LRNT 524 – Bobbi's Blog

Activity 4: Continuum

When examining the continuum from renewal to new in the case of digital collaborative, I found that my case as a whole is more on the renewal side of the continuum. The use of digital platforms to collaborate is not new. Collaborating and teaming is not new. Collaborating digitally is not new. The method in which we will be collaborating is new.

My school, the location for my case study, is a Google school and is swamped with the use Google Suite. Google is fine; however, when examining other platforms and their performances, it seemed appropriate to test MURAL.

However, MURAL as a platform is new.

My colleagues are entrenched with user-friendly Google Suite, but this does not mean that all teachers are tech-savvy. The team that will be working with MURAL in the collaborative do not all have the same level of technology competencies. There will be a learning curve and comfort-level required to function in the collaborative. The learning curve for MURAL and the user expectations are ‘newer’ and will move down the continuum. The expectations of the familiarity and the consistent use of MURAL will be higher, for this collaborative work well and with purpose.

Activity 3: Understanding Design Principles

My case:

My international school is a reputable school with a strong faculty where there is a continual desire to improve and better our practice. Our physical space does not foster collaboration- a huge issue. The design of the physical space (or lack thereof)and busy schedule makes it extremely difficult to connect with colleagues.

Our school values opportunities for leadership and encouraging professional and personal growth. In particular, we have a group of teachers designated as learning leaders, who lead subject-specific teams such as English, Science, Math etc, and are a layer of leadership who are relied on for their ideas, input, and pulse on their team. This team is valuable to our organization.

Design Principles:

Learn from mistakes, and move forward
Listen and learn from ideas and situations from before. As learning happens, and other methods are trialed, many new ideas are considered and opportunities are presented. Thinking, reflecting, and building or restructuring goals with purpose will bring clarity to move forward.

Voice & Choice
Voice: Encouraging input and embracing ideas and suggestions empowers stakeholders to be apart of change–adapting to create a better learning environment. Inclusivity is key, building relationships and trust to strengthen the process.

Choice: Feedback collected is collated to present viable options making it less overwhelming. Minimal selection when the time is of the essence will increase engagement rather than burden with possibility.

Optimism
Optimism is what drives you forward. When things are muddied or difficult, or when there is new ground to explore, the belief that your team will find solutions and move forward is essential. The continual effort in the team’s common goal will boost engagement and collaboration.

Consistency is Crucial
Using tech is a routine.
The digital environment will only sustain and grow if stakeholders engage habitually with the content and with each other in order to benefit the common good.

Make things Efficient
The functionality of the platform must add to the positivity of the experience and enhance its perceived value.
Time is money: keep it simple.

Do you feel what we feel?
Be comfortable being uncomfortable and yet, understand the complexities of others learning curve. Viewing the problem and process through multiple lenses enhances and clarifies context while diminishing preconceived ideas.

Cohesiveness
You can be a critical friend but you cannot be a ‘Debbie-Downer’. Feedback is vital to the growth and redirection of a system. Stronger teams, even with disagreements, there is still a full commitment to the common goal.

Activity 2: Understanding Case Studies

“There is nothing more constant than change”
– Heraclitus, 535 BC

I feel in my work environment — this is what my colleagues and I identify with — constant change, masked in self-improvement and betterment. My international school is a reputable school with a strong faculty where there is a continual desire to improve and better our practice and strategies. Our current building, which was initially meant to be a temporary structure built 15 years ago, has turned into our permanent facility. It was not developed with the idea of shared spaces or collaboration in mind – a huge issue. The design of the physical space (or lack thereof) makes it extremely difficult to connect with colleagues. Adding to this, the stress that our schedule, demand for academics, and hectic pace of extracurricular activities, makes it difficult to find time to connect with each other and our community. We have struggled with, in either excess or limited, communication with all stakeholders and attempting to find the happy medium.

LP#1: Communication with faculty (Learning Leaders)

Our school values opportunities for leadership and encouraging professional and personal growth. In particular, we have a group of teachers in leadership roles, designated as learning leaders, who lead subject-specific teams such as English, Science, Math etc, and are used as a layer of leadership in our organization to help make decisions with the administration as far as grading, assessment, school-wide impacts, etc. Also, this talented group of teachers is relied on for their ideas, input, and pulse on their team.

This team is valuable to our organization; however, as an administrative team, we are unable to find the time to gather these people together to help us in curricular and administrative decisions while encouraging a supportive and team approach to this layer of leadership.

The proposed solution is looking at another digital collaborative platform that can support us until larger structural shifts can be made, such as redesigning the schedule or physically redesigning the building. Having a digital collaborative platform will help build a structure that allows communication to be open and readily accessible. It would be the base of a digital community, for learning leaders, that can be fostered and supported.

LP#2: Communication with students and parents

Currently, there are many platforms that students and teachers use to connect with students and then parents. Our school is a 1:1 school, and although we claim we technology savvy, we are not as savvy as we think. In fact, in most cases in education, the students’ ability supersedes that of our faculty. Here in lies the problem.

The LMS is Veracross, a great platform that is doing a lot of tasks for all levels of school. It is not unlike Moodle; however, it serves our purpose better with communicating academic achievement, formative process, and comments to the parents and students about progress. Comments and grading are happening simultaneously as report cards — it is pretty amazing, and it continues to build its platform to be superior to other rival systems such as PowerSchool. It is the main communication tool for students and parents, but it is used to varying degrees among staff because of preference and level of understanding.

However, not all teachers have bought in or willing to learn all that Veracross has to offer. There is a comfort with other platforms for managing class and assignments, thus, depending on the teacher, the student will navigate a series of websites, webpress sites, and google classrooms work through their class material. Students comment they go through click-icide to navigate their day. This is the problem.

Although the students are very digital literate, they are finding student life confusing with the uses of many platforms. In examining what is most useful for students, making their life easier, not necessarily the teacher, what would create a more sustainable, purposeful, cohesive learning model? There is a policy that every teacher has to use Veracross. However, it is in a minimal capacity, and this allowed teachers to choose what they felt the most comfortable with or to shy away if they were not as competent with the tools. The debate is to renew the learning practice of Google Classrooms for EVERYONE or to renew the thorough use of Veracross. There are pros and cons for both platforms, and they are not equally sharing the same perks and extras. This makes it difficult to decide and unsure of what level or degree our school should move toward mandating one platform.

The downside is that an online collaboration and a student management system discourages face-to-face conversations and relationship building.

With careful consideration and looking at the renewed practices, I will be examining the learning practice of collaboration online.
With this context in mind, I will be analyzing ways to:
Use time effectively
Establishing a culture
Benefits of an online environment
Digital collaborate: MURAL
Tutorials and time to be familiar program

Assignment 1 Part A – Design Thinking

Problem Statement:

Bobbi and Krista are discovering methods for students to better engage with curriculum while developing real-life skills and enhancing cultural perspective. Important to both learning groups is an increased cognizance of what is beyond their educational confines: considering the needs of 21st-century learners in an international high school; and supporting 20-30-year-old (mostly) Caucasian males, respectively. While there is an obvious contrast between groups’ participant diversity (or lack thereof), they are comparable in that both groups lack perspective outside their immediate context.

For us, one of the defining factors is trust and perspective. To encourage participation, we created an environment that is both comfortable and safe, while allowing for vulnerability (Wegerif, 1998). Although both groups have different needs, they require skills to engage online through collaboration, communication, and knowledge-building. Krista’s learning group is needing the support of the community to build awareness for operational work; Bobbi’s students are growing their international-mindedness. Both groups require the cognitive skills of a 21st-century learner/thinker to support their future endeavors.

Building Empathy:

Through the design process, we discovered current, common needs. Krista was seeking methods to build camaraderie online and encourage engagement, while Bobbi is seeking meaningful engagement through understanding. Because of concern for learner complacency (those who do the minimum needed to pass versus those who construct knowledge), it is essential to create learning experiences that are both authentic and experiential in nature (Crichton & Carter, 2017). In wanting to build online skills in research, collaboration, and communication, it was highlighted that both groups of students had to build a greater understanding of themselves and the world – a difficult concept to teach.

Our Solution:

Papert’s theory of constructivism offers that “[constructing] knowledge and understanding are through the building of something that is shareable outside of the student’s head” (Crichton & Carter, 2017, p.16). To aid in developing new perspectives and engagement, we created an activity that is low-risk and inclusive. In this activity, students represent self-selected United Nation countries in a simulated UN conference. The activity plays out live via Blackboard Collaborate or Skype and is centered around their countries’ positions on the urban refugee crisis.

Prior to this culminating activity, students will connect with other UN countries. Sharing details of the countries represented (such as policies, cultural perspectives, and/or resources), students will determine if other countries geographically and politically support their position. By connecting synchronously online, students will evaluate each countries’ perspective. To model participation, the instructor will also represent a country, engaging in the same process. Final positions are compared with initial positions and posted to a forum.

This activity offers students the opportunity to engage in discussions concerning a global crisis that continues to have an impact on the world. As Burkhardt et al. (2003) confirm: interpersonal, management and problem-solving skills are fundamental to this economy, and students must demonstrate flexibility in an ever-changing environment that necessitates critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication/collaboration skills to adapt to any given situation.

Analysis:

The limitations of the logistics of this activity include: (1) that it is a new activity and some glitches may occur, and (2) keeping track of participant engagement might be difficult.

The limitations of the learner experience include: (1) the topic of the refugee crisis might not be of interest to all participants, thus limiting intrinsic motivation; (2) lack of background knowledge of the present day refugee context could hinder engagement; and (3) technology skill levels of the participants might detract from interaction and engagement.

References

Burkhardt, G., Monsour, M., Valdez, G., Gunn, G., Dawson, M., Lemke, C., Coughlin, E., Thadani, V., & Martin, C. (2003). Literacy in the digital age. NCREL. Retrieved from http://pict.sdsu.edu/engauge21st.pdf

Crichton, S. & Carter, D. (2017). Taking Making into Classrooms Toolkit. Open School/ITA.

Wegerif, R. (1998). The social dimension of asynchronous learning networks. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 2(1), 34–49. doi: https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/sites/default/files/v2n1_wegerif_1.pdf.