As I reflect on how to use Facebook, Twitter, blogs and wikis I wonder if my students feel as though I am treading into “their space” and, like the children of my friends, think I do not belong. Will my efforts to engage them by using technologies that are a part of their daily lives backfire or have the intended effect? As I prepare for my spring classes I intend to ask my students for input regarding how I use these kinds of technologies to encourage interaction, participation and engagement in the courses I teach.

I currently use a variety of technologies to assist in my own process of learning, such as database searches for information in the university library, more targeted searches on company websites, exploration of sources in Wikipedia and other online reference tools, and the Google Reader – an RSS aggregator that allows me to easily collect updates to my favorite educational blogs. I have also started using a wiki to facilitate collaboration on a manuscript that is being co-created by myself and a couple of colleagues at other universities. And finally, through my participation in online discussion forums, I am reflecting on how course readings apply to my life as a learner and teacher.

In my role as university professor I encourage my students to use technology in many ways. For example, all of my exams are of the “take home” variety – posted as PDFs on our course website two weeks before the answers must be submitted using the course management system’s quizzing tool. All lecture notes, supplemental readings, assignments for discussion sections and weekly quizzes are also posted in the course website. This semester the students in my organizational behavior courses were required to work in small teams to “make a difference in the world” and document their impact in a 7-10 minute multimedia production. Few of the students had ever been required to write a script, create a production plan, shoot and edit video, or incorporate music and narration into a multimedia project. And finally, in order to encourage preparation for and participation in lecture, I utilized audience response technology which required students to be present and provide correct answers to lecture quizzes or provide their personal opinions about real-world problems.

In recent weeks I have also gained a greater appreciation for how I can use technology to build connections with other people, access new information, find relevant examples that deepen understanding and build on my previous experiences. One of my greatest challenges, however is to sort through the multitude of technologies that are available and figure out which ones are the most valuable as aids to learning. Over the next few months I will be exploring how to use mobile computing and personal networks to enhance my own learning, as well as more fully engage students in my large lecture courses. As I make changes to my spring courses I will find opportunities to ask my students if they are doing things on the Internet that are relevant to what we are learning about or if any of their computer games or mobile applications provide relevant insights into behavior in organizations – the topic area of the course. I will also encourage my students to share their technological expertise with me and their classmates, helping all of us learn to use specific hardware and software tools more effectively. Stay tuned for updates on how things are going.

But I am a digital immigrant (Prensky, 2001, 2006) and for the past few years I have been trying to figure out how to use the technologies of today, as well as those on the horizon, to more fully engage and motivate my students. But, as Professor Artino mentioned in one of his postings to last week’s discussion forum, the technology changes so fast that just when I think I have figured out how to effectively use a new technology in my teaching, a couple of years have passed and there is another technology that has taken its place. As a digital immigrant, there is no way that I will ever catch up to my students and be able to use technologies as comfortably or creatively as they do. At most, I think I can get out of their way and allow them to truly be co-creators of knowledge, working with me as collaborators, making judgments about what resources or arguments make sense and which ones don’t. My job as an educator has changed and I am pursuing this degree program to better equip myself for the demands of teaching in this strange, new world that is unfolding right before my eyes.

Prensky (2006) argues that teachers must “practice putting engagement before content when teaching. They need to laugh at their own digital immigrant accents, pay attention to how their students learn, and value and honor what their students know” (p. 10). He also asserts that teachers must find ways to incorporate into classroom discussions, the “information and knowledge that their students acquire outside class in their digital lives” (p. 10). Prensky recommends that as teachers, we should not try to master all of the new technologies, but suggests that we ask our students questions like “Does anyone do anything on the Web that is relevant to what we’re discussing? or Can you think of any examples of this problem in your computer games?” And finally, he recognizes that if we encourage our students to share their expertise, “students can be a teacher’s best resource for suggesting better access to technology, defining the kinds of technology that teachers should be using in the classroom, and showing teachers how they can use specific hardware and software tools to teach more effectively” (p. 11).

Like Prensky, I believe it is important for me to figure out how to use digital technologies to engage and motivate learners – allowing them to use the technological tools they are already using to construct knowledge and demonstrate their understanding. Given this challenge, I think that two emerging technologies mentioned in the 2009 Horizon Report (Johnson, Levine & Smith, 2009) have the greatest potential to enhance my practice as an educator, namely mobile computing and the personal web. Throughout my career I have believed that in order to bring a learning tool into my classroom I had to be fairly adept at using the tool myself – after all, how could I require my students to use a tool without having the personal expertise to show them how to use it effectively? I have recently come to realize that this belief is a highly dysfunctional aspect of my “accent” as a digital immigrant (Prensky, 2006) – a remnant of the days when a teacher had to “know the answer” before posing a question. I must admit that it is rather unnerving to give an assignment that requires students to use a technology in which I have little expertise. But, to my surprise, students appreciate the fact that I am willing to experiment and try something new – they like the fact that they know more than I do and that I am more than willing to learn from them. Rather than undermining my credibility and impact as a teacher, my students view my “openness to new technological experiences” as cool, and a way for us to build a deeper connection than my content knowledge and expertise ever could. In some ways, my willingness to enter their world as a novice, digital immigrant, is akin to my role as “pen pal” to my younger siblings, more than 30 years ago.

There is, however, one aspect of this cognitive shift in my “immigrant status” with which I continue to struggle, but is “foreign” to the digital natives in my classroom. And that has to do with the separation between my personal identity or sense of self and my public, professional identity. It is in this context that the notion of “personal web” takes on a different meaning for me than what was intended in the 2009 Horizon Report (Johnson, Levine & Smith, 2009). I had no problem using the connectivist perspective to construct my personal learning network, however making it “public” created a high level of anxiety and personal angst that was quite unexpected. I was even criticized by a classmate for not including my picture and personal information on the blog that I created for this class. While I recognized that I clearly had the “right” to choose how much of my personal identity to make public, I was taken aback by the forcefulness of the criticism and the obvious clash in our beliefs about personal and professional boundaries. I imagine that over the next couple of years my notion of public versus private self will continue to evolve as students invite me to be their friends on Facebook, use Twitter to update them on course activities, post YouTube videos of class projects and demand to be co-authors of course materials. I hope I am up for the exciting challenges that lie ahead.

References

Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (2009). The Horizon Report (2009 ed.). Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved on December 1, 2009 from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon 9 (5): 1-6. Accessed on December 14, 2009 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/9799/Prensky-Digital-Natives-Digital-Immigrants-Part1

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital natives, digital immigrants, part 2: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon 9 (6): 1-6.

Prensky, M. (2006) Listen to the Natives. Educational Leadership, 63: (4), 8-13.

Prensky, M. (2009) H. Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom. Innovate 5: (3). Retrieved on December 15, 2009 from http://www.innovateonline.info/

It is a challenge for me as a teacher to motivate my students to read our textbooks or related articles, no matter how interesting I think those resources are. I have worked hard to develop my ability to use images and diagrams to help my students, who are predominately visual learners, grasp the meaning in text-based instructional materials. I also find that one of the best ways for me to learn is by trying to explain the material to someone else – a technique that I often use with my students, as well. For the most part, I think the cognitivist and constructivist views of learning are most closely aligned with my personal perspective about how people learn, including myself. As Ertmer and Newby (1993) point out, the cognitive approach “focuses on the mental activities of the learner that lead up to a response and acknowledges the processes of mental planning, goal-setting, and organizational strategies.” While this view is an accurate representation of how I prefer to learn, experience has lead me to believe that the majority of my students do not use such a “strategic” approach to learning. Many of them have grown up in an educational environment that relied primarily on the co-creation or social construction of knowledge and focused a good deal of attention on the active application of ideas and past experience to real-world problems (Ertmer & Newby, 1993; Ormrod, Schunk, & Gredler, 2009). One of my greatest challenges as a teacher has been to balance the constructivist’s appreciation of experience and co-creation of knowledge with the cognitivist’s belief that learning must build upon existing knowledge in order to be effective. The trick for me is to figure out what knowledge is contained in a student’s existing mental structure, help correct major misconceptions, and then help learners “connect new information with existing knowledge in some meaningful way” (Ertmer & Newby, 1993).

I think it is crucial for all instructional designers to understand various learning theories and also reflect upon how they learn best. Unfortunately, at least in my experience, most college professors do not view themselves as instructional designers, nor do they take the time and energy that is necessary to learn about their students’ preferences and strengths as learners and use that information to change course designs or the structure of learning activities. I have had to seek out faculty in other disciplines in order to even have conversations about how to improve student learning and the design of instruction. I am hopeful that we will have some interesting discussions in this class that will help me gain deeper insights about how to help my students learn more effectively.

References

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 50–71.

Ormrod, J., Schunk, D., & Gredler, M. (2009). Learning theories and instruction (Laureate custom edition). New York: Pearson.

Siemens also points out that learning theories such as behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism were developed at a time when technology played a limited role in learning and knowledge transfer.  But in today’s world, technology makes it easy to store, access and retrieve vast amounts of information instantaneously – a fact that has serious implications for learning, decision-making and problem-solving.  Connectivism recognizes that since information changes rapidly, decision makers must be able to sort through information quickly and determine what is relevant, as well as irrelevant to the decisions or problems at hand.  Since it is impossible for one person to know all of the information that is relevant to a given decision or problem, we must rely on the knowledge of others to make effective decisions.  While other learning theories recognize the importance of social interaction in creating knowledge or making sense of information, connectivism asserts that an individual’s ability to forge connections with the “right people and knowledge sources” is the primary determinant of how well he/she will learn what is needed to make good decisions, take effective action and solve important problems.

Frankly, I have spent the past 16 years in my career as an educator developing connections and building my learning network – it just wasn’t a conscious, intentional act.  But regardless of which campus I was on, I quickly discovered who were the people I needed to know to do my job more effectively.  In recent years, I have noticed that many of the people in my learning network are, in one way or another, involved with learning technologies, either on my current campus at UW-Milwaukee or at other universities within the UW System.  Likewise, I have been drawn to colleagues and resources that value the development of learner-centered (rather than teacher-centered) environments, regardless of the discipline.  Increasingly my desire to forge these kinds of meaningful, “interest-driven” connections has taken me outside the confines of the business school, opening my learning network to the exciting complexities of interdisciplinarity, digital storytelling, virtual worlds and other ways of knowing.

In the not-so-distant past, I viewed myself as a rather “solitary” learner.  Much of my scholarly work was done on my own, and I did not consult anyone else as I designed course syllabi, course websites, instructional materials and learning activities for my students.  However, recently I have become much more cognizant of my personal limitations in terms of time, energy, patience, information processing capacity, knowledge, etc.  In other words, I have bumped up against the connectivist principle that it is impossible for one person (e.g. me) to know everything that is possible to know about a given subject, no matter how smart or efficient or dedicated or passionate I am about wanting to know all that is knowable.

Believe me, I have tried to remain current.  I have done my best to teach my 900+ students what they need to know to move on to the next courses in their academic program of study.  But each semester it is getting harder and harder for me to catch up on how the world has changed, how companies have developed new ways to reach out to customers or better meet the needs of their employees.  Just about the time I figure out how to integrate a “new” technology to create richer learning experiences, that “new” technology is obsolete or not supported any longer and I have to find a another way to connect with students and make learning more meaningful for them.

So even though my learning network today is quite different from what it was even two or three years ago, I am still trying to figure out how to use that network more efficiently and effectively in my work as educator, writer, scholar, instructional designer, mentor and colleague.  By nature, I am an introvert – so sometimes I feel extremely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in my network who want my attention or input or action.  I am still searching for ways to use digital tools like email, instant messaging, Twitter, wikis, blogs, YouTube, etc. to better manage the complexity of the learning environment in which I am situated.  I am reading a lot, posting comments and questions on the blogs of other educators and scholars, talking more frequently with teaching assistants and other doctoral students about pedagogy, assessment tools, values and perspectives on learning, self-regulation, motivation and other important issues.  I have also been attending conferences sponsored by Educause, the Learning Technology Development Council (LTDC) of the UW-System and participating in other professional development opportunities to expand my knowledge base and build new connections.  And finally, I have joined the Walden University learning community as a student in pursuit of a master’s degree in instructional design and technology.  I am not exactly sure how my participation in this degree program will impact my learning network, but at least it has challenged me to think about the courses I teach a bit differently as I walk in the shoes of a 21st century learner trying to navigate along the information highway without getting so lost that my GPS system can’t help me find my way.  Wish me luck.

My Learning Network Created Using Inspiration 8.0

One of my favorite resources is a book by Garr Reynolds (2008) entitled Presentation Zen. I also highly recommend this video of a presentation that he gave for employees at Google http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ2vtQCESpk. In the video he demonstrates many of the insightful tips offered in his book, including these general design principles – signal versus noise ratio, picture superiority effect, empty space, contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity.   He also emphasizes the importance of simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories – lessons learned from Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

I read Garr’s book early in 2009 and tried to apply his approach or philosophy of presenting in my courses. I wholeheartedly believe in his approach, yet it is so hard to break away from the academic culture of “death by Powerpoint.” Putting lots of information on slides makes it easier for me to present, partly because I don’t have to know “the story” very well – I can “wing it” without having to look at my notes or review the text material. But the times that I have been able to just tell my story and let go of the trappings of text on a screen – are the times when my students have actually listened and heard the message behind the words. Yet it takes a lot of time and energy on my part to prepare a presentation that is zen-like in its simplicity, yet powerful in terms of impact. My personal goal is to be more mindful of the design principles advocated by Reynolds and others and redesign my presentations so that they work better than they do now and help make ideas “stick.”

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.  The organization hosts a wide variety of blogs related to information technology in higher education, instructional design, learning environments, assessment and evaluation, green computing, sustainability, etc.  The following URL (http://www.educause.edu/blogs) links to the list of all of the blogs that are hosted on the EDUCAUSE website – you need to register in order to post a comment on the blogs, or else be employed by an institution that is a member and sign up.

One of my favorite learning theories, known as multiple intelligences theory, was proposed by Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  On Gardner’s website (http://www.howardgardner.com/index.html) there are numerous white papers, links, books and other materials related to his theory of multiple intelligences and how it has been applied to education, leadership, creativity, and social responsibility in the workplace.  There are also listings for blogs on which Gardner has posted comments about intriguing questions related to multiple intelligences theory and his other published work.

My third example of a useful educational website, Edutopia, is hosted by the George Lucas Educational Foundation at (http://www.edutopia.org/).  The primary purpose of the website is to disseminate information about what works in public education.  Even though most of the blogs, videos and other resources on the site are related to K-12 education, I have been able to find many helpful resources that can also be used in higher education learning environments.  Check it out and let me know what you think!