#blendkit2017

Questions to Ponder How much of the final course grade do you typically allot to testing? How many tests/exams do you usually require? How can you avoid creating a “high stakes” environment that may inadvertently set students up for failure/cheating?  

·         It is usually the institution that applies the rules as to what can be done in assessment. I have been in some huge battles over this issue in several countries, as often those holding the institutional power are far from being subject experts in education or in assessing knowledge and seem rooted in test, test and test.  Unfortunately, his also include the teachers within the colleges and universities that have little or no formal training in the science, art and craft of teaching. It is beyond me how these institutions think that a Masters degree or a PhD qualifies you to teach? It is this institutional arrogance that is at the heart of bad education experiences in higher education.I am saddened beyond belief that this situation has not been addressed yet. It is even more distressing for students to be taught by outdated higher education teachers often holding the institutional rank of associate Professor and above. I have seen here in Japan, Deans of Nursing with no Doctorates in any subjects. Courses run by medical doctors, well great is they are teaching anatomy but if they-they think that an MD training is higher than a PhD then they really need to retire and quickly.Again I argue just because they have an MD, it does not mean that they can actually understand teaching. Teaching is not an add-on item. It is its own subject-specific science, art and craft as mentioned above.Put any of these over inflated blowhards up against a trained teacher in their subject and they will be soon exposed as the advocates of emperors clothing syndrome that they are. If I sound angry, I am, for I suspect the numbers of students who have had their lives marked by such people will be in the millions.

It is easy to avoid setting up high-stakes environments if you are working with educational professionals. Formative assessment, self-testing and reflection is a process where the student acquires knowledge over time. Course weighting should be in the process, the evidence of that process and the knowledge gained. If knowledge processed in, is the same knowledge processed out, it is banking education, memory learning and not about education. Students have to be encouraged to think and develop knowledge plus. However that is not the purpose of education, is it? I am reminded of what I wrote in My doctoral thesis at Bath University in the United Kingdom;

For an example - my values of love and compassion as a nurse and priest and how the nursing profession and educational system does not exemplify these values, they are almost a contradiction.  Nursing and education have different political and contextual agendas.  The values that I want to teach in the classroom of critical enquiry can be blocked by the policing and policy power of the establishment.  I want to be an educator who empowers students to think, the contradiction is I could actually be a banking educator (Freire 1970; Freire and Macedo 1987) in my actual practice.  Deciding which thread is the most important and how to frame that thread was problematic to me.  I truly could not disentangle the varying elements of my being and just present a selected distorted exclusion account’

(personal journal entry, August 4, 2003)

Again in 2007 in my thesis I was still struggling with the banking education system;

I am conscious that I am a product of my own culture and that I have been imported into Japan, in a pedagogic sense.   With the authority of the university, I brought with me a Western body of knowledge with which, if I delivered it without the consciousness that I claim, could easily result in my becoming a banking educator.  I could actually have reinforced the educative colonisation of Japanese nursing by Western educational paradigms (Wolferen 1991). What I have strived to achieve, and I claim to have succeeded in this, is the encouragement of Japanese nursing students to engage with a curriculum that was conceptualised through a lens of Western educational thinking and construction, but not in a sense that the knowledge I present has any more “rightness” than their own forms of knowing. Rather, I suggest that we are co-creating a transcultural learning space, one in which I am being instructed, moulded and modified by my context and praxis, and my students likewise.  This unique curriculum is one that is combined with a curriculum content that is Western in its educational framing and disciplines,  Eastern in its spiritual conceptualisation and made Japanese through its emergence in actual practice and implementation.  Therefore, in essence, a new form of educational practice has emerged in the inclusional pedagogy of the unique.(p.137)

Adler-Collins 2007. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Bath University Department of Education.

 What expectations do you have for online assessments? How do these expectations compare to those you have for face-to-face assessments? Are you harbouring any biases?

 ·         Online assessments in my thinking as expressed above are part of a process. The student self-assesses and critically reflect back what did he/she learn, what worked, what did not work. In formative assessment (informal) the online software I use provides me with in-depth analysis of every question asked. If several students have an issue with a particular question. Then it has been sign posted and my intervention is to revisit the subject and see how I can resolve the understanding. With large classes, I can easily support students with an audio feedback, noting the problem and suggesting possible ways forward.

·         I am male, white and English, of course, I have basses. I am privileged by my skin colour, my gender and my history. As long as I am mindful of these filters and conscious how they can change the lens of my interreactions. Then I do not see a problem. I am a Buddhist monk. I reflect, reflect and reflect. I have deconstructed the filters of my selfhood, I almost disappeared. Smile.

What trade-offs do you see between the affordances of auto-scored online quizzes and project-based assessments? How will you strike the right balance in your blended learning course?

Huuum, not such a big issue. Auto scored is great when it’s a factual item being reviewed. Critical thinking, ideas need manual reviewing. Holistic rubrics, if they are well designed can bring about a consistency of marking. But fall down if you are looking for original thinking. Teachers are at the heart of assessment, they advocate for the student's progress in gaining knowledge. Online marking is a tool, and only that it does what it is programmed to do.Human interaction can make those connections beyond that of a programme.

How will you implement formal and informal assessments of learning into your blended learning course? Will these all take place face-to-face, online, or in a combination?

 I am not a fan of removing the teacher from the equation. F2F is a precious time for the student and the educator/ teacher or facilitator. They engage with their knowledge progression, teachers identify the management of that process. Combinations work well. I use coffee shop clinic, an informal meeting where students can talk about issues. peer to peer, peer to the teacher. And the coffee is good..smile.

As no statement requiring formal academic writing has been made, I wish to respond to items that have caught my attention during reading the Chapter.2

Questions to Ponder

·         Is there value in student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction in all courses regardless of discipline?

·         What role does interaction play in courses in which the emphasis is on declarative knowledge (e.g., introductory “survey” courses at the lower-division undergraduate level) or, similarly, in courses that cultivate procedural knowledge (e.g., technical courses requiring the working of problem sets)?

·         As you consider designing a blended learning course, what kinds of interactions can you envision occurring face-to-face, and how might you use the online environment for interactions? What opportunities are there for you to explore different instructional strategies in the blended course than you have in the past?

·         What factors might limit the feasibility of robust interaction face-to-face or online?

  Reflecting on these very good question requires me to move deeper into what I see they are meaning to do that I need to relook at the process of knowledge.

Multi-aspectual knowing and intuition

Two interesting themes for exploration in this chapter on blended learning are the different types of knowing and different aspects of knowing.  Our knowing, in everyday living, is integrated as one whole in a matrix of constructed images processed from our sensory data;  yet that very wholeness has aspects within aspects.   By ‘aspects’ I am thinking of the multi-aspectual form of knowing.  For example, a pen is an inanimate object, but it has the potential to be used not only as a tool for making marks on paper but to formulate the written word.   Such symbols (words) are more than the object (pen), rather they are abstract extensions into concrete form via the object.  Not only are they abstract expressions but they have a purpose, and that is to convey meaning.  They in a sense are contained in the potential of the pen.  Such thinking can be applied to any form of concrete expression in any medium, a pen, a brush, a word processor.  Therefore to call a ‘pen’ a ‘pen’ is to include the higher aspects of knowing the potential properties associated with the praxis of a ‘pen’.   The boundaries of understanding the form and function of the object are restricted to the cognitive and psychomotor skills of the user and the ability to write and read in the language of the context.

 In Buddhism, we are taught form, function, purpose.  The pen has form, the form’s function is to hold ink and enable a mark to be made, its purpose is open to the individual’s intuition but the pen holds the potential to be used for writing, and writing has the potential to convey and praxis meaning when read in the social and cultural context from within which it is written.  Another element is that the skill of writing needs to have been mastered and also that the context within which the writing is used is socially understood.  In many ways a blended form of learning..smile.

 Early human cultures had no written tradition and even today, in our Westernised high-tech world, some indigenous cultures still do not possess formal written languages, relying instead on centuries of oral knowing and intuition that have served them well.   This moves “intuition” out of the realm of complete mystery into something rich and tangible and yet ultimately beyond our full understanding.  Let’s take for example an Amazon Indian shaman whose memory and knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants is extraordinary, and his immersion in the rhythm and harmony of his environment gives rise to a different form of knowing that we as Westerners, should we go into his domain, could never achieve or understand.

 [I recognise that I can never completely know the context of another.  By this, I mean that I will never understand completely the full experience of being Japanese.  This suggests that culturally bounded forms of knowing exclude all who are outside that culture from a shared wholeness of knowing.  I can, for example, have a deeper communication with another soldier about fear only if that soldier has experienced the same fear.  If this is so, the situational knowing is stronger than that of any cultural boundaries that might otherwise come between us.  I suggest that a bond exists in knowing, especially if shared at the same time.  In advanced Buddhist teachings, such a problem is overcome by mind-to-mind contact where it is claimed that an instant and total form of knowing occurs.  Such contact is not mind-reading or telepathy but a complete union of minds.]

 The same thinking can be taken into my understanding of my domains of praxis, those of nurse, teacher, farmer and priest.  Each requires an engagement with different forms of knowing, and each has a body of theory that has to be learned as the accepted benchmark of what is correct or acceptable knowing and practice in context.   Some cameos of my own intuition can be seen, for example, in my nursing:  when I come on shift and greet the patients, I use a form of intuitive knowing that is like radar, scanning the patients’ vital signs and taking on board their spoken and unspoken signals - assessing the words used, the voice stress, the silences, and tone delivery.  

In my classroom, I am using the same process, but this time I am looking at and paying more attention to my students’ eyes as they speak to me of their confusion, enquiry, understanding and sometimes shining with comprehension.  The class or lesson dynamics has a feel about it.  I am mindful that this dynamic, for which I hold in high esteem, could be diluted or even lost in blended learning if the relationships of engagement are not tended to and nurtured closely. All these inputs are continually assessed against the database of my knowing, my experience, my learning.  Sometimes a sense of unease flags my attention as I intuitively sense that something is wrong but actually do not fully know what it is that is bothering me. Heeding such intuition requires me to look deeper and investigate further.   Perhaps this could be the seeds of blended knowing?? Smile.

As I write I am conscious of the problem that my thinking may cause my profession in terms of the current trend towards evidence-based practice.  However, considerable evidence indicates that much professional decision-making is not based on the best evidence but instead on an individual’s subjective intuitive judgements concerning the appropriate actions to take for a given clinical challenge.  This intuitive approach has resulted in wide variations in clinical practice and the outcomes associated with it (Tinkler et al.  1999).  Nursing has embraced this stance positively and has used intuition as the mark of an expert in the field (Benner 1984; Benner et al.  1999).   

How such intuitive decisions are made is an area of concern for healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the recipients of these decisions.  I believe that embracing intuitive judgements is a positive strategy of being professional.  However, this has to be balanced with scientific praxis.  In my curriculum, I highlight the use of intuition and professional scientific judgement based on practice, experience and intuition.  I advocate that these three stances need not be exclusionary; rather, each informs the other, giving a broader sense of knowing and thereby a more informed sense of praxis. Ways of knowing our self can be described as aspects

 If each aspect provides a meaningful way of knowing, and is thus a meaningful part of what it is to know, in what way does each aspect make its contribution?  Bateson (1979) says of knowledge:

 We can continue to discuss the relationship between knowledge [multi-aspectual] and reality.  . . .  I take the stance that it is not possible to perceive [aesthetic] reality directly. . .  Thought [formative] can be about pigs or coconuts, but there are no pigs or coconuts in the brain; and in the mind, there are no neurones, only ideas [analytic] of pigs and coconuts.  . . .  The name [lingual] is not the thing named, and the idea of pig is not the pig (p. 205).

  http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/COW_VS_PIG. Accessed 2320 08/03/2017

The complexity of knowledge can not be underestimated and the philosopher Louis Arnaud Reid in the 1960s  pointed out differences between; Know that - propositional or declarative knowledge. Know how - procedural knowledge - knowing how to do something. Know this - knowledge with a direct object such as responses to music or the direct tacit knowledge that I and others have in practice.

 ·         As you consider designing a blended learning course, what kinds of interactions can you envision occurring face-to-face, and how might you use the online environment for interactions? What opportunities are there for you to explore different instructional strategies in the blended course than you have in the past?

    Photograph A.  Normal classroom layout in the university. Consent to use these images and academic papers for research were given by all the members of this group. This is the case for all images used  (Copyright Adler-Collins 2004)

Photograph B.   Layout of healing theory classroom after we had negotiated the classroom formation and layout (Copyright Adler-Collins 2003).

A comparison between the two pictures shows a marked difference in body language. Picture A was a formal environment controlled by the power of the establishment and the teaching style. Picture B suggests, through the body language, a more relaxed approach to space and power relationships. For example, the positioning of the two students on the left shows them to be comfortable with each other as they are leaning towards each other, combined with open body gestures. The gap between the two students in the middle of the picture suggests that they are not yet fully comfortable with each other. (Group members were selected at random deliberately to show the students that they have to be flexible as nurses. This is important, as a nurse may well find that he or she is moved from their team or ward as staffing and circumstances dictate in the work environment. The ability to form effective team relationships and exercise flexibility is, I believe, another basic nursing skill). The students are smiling in this picture and there is a look of engagement and fun on the students’ faces suggesting that they are relaxed with each other, the environment and the task at hand (Krebs, 2000; Jordon, 2001).

 I taught and designed web-based courses to support the practical hands-on work that there was never enough time for. Changes I am making as I design a blended Learning course is the inclusion of a coffee shop clinic. In my doctorate, I was very concerned about spaces that were healing and supported learning. The blended learning course challenges keeping spaces safe as the students are creating their own route to the learning outcomes. The coffee shop space is informal, a free cup of coffee and a chance to socialise, decompress and talk about issues that are concerning them. Having this type of space, for me is sustaining my responsibility to facilitate learning that has to include elements of socialisation in it as socialisation is very important and organised inJapan.  Photo credits https://www.flickr.com/photos/thompsonrivers/4584346739/.

 Chapter 2 was a thought provoking exercise and in revisiting my previous works. I was struck by the complexity of the philosophy of blended learning. Mor on that later.

The questions to ponder this week really made me think about how our Educational Technology group would like to be the trusted colleague that reviews course materials. We do not have formal standards to guide evaluation, so our faculty are not used to this practice.