout which give students opportunities to put these skills into practice. So we'll actually have a few sessions on note-taking and then some formative assignments in which students' note-taking is assessed....
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How did the flipped learning go? I ask that because whenever I've tried flipped learning ... no-one did the work in advance so the session was a bit of a dead loss.
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That's fair comment. I think the reports are more focusing on what is emerging as a key theme at the moment and may be for the next few years. Sometimes this is something that has been around for years but is suddenly gaining acceptance, or becoming more widespread. Sometimes it's a re-conceptualising of an older idea, or synthesising different ones. The...
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I totally agree, and it would be a huge boon to higher education if more people approached university teaching in this way. Sure, older learners have more self-discipline, but wouldn't it be excellent if they found what they did fun as well as useful? I remember secondary education suddenly getting more boring compared to primary school, and there's no real...
