As one who sometimes gives over 100 talks in a year, my personal blog is titled TravelinEdMan for a reason. The phone rings. Emails pile up. Meetings are arranged at conferences. Shortly afterward, the Web links or faxes are sent to me with the talk schedules. And off I go to try to inform and hopefully motivate people about the possibilities of online teaching and learning.
One interesting fact is that it is not just college instructors who want to know what is happening online. The audiences include K-12 teachers, technology coordinators, and administrators as well as instructors, instructional designers, and many others from higher education, government, corporate, and military settings. More fascinating is where they are located. A decade ago, the destination sites were the standard elearning hubs of Finland, Canada, and Australia. After that, it was New Zealand, Iceland, Korea, and the UAE. More recently, requests have come from countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and Canada (again). It seems many of these places aspire to be the elearning capital of the world or at least of their region.
You will notice that I did not mention the United States. It is only in the past year or two that I have been asked to train faculty on a regular basis in my own country. Apparently, the 50 mile rule of expertise is no longer operational. Today it seems that one is not an expert unless she can sit on a plane for at least 8 to 10 hours. Some people will naturally ask why fly at all when you have the Web. I wish I had the answer for that question. Often we do arrange IP-based videoconferencing sessions. Of course, physical journeys to a place build connections, collaborations, and later communications. In addition, in face-to-face settings one has a better chance of overcoming anxiety and calming down stressed out instructors and administrators about the dramatic changes the Web has brought those of us in higher education.
With the plethora of tools and resources for integrating the Web in instruction that are announced each month, there are reasons to be anxious. Each day, in fact, offers many unique and intriguing, student-centered technologies for online instruction. If you are like me, you are often overwhelmed. With the emergence of the Web 2.0, the daily list of articles to read or Web sites to visit has shifted to overdrive. Sometimes my head hurts just browsing through all the new sites and announcements. I am quite certain you have also felt this pain.
Well before the Web 2.0, I was experimenting with Internet-based collaboration tools. This was way back in the early 1990s when I was at West Virginia University. A few years later, I left for Indiana University and taught my first blended course in the fall of 1993. After nearly two decades of experimentation with online technologies, I see no end regarding the technologies to consider. What I have come to realize is that instructors need models, frameworks, and guidelines. They also need vision statements for what they plan to do with technology in their respective classes.
As a result of my early adoption and immersion in Web-based instruction, I decided to create a few models or frameworks that cut across many of these efforts. During the past ten years, I have published several articles related to these frameworks including a book chapter that Vanessa Dennen and I wrote that provided a framework for all of the frameworks.
One model that audiences seem to resonate with is called Read, Reflect, Display, and Do (R2D2). During the summer of 2008, a book, Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing, was published which summarized many Web-based instruction opportunities related to the R2D2 model. This book describes 100+ online learning activities (25 ideas for each of the four quadrants of the R2D2 model) as well as variations, objectives, advice, and descriptions for each one. In addition, with each suggested activity, there are indices for the degree of risk, time, and cost. The duration of the activity and degree of learner-centeredness are also noted. Low-risk, low-time, low-cost activities can go a long way in overcoming hesitant or resistant instructors. And there are plenty of those in the R2D2 book.
I have another framework for online motivation and retention online called TEC-VARIETY. The ten key motivational principles of this model are tone, encouragement, curiosity, variety, autonomy, relevance, interactivity, engagement, tension, and yielding products. I am currently writing up a book on that model with another set of 100+ activities and 100 more variations on them. My hope is that one or both of these frameworks can help with the pervasive questions regarding how to train the hesitant, resistant, and reluctant in online teaching and learning, especially in various Web 2.0 technologies which give students a voice in the online learning wilderness.
I believe that we need frameworks like R2D2 and TEC-VARIETY to help make sense of the thousands of additional technology tools and free online resources that will appear during the coming decade. Without a means to categorize or make sense of each new announcement or innovation we are pushed beyond our cognitive capacities.
Besides the increasing reliance on guidelines, models, and frameworks, I have nine other predictions for the field of online teaching and learning and education in general. A second trend I see is the increasing spirit of sharing. We are entering an age wherein sharing online learning is the norm. In the past we could work in our own little silos. Keep in mind that it was just a decade ago when many college instructors protested sharing their syllabi online. Today life is quite different! Instructors not only share syllabi, but entire course materials, books, and information portals as well as their rankings and opinions about them.
A third trend I have heard others talk about during my travels is mobile online learning. Within a few years, thousands of online learning courses will be embedded in smaller and smaller devices including iPods, iPhones, and wearable technologies. According to many reports, learning devices are already being embedded in watches, swimwear, lensware, smartpens, and tasers. Soon, we will even be reading from text scrolling across buses, buildings, or people’s bodies as we walk in major cities. Perhaps most importantly, in the next few years, screens on mobile phones and MP3 player devices will be foldable and bendable. When this occurs, learning will be pervasive. Learning. We will always be learning.
Fourth, this mobile learning revolution will bring billions of new learning participants. Mobile learning from phones will multiply the number of people seeking access to online learning. We will quickly move from 1 billion connected learners to 2 or 3 or even 4 billion. And they will be seeking quality content and interactivity!
The fifth trend relates to the storage of our learning. Flash memory sticks are already holding 32 gigs of data. According to researchers at Arizona State University, a terabyte of data is right around the corner. And when that happens, we may begin new discussions of what is important to learn. We will soon hold the library of Alexandria in our pockets. We probably already do. How those pocket memory sticks or pocket schools are used in online learning is limitless.
Sixth, we will see the rise of super e-mentors or counselors who understand both human learning and development as well as how to guide the learner to resources found online. And such individuals will be available when needed. Given prevailing educational demands and opportunities, counseling, social work, psychology, psychiatry, and human development programs need to think innovatively about their courses and degree programs. So much more is now possible!
Seventh, rather than traditional classmates, we will pick our classmates from those available online. Learners will have more control over their learning partners than in the past. We will have global or international learning partners from Chile to Chad to China to Christmas Island.
Eighth, learners will increasingly self-determine their degrees. There is endless choice for learning today. This will not decrease anytime soon.
Ninth, as part of this, the thoughtful use and convergence of tools such as RSS, wikis, blogging, virtual worlds, podcasts, social networking software, and other emerging technologies will bring personalized learning environments (PLEs) to customize the learning for each learner. Conferences in the UK and other parts of the world are already devoted to the topic of PLEs. Soon this too will hit America. And it will hit hard. The Blackboards of the world better be prepared.
Tenth, where learning is occurring and teaching is occurring will be increasingly hard to determine. People are already learning and teaching from trains, planes, boats, beaches, and mountain tops. Your teachers as well as your students can now come from anywhere on the planet as well as space shuttles and stations hovering above. This is a fascinating time to live and to learn. Enjoy it!
Of course, while all this is happening, learning is transforming in front of our eyes. In the coming years, it will be more authentic, informal, collaborative, cross-institutional, and on demand. I have written about many of these trends in a book that is currently in review entitled, “The World is Open: Now WE-ALL-LEARN with Web Technology.” This book extends Thomas Friedman’s well-known book, “The World is Flat,” to education. The WE-ALL-LEARN model stands for ten technology trends in education. If you are interested in learning more about this model or book, write to me and I will tell you what these ten trends stand for and perhaps share a sample from the book. As I said, to make sense of all the advances in Web-based learning technologies, we need frameworks. WE-ALL-LEARN, R2D2, and TEC-VARIETY are three such frameworks. I hope you can use one of them. If not, call me up, email me, or send a fax.
References
Bonk, C. J. (in review). The World is Open: Now WE-ALL-LEARN with Web Technology.
Bonk, C. J., & Dennen, V. (2007). Frameworks for design and instruction. In M. G. Moore (Ed.), Handbook of distance education (2nd Ed.) (pp. 233-246). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bonk, C. J. & Graham, C. R. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives, local designs. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer Publishing.
Bonk, C. J., & Zhang, K. (2006). Introducing the R2D2 model: Online learning for the diverse learners of this world. Distance Education, 27(2), 249-264.
Bonk, C. J., & Zhang, K. (2008). Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Curtis J. Bonk, Professor
Department of Instructional Systems Technology
School of Education: Room 2238
Indiana University
cjbonk@indiana.edu
http://mypage.iu.edu/~cjbonk/
Posted by: Admin on Friday, March 27, 2009 - 05:04 PM
