TEL and extraneous events – the 80/20-Rule

As Pierre rightfully pointed out, (classroom) life is full of events that have an impact on the learning process and that should be taken into account. Examples mentioned by Pierre include learner dropout, illness and a kid shouting the right solution to the whole class.

Every teaching or learning activity has some sort of (implicit or explicit) design that the teacher follows and that learners are supposed to follow as well. In Annex 3 of the previous Trend Scouting Report, Pozzi et al describe designs (scripts) for collaborative groupwork: macro-design approaches involve techniques that structure the process beforehand and micro-design approaches involve techniques for structuring actions during the process. In practice, both macro and micro scripting is needed during teaching. Macro scripts involve known techniques - such as case studies, role plays and brainstorming - that provide the basis structure for a learning activity. Micro-scripting involves (foreseen) actions taken during the activity (such as the bringing of counter-arguments or deciding that a role change in a group is necessary).

Pierre argues that TEL will not have a major impact without turning [among others, extraneous events] into design principles, as these belong to the reality of school. In fact, I believe that the support of extraneous events is already (implicitly) embedded into the majority of tools supporting TEL:

• LMSs such as Moodle allow teachers to communicate with learners via Wiki, Forums or private messages (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Teaching_FA)

• Teachers can use DropBox for opening (and editing) files created by learners

• Announcements can be spread via Twitter, Facebook and Skype

Elearning tools are meant to support the teacher and to take away part of the workload (it costs less time to review learner communication in a forum than to visit and interview each working group individually). Obviously, one needs to set up 'the rules' first: do-this-there, put-this-there, final results to be sent by email. Most likely, the infrastructure and the basic rules will get most learners (or learner groups) started. But – and this is what tends to be forgotten in discussions on TEL – this does not mean that the teacher can simply lean backward and do nothing. Instead, it is the teacher's responsibility to check whether progress is as anticipated and to act in situations where this is not the case. This includes reassignment of students to other groups or other acts where tailored solutions are needed.

As a side note, regarding the comment that 'teachers [commonly] reject collaborative projects [due to] the difficulty to give individual grades': my personal experience is that it is far easier to check individual contributions if they are placed online (Wiki entries, forum questions and responses, uploaded files, changes in Google Docs) than in pen-and-paper face-to-face groupwork. In 'offline' groupwork there tends to be always someone who takes over the work of a non-performer, to ensure that the group will receive a good grade. If contributions are transparently logged or registered (for example via http://www.rescuetime.com/), group progress can be more effectively monitored in less time.

My claim is that – if properly used together with appropriate 'offline' teaching strategies, TEL tools are able to reduce the most common types of teacher involvement (which typically constitute 80% of all actions), which allows the teacher to concentrate on the remaining 20% of 'more complicated' issues that demand teacher involvement.

Eelco Herder 357 days ago

Two quick comments. 

I suggest not to use here with new meaning the words macro-scripts and micro-scripts that have a rather well defined meaning in CSCL for 10 years (see Stellar's thesaurus: http://thesaurus.telearn.org/Collaboration_script)

The idea that TEL tools would off-load teachers from routine task and help them to concentrate on the most interesting things is what our community has claimed for many years, but I am afraid this is theory. This does not match the reality of schools, where TEL increase teacher's workload... because of many small design choice conflicts with the daily constraints of teachers' life. In principle, you are right, but in practice, it does not work like that. Indeed, if TEL would really facilitate the tasks of teachers, they would be massively used by now.

Pierre Dillenbourg 357 days ago

Thanks for the link to the lemma Collaboration Script, with the definitions for macro- and microscripts. The Thesaurus becomes a good resource for common understanding. Still, I think my description fits the definitions in the Thesaurus (why do you think they do not?).

Regarding your comment: "if TEL would really facilitate the tasks of teachers, they would be massively used by now.": could you mention a number of the "small design choice conflicts" that hinder take-up of TEL? In particular Web 2.0 tools like DropBox, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Google Docs are designed for general use and they all have a large user base - which indicates that they really facilitates the tasks of users.

Is the problem mainly that teachers do not really know how to use these tools (in combination): and therefore do not know how to instruct students "do-this-there, put-this-there, final results to be sent by email"? For this, it would be good to collect, analyze and report 'best practices' (I assume several of those stories can be found in blog etcetera... anyone?).

If the problem really is that TEL / Web 2.0 carry several "small design choice conflicts" that hinder take-up in the classroom, it might be about time to go back to the drawing-room... Comments appreciated.

Eelco Herder 352 days ago