In my job, among other things, I am convincing people about how useful learning objectives are by providing a pre-concept of the expected competences. A learning objective should offer orientation within the complex process of learning, a push of common language for future conceptualisation and at the same time a conceptual playpen for the first practical experiences. It should also mark the starting point for reflexion: how well is my learning process working, is it on target?

But, unfortunately, at first sight any set of learning objectives looks like a list of errands to work through one by one, therefore people tend to take it as a shopping list of things to put into the head of a learner.

Thinking about this, I remembered Wittgenstein’s attempt to solve «the» philosophical question with one sophisticated list. He wrote a book of 75 pages containing 7 numbered propositions, with various sub-levels (1, 1.1, 1.11):

• The world is all that is the case.
• What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.
• …
• Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)

His important contribution followed after this first book, though. He became the one philosopher to accept and show, that even his perfect list (or logical treatise) couldn’t solve the philosophical question. And he restarted his thinking about meaning and sense making in contexts of use within specific language-games.

Now this might be a little simplified for the sake of analogy, but we can make the step from list to language-game by thinking about a specific learning objective that evokes in a few words a future competence and its practical use in the professional world.

The complexity of such a language-game, lying beyond a professional field, should never be underestimated. By spelling out learning objectives, we hope to be helpful for learners, showing first steps into the complexity of professional skills.

To give an idea how the horizon of such a language-game may look like, I attach my draft of a grid of competences for self regulated learning. It cannot be read as a solution for the question of learning, but as a communicative outline for an open, common language for formulating learning objectives.

This draft will be discussed in the Eduhub Special Interest Group ePortfolio and in internal projects. And it will be used as an example for describing competences in the project MAGICC (Modularising Multilingual and Multicultural Academic Communication Competence www.magicc.eu.) by the project coordintor, Brigitte Forster Vosicki, of the University of Lausanne.

Attachment: Self Regulated Learning (SRL) – Grid of Competences

Based in Basel for 5 days of concentrated writing and discussing, we have drafted papers for students, university teachers, technical staff and decision makers, always with an eye on our future readers. After some editorial work, these readers will be asked for feedback and first results will be published in summer.

Now why is an ePortfolio such a complex issue to explain? Basically in an ePortfolio, you will collect what you have learned and publish it for others. By doing so you will have to review things, rearrange your collection and rethink some of your thoughts, in brief, you will have to reflect. It is a very promising method for learning and assuring what you have learned, because reflection (meta-cognition) is a key success factor for learning.

But – to reflect seems to be one of the verbs without an imperative form, like love, dream, read… listed by Daniel Pennac in «Reads like a Novel». Go on and try it: reflect! – Right, it is impossible to do it like that. – Therefore we have methods like ePortfolio work, involving everyone in a complex and entangling learning process and just like everything, that is more complex than a simple imperative, this needs explanation, introduction and care.

There is another reason for the complexity of ePortfolio work. It is a deliberate crossover of different professional domains: science, education, design and many other professions, web publishing and the internet community. Words like «selecting, publishing…» are triggering quite different thoughts within professionals of these domains.

Many reasons to work on guidelines. We will be looking for community feedback – soon also on this blog.

See also my presentation about ePortfolio work on slideshare.

The results suggest that reading behavior on e-readers is indeed very similar to reading behavior on print. Participants shared similar proportions of regressive saccades while reading on e-readers and print. Significant differences in fixation duration suggest that e-readers, in some situations, may even provide better legibility.

Link to the article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141938211000497

Citation: Siegenthaler, E., Wurtz, P, Bergamin P. & Groner, R. (2011). Comparing reading processes on e-ink displays and print. Displays, 32 (5), 268-273. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.displa.2011.05.005.

• Tablets im Einsatz
• Aktuelle Praxis-Erfahrungen mit FFHS-Kursen

Zudem werden Präsenz-Workshops angeboten.

• Ganz neu: Herstellung guter Multiple-Choice-Fragen – Als Referent konnte René Krebs, der jahrelange Erfahrung im Bereich Multiple-Choice hat, gewonnen werden.
• Hochschul- und Fernstudiendidaktik – Elemente der allgemeinen Didaktik sowie das Modell der transaktionalen Distanz.
• Der Bewährte: Moodle Kompakt – Wesentliche Funktionen unserer Lernumgebung.
• Dazu passend: E-Moderation – Aufgaben stellen und begleiten in der Lernumgebung.

Weiter werden wiederum die beiden Module des CAS Teledozent durchgeführt – Wissensvermittlung mit Neuen Medien und die entscheidende Rolle der Teledozentin / des Teledozenten.

Eine Übersicht aller Kurse finden Sie unter: http://www.ifel.ch/de/kurse

Anmeldung direkt online: http://www.ifel.ch/anmeldung

The decision seems to be based on last year’s Next Gen report by Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope, which highlighted the poor quality of computer teaching in schools and was promoted with a great slogan: «Coding is the new Latin». Mr Livingston says: «Children are being forced to learn how to use applications, rather than to make them. They are becoming slaves to the user interface and are totally bored by it.» We are glad to see this so called «seismic shift in computer education». Anyone who has ever taught coding knows, how much good this does for understanding the «wicked ways» of computers and the like.

Yet there is more to it. The slogan Coding – the new Latin invites to reflect on «Coding» as a cultural technique, just as we used to think about and argue for «Latin» in schools. The following list may help with this. I wrote it in German some years ago and translated it in today’s context.

It parallels some thoughts about Latin and Coding as cultural techniques – an opportunity to reflect on the intricate ways of societies and the like.

Lets end with some good wishes: May the new curriculum be cool for the children and constructiv for the teachers. And may more and more politicians follow the exemple of the Britisch education secretary and also New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who takes a coding course – which is another sign that the times are moving on and certainly good for the quality of political contributions. We were surprised though to read, that participants in the course receive an interactive lesson each week, by email.

May that course grow from mail to moodle or a similar environment, into a full-blown distant-learning adventure based on some didactics beside all the tech, we’d be glad to help with ideas.

In a first phase the students worked with the prompts, in a second phase they had to fill in multiple-choice-questions as a control condition. Next year we will rerun this design changing the sequence with multiple-choice-questions first followed by prompting. The prompting activity was measured with the «communication interaction level» for logs proposed by Hamuy & Galaz (2010). For 21 students the communication competences were coded by trained raters based on video recordings of internships with regular classes.

The results of the first year (2011) show that prompting enhanced the transfer from the communication course to the communication competences in class.

We found a significant correlation between prompting and communication competences of .47, and of .60 when controlled for pre-knowledge and transfer motivation with 36% of the variance explained. The multiple choice condition has a non-significant correlation with the communication competences of .23, and .31 when controlled for pre-knowledge and transfer motivation with 10% of the variance explained.

The name of the project is LCLL, i.e. Förderung des Lerntransfers durch computerbasiertes Prompting in einem Blended-Learning-Szenario für Lehramtskandidaten/innen. Its duration is from February 2011 until June 2012.

Quite exiting therefore, to revise the watching-machines all around us, not merely on the level of screen design but on the profound level of structure, dialogue and autonomy, by means of which we are given time for reading and learning. In didactics this arrangement of structure, dialogue and autonomy opens space for learning. Thus we are observing attentively the transition of our learning environment Moodle from browsers to mobiles – transition from a browser-based interface with a lot of functionality in parallel, to a more consecutive and differently focused arrangement on smaller screens, which opens also a different space for dialogue and potential autonomy.

Moodbile.org – Mobile Learning for Moodle at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – Barcelona Tech has provided specifications of «web services for supporting the integration of external apps with Moodle» and beta-versions of a Moodbile-Server, an HTML5-Client and an Android-App. We have tested the server and clients and are exited about the potential they show already. Based on open standards this project provides the middleware for interfaces of the future mobile watching-boards and learning-boards.

At the IFeL we are designing and testing functional clusters and didactic sequences for mobile learning devices which this project reinforces not only conceptually. Thank you Moodbile, this helps to develop learning which is what our work is all about.

Hier ist ein Auszug aus verschiedenen Tools die eingesetzt werden können:

Dropbox

Die Bereitstellung von Dateien auf einem zentralen System muss nicht kompliziert sein. Mit Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) benötigt man nur eine Internetverbindung um auf die Dateien zuzugreifen, auch wenn man mal auf einem anderen PC arbeitet, auf dem Dropbox nicht installiert ist. Das Teilen von Ordnern mit anderen Benutzern ist sehr einfach und unkompliziert – eine Einladung via eMail genügt.

Skype

Um dann das Meeting durchzuführen, eignet sich zum Beispiel Skype (www.skype.com). Mit Skype können Sie kostenlose Anrufe oder Videoanrufe zu anderen Skype-Nutzern tätigen. Es eignet sich auch gut für Konferenzgespräche mit bis zu 24 Personen. Bei einem Meeting mit zwei Teilnehmern ist es auch möglich den Bildschirm zu übertragen, so z.B. wenn man dem Gesprächspartner etwas zeigen möchte.

Mikogo

Skype in Kombination mit Mikogo (www.mikogo.de) erweitert dann diese Bildschirm-Übertragung auf mehrere Sitzungsteilnehmer. Mikogo ist eine plattform-unabhängige Desktop Sharing Lösung für Web Konferenzen, Online Meetings oder Remote Support. Leider bietet es keine Möglichkeit die Teilnehmer von dort aus anzurufen, so dass es empfehlenswert ist, Skype dafür zu nutzen.

Titanpad

Mit Titanpad (www.titanpad.com) lässt sich dann ein Protokoll fertigen, in dem alle Ihre Notizen hinterlegen können.

Weitere interessante Tools finden Sie unter: http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com

Ein E-Moderator hat vielfältige Funktionen und Aufgaben in einem Online-Kurs wahrzunehmen. Er ist dafür zuständig, dass im Online-Kurs rechtzeitig Informationen zu Übungen bereitgestellt, die Teilnehmer inhaltlich bei der Lösung der Aufgabe unterstützt und Feedbacks zu eingesendeten Lösungen gegeben werden. Fazit: der Erfolg eines Online-Kurses steht und fällt mit der Kompetenz und dem Agieren des E-Moderators.

Und was geschieht, wenn der E-Moderator nicht (re)agiert?

Dann wird es höchstwahrscheinlich so sein, dass

• die Teilnehmenden nicht oder nie im Online-Kurs anzutreffen sind,
• sie bis zum letztmöglichen Abgabetermin warten, um ihre Lösungen abzugeben und
• von Online-Kommunikation oder Kollaboration kaum etwas zu sehen ist.

Prof. Gilly Salmon hat ein Rezept dafür; sie setzt auf E-tivities (auf der Basis des 5-Stufen Modells). Auch die Teilnehmenden des Workshops konnten erste Erfahrungen mit E-tivities machen, die sie als E-Moderator wiederum in ihren Online-Kursen einsetzen können.

5-Stufen Modell von Prof. Gilly Salmon

Weitere Informationen zum 5-Stufen Modell finden Sie unter: http://www.atimod.com/e-moderating/5stage.shtml

Literatur:
Salmon, G. (2004). E-tivities: Der Schlüssel zu aktivem Online-Lernen (1st ed.). Zürich: Orell Füssli.

58,000 Want Course, ein Beitrag aus (m)einer individuellen RSS-Bildungsbeilage, spricht da andere Sprachen: The New York Times’s most e-mailed bringt oft Trouvaillen zu Experimenten und zur aktuellen Debatte, trotz stürmischem Umfeld mit innovativer Begeisterung. Und es sind immer wieder Bildungsfragen in den Top Three.

Im Beitrag wird ein Online Kurs zu Artificial Intelligence der Stanford University vorgestellt, der überwältigendes Echo ausgelöst hat. Ein Dozent fasst seine Motivation in den Satz: «The vision is: change the world by bringing education to places that can’t be reached today [without online courses].» Die Initianten verweisen auf das Vorbild Khan Academy (dazu ein ander Mal mehr) und die Vorreiter am M.I.T., dort kommentiert einer dieser Vorreiter:

The idea that you could put up open content at all was risky 10 years ago [...] Now the question is how do you move into something that is more interactive and collaborative, and we will see lots and lots of models over the next four or five years.

Hervorzuheben ist zweifellos die Absicht der Dozierenden, ein Modell der Fernstudiendidaktik anzuwenden:

Intentionally [to turn] the relationship of the classroom and homework upside down. Students watch lectures at home, then work on problem sets in class, where the teacher can assist them one on one.

Umgesetzt in Online-Sequenzen.

PS: Der Tipp für eine RSS-Zeitung, die nun wirklich Anderes als die Andern schreibt: Moodle News | News, Information and Resources for the World’s Leading LMS. Rund um das Learning Management System Moodle hat sich eine riesige, aktive Community gebildet. Wer den Überblick zu behalten oder zu gewinnen sucht: die Moodle News ist deren Bildungsbeilage.