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January 29, 2005
‘scuse me mame, is this horse dead?
Completely loved the last class discussion, i.e. the Blog Fiasco. Real-world examples cannot be beat, especially when so many people have so much invested.
Something Diana said got me thinking about an article that I brush off every once in awhile -- especially when I find myself getting too enamored with the tools and technologies of the online trade. She said something like, “We’re all teachers, we know how to conduct a class.” And that, I think, is what made the incident so frustrating for so many.
As teachers, we all have experience with and knowledge of instructional practices – and we know how to address the wide spectrum of learning styles in our classrooms. Some of our students are holistic learners – give them a topic and example and they run with it. Other students are serialistic learners – they need more declarative and background information before they can apply a topic. And some students fall some where in between those two poles.
In Active and Interactive Learning Online: A Comparison of Web-Based and Conventional Writing Classes (IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 43, NO. 2, JUNE 2000) Brad Mehlenbacher and Carolyn Miller (yes, THAT Carloyn Miller) documented a study that examined how students in online technical writing classes “performed” in comparison to students in resident technical writing courses – same curricula content.
The most important results (at least those that I like to refer to) were not located in the performance assessment data, but in the relationships between prior knowledge and learning styles and the online writing environment.
... global learners performed significantly better online than active, sequential learners, whereas there was no difference between them in the conventional class.
I think studies like this can be used to remind us that teaching with technology (whether in pure online formats or what we call “blended” formats) is a complex exercise. As such, we should constantly monitor our learning activities by asking ourselves if we’re maintaining knowledge transfer and skill development across the learning-types spectrum.
Posted by mfrascie at January 29, 2005 03:29 PM
Comments
global learners performed significantly better online than active, sequential learners, whereas there was no difference between them in the conventional class.
Mike, I wonder if you might be willing to unpack that a little for us. I think I know what it means, but it might be helpful to hear a little more, esp for those of us unfamiliar with the differences between global and sequential learners, e.g.
Posted by: collin at January 30, 2005 01:28 AM
I'd love that too, Mike. I am curoius as to whether I am a sequential learner, since I am having trouble working in this medium. I am reading Frank Smith's _Understanding Reading_ this week for Louise's class, as well and Stephen Kucer's _Dimensions of Literacy_ and I find it fascinating that material affordances like contexts and formats are non-trivial to being able to read effectively. I find that I have a difficult time reading as fast or as focused when doing this online work.
According to Smith, the brain and eyes can only process visual information at a certain rate, and they need a certain amount of non-visual information in order to make sense, quickly or at all, of that visual information. Non-visual information is defined by Smith as "prior knowledge," cues and clues my eyes and brain don't really need to process/decode at all, something I come into the situation knowing (what to expect). For whatever reason, I feel like I am coming into this situation with limited "prior knowledge." My guess is that my limited use of the computer for extensive reading makes me uncomfortably conscious of all of the new visuals involved in on-screen reading.
This all seems really silly, since I write on the computer all the time...but when I sit down to interface in this medium, I feel very out of place.
Posted by: di at February 1, 2005 07:50 PM
I'm intrigued by the term "global learner" as well. Like Diana, I immediately wonder if that is me. But also, how does the learner characteristic mesh with the medium. Is the online environment more of a "global" medium, and what does that mean? Would it be a structural characteristic of the environment?
Posted by: hj at February 2, 2005 10:23 PM