REPORT ON INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES AT NIS,
2014
Denise Germaine Taylor
ICT Teacher, International Subject Leader of Computer Studies, NIS, Astana, PhM
taylor_d@ast.nis.edu.kz
ABSTRACT
This article is a report about eLearning innovations at NIS Astana, PhM. It
provides an update on current developments and how they might be employed
in the classroom and by the administration staff. It discusses examples chosen
from practice within my own and a few other departments and attempts to
explain how they are innovative for our institution and how they might be used
more effectively.
Keywords: pedagogical approach, innovation, technology, MOOCs Flipped
Classroom, Learning Analytics, Data analysis, seamless technology, eLearning
Introduction
Definition of innovation in eLearning
Innovation in eLearning can be defined as a new pedagogical approach
emerging as a result of introducing a new technological product or service, or a
new technology being introduced within existing pedagogical frameworks.
A definition found on Google uses synonyms for the word innovation such as:
‘change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis,
reorganization, restructuring, rearrangement, recasting, remodelling,
renovation, restyling, variation, new measures, new methods, new
technologies, novelty, newness, unconventionality, modernization,
modernism, a break with tradition …’
This report will provide an update on three innovations in eLearning by
focusing on aspects of ‘newness’ and ‘change’.
Examples of innovation in eLearning
Seamless Technology
I started using SurveyMonkey which is a cloud-based data collection and
analysis tool to get an idea of staff workloads and to review testing
programmes. The program collates the results and presents them in colourful
charts which saved me a lot of time, enabling me to focus on interpreting what
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the graphs were actually inferring. The novelty of being able to collect views
from a large number of people, process it so quickly and be able to share it with
others so conveniently revolutionised much more than a new method of
collecting data.
MOOCs and the Flipped Classroom
Recently I introduced the Khan Academy together with the Flipped Classroom
as a new pedagogical approach. Khan Academy is a MOOC where students
login wherever, whenever to watch videos and learn small sections of their
different subjects on their own at their own pace. They can pause and replay
sections until they understand each section properly without being embarrassed
in front of others. Teachers can track their students’ progress and know when to
intervene and assist their students on an individual basis. This new method of
delivering learning content and ‘teaching’ students on an individual basis
instead of in the traditional way of the teacher standing at the front and talking
‘at’ a whole class of students for extended periods of time, is termed the Flipped
Classroom. Sharples, et. al (2013) rated MOOCs as one of the top ten
technologies that should be exploding within the next twelve to eighteen
months. Khan Academy has approximately 10 million daily logins.
Learning Analytics
Some degree of learning analytics occurs at my school with data originating
from forms filled in by parents, students and teachers. Not much data is
collected from social networking sites and other web-based applications signed
up by students for transfer into a learning context. Data from the latter are
separate from data collected by learning institutions. According to Sharples, et.
al (2013),
‘A central challenge is to develop analytics that are driven by key
questions, rather than just querying data collected from online systems.
The relation of learning design to learning analytics is also being
considered, so that new teaching methods and curricula are informed by
analysis of previous experience.’
Bill Gates is funding projects like the InBloom project which aims to
personalize school education by providing tools to visualize and aggregate
student data.
Explanation of why the chosen examples are innovative and how they
might be used effectively in your organization
Seamless Technology
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I first introduced SurveyMonkey as a survey to staff and students at about the
same time. Interestingly, the students first began using it in their other subjects
and it was not the teachers who introduced it to them within their subjects.
Students studying Global Perspectives created questions relating to fairly
controversial topics and their surveys were well supported by a wide range of
individuals across gender, age, etc. I followed through to see how they
interpreted and analyzed the data and to see if there were any unintended
outcomes from using this innovative technology for the first time at our school.
The impact of using this technology has been much more than simply using the
technology. Students initial attitudes of ‘don’t question – just do as you are told
to’ have now changed by using SurveyMonkey to question all types of attitudes
and get ‘anonymous’ responses thereby providing a safe way for students to
express themselves more freely without the fear of reprisal. Teachers have
reported that the interpretation of the data is enhancing students’ critical
thinking skills, which was not an intended benefit from the use of this
innovative technology from the start.
In Computer Studies students initially only described the most obvious results
shown by the charts. They were taught how to interpret and analyze their data
and present feedback to their client based on the findings from their survey
results. This time the benefit from the use of this technology was anticipated in
that students would be able to design IT solutions for their clients that
incorporated the views of the users of the existing systems. In this subject, the
use of this innovative technology was a new technology being used in the
traditional way of collecting information from prospective users.
Judging from the two examples above, an unintended benefit arose in one
subject where introducing a new technology had the effect of causing a break
with tradition, causing students to unconventionally display some modern and
revolutionary thinking, whilst in the second case, the use of the technology
simply represented a change in the method of collecting the data that students
would have collected in a more traditional way in the absence of this
innovation.
Teachers could use this innovation more effectively in our school to develop a
more democratic style by giving people more choice rather than continuing
along the old ‘Soviet Era’ overspill attitude where everyone just does as they
are told without questioning. Displaying results from surveys in the colourful
charts could also be used to differentiate in lessons because some students learn
better when information is presented graphically rather than in chunks of text
only.
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MOOCs and the Flipped Classroom
Using Khan Academy is causing an upheaval in our school because our
teachers are so used to the ‘sit-down, shut-up and listen’ method of teaching and
our students only ‘feel’ as if they are learning when they have been ‘talk at’ for
an extended period of time. Our organization has specifically hired foreign
teachers to advise their national teachers to break with this traditional
pedagogical approach and to adopt newer modern teaching styles. Although
teachers are willing to participate in training sessions, they are slow to adopt
these new methods because they feel they still have to cover their syllabus
content. With the new method, students are progressing at their own paces and
it is rather chaotic in that the teachers are struggling to keep everyone moving
along at the same pace. Lesson planning doesn’t follow the traditional format
where learning occurs in a linear pattern, because the learning outcomes can be
unpredictable at times. Teachers require convincing that students are actually
achieving much more than the learning objectives. I have to agree that teachers
require more training in how to design lessons incorporating the use of MOOCs
as was highlighted by ‘The NMC Horizon Report: 2010 Australia-New Zealand
Education’, that stated, “the need for comprehensive professional development
to help faculty gain these skills was listed as the number one challenge.”
Learning Analytics
Our organization is only five years old and as such has not yet worked out to
how to collect relevant data, how to organize the bits of data it has collected and
how to use it for the benefit of enhancing the teaching and learning experience.
The administration holds personal data of students and staff, including health,
financial and educational. This is held in the school’s administrative database
which links it all together and by filtering out what you need, you could
personalize learning programmes for individual students but it is a cumbersome
job to do. Siemens, G (2013) speaks about prediction intervention as being key
focus areas in which Bill Gates’ project and Educause are key players. The
reasons that he quotes are knowing who is likely to drop out as having
economic implications or otherwise for society, could be relevant. However, I
would have emphasized that educational institutions would be more interested
in organizing the collected data from the three areas he mentions: academic
analytics, learning analytics and educational data mining, to know how to adopt
learning content for individual students because students acquire different
knowledge and skills through their daily life’s experiences and these need to be
compared to the curriculum in order to enhance each individual’s learning
experience. Engaging in educational data mining from social networking sites
used by students could add valuable information about a student’s other life
outside of the classroom that might affect how that student learns (learning
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analytics) to give a comprehensive picture about what is actually happening in
the educational process (academic analytics).
Conclusion
The innovations in eLearning introduced at our institution have transformed the
whole educational landscape by creating a restructuring of lesson designing and
have had the unintended impact of democratizing attitudes in the school
environment. The impact of use of these innovative technologies to embrace
unconventional pedagogical approaches has reached far beyond the physical
boundaries of our educational institution.
References
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EdLab Seminar Longshot: George Siemens, 01.09.13 on Learning and
Knowledge Analytics – Analyzing what can be connected. [ONLINE]
Available at: http://www.learninganalytics.net/ [Accessed 12 March 2014]
Google.
2014.
Google.
[ONLINE]
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at
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=innovation+definition. [Accessed 12 March
2014].
Johnson, L. and Adams, S., (2011). Technology Outlook for UK Tertiary
Education 2011-2016: An NMC Horizon Report Regional Analysis. Austin,
Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC
Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: TheNew
Media Consortium.
Sharples, M., McAndrew, P., Weller, M., Ferguson, R., FitzGerald, E., Hirst,
T., and Gaved, M. (2013). Innovating Pedagogy 2013: Open University
Innovation Report 2. Milton Keynes: The Open University.
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