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Last Thursday was my first E-Teaching for E-Learning Seminar. I appreciated the attendance of several colleagues. In the seminar I outlined the framework for the seminar series that will be held this semester. The first slide forms an introduction to the place of e-teaching in the service of e-learning. The graphic expresses a belief about e-teaching and e-learning. E-learning is on top, and should be increasing and improving all the time. The learning is what is important. E-teaching supports e-learning, and should make it possible for good e-learning to happen. E-teaching without e-learning is worthless.
Dr. Bertalan Komenczi welcomed the group to the first E-Teaching for E-Learning Seminar. Eszterházy Károly Főiskola and Valdosta State University have been official partners for 15 years. The Institute of Media Informatics hosted a delegation from Valdosta State University for the Agria Media Conference in 2004, and some distance collaboration was done in the intervening years. Dr. Komenczi said that this seminar would be the first one that would focus on E-Teaching, and would be held in English. He encouraged the participants to attend each week, and to assist each other to discuss, and ask and answer questions in English.
I began the seminar with a few sentences in Hungarian, including greetings, and introduction of myself and my husband, Dr. Jack Hasling. Dr. Hasling is a retired professor of sociology who will be informally participating in classes and seminars in the American Studies department. I apologized for not knowing more Hungarian, and expressed a desire to learn more during the February – May exchange period.
During this semester, we will meet regularly to talk about e-teaching. In the first seminar I communicated the framework of the seminar series. On other days, we will be less formal, and will discuss specific topics that the group finds interesting. I have created a a four-part framework that includes communicating my perspectives on online teaching, principles of online teaching, practices of online teaching, and promises about the seminar series from me to my colleagues, and from my colleagues to me.
FRAMEWORK: PERSPECTIVES
Academic perspective, or instructional point of view, is formed by academic training and teaching experiences. I wanted to tell the group about my academic training so they would understand where my perspective was formed. My first academic subject in college was telecommunicative arts, in which I studied the theory and practice of working in the areas of radio, television and film production and performance. After earning a bachelor’s degree in this field from Iowa State University, I worked in the broadcast industry in California for some short time.
My second academic subject was library and information sciences. I studied this field at the University of Iowa, and earned a Master’s degree. My speciality in this field was in college level libraries, especially in assisting library users as individuals and teaching groups of students to use the library. My time as a librarian spanned the time period during which computers became important for storage, automation, and communication, and the Internet became a necessary source of information.
My third academic subject was Instructional Systems Design (ISD), in which I earned my Ph.D. at Florida State University in 1992. ISD is a unique blend of learning theory, educational psychology, management, and technology. The discipline had an historical beginning in the United States just before the Second World War (1939-1945), when the military and military-industrial complex had a challenge of training new soldiers and factory workers to do jobs efficiently and at a high skill level. ISD is a discipline that encouraged application of scientific practices to the field of teaching and learning. Practitioners in the field may be in academic settings, like me, or may influence production of instructional materials for use by schools, colleges, businesses, government agencies, or the military.
All of my academic subjects help me with my job as a professor in a College of Education at Valdosta State University. I teach students in the areas of instructional design, learning theory, technology integration in schools, action research, needs assessment, program evaluation, and knowledge management.
Academic perspective is also formed by teaching experiences. There was a time when all of my classroom instruction was…in a classroom! Even then, I used a great deal of technology support including video, photography, and overhead projection. I moved to real-time interactive video delivery, with groups of students at specially equipped sites, and a group of students in the classroom with the instructor. This was an excellent system in our State, and was used for education and telemedicine. As the Internet developed, classroom and video classes became Web-enhanced (blended learning), and the classrooms became rich environments with areas for computer use, student collaboration and traditional professor-led instruction. The once-successful interactive video system lost support as the Internet grew. Since 2000, distance learning has been equated with online learning. We use Web-CT, an online course management system. Since 2002, I have taught almost exclusively online.
My academic training and teaching experiences have led me to my perspective about online teaching. From my background in telecommunications, I learned the importance of good design of instructional messages. From my library training, the importance of resources became clear. Like many librarians, I fully believe that it is not so important to know all information, but it is important to be able to find information when needed. My Ph.D. program in Instructional Systems Design included a great deal of emphasis on learning theory and the scientific principles of learning. The necessary connections among goals, outcomes, and assessments was stressed. I learned that technology could be a tool for learning, but was not the main focus of teaching.
Instructional Systems Design advances an argument that the “delivery system” (that is, via professor lecture, reading, discussion, computer-program, distance learning, or video) does not matter nearly as much as the quality of the content and design of the instruction itself. Good instruction is good instruction, no matter how it is delivered.
I thought it was important for my colleagues to understand my instructional context. I teach in a College of Education in a regional University in the Southern United States. Our University has 11.000 students, and teacher training is a strong focus of the mission of the university.
My department is the Department of Curriculum, Leadership, and Technology. Other departments in the College of Education focus on training beginning elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers, and on training special educational professionals such as speech pathologists, special education teachers (for children with mental or physical disabilities), and gifted education teachers (for children with advanced abilities).
My department has only graduate students, mostly teachers with a lot of practical experience. They continue their education in order to specialize their knowledge and also to get a higher pay. Most of the classes taught in our department are held at night, on the weekends, blended, or online. This is because most of the students work at their schools each day. They also take classes during the summer when the children’s schools are not in session. Because of these nontraditional (adult) students, I expect my students to have knowledge and experience to share with their peers (other students). So I know that they have much to teach each other, as well as what I have to teach them. I call this peer learning.
Other instructors in the department have chosen to deliver programs on weekends or at night in classroom settings. Those of us in the instructional technology area decided that our program and courses could be delivered online. This has been a popular decision, since it allows students from a far distance to take our program. The benefit of this group is that the students get to study with people who live in different size cities, different economic settings, and who teach different kinds of children. This diversity has made our program rich in depth.
FRAMEWORK: PRINCIPLES
The second part of the framework is Principles. By principles, I mean some common ideas that support teaching and learning in an online setting. These principles can be found in the professional literature, but also by examining my own practices to see what works best across many instances. I made a long list of principles, too many for us to speak about in the time that we will meet in the seminar. I hope my colleagues will help me to choose principles that would be interesting for the local context, and we will focus only on those. I also hope they will suggest topics for seminars in the weeks ahead. For the first seminar, I gave an example using the first two principles--identity and community.
Identity is “who we are”. In a classroom setting that might include an introduction of names, courses of study, and perhaps academic interests. Some students might know each other already from other classes, or from previous experiences. Some students might talk to each other after class, and meet in social settings. In an online class, especially at the beginning of an online program, the students do not know each other. They do not live close to each other, and they do not see each other. Online students are alone at their computers in their homes. I think it is important to plan activities that allow students to share their identities. By writing autobiographies, and including photographs or video of themselves, they feel more involved in the class. The instructor and other students have more information about them, and a friendlier environment is established. Communication in online courses is very often only conducted through writing. More personal connection makes it possible to interpret written communication in a more precise way.
Community is related to identity. My courses, whether online or not, have always stressed having students work together in teams and groups. As said earlier in the presentation, I expect my students to engage in peer learning, in addition to learning from the textbook, other resources, and my lectures. By giving students the opportunity to share their interests, and to propose what technologies they know and want to know, they make connections with each other. The more the students know about each other, the better they are able to work together on course projects.
FRAMEWORK: PRACTICE
The third part of the seminar framework is practice. I have taught many online courses, and used various practices in the courses. I am currently teaching a course at Valdosta State University, and this will be a good way for me to show my practices in an immediate way.
My course is described on this slide. The Course Description is: Survey and analysis of the theoretical perspectives of change, communication, diffusion, systems, learning, and instruction as applied in instructional technology.FRAMEWORK: PROMISES
The fourth part of the framework involves promises. I want this seminar to be helpful and interesting, and to do so I must ask my colleagues to help shape the content of the seminar. The seminar will be in English, but I will try to speak some Hungarian. I hope they will help me when I use wrong words or pronounce words incorrectly. I will be appreciative and helpful as they speak English, and I know that there are varied levels of English speaking among the group. I know they will help each other with translation.
Another kind of language that sometimes needs translation is jargon. Very often people in Education use words in a particular way that might not translate very well. If I use an English word that does not seem to make sense in the context, I hope my colleagues will let me know. As I said earlier, my instructional context is very specific and may not be similar. I ask for help to generalize the principles by explanations of EKF teaching situations, so we can discuss how the principles may apply. The classroom and collegial culture has some differences between the U.S. and Hungary. I hope they will help me to do things appropriately, and tell me if what I propose would be considered offensive or inappropriate.
If there are others, whether in our Institute or not, I ask my colleagues to please invite them to attend the seminar. If people can come only occasionally, that’s OK. I also asked that they invite me to attend classes, or other activities. The more I can see of EKF work, the better I will understand. That includes seeing what is going on online, if that is possible.
SHOW and TELL: DEMONSTRATION OF PRACTICE
I showed the group a bit of my ITED 8100 course. My students welcomed my Hungarian colleagues to the course, in written discussion messages. I showed a couple of the introductory discussions and will show the assignments (also called prompts) below. The first one addressed the principle of Identity, the second one addressed the principle of Community.
Biography Exercise 1: Just the Facts
REPLY to the Just the Facts instructor prompt below with a posting in which youintroduce yourself to me and to your peers. State your name, what you like to be called, where you live, where you work, what you do in your job, and any facts about your family, interests, or background you'd like to share. Please attach a digital picture of yourself if possible.
Biography Exercise 2: Birds of a Feather
In this discussion group, CREATE MESSAGE in which you propose a particular instructional technology tool that you know a lot about, or would like to know about. Briefly describe your interest and experience. The subject line of the message should be descriptive of the technology, and whether you are an expert, enthusiast, or wannabe. Examples of such subject lines would be: Interactive Whiteboards-My Passion! Or Digital Moviemaking: Beginner Level. Monitor this Biography Discussion Area during the next week, and REPLY to any postings that describe areas in which you are also skilled or interested. This networking will help start our Ed.S. Learning Community.
I also showed a Yearbook of pictures and personal information about the students in the class. This document helps the students to get to know each other. A Google map, which helps people to know where other students live, was also shown.
We'll start next week's seminar discussing activities that may help with identity and community in online classes. I gave the group an assignment--or HOMEWORK, as Dr. Komenczi called it.Following the seminar came the best part--we went to a nice restaurant for brainstorming and refreshments. We talked for so long, it became dark, and the gates leading to my office were locked. Oh, well! It was a great day for me, and, I hope, for the rest of the seminar group.
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