This page summarises some of the key lessons learned from the LINK Project, as experienced in the research and implementation at Curtin University in the Department of Internet Studies. These findings are extracted from the formal report to the ALTC.
Students ‘get’ online collaborative communication – for informal learning
One of the central challenges for the development of learning in networks of knowledge is to recognise that, more and more, students are already involved in such activities regardless of what teachers do. As revealed by the uses of twitter, and other technologies, in the units in Internet Communications, students share ideas, discuss their studies and generally support each other via the normal sorts of online communication which are now part of everyday life, principally but not only Facebook. This informal learning is essential for successful study and the Internet demonstrates its power and significance by becoming the home of learning networks that spring up between individuals engaged in common pursuits.
From here, the challenge is to create a learning experience that, while not ‘formalising’ informal learning encounters, nevertheless encourages and supports them. We have already see, in Internet Studies at Curtin, how students – once they realise that their studies are online knowledge work – become more open to sharing what they do with other students, and in actively seeking to make ‘connections’ thereby creating their learning network. In other words, learning networks which promote informal exchange are not the same as the formal learning encounters, but the value of such networks must be given as much prominence by teachers so as to signal the benefit to students – especially those without a rich set of independent leaning skills.
In part, the answer could be to identify technologies (such as the simple forms of asynchronous and synchronous communication which abound online, for example a new service called Convore, which combines the two) which create a distinctive experience for online exchange, not so closely associated with formal exchanges (classrooms or their virtual equivalent) nor so embedded in ‘everyday life’ (like Facebook) that the attention and study specificity required of informal learning conversations become lost. Equally, we need social affordances built into units of study: explicit requirements or arrangements which bring students together for informal interactions, especially with students in first-year units who may otherwise expect or assume that everything revolves around their individual interactions with teachers.
Technology adoption is less of a challenge than judgments of relevance
People cautious about utilising online learning innovations outside of a learning management system are usually concerned that the technologies involved will be too difficult, or not the same as, what students are used to in an LMS. All of the evidence gather during this project suggests this fear is misplaced. Students adapt easily to varying kinds of online experiences and, for those who are regularly using a LMS, they actually enjoy the difference which a tool like Wiggio brings with it. Most online applications and services relevant to learning are, indeed, designed specifically to be easy to use and attractive and appealing in their screen design. The same cannot be said for many institutional systems.
However, students will not accept excessive and variable applications of different technologies for their own sake. The key, always, to gaining student acceptance and enthusiasm is relevance to the subject matter, coherence and value with the assessments to which the technologies are linked, and – perhaps more than anything – a clear communication of why this site or service matters. Part of the work of innovative online learning development is for teachers to become excellent users of the technologies themselves, not just so that they can explain them easily but so that students instinctively ‘get’ that the authority of the teacher is well-placed.
Indeed, technological innovation is likely to succeed only where it is conducted with specific emphasis on the way Web 2.0 can empower users to be more ‘in charge’ of their own knowledge work behaviours. In one unit of study in Internet Studies, our insistence on using a particular web platform for publication was routinely subverted by students who comfortably adopted things which were, perhaps, more difficult to use but felt more ‘natural’ to them.
The audience for online work is more complex than just ‘the public’
Central to the knowledge-networking paradigm is that publicly presented work, generated by students, is more likely to be done to a higher standard and with more attention and active learning because it is formally addressed communication. While this assumption was in most cases supported by the research data, our surveys and reflections have also revealed that most students understand that audience as ‘other students like them’. Consistently, what we found is that encouraging and requiring students to post their work into online publications (of many kinds) utilised the ‘ideal’ of the general Internet-connected audience, creating a network of knowledge around the topic, but that students internalised and acted upon this audience in more concrete terms, based on the reality that other students would learn from them, see their work and of course judge it. Virtually no student we encountered had any problems with this: in fact many were relieved to be able to make connections with what others were doing. However, we suspect that if students were simply asked to exchange their ‘assignments’ with other students, they would be much more reluctant: the ‘online audience’ is a necessary fiction that authorises students to think differently about assessable work. While it might end up being assessed, its initial location within a public domain, empowers students to be more open about their work with colleagues.
A further lesson would appear to be that ‘online communication’ between students, to sustain the learning networks referred to above and even build a learning community, is not just a matter of conversations, but also of publication. Too often, students have been expected to spend a lot of time reading each other’s informal discussion posts, chatting via electronic forums and the like, but never then ‘close the circle’ and see what others have done in their assessments. Therefore the knowledge-networking effect becomes visible not just in explicit conversational requirements but in the very act of working primarily within a public domain that puts the focus on the work and its communication / reception rather than on the student-teacher power dynamic.
Assessment via portfolios is less relevant than expected
The project had started with a strong focus on the need to use portfolios as a key element in the assessment process, on the basis that busy teachers are often not able to look in detail at the work online of many students. It had been expected that all units would involve significant use of portfolios. Early on, and based on initial feedback from students that the concept of the portfolio was confusing and complex and therefore distracted them from actually achieving the learning outcomes, it was decided that only in specific instances would a portfolio be used. Initially, portfolios were implemented to enable us to divide up the work of students into many more precise, smaller and manageable tasks. To ensure these tasks were valued and students motivated to complete them, they had to be assessed in some manner, but we did not wish to impose the significant burden on all concerned of assessing each one, time and again. Thus a portfolio was the pragmatic solution: while conceptually sustainable, the decision to use portfolios simply allowed us to take several small tasks, below the threshold for direct assessment, and turn them into a single assessable item. Second, learning involving diverse evidence and activities – often located in many places on the Internet or presented originally in forms that would not easily link to the student who produced it – would be far too complex to assess directly, if it were not first collated and presented in a manner and form that could be easily uploaded to the learning management system, accessed and assessed simply by one of several tutors, and then returned promptly to the student with feedback. In other words, while the Internet makes much distributed learning more visible and retrievable, it still does not (and will not) make that easily assessable by hard-pressed, short-term tutors.
However, in more advanced units, it became clear that students were capable of engaging in online tasks and activities which benefited them without necessarily needing the spur of assessment. More importantly, the array of online sites and services available which automatically aggregated or otherwise collated activities was such that it was easier than imagined to design assessments where all of the online work formed a coherent whole, assessable as a single assignment. Furthermore, as we look to expand the use of these services to include more intensive, student-centred discussions and analysis of the knowledge work being done, the portfolio seemed overly ‘teacher centred’ – a too-stark reminder of the artificiality of study compared to authentic, realistic knowledge networking.
The portfolio is becoming a complex and contested space. Several models are being used concurrently in higher education, and often with limited discussion of the need to educate students into their effective use, especially for reflection. As a result, a key finding of this project is that, at least for Internet Communications, the concept of web presence – a distributed, public online knowledge network in action – is more useful as a guide for how we want students to see the sum total of all knowledge networking across our units of study.
