Lisa Gates — early history of animation in ed tech
I found this exercise to be really valuable. We had the opportunity to explore academic and other literature around our chosen topic, then to populate an Excel sheet with our findings. Reading the papers with these topics in mind helped to crystallize the information and organize it mentally. It was a good grounding in the material, and will shape the way that I prepare for the writing of future papers.
Now, on to writing the synthesis paper…
By Lisa Gates and Sandra Kuipers
At first blush, looking up a recipe for paneer (a soft cottage cheese) seems like a simple task, yielding straightforward results. While finding a good paneer recipe is easy, the task is more complex and involving than simply learning how it is made. The internet is abundantly full of information: recipes, regionality, commonality with other cuisines’ soft cheeses, and the history and etymology of paneer, making it a great example of a topic for life-long learning.
To explore the idea of abundant content online, we picked the topic of “how to make paneer”. We’re both passionate cooks, and paneer is something neither of us had made before and were both interested to learn more about. I (Sandra) love to make curries, but living in Asia it’s difficult to buy dairy products. Paneer is a “rich source of high quality animal protein, fat, minerals and vitamins” (Khan & Pal, 2011), so learning to make paneer would be a great way to add a healthy source of protein to my vegetarian curries. Paneer is delicious on its own and is often used as an ingredient in other dishes. Many of the initial recipes revealed have similar ingredients and methods, and a quick look at Wikipedia (“Paneer,” 2019) will show that there are many kinds of fresh cheeses that would be similar, if not the same as, paneer but from different places throughout the world.
Inspired by the availability of recipes, I (Lisa) decided to gather the ingredients and make a batch of paneer for dinner. Making paneer ended up taking much less time than looking for information about it did. Exploring paneer had me looking at a map of India to better understand parts of the country that my students are from, to find regionally specific recipes. I chose a recipe from Punjab that I may bring to a class potluck. Taking the learning and making it relevant to my life, with real world application and emphasis on learner construction (taking information and making one’s own meaning), including the shift from theoretical to practical experience (Ertmer & Newby, 1993) plants this exercise firmly as Constructivist in nature.
In the case of making paneer, online instructional content appears particularly well suited for short procedural tasks, such as a cooking recipe. Paneer can be made in 30 mins to 1 hour, something we didn’t know before starting this activity. The short duration of the learning process, as well as relatively few steps involved, suggests that using an online source of instruction would likely have a high degree of success. We wondered if longer more involved learning process may not see the same level of success, given the possibility of missing a step, or misunderstanding an instruction.
Our research into how to make paneer suggests that the availability of content online is a boon for life-long learning. Weller (2011) emphasizes that “learners need to be able to learn throughout their lives and to be able to learn about very niche subjects” (p. 228). In the case of learning how to make paneer, the abundance of content online makes it easy for someone interested in expanding their culinary repertoire to learn a new cooking process. They could be a professional looking to continuously improve their craft, or an individual interested in replicating their favourite dish. In each case, the availability of content outside of a formal learning setting enables individuals to engage in “innovative explorations, experimentations, and purposeful tinkerings” (Seely-Brown & Adler, 2008, as cited in Weller, 2011). These opportunities for informal exploration support the pursuit of life-long learning by providing just-in-time instructional content.
The knowledge of how to make paneer could be thought of as human knowledge, rather than academic knowledge or corporate knowledge. It is thought to originate in the Kusana and Saka Satavahana periods AD 75-300 (Khan & Pal, 2011), and may have begun as an oral body of knowledge, passed from family to family. The wide availability of recipes for how to make paneer online reflect this human origin: there is no copyright or patent that could be applied to this knowledge. We would confidently label this as “abundant content” based on Weller’s (2011) characteristics of a “pedagogy of abundance” (p. 229): content is free, abundant, and varied; sharing is easy and socially based; and content is user-generated. However, and abundance of content doesn’t guarantee success in learning.
Abundant content online can also be overwhelming. Weller (2011) expresses that an “excessive abundance constitutes a challenge” (p. 234), and requires different teaching and learning strategies. Learners facing an abundance of content need the skills to search and evaluate the material they find, such as general digital literacy skills and the ability to gauge the relevance of information found in searches. Basic digital literacy skills involve navigating the online environment, including the generation of relevant keywords for searches. Information evaluation, while not particularly challenging in the search of paneer recipes, can prove extremely important in other realms such as learning about science, geopolitical issues, or other life-long learning topics. The ability to discern real, well researched, peer-reviewed information can be paramount to one’s ability to navigate and understand the real world recognizing and avoiding the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and junk science. Anderson and Dron (2014) emphasize that “there is a concern that ‘popular’ is not necessarily equal to ‘useful’”. They state:
Content is often curated, mashed-up, re-presented, and constructed or assembled by those in the network. This is a wonderful resource when seen as a co-constructed and emergent pattern of knowledge-building, but without the editorial control that a teacher or guide in a group provides, it can lead to network-think, a filter bubble in which social capital rather than pedagogy becomes the guiding principle. (p.140)
In our exploration of abundant content, we were easily able to find recipes for how to make paneer, and were even successful in creating a batch of paneer from scratch. However, throughout this exploration, we remain conscious of the different types of knowledge available online, and the possible pitfalls of abundant content. Some learning, such as short recipes and step-by-step instructions, may be better suited to online instruction than other types of learning. Our findings in this activity suggest that it’s important to understand Weller’s (2011) “pedagogy of abundance” (p. 229) when approaching learning online, and not make the assumption that abundant content automatically leads to successful learning.
Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2014). Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781927356807.01
Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.
Khan, S. U., & Pal, M. A. (2011). Paneer production: A review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 48(6), 645–660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-011-0247-x
Weller, M. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249, 223–236.
Additional Information Sources:
How To Make Paneer At Home – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbYRKRZIVV8
How to Make Paneer (Easy Step-By-Step Guide) | Healthy Nibbles – https://healthynibblesandbits.com/how-to-make-paneer/
How to make and use paneer | Jamie Oliver – https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/how-to-make-and-use-paneer/
Indian paneer – English Forum Switzerland – https://www.englishforum.ch/food-drink/114063-indian-paneer.html
#paneer hashtag on Twitter – https://twitter.com/hashtag/paneer?lang=en
#paneer hashtag on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/paneer/?hl=en
Khan, S. U., & Pal, M. A. (2011). Paneer production: A review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 48(6), 645–660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-011-0247-x
Cookbook:Paneer – Wikibooks, open books for an open world – https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Paneer
Paneer and the origin of cheese in India – The Hindu – https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/Paneer-and-the-origin-of-cheese-in-India/article14516958.ece
Through reading Ertmer & Newby’s article Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective, it became clear that I am working primarily from Cognitivism as my theoretical centre when teaching online and more from a Constructivism centre when teaching in the classroom.
Declaring an alignment with a particular theoretical stance for all of my work is not really possible because my work occurs in a variety of different contexts, for a variety of reasons.
I instruct and facilitate in Human Services programs, teaching primarily support strategies courses in the classroom and interpersonal communication online. The classroom work is dynamic, students have full access to each other and are encouraged to bring their own wisdom and experience to bear on the activities we do. Human Services is messy, unpredictable work, and students are given many opportunities to research, understand, discover and practice the skills that will be required in a variety of real-world scenarios (Ertmer & Newby, 2013, p. 57). The work is relational, so teaching a cut-and-dried set of procedures will not help students once they are in the work force. In order for them to be best equipped, I give them messy, ill-structured problems and as that they work individually and in groups to understand their relationship to the problem, their possible solutions, and how others might solve the problem differently, but with equal validity. Students are regularly asked to reflect on how they came to the conclusions they did, to examine personal experiences and biases that brought them to those conclusions, and the cultural context in which it all occurred (Ertmer & Newby, p. 56). Students complete their credential with practicum placements, which firmly places the learning in the realm of Constructivism.
The interpersonal communication course that I teach online has very different parameters. This is somewhat due to the constraints of the LMS (Learning Management System) we are working within, somewhat because of the constraints of working within a standardized course. There are several different instructors teaching this particular course and we endeavour to have some consistency (standardization) across all the classes and delivery methods. The constraints of the LMS make it difficult to have students practice their interpersonal skills with each other (curricular things such as eye contact, and open body language), and the institutional constraints make it difficult to introduce other applications for this practice (video conferencing software) as we are cognizant of privacy laws and student use of 3rd party applications. Within this course, I structure the environment of the course to have explanations, demonstrations and examples to guide students. We talk about how learners encode information, and work with a variety of study skills that are designed to support their learning through activating their prior information, connecting the new information to it, practicing or demonstrating this new information, and ongoing rehearsal of the information as a way of ensuring that it is encoded in memory (Ertmer & Newby, 2013, p. 52). Students are expected to demonstrate that they can apply the new information in a variety of contexts (transfer) through different assignments and class discussions in the forums. Coaching the students to use appropriate learning strategies is in line with a Cognitivism theoretical base (Ertmer & Newby, p. 52).
Due partly to the different contexts of the courses I teach and the different expectations of the courses, my role in the classroom is much more of facilitator (which I see as in line with Constructivism) and of instructor online (more in line with both Behaviourism and Cognitivism). Students in my online courses will all come away with the same set of skills and information, but the students in my face-to-face classes will come away from the course with learning that is meaningful to them.
Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.
Lesson from the past that I can apply to my work:
The quality of media use matters. Reiser (2001, p. 58) identifies that much of the reason that instructional television began to lose its momentum as an educational media was that the instructional quality was poor. Poorly designed materials are poorly designed materials, no matter how expensive, interesting, modern or cutting edge the delivery method is. Shoehorning poor pedagogy or andragogy into a new delivery method will not make a good lesson.
Really this is very relevant in my work. As instructors, we need to remember that the first thing in the 1994 Association for Educational Communications and Technology definition of field categories for Education Technology is design. Taking time to first design a lesson, prioritizing the learning outcomes over the media through which we are working with students is paramount to finding ways to use technology effectively. My current strategy is to think through, “what are the things I need the students to come away with?” Then to look at the educational media tools at my disposal to see which one best delivers the information and allows for student input and feedback.
Lesson from the past that conflicts, contradicts, or causes problems with my work:
Reiser (2001, p.59) talks about how the early work done in computer-assisted instruction from the 1950s did not change the way the information was being delivered to students, and that education practices remain the same – just that tech has become the media through which that teaching happens. I’d like to see that, at my institution, we can move beyond replicating the classroom experience to the virtual realm, to do more than videotape and post lectures. I am currently part of a committee that is developing a course, and much of the suggestion has been around filming in-class to create video lectures, enabling us to translate the course from a face-to-face setting to an online setting. My concern is that there is no room in this model for student feedback and relationship to the material. There is a prevailing attitude that putting it online is easy, that additional development does not need to be done. I would argue that 1950s attitude about what educational media can do for us and our students is still prevalent in my post-secondary institution today.
Reiser, R. A. (2001). A history of instructional design and technology: Part I: A history of instructional media. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(1), 53-64.
(A note at the outset – I started writing this post about Jim Groom, only to realize how important Martha Burtis’ voice is to the story of ds106. I elected to write about the two of them to ensure that her voice is not lost.)
I would like to share a brief overview Jim Groom and Martha Burtis’ work around Digital Storytelling 106 (ds106) with the University Mary Washington (UMW) in Fredricksburg, Virginia.
Ds106, originally written by Jennifer Pollack, was restructured and delivered in an experimental ‘Open’ way in 2011 by Jim Groom and Martha Burtis. Faculty at UMW had, the year before, received their own domains and had started writing blogs, experimenting with open community and network building. Groom had been teaching ds106 face-to-face and suggested opening it up to the World Wide Web, allowing open participation. Burtis agreed, and the phenomenon of ds106 was born.
They taught different sections of the course – the first of its kind. It combined a real, practical understanding of ‘Open’ as an education concept and successful implementation. Ds106 is remarkable for several reasons: students received their own domain with which to demonstrate learning (something that later evolved into Domain of Ones Own, or DoOO), all the domains were syndicated into the main site so that they could be viewed by categories and tags, creating a connected, online community of students. Students were given the opportunity to submit assignments for themselves and other students to do, allowing them to choose an assignment a week from this democratized assignment bank to complete and post for others to view, give feedback and comment on.
This short introduction does not capture the seismic effect that this course delivery model had on Ed Tech in general. The after shocks of ds106 are seen in our own program, with each member of our cohort having a blog to publish to and network with, our syndication through Feedly, and the use of the RRU WordPress site to house the bulk of our teaching materials. Our blogs are open to the Web, meaning that anyone can view and comment on our work.
Martha Burtis is currently Learning Teaching Developer at Plymouth State University. She has blogged for many years at The Fish Wrapper, and currently muses about Ed Tech, teaching and more at Beyond the Wrapper.
Jim Groom is currently an owner operator of the web hosting company Reclaim Hosting, founded in 2013 that specializes in hosting for Higher ed. He continues to blog about Ed Tech, Edupunk topics, media, and his personal life over at Bava Tuesdays.
Groom, J. (n.d.). About – Reclaim Hosting. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from Reclaim Hosting website: https://reclaimhosting.com/about/
Friend, C. (2016, August 19). Making and Breaking Domain of One’s Own: Rethinking the Web in Higher Ed. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from Hybrid Pedagogy website: https://hybridpedagogy.org/making-breaking-rethinking-web-higher-ed/
University Mary Washington. (2019). About ds106 [Course Description]. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from http://ds106.us/about/
Getting an understanding of the history of education technology really relies on the definition given to the word technology. Is technology defined only in what might be considered a modern way? As a mechanical or electronic gadget that mediates learning? Or can we look back to see that carving marks into stone (cuneiform script as early as 3200 BC in Mesopotamia) or tying knots into string (going back to the first millennium AD in Andean South America) could be considered technology used to pass on knowledge (to teach)?
I like the idea that we’ve been using all of our technologies to teach each other since the dawn of time, that the only real differences through history are the technological tools we use and the types of information that we convey. I do graphic recording and illustration and think of the power of mark-making as one of the most powerful tools that humans possess to convey information. With this, I think that education technology has been used since the first person went from teaching through oral history to teaching through image and mark making, perhaps by using a stick to draw on the ground during a conversation, and later through the use of pigments to make images on stone and in caves.
Wandering through the research and different perspectives was interesting. The Rosetta stone is the earliest known written translation between languages. Early religious teachings of the contents of holy books were done through paintings (in religions that favour use of images of god), and through illuminated manuscripts in the early centuries AD. The boom of literacy that came with the invention of the printing press in the 15th Century AD was unprecedented and opened up a new era of education, creating a mechanism by which information could be distributed on a mass scale. The next largest boom in terms of mass access to information was probably late last century, with the wide adoption of use of the World Wide Web.
Between the printing press and the adoption of the web was a time rich with ongoing growth in education technologies. I’d not heard of desktop sandboxes for practicing the alphabet (1806), or hornbooks (1450) but remember my grandfather talking about use of slate in his Prairie one-room schoolhouse. As a child, I learned a lot from watching Sesame Street and The Electric Company on our little black and white television. I look at our K-12 and post-secondary settings today with their use of electronics for everything from creating and distributing digital print documents to the use of richly multimodal teaching materials, ones that are interlinked with as much (or little) as a student might like to know.
I’m excited to be stepping into history at this point in the stream, having the opportunity to look back and learn more about what has led us to this point, as well as to squint into the future to see what new ways of teaching and learning it might hold.
