Intermediate Thoughts on e-Learning Initiatives

In my Designing and Delivering e-Learning Environments course at Johns Hopkins University, under the guidance of Ms. Donna Schnupp, I have crafted the following plan for an e-Learning/Professional Development initiative at Colegio Internacional de Caracas:

                   

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Just want the abridged version with less reading?  Here it is: 

Not only do I plan to implement this initiative; it has in fact already begun. It was important for me to use data to build my initiative, and what better data than that nearest to myself? The school at which I work had placed a high value on improving the implementation rate and effectiveness of instructional technology integration. I worked myself into a position with the organization (Technology Coordinator) which would help me to best promote this improvement, and one of my first self-assigned tasks was a technology survey. This data was valuable for more thoughtful work on this initiative; I have done more than was expected of me in that position as a result of this assignment and using the language of data. Thus far, we are on schedule with what is mentioned in the plan; the initial workshops are now several weeks in the past, a handful of “Techie T-Day” workshops have happened, and over the next week or so I will be working an average of an hour a day to have the e-Learning platform (this website) ready for a full-faculty launch on the 9^th of April. I am hopeful that myriad learning experiences will be our organizational yield; from assisted perspicacities of the young child's mind to more complex and diverse thought creations of the teachers.

I am not so naïve as to expect this initiative to manifest flawlessly. In fact, we have already had some unexpected disappointments in its implementation. The “Techie T-Days” have averaged less than four participants in a participant field of more than forty people. This translates to under 10% compared with our expected 20-25% attendance. Some of this can be attributed to the abundance of paperwork required of our teachers in March. In fact all International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme schools struggle with greater time constraints this time of year due to the submission of required paperwork. One way we plan to improve attendance at these interest-based sessions for the remainder of the school year is through behavioral influence. We will offer the occasional extrinsic reward at these sessions, such as candy or a voucher for a free class coverage. It will be random and sparse in nature so as to not make it an expected norm or the focus of attendance. At my behest, we will also use captology (reference) via hot triggers in faculty emails to subtly build greater interest in the sessions, the platform, and edtech integration in general.

I can envision the participation in website visits and discussion contributions waning rather quickly as well, which is why, at the April 9^th meeting, I will be sure that all of the faculty and staff members sign up for the RSS feed to the discussion forum. In this way, I will ensure that at least the parent posts are being read by the majority of our faculty. Hopefully it will also cause more teachers to comment on the posts (in addition to the likely Level III instructors) and keep the online community alive in parallel to the face-to-face community which already exists. I have also set up a group on Diigo for CIC faculty (please contact me if you would like access) to share resources with each other through simple bookmarking, and have asked teachers to receive weekly or daily updates to their email accounts as to what has been shared in the group. Though it is likely many of these resources will directly relate to technology integration, many others will be shared which tie to the International Baccalaureate programs, AdvancED accreditation, and multiple curricula components used across the PK-12 continuum. I will frequently post ideas or questions in parallel to what is posted on Diigo that will almost require them to look at what has been shared with the group to compose a well-thought response.

Though I will be with a different organization in the near future, if I were to remain with Colegio Internacional de Caracas, the next logical step for this initiative beyond its continued internal improvement would be to extend the e-Learning platform to the rest of the VANAS (Venezuelan Association of North American Schools) organizations and form a much larger community of learners. This community of learners would be hybrid as well, with face-to-face workshops happening once a year in January; however, since most of the learning would be online I would have to make the following important considerations about potential changes in the platform:

• The platform in its current format will not significantly develop a strong sense of community on its own, as it has been designed for a group of adult learners already very much in regular face-to-face contact with each other. The addition of the other VANAS organizations would require significant changes in the platform, a facilitator with contractually devoted time to its upkeep and feedback, and quite possibly the development of actual courses. For this reason, I would consider switching to a more comprehensive free-use classroom tool, such as Schoology.
• The new platform would have a natural inclination to become something much more than a mere tool for increased instructional technology integration. If successful, it is likely that it would morph into an electronic liaison between the eight VANAS organizations, become more-or-less the 9^th distinct organization. With a tool such as Schoology, this could be facilitated, with endless positive benefits as a result.

My next career goal, as I am set to finish my Master's degree and would like to bring my family back to the States, is to find a position of organizational leadership tied to the enhancement of authentic learning experiences for students, faculty, and school administrators through technology-aided means for a district or similar organization. Though it would be silly for me to assume any great specifics without data or additional qualitative information about the district, I will assume for this thought experiment only that the district roughly meets the following parameters:

• 4 High Schools (5,000 students)
• 6 Middle Schools (4,000 students)
• 12 Elementary Schools (8,000 students)
• 1200 faculty and staff members
• Standard Autonomy over Everyday Decision-making
• Average or slightly above-average test results
• A desire for continued 21^st Century Improvements

For a district of this size, my initiative as designed clearly will not work. I do believe that it could, however, keep its philosophical heart on a dramatically different vector. That vector is one of an effective Professional Learning Community (PLC) system. Using the basic attributes of Professional Learning Communities as outlined by Shirley Hord (1997) of SEDL (link), I would hope to set up a comprehensive network of professional learning through a site such as Schoology. It would include the following components:

• Courses designed and facilitated by teachers within the district that are high on the LoTi framework and have demonstrated high levels of integration within their classrooms. They would receive a small stipend for their work, and would be trained and supported by someone like me to design and facilitate their courses effectively for adult learners. These courses would be differentiated and someone interest-based, like a drawn-out and detailed version of my “Techie T-Day” idea. All sections of the Schoology course could be used here, and a pass/fail awarded by the instructor. A certificate could then be issued by the district, and if successful, this could eventually extend to other districts – providing the stipends for these teachers to do the work without cost to the district.
• Groups set up for PLC groups, whether they are in-school, intra-district, or other. Here, these groups could share resources, Diigo links, videos, blog posts, presentations, and much more.
• District-Wide Professional Development Announcements. This is a system developed entirely for the teachers, and an administrator with a Schoology administrative account can easily post announcements and updates for the entire district community of teachers to see. Not only that, automatic emails will be sent by Schoology to all users noitifying them of these announcements, etc.

A nice symptom of this initiative would be the use of many teachers of Schoology to build their own course shells for students and student groups. Another great thing about this initiative? Schoology is free for all of the uses listed above. Sure, the district could choose to pay a bit to make the domain more customizable and to have more administrative functions, and it would likely benefit the initiative; but it is not a necessity. The only cost to the district is to provide stipends (or course load reductions) to the teacher-instructors of the courses, and as I've mentioned above, the success of this initiative could eventually erase that cost entirely. A zero-budget initiative? Absolutely possible. And it could easily seep into summer school and online course development for students and greatly reduce (and even eventually eliminate with success) the cost of those programs.

Working on this initiative hasn't much changed my perspectives on e-Learning. I still believe it should ideally be the “meat” of a sandwich of a hybrid learning program, where the bread represents beginning and end face-to-face components to genuinely solidify the community and promote lasting communication and development. I still believe it is incredibly effective for content presentations and can be designed to invoke higher-order thinking and creativity with thoughtful assignment development. What has been enhanced through this experience is my own creative spirit; I feel more prepared than ever before to put my creative talents to use for an organization, and have an even larger skill set with which to make it happen.  


The wheels are definitely turning... Click the "neurons" to get subtle clues about what more I'm thinking about future eLearning initiatives...

image credit: Master Isolated Images (Digital Portfolio)

New Vocabulary for my Awareness: A Reflection

Though this is the first course I have taken in the new ELC platform created by brilliant people at Hopkins' Center for Technology in Education, it is the 9^th course I have taken in a mostly or completely online format. The actual format of learning in this new platform is largely the same as the old ELC, but now that I am explicitly studying the design and evaluation of e-Learning environments, there are several components of improvement that I have noticed and feel are worth mentioning. For instance, here's a look at the main page of a course in the old ELC:

And now, here's a look at the welcome page for a course in the new ELC:

When I first logged into the new ELC for this e-Learning course, I noticed the change in color first, and then the menu. I thought it was more aesthetically pleasing than the old edition, and generally a simpler look; I did not, however, notice the core upgrades in the Essential Elements of a course. For instance, on the main page of the new ELC, one can see all of the content presentations sorted out by week right away as opposed to having to select the coursebook. This is a major upgrade in the Essential Element of Tone & Style, as it links the content presentations with course announcements in such a way as to say, “Welcome to class, here's what's going on now, what we've done in the past, and what's coming up next.” This thoughtful change is a great upgrade, but I think the most striking positive change addresses the Essential Element of teaming. Here's a side-by-side image of the team work space comparing the old ELC with the new:

As one can see, the new ELC team space includes updates, a collaborative blog, discussion, simple chat functions, and places to share resources amongst the team and keep a collaborative calendar. The old version of the ELC included a team space only for discussion. Any other collaboration had to be improvised elsewhere within the course shell or maintained outside the ELC.

There's also the newly improved communication features, such as the ability to very easily track updates to a particular discussion or area of the ELC using the “Subscribe to Email Updates” function. All of the changes in the new edition of the ELC seem positive to me, and I have learned a lot about how I might take that with me into course design myself – including the e-Learning PD initiative I am currently designing and will be soon implementing at my school.

There is a wide range of instructional technology abilities and interests at the school where I currently work (lots of digital immigrants on the faculty). As the new Technology Coordinator, I have made it my core mission to provide more scaffolding and differentiation in professional development opportunities for all faculty and staff. My initiative will involve providing a place for asynchronous learning of Web 2.0 and school-specific tools. These will sometimes be intended as stand-alone resources and other times as follow-ups to face-to-face interactions. I am going to be looking for more ideas in the coming weeks about how to best support digital immigrants in the asynchronous e-Learning environment to ensure the best possible success of the initiative.