MY EXPERIENCE WITH SOCIAL SOFTWARE AS A LEARNING TOOL

Let me just begin with my own brief definition of social software. Social software refers to software programs used to achieve learning and collaboration via the internet among regular individuals as well as between learners and teachers, in addition to, or instead of, traditional, face-to-face teaching in the confines of the classroom. What is characteristic of conventional face-to-face learning paradigm is that the teacher is seen more or less as a source of knowledge whose job is to transmit knowledge to students whose charge is to receive that knowledge. What social software does is to provide a frame where learners stand a much better chance at achieving learning through personal engagement as well as through social networking with the teacher, with their peers and with knowers all around. Though in most cases, the teacher still has monopoly over the goals performance objectives set for the course, students play a more active role in learning individually and collectively.

My experience over the past few years with social software have mostly been with the following platforms: wikis, blogs, GoogleDocs, Elluminate, and GoogleWave. One difference between such platforms and learning management systems (LMS) such as Nicenet, Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai is the latter tend to be closed spaces where the course is restricted to the students enrolled in it, whereas the former tend to be more open. The other difference is that LMSs have often been conceived as one-way systems of communication where the level of interactivity is generally less than it is with wikis and similar platforms. It is noteworthy that nowadays, the distinction is less straightforward because LMSs like Moodle, Sakai, and Blackboard for example do provide the functionalities of chatting, blogging, and internal messaging. Below is a description and evaluation of my experience with blogs and wikis.

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Wikis and blogs
I started using blogs and wikis almost concurrently at the University of Sfax, Tunisia. In one teaching methodology course, I hosted all course materials on a wiki provided by Wetpaint. The course requirements were a set of nine assignments that had to be answered through a blog students had to create either Blogger or WordPress. Despite the difficulties this involved, students, whose digital literacy was pretty for the most part when I gave the course in 2007 valued and enjoyed the experience. Excepting the few whose sole goal was just to hit the pass mark, many felt empowered with having ‘constructed’ a space bearing their own name, biography and photo and displaying content that is mostly theirs. A few of them even initiated reactions to classmates’ work, and it felt like a community of learning was in the making. In hindsight, I realize I should have integrated the writing of a reader response as one of the assignments factoring into the final grade.

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Wikis

I also used wikis for student research and created space for each wiki member to host their own research project both at the University of Sfax, Tunisia and the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The idea here was for students to feel accountable for what they write; whereas conventional classroom assignments often meant student had to write for the teacher as main reader and grader, what comes to the fore in this exercise is that students understand the need to target a much wider audience of readers and commentators in addition to the teacher. Their work was no longer something between their rater and themselves but rather involved anyone who chanced to read the research. We are talking of a much wider circle than the classroom or the institution. This could be a world wide audience; knowing your product can be scrutinized and commented upon by anyone inside or outside the group somehow puts you on the spot. With visibility comes greater responsibility. Plagiarism is going to become an issue because the moment a sentence I google appears to be not the result of the author’s genuine work, they realize the importance of intellectual property and that they can only engage in such behavior at their risk and peril.

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Another important perk for using wikis is that research writing is seen as a work in progress on display. Students had access to my online comments on a minimum of two to three drafts, and they could easily compare and see, on the same screen, how they have progressed from first to final draft. At the same time, students with poor scores could easily access examples of finer models completed by other students in the group and model them. This is a simple way of harnessing so called ‘collective intelligence’.

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What has yet to happen?
The movement from the ‘one-way’ Learning management system to the wiki should have meant that students feel empowered enough to actually effect changes on anything they see, as I ask them to join not just as members with such regular privileges as mailing, initiating and responding to discussion topics, but as writers with the ability to change anything they see on the wiki. I make it amply clear on my wikis that everything is in draft mode and I encourage students to implement any changes they see fit, as the wiki has the added advantage of logging the history of its own changes. I note though that students choose not to ‘take liberty’ with material the teacher writes, especially not the course description. Mind you, there is a section in one of the wikis I have developed for course evaluation and some do intervene there, but I have yet to see students clicking on the ‘Easy Edit’ function to reword, correct, enhance, or delete something I have written, as a teacher. Saying this may be one thing, and seeing it done is another, and this may take some doing and learning, on their part as well as mine.

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In my next post, I will evaluate my experience with GoogleDocs.

ICT-BASED LEARNING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ASSESSMENT: A VIDEO PRESENTATION

This is a video presentation titled: ‘ICT-Based Learning and Implications for Assessment” that I gave at the Mednine Higher Institute of Applied Studies in Humanities, University of Gabes, Tunisia in the Spring of 2008.

In this presentation, I propose to discuss the emerging ICT-based learning paradigm based on content management systems, mobile learning, social software, and constructivist learning and to delineate in rough outline the corresponding changes at the level of assessment. I begin with an overview of the features of traditional assessment, which, for the most part, consists in an individually-constructed, paper-based, teacher-oriented, reproductive, archive-destined, word-based, in-class assignment. Then, I argue that ICT-enriched assessment is a collaboratively authored, digitally hosted, public and consumer-oriented, multimedia-rich creation. This creation is subject to updating and involves a geographically dispersed, networked community of contributors. Finally, I focus on the challenges in the face of implementing such changes at the levels of learners, content managers and service providers.
Please address your questions and comments to: araddaoui@gmail.comh

ICT-Based Learning and Implications for Assessment

In this vodcast, I propose to discuss the emerging ICT-based learning paradigm based on content management systems, mobile learning, social software, and constructivist learning and to delineate in rough outline the corresponding changes at the level of assessment. I begin with an overview of the features of traditional assessment, which, for the most part, consists in an individually-constructed, paper-based, teacher-oriented, reproductive, archive-destined, word-based, in-class assignment. Then, I argue that ICT-enriched assessment is a collaboratively authored, digitally hosted, public and consumer-oriented, multimedia-rich creation. This creation is subject to updating and involves a geographically dispersed, networked community of contributors. Finally, I focus on the challenges in the face of implementing such changes at the levels of learners, content managers and service providers.

NB: this vodcast is available on video.google at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6448386464633568584

Thinking through my experience with e-learning at the University of Sfax

In the run-up to this coming December's Conference at the Higher Institute of Applied Languages in Gabes, Tunisia, I would like to start describing and assessing my e-learning experience at the College of Letters and Humanities of Sfax, University of Sfax, Tunisia.

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In the main, I think it is fair to say that it is something in the making. This year, I am using Moodle with my 4th year English Department students as well as at the graduate level. Moodle is a learning management system that is open source, free to use, and compares very favourably with its commerical counterparts, namely Blackboard (Bb) and WebCT. Some people prefer the label LMS, for learning management system, while others sometimes call it CMS, for content management system. There are others who would rather use a combination of these two appellations and that produces LCMS, short for learning content management system. Basically, this is a system that allows teachers and trainers to place teaching material somewhere on a server that students and employees, and anyone who wishes to learn, can access from a computer with an internet connection. There is the teacher who may be one of many in charge of providing content. There is also the graphic designer who can provide help with how to present the material, in terms of sequencing and units. And of course, there is the software if you like, which someone or actually many people have prepared to accept various kinds of inputs, including lecture notes, assignments, grades, evaluation, what have you.

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So now, we have an idea what LMS does. The main point to keep in mind is that students who have access to the system are not asked to be in any walled, chalk-and-talk classroom. Their classroom is in the virtual world. That's why this type of environment is often called VLE, virtual learning environment. There, they can meet their classmates and their instructor, submit their assignments, and receive feedback from the instructor or their peers.

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What about our experience here at Sfax University? I must say, to begin with, that I was and am still thrilled about the possibility of making my courses available for students online. This could deprive me from the joy of meeting with them on a regular basis, and talking to them outloud, in front of them, in an auditorium that is packed to capacity. I am starting to think that traditional students, and we all are, to a certain extent, like to see a teacher in front of them, not an avatar of a teacher, even when they can actually hear and watch their teacher speak on the system. This is in part my experience here. I tell my students by way of jest they like to see a teacher speak himself hoarse in front of them (I refer to myself throughout, so I am entitled to use referent he, rather than the usual he/she). They like to see a teacher sweating, on the forehead and under the armpits, rusting his clothing with chalk, walking between the rows, raising his voice at times, and commending a large presence. It's a little bit like the kind of play that you have to attend without participating or entering into a discussion with the players.

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In principle, of course, there should be nothing wrong with that. After all, a teacher is an educator, and students stand to benefit simply by listening to him, and absorbing material he has to say. Our students have also been born and bred into a tradition of note taking. Note taking is very big at the college. I may be wrong, but students seem to enjoy coming to class, listen, and take an inordinate amount of notes. To them, that is an indication they they have attended, and that they have learned too. Those who miss class will usually ask someone to provide them with notes of notes, usually copies of notes from the notebook of a presumably good student. When pressed for time, teachers usually give students copies of their last lecture notes. Students, as I said, like that, and probably feel their job is half done and that the second part of the job will be to reproduce what the teacher has said on exam day!

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Well, what happens when you actually provide your whole course package to the students from day one? You tell them, well, here guys is your course. Everything, from A to Z. Thus, in order to prepare my Sfax students for this online course, I told them from day one that they were to have a copy of everything, specifically and most importantly my lecture notes. But I also provided readings assignments and other activities. Those assignments are, for all intents and purposes, samples of what they might expect on the exam. I have two colleagues to help me with the tutorials, Pr. Chokri Smaoui and Pr. Salaoua Abid. and I thought, well, this is pretty much it. Students will be able to take full advantage of the course. Tutors will do the rest, and much of my work has been done; I thought I might meet students every now and then to assure them that I was still around and alive, and then, we'd see them in the final exam.

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Well, as it turned out, it wasn't so! There are difficulties that I have to recognize. Some of these relate to the grip of tradition, and those are understandable, and with time, you would hope to be able to do something about them. There are other difficulties, difficulties of access. In my next blog, I will start broaching those two types of difficulties. It might actually be a good idea to get some feedback from students themselves. And as I stand here to relay and relate their experience to you from my own perspective, I think I also owe it to them to give them a chance to just report, in their own words, how they feel about this. And as we will see, this is not a question of a homogeneous block of students who are all shouting: 'Sir, Sir, back to the old system, please'. There may be a bit of this, for some, but there is also recognition that the learning and teaching landscape has changed tremendously elsewhere, sometimes beyond recognition, with implications for how we conduct business here. More on this soon.

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Ali H. Raddaoui, University of Sfax, FLSHS, Sfax, Tunisia