Category: E-Learning

Open Access & Public Domain Resources

Paul Ross

Copyright and the use of images is a tricky business when using to present at a conference, add to education resources or use on a blog. You need to check the copyright rules and understand permission rights of when you can use an image. It is not acceptable to copy one directly from a Google search as these images are likely copyrighted “All Rights Reserved” and you must get written permission or pay to use such works. Hopefully this post can help you find resources on copyright rules and to find open access images, music and content.

“Creative Commons helps you legally share your knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. We unlock the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, growth and productivity”(Creative Commons.org).

Added to this difficulty is the fact that the internet is global and copyright rules may be different in each respective country, although new Creative Commons licence 4.0 are internationally valid. This resource is excellent in clarifying the commons licence understanding.

Wanna Work Together? from Creative Commons on Vimeo.

Resources

Remember to check each of the above resources copyright and permission rules as not everything will be open access.

Help create a sharing community by adding your contributions and make your resources open access and freely available. Not everyone has the financial means to access journals and articles to keep up to date with the latest evidence base, so even a review can help aid discussion in our global healthcare online communities.

 

 

Minecraft & Gamification

Paul Ross

Now I am not a gaming person but for skills of the future I have decided for my own personal development, that my aims for the coming 12- 24 months are to engage in gaming environments (Minecraft to start) and also learn some basic coding skills. Hopefully you find these resources useful when starting out, if you know of any others please post them in the comment section at the bottom of this post. When I somehow find some spare time to commence coding I will create a post with links to any of the resources I have used (I aim to learn using open access resources so it will all be free).

For those in school education, there is also a Minecraft Education edition that promotes an online world with collaboration and problem-solving in an immersive environment.

Keywords; gaming, immersive, problem-solving, collaboration, Minecraft.

Resources

DigMinecraft (2017) Getting started in Minecraft.

Minecraft (2017) Minecraft Official Site.

Minecraft Education Edition (2017) What is Minecraft Education.

Wikipedia (2017) Minecraft.

Socio-cultural: Developing An Online Course

Paul Ross

Socio-cultural

The learning trajectory of the human learning experiences aims to create boundaries and create new opportunities. This experience of learning and negotiation of meaning within a community through concepts of imagination, alignment and engagement is the socio-cultural or ‘Communities of Practice‘ (Wenger, 1998). Socio-cultural theoretical framework involves the learning experiences from both past and present within the current learning environment to create new opportunities of learning.  The socio-cultural perspective surrounds the social construction, the environment and cultural context.

Socio-cultural Online Course
• Ideally naturally formed working partnerships and group work, this could be very difficult to create an effective, comfortable, trusting relationship formed quickly on an online course. The other option is to encourage discussion to link up with a peer, or eventually the more formal process of educator picking partnerships is undertaken. Same for group work, but likely the facilitator may organise this very low-key to encourage engagement and feeling of control and direction of the learners. Could a visual resource such as FaceTime, Skype or Hangout be used to form more personal relationships, “name to a face” approach?
• Cooperative learning environment, social integration of the learners.
• Peer partnerships.
• Online interpersonal skills, such as writing, listening, discussing, talking online, negotiating.
• Cooperative group work and learning experiences.
• Case studies and problem solving activities.
• Creating a solution as a team.
• E-portfolio for reflective practice, especially focused on the collaborative experiences.
• Sharing information.
• Variation.

Transformation Aims

Positive interdependence, in that the collaborative approach and sharing ideas has made a positive impact on the individual and the community level. The development of interpersonal skills and soft skills.

Keywords: social learning, community of practice, situated learning, COP.

References

Ross, P. (2016) Communities of Practice (CoP) by Etienne Wenger. Nursing Education Network.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge university press. [sample here]

Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization, 7(2), 225-246.

Wenger, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) Introduction to communities of practice: A brief overview of the concept and its uses. Wenger-Trayner.com

Phenomenography: Developing An Online Course

Paul Ross

The science of andragogy is understanding and supporting lifelong learning in adult learners and developing the teaching of adult learners (Knowles, Holton & Swanson, 2011). This discussion on the main conditions around contemporary learning utilising a phenomenological theoretical framework environment is aimed to improve learning and the philosophy of knowledge.

Phenomenography

A student centred educationally developed course, with the environment developed from the instructor having walked in the student’s shoes. “Instructors must then not only ask “What is learned?” and “What is transferred?”, but also “What should be learned?” and “What should be transferred?” (Marton, 2006).

Background on Phenomenographic & Variation Theory.

Phenomenography/Variation Online Course (E-Learning)

  • Variation would be the nature of the course to provide adaptability and agility of the course and the student (#interleaving)
  • Creating scenarios based on variances and differences to engage, investigate and change perspectives.
  • Advancing technology, use of an array of online resources to explore phenomena. Web based, gamification, point of view could all be included as part of this development.
  • Engage in scholarly discourse, to critique and discuss content to encourage a wide range of views and perspectives. Increases oral and listening skills also as an ongoing life skill.
  • Two way discussion for developing enquiry and negotiation skills.
  • As part of the exploration, look at both sides (pro’s and con’s, for and against, good and bad) to develop knowledge.
  • Encourage students to think outside the box.
  • Error free learning environment.
  • Facilitator must engage closely with students to ensure students understand the variations, diversity and phenomena.
  • E-portfolio for reflective practice and really understand their personal feelings, process and developmental journey.

Transformation Aims

Student skills development, especially focusing on experience, ability to critique and question and notice differences in the variations. A personal growth from the transfer of the learning and discern meaning out of the learning experience. Phenomenon based learning is to equip students with the skills to flourish in the 21st century technology driven era.

Keywords: transfer; phenomenology; Marton; agent of learning; e-learning; phenomenon based learning; PBL.

References

Knowles, M. S., Holton III, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2011). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development.

Marton, F. (2006). Sameness and Difference in Transfer. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(4), 499-535. doi: 10.1207/s15327809jls1504_3

Making The Internet and Resources Accessible

Paul Ross

This is my consideration to reviewing accessibility of this blog and to aid future creation of resources. After reading this post by Finn Gardiner on neurodiversity inclusiveness it really makes you consider how you create education items. At times I have created short video recordings and added them into YouTube for students to access, normally talking over a few powerpoint slides explaining focus of upcoming course content or discussing an article for journal club but had never thought to add captioning or subtitles. The below resources explain the reasons for inclusivity and then a how to guide to add captions ‘Charlie Chaplin’ style. At the bottom right of this blog, is a translate option that hopefully allows more accessibility.

I try to add a mix of text, image and video resource to provide a variety of sources of information and to keep it light and interesting (#microlearning). What I am not sure about is the accessibility or loading speed for those accessing around the world. The open access approach means quick access, no passwords, payments but access to published articles is dependent on publisher rights so sometimes only a link to a abstract can be provided.

Make The Internet Accessible by Annie Elainey.

 

Creating Subtitles and Closed Captions on Your Youtube Videos by Derral Eves

Resources

Finn Gardiner (2017) 5 ways to make your web content more neurodiversity inclusive. Nosmag.org

National Association of The Deaf (2017) Captioning on the internet.

 

The Datathon Experience

Paul Ross

So I have just attended my first datathon aimed at “bringing inter-professional critical care trainees and clinicians (data novices to gurus), statisticians, data scientists and administrators together in the same room to tackle clinical problems with large datasets. The datathon aims were to generate patient-centred or service-centred projects and research which can be published in scientific journals and ultimately make a real difference to patients.”

The Experience

I went with the advised ‘open attitude’ and ‘to collaborate’ mindset and it did not disappoint. From initial ideas brainstorm from those attending, and then linking in to a project of interest or specialty, this was all spontaneous. Next came the collaborative group work formed from a team of medical, nursing, librarian, government, dietitian, researchers, statisticians and data scientists discussed and brainstormed to generate a meaningful research question. This was all supported by research, medical, scientist ‘gurus’ to challenge and advise on topics and frame the research process.

Big Data

Having minimal research experience, a dataset of 1.5 million admissions is just scary and needs to be managed with the respect like you were directly caring for each of these patient admissions. Time for the data scientists to come in and within hours had provided a initial dataset with required variables (cut down to 100 after much discussion) from 1 million admission episodes. Many cups of coffee were required to keep up with these specialists. No matter the level of experience, all aspects were fully explained so the group were all up to speed.

Big data analysis and time for ‘The Statistician’ to come and make some meaning from this huge amount of data. This was all done before the morning coffee break, that is time critical working.

Results Review

Time to review the results and look for outcomes and demographics with important findings. Comparing these results to past research and knowledge provided a where were we at picture, to look at where are we now.

Ready to Rumble

How To Pitch Your Presentation by @MishManners:

  1.  Introduce
  2.  Frame the problem
  3.  Current solution / knowledge
  4.  Your solution!
  5.  The ask

The End

The datathon showed you need a collaborative approach to complete such a research project. Multi-disciplinary working, we must do more. Can the team continue to collaborate and finalise the work to publish and share these findings with a wider audience? As for another datathon, I would thoroughly recommend, even for a lost weekend of days off.

References

#CCdata17

#anzicsdatathon17

@ANZICSCORE

Blended Synchronous Learning

Paul Ross

Journal Club Article: Bower, M., Kenney, J., Dalgarno, B., Lee, M. J., Kennedy, G. E., Carter, H., … & Hedberg, J. (2013). Blended synchronous learning: Patterns and principles for simultaneously engaging co-located and distributed learners. Electric Dreams. Proceedings ascilite.

Background

The traditional view of learning is of the on-campus University experience is changing, with students wholly or partially participating away from their institution (Gosper et al, 2008). Factors such as lifestyle demands of work, financial and social commitments mean universities now need to find new ways of engaging students irrespective of their geographic location.

The Answer?

“Blended synchronous learning approaches use media-rich synchronous technologies to enable remote and face-to-face students to co-participate in live classes”. The challenge is to provide collaborative learning activities in blended learning to ensure a social constructivist pedagogy is delivered.

Synchronous or Asynchronous?

Distance students have primarily been supported through asynchronous resources such as recorded lectures, electronic documents, discussion forums and course content delivery through a learning management system. But this does not provide vital real-time conversations, so a synchronous and multi-modal approach needs to be delivered.

Technologies

Media-rich synchronous technologies such as:

  • Video conferencing (Skype, Google Hangout).
  • Web conferencing (Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate).
  • Virtual worlds (Second Life, Minecraft).

Learning: Student Tasks

  • Collaboration evaluation.
  • Group questioning.
  • Class discussion.
  • Problem solving.
  • Role play.
  • Collaborative design.

Teacher Needs

  • Extensive preparation.
  • Clear instructions.
  • Flexibility.
  • Student preparation.
  • Support staff.

Pro’s of Blended Learning

  • Equity of access.
  • Flexible course.
  • Technology aids work ready skills.
  • Continues a collaborative approach to learning.

Con’s

  • Preparation for student and teacher to be prepared, don’t assume everyone is tech savvy.
  • Minimal software requirement, which may add to costs.
  • Broadband can effect user experience in the online learning world, may disrupt teaching sessions.
  • Capturing real time and ensuring quality online delivery.
  • Difficult to manage remote and face-to-face demands on the teacher (may need a support person to manage the online world).

Summary

Blended learning can provide a synchronous learning experience that allows the community of practice to continue. Resources are needed for the technology, training and supports required to deliver a quality education program. The question of relevance in the vocational setting such as healthcare needs to be researched to question if blended learning can really replace hands on training and if nurses are actually ready for this approach.

References

Bower, M., Kenney, J., Dalgarno, B., Lee, M. J., Kennedy, G. E., Carter, H., … & Hedberg, J. (2013). Blended synchronous learning: Patterns and principles for simultaneously engaging co-located and distributed learners. Electric Dreams. Proceedings ascilite.

Nursing Education Network (2016) Blended Learning

Blended Synchronous Learning (2017) http://www.blendsync.org