Author Archives: John McCormick

The Journey to Expert Performance: Authentic eLearning Assignments

Posted on by

How can we best support learners in their ability to apply knowledge and skills to complex situations? Moving away from abstract, decontextualized learning that leads to inert knowledge is difficult to transfer to problem-solving situations. A key element that can move learners to a higher level of expertise is a cognitively authentic task. Collaboratively working on complex, authentic tasks can be a key to students’ successful transfer of knowledge and skills to real world contexts.

Cognitive Apprenticeship

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Collins, Brown and Newman (1989) suggested an extension of the traditional apprenticeship model of learning through what they termed the “Cognitive Apprenticeship”. They claimed that traditional apprenticeships have three elements cognitively important for a model of learning:

  1. Leaners have access to models of expertise-in-use against which to refine their understanding of complex skills.
  2. Apprentices often have several masters and have access to a variety of models of expertise leading to an understanding that there may be different ways to carry out a task, and that no one individual embodies all knowledge and expertise.
  3. Learners have the opportunity to observe other learners with varying degrees of skill (p.456)

Authentic e-Learning

authentic task visual

More recently, Herrington, Reeves, and Oliver (2010) have developed a framework based on the idea of cognitive apprenticeship. The elements of the framework can be used as a set of criteria for designing learning experiences:

  1. Provide authentic contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real life
  2. Provide authentic tasks
  3. Provide access to expert performances and the modeling of processes
  4. Provide multiple roles and perspectives
  5. Support collaborative construction of knowledge
  6. Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed
  7. Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit
  8. Provide coaching and scaffolding by the teacher at critical times
  9. Provide for authentic assessment of learning within the tasks

Authentic learning is very well suited to online learning, but while students may be familiar with technologies of participatory culture, they need guidance in working on collaborative online teams and coaching at critical times during problem-solving.

If you are interested in creating an authentic online or blended task for your online, hybrid or face-to-face teaching, please feel free to contact elis@lesley.edu. Our design staff has expertise in the creation of collaborative online learning and have presented at national conferences on the topic.

Engaging Learners in the Real World: Field Observations

Posted on by

McDonalds

Students often spend much of their time in classes talking about the content of their courses rather than applying that content. Moving students more quickly towards applying content in authentic ways can enhance and strengthen students’ understanding of concepts and ideas – something that can be difficult through abstract discourse.

If you would like your students to learn through application, field observations can be a very effective way to bring the real world into the classroom.  In his fully online course Introduction to Sociology, Netra Darai uses several “Participant Observations” in which students go out into their local communities to study a particular topic, and report and discuss their experiences with their classmates via a blog.  In a unit on social class, his students speak to staff members of organizations supporting the homeless. In a unit on gender and age, they interview an elderly person they know.

In her hybrid course, Cross Cultural Psychology, which meets face-to-face once per week, Katie Howe uses similar field observations. For example, in a unit on McDonaldization, her students visit popular chain stores, restaurants or local sporting events to examine how such establishments follow principles of McDonaldization (efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control).  Students then present a brief report on their observations in class.

If you would like assistance with crafting such assignments for your course, feel free to contact the instructional designers on the eLearning team or contact us at elis@lesley.edu.

Note: The image above is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

29th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning

Posted on by

distance conf banner 2013Instructional designers Sarah Krongard and John McCormick of Lesley’s eLearning and Instructional Support group (eLIS) will be conducting a three-hour workshop on the design of online collaborative learning activities at the 29th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning in Madison Wisconsin this summer.  Recognized internationally for the quality and integrity of its program, the conference provides an exchange of current resources, research, and best practices that are relevant to the design and delivery of distance education.  Last year’s conference included over 800 attendees and representation from 21 countries.  Sarah and John look forward to sharing the ideas and new thinking gleaned from the event!

Blackboard IM: A Brief Survey of One Lesley Professor’s Experience

Posted on by

BBIM

Dr. Paul Naso, an assistant professor in the PhD in Educational Studies Program at Lesley GSOE, has adopted Blackboard Instant Messaging for a variety of communication tasks.  Below is a list of some small steps he and his students have taken during recent semesters:

In his online course Critical Contexts for the Principalship:

  • Office hours, by appointment meetings, and occasional unscheduled meetings with students
  • Use of audio, video and text message functionality
  • All students were Bb IM users and approximately 75% of students used Bb IM frequently for within-cohort interactions, in pairs or small groups

As part of the online component of Adult Learning and Development Semester IV:

  • Office hours, by appointment text chat
  • Audio chat with students to get individual feedback on plans for how they would approach their assignments

In the Educational Leadership PhD specialization:

  • Unscheduled, student-initiated text chats to
    • Check-in about program requirements, program schedules
    • Request suggestions for research topic literature
    • Schedule appointments

Through his use of Blackboard IM so far, Paul has observed that as the numbers of his students using the tool increases, the more uses for it become evident.

If you would like to learn more about Blackboard IM please review the help documentation on the eLIS website.

eLIS Staff Present at Northeast Regional Learning Analytics Symposium

Posted on by

nerla

Instructional designers John McCormick and Sarah Krongard presented at the Northeast Regional Learning Analytics Symposium in Southbridge, MA on January 25th. NERLA is part of NERCOMP, a regional arm of EDUCAUSE.Their presentation was titled Visualizing Interaction: Learning Analytics to Improve Online Discourse, highlighting exploratory action research on the use of an analytics tool that shows real-time visuals of online discussion interaction patterns. Learning analytics is an emerging field in education highlighted in the Horizon Report as 2-3 years from mainstream adoption, along with game-based learning.