I chose to focus on Connectivism and UDL.
Model 1: Connectivism - What does the model claim to describe, explain and / or enable?
The Chaos theory recognizes the connection of everything to everything. The reality of learning today is that schools need to be receptive to changing technologies to be able to adapt and change. Computer networks, power grids, and social networks all function on the simple principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole. Alterations within the network have ripple effects on the whole.
Principles of Connectivism:
· Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
· Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
· Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
· Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
· Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
· Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
· Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
1. Compatibility:
The amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.
The acquisition of knowledge and understanding in today’s technology-rich world is not always controlled by the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), and is focused on connecting new knowledge to an individual’s knowledge base which in turn leads to the acquisition of deeper knowledge. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.
2. Scope:
Diverse teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely exploring ideas. Innovation is also an additional challenge. Most of the revolutionary ideas of today at one time existed as a fringe element. An organisation’s ability to foster, nurture, and synthesise the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy survival. Speed of “idea to implementation” is also improved in a systems view of learning.
3. Fruitfulness:
The starting point of Connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.
This trend is well under way. Mainstream media organisations are being challenged by the open, real-time, two-way information flow of blogging.
4. Role of technology:
John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few. The central premise is that connections created with unusual nodes supports and intensifies existing large effort activities.
5. Student outcomes:
Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized. The field of education has been slow to recognize both the impact of new learning tools and the environmental changes in what it means to learn. Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.
6. Clarity:
Connectivism values the role of the individual as part of a larger entity. Conversely, the onus is on the individual to respect a diversity of opinion, make connections, have a desire to know more, and to make an effort to build more and more connections in order to be a life-long learner. Decision-making is also a core skill, where the learner needs to be able to sift through the sheer volume of information available at the click of a button to alter their perceptions of today’s and tomorrow’s world .
Model 2 UDL: What does the model claim to describe, explain and / or enable?
The traditional teaching approach of ‘one-size-fits-all’ cannot meet learner diversity in contemporary learning. UDL allows for the designing of flexible and accessible educational settings. The term was first coined by the architect Ronald Mace in the 1970's to refer to the design of products and environments to be usable by all people without the need for adaptation or specialised design.
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework claims to provide an effective solution for filling the gap between learner ability and individual differences. UDL attempts to tackle the limitations of a learning environment rather than addressing learner limitations. By providing a framework that is both accessible for all learners and challenging for all learners, UDL aims to change the design of the environment rather than change the learner.
It is agreed that to be better prepared for the 21st century, all learners need to be
· critical consumers of knowledge
· to think more deeply
· to use skills to be collaborative problem solvers.
Teachers and students also need to be able to master the skills needed to manipulate the growing variety of technologies to grow through the changes that will inevitably happen over time.
Under the UDL approach, curriculum materials, activities, and instructions are designed flexibly so that every learner is able to engage with what is going to be learned. As its core principle, there are many choices for representation, expression, and engagement to support all learners on their journey. The array of flexible options from the start provides each students with equal access to a wide range of learning opportunities.
Compatibility
The UDL Guidelines are not meant to be a “prescription” but a set of suggestions that can be applied to reduce barriers and maximize learning opportunities for all learners. They can be mixed and matched according to specific learning goals and can be applied to particular content areas and contexts. It can also be incorporated into existing practice.
Some researchers point out that UDL principles can be used by educationalists as a starting point in developing accessible curricula or for evaluating their current design.
Scope
The UDL Guidelines are organized both horizontally and vertically.
Vertically, the Guidelines are organized according to the three principles of UDL: engagement, representation, and action and expression. The principles are broken down into Guidelines, and each of these Guidelines have corresponding “checkpoints” that provide more detailed suggestions.
Horizontally, the Guidelines are organized into three rows. The “access” row includes the guidelines that suggest ways to increase access to the learning goal by recruiting interest and by offering options for perception and physical action.
The “build” row includes the guidelines that suggest ways to develop effort and persistence, language and symbols, and expression and communication.
Finally, the “internalize” row includes the guidelines that suggest ways to empower learners through self-regulation, comprehension, and executive function.
Fruitfulness
UDL emphasizes three large brain networks that comprise the vast majority of the human brain and play a central role in learning. These networks include:
(a) the affective network (how learners monitor the internal and external environment to set priorities, to motivate, and to engage learning and behavior);
(b) the recognition network (how learners sense and perceive information in the environment and transform it into usable knowledge); and
(c) and the strategic network (how learners plan, organize, and initiate purposeful actions in the environment).
Role of Technology
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) recognises the importance of technology as a means to support access and learning. Every guideline in UDL can be achieved via technology, and part of the strength of UDL as a model for technology integration lies in thinking about technology as a means for minimizing barriers to students while maximizing learning outcomes.
Student Outcomes
The UDL Guidelines are not meant to be a “prescription,” but a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to instructional design to reduce barriers and maximize learning opportunities according to specific learning goals. As educators, many of us already incorporate aspects of the Guidelines into our practice; however, there may still be barriers in our learning experiences that we haven’t noticed or haven’t yet encountered.
The UDL Guidelines are a tool that can be used to design learning experiences that meet the needs of all learners. These Guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions for applying the UDL framework to practice and help ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.
UDL aims to move from a ‘teacher-centred’ to a ‘learner-centred’ approach by providing multiple means of content representation, knowledge expression, and learner engagement.
The improvement of learner perceptions represents another advantage of UDL implementation. Students who attended UDL-based courses possessed high satisfaction, positive attitude, and engagement in comparison to other peers.
Which model, or combination of models will you use in your Practice-based Change Project? Justify your answer.
I found the Connectivism theory to be just plain annoying. We could claim that the world has always been in a state of flux, with the threat of external forces being an uncontrollable factor in the individual’s quest for stability. So chaos throughout history has always been the norm. Technology is just another threat/opportunity to the individual, and the placement of the individual as part of the larger entity simply a modern take on what has always been the reality for our ancestors. I will not be using this model in my Practice-based Change Project. Too vague and lacking in a factual and evidence-based response to technological change. For example, I could substitute other innovations through the centuries and build an effective argument based around those innovations e.g. Christianity; invention of the steam engine.
You want more evidence? Take my Grandmother’s life. Born in 1898, she was a pupil-teacher at the age of 18, teaching a class of 50 students while studying (the men were all at war). She nursed the sick and dying in the influenza epidemic of 1918, and travelled to Europe in the 1920’s to see risque theatricals in Paris (she also studied at the Sorbonne). She returned to New Zealand to marry a man her family did not approve of (older, war wounded, lower class) but what choice did she have? She was in her late twenties, and there were few men left in their generation. Hard on the heels of that was the great depression, where they nearly lost their farm. Grandma raised chooks and sold eggs to help make ends meet. Their farm was also a haven for the many tramps who criss-crossed New Zealand in those years; there was always a bed and a meal for those that turned up. World War Two saw the basis of her enduring hatred for the Japanese when the Prisoners of War returned home; she never bought anything ‘Made in Japan’ and called them ‘Nips’ for the rest of her days. She was kept busy doing her work for the Red Cross (something she did for the rest of her life). She also witnessed the changes brought about by new technology (my Grandfather was the first farmer in his area to buy a tractor. He sold his team of horses to buy the tractor. The last farmer to convert to the new technology shot his team. Such is the price of progress. What would you rather be – early adopter? Or laggard?). My grandparents adapted to change, just as we are adapting to change today. That is the reality of the human condition.
UDL provides a framework that can adapt existing practice; it also offers flexibility in design. Studies suggest that the beneficiaries of UDL integration included both learners and teachers, as well as educational institutions. The majority of studies showed that a UDL-inspired course design positively affects user perceptions and/or academic performance (Al-Azawei, Serenelli, and Lundqvist). Furthermore, the specialised programmes on UDL instructional design techniques helped tutors to adapt their existing teaching strategies to cater to all learners. Kumar & Wideman (2014) pointed out that a UDL-based course design can promote teacher engagement and reduce their workload because the implementation of UDL can lead students to practicing a ‘learner centred’ approach rather than relying solely on the traditional ‘teacher-centred’ method. Sounds good, doesn’t it? One commentator points to the fact that it is all rather new still, and that further study is needed before we can be completely convinced of the efficacy of this design process. However, I do like the fact that we can build on what we already do, and that the Ministry of Education has many models upon which to base a UDL-inspired course. my school's annual charter and strategic plan includes the following statement: “UDL principles, strategies and tools embedded within all PLD opportunities to develop / strengthen teachers and leaders’ inclusive practices.” By showing a commitment to the principles of UDL, it makes sense for me to do some further research and perhaps adopt some of the practices that inform implementation.
I also like the concepts behind the Technology Integration Planning (TIP) model. It consists of three clusters of activity in order to guide technology integration (Roblyer & Doering, 2013).
The first cluster represents an analysis of learning and teaching needs and includes two phases: first, to determine the relative advantage of the integration, and second, assess TPACK. This first cluster is the only cluster in the model that is not revisited later in the process, while all other clusters are revisited in an effort to improve the model for teaching.
The second cluster, planning for integration, consists of three phases:
(a) decide on objectives and assessments
(b) design integration strategies
(c) prepare the instructional environment.
The third cluster, post-instruction analysis and revisions, includes the final phases: analyse results and make revisions.
After determining outcomes, the third cluster cycles back to the second cluster, revisiting the planning stages in hopes of improving learning and allowing the adopter to solve problems and improve efficiencies.
I think that this is the way in which many teachers already plan a unit of work: we establish what we want the outcome to be early in the planning process. By cycling through the second and third phase, we are using critical reflection to modify and change the module of work so that it adapts and changes according to feedback from students; results also need to reflect what we want from the first phase. Do results reflect intended outcomes? Might the programme of work need to be revisited in order to meet the needs of students?