Steve+Heuristic+4


 * Heuristic 4: **

** Encourage authentic conversations about learning, to provide feedback about transfer, an audit of what’s learned and to assist the construction of meaning. ** 

The transmission model of learning, with teacher as expert and learner as ‘sponge’ focused attention on a one-way flow of information. Students were assessed on their ‘learning’ but not on how they’ve integrated that learning into their personal knowledge constructions. Constructivist principles focus on learner construction of new knowledge. Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) tools allow educators to observe and participate in the process of students making meaning. Conversations of students that are captured by CMC’s allow the learning to be made visible. This can lead to some important outcomes in terms of an audit of learning and integration into learners personal knowledge constructions. 

Paulus, Payne and Jahns (2009) used a post-instruction blog with a student group who had studied a health and hygiene unit. Students were asked to blog on a regular basis within their learning group. Blog transcripts were analyzed as artifacts of the meaning making process. A qualitative analysis revealed 4 emergent themes: the application of learned concepts to daily life, barriers and social critiques regarding health learning’s, what sources of information were deemed as expert knowledge, and whether questions posted on the blogs were answered or not.

Paulus et al. (2009) considered that this feedback from the learning processes helped instructors to contextualize how their instruction was integrated into personal knowledge constructs of the learners. It closed the ‘learning loop’, and allowed an insight into how this learning was transferred into instrinsic meaning making for the students. Rather than assessing apriori determined categories of knowledge, this analysis of CMC’s allows educators to assess true transfer of learning into the everyday world of the students; an actor-oriented perspective on transfer. The blogs provided insights into the barriers students faced in applying this knowledge; valuable feedback to the educators who can then fine-tune instruction. The blogs also revealed the sources of knowledge that students counted as ‘expert’, revealing the impact of the media in student’s meaning making. This can allow insight into how to best foster critical and reflective thinking in students. The fourth avenue for feedback concerns the extent of social construction, the impact of question answering in the blogs.

Secondly, the use of CMC in this way provides an ‘audit trail’ of students meaning making attempts. In traditional classrooms, the exercise book was a tool for recording students progress. It was a semi-public record that allowed the educator to determine student progress as well as a tool for revision and reflection by the student. In my own classrooms, where laptops are replacing exercise books, I’ve found a need for students to construct a record of their learning. While using many online learning tools, discovery learning objects and social networking tools, I’ve insisted that students ‘clip’ examples of their work into OneNote (a flexible media processing tool). This not only serves as a traditional ‘reference book’, but it also allows an audit of student progress and is a record of their learning endeavours. In a similar fashion, Paulus et al. (2009) have a semi-public record of the meaning making, not just of the individual but of the learning community. These ‘authentic conversations’ support critical thinking, reflective thinking, collaboration and provide an audit of students actually taking ownership of their own learning.

Collis & Moonen (2005), pioneers in the introduction of ICT into educational practices, have their own heuristic relevant to the point here: // Process yields product //. They consider that pedagogy should reflect both acquisition and contribution-oriented models (in line with the constructivist rather than transmissionist idea above). There needs to be a shift in focus away from content delivery to activities and processes of contributive learning such as collaboration, construction, contribution, finding, sharing and communicating. The use of a blog in our example puts a greater emphasis on the process of learning, on the shared meaning making and application to personal life decisions.

In summary, ‘authentic conversations’ focuses our pedagogy on the contributive constructive and collaborative nature of learning, rather than on transmission of content. Mediating these conversations via CMC’s such as wiki’s, blogs and bookmarking sites allows the making of meaning to become shared and public, facilitating collaboration and contribution between students, and providing valuable feedback to educators as to the contextualization of learning, and an ‘inner audit’ of the students journey. 