Liberating Structure
I just furled a fine freestyle from James about the importance of structure in the success of online learning events. He writes:
…the structure of a learning environment is, in a
significant way, a driver of its constitution…it is NOT a neutral
technical aspect…without a structure that allows for effective teacher
presence (and, if you will, controlled autonomy and emancipation) and
which is PEDAGOGICALLY appropriate and flexible we are swimming against
the tide in trying to teach effectively online. (Read more…)
I don’t know exactly what James means by ‘effective teacher presence’,
but I
think it should be minimal, relative to the cognitve maturity of the
participants. If autonomy, emancipation and self-organization are
traits we wish our learners to develop, we must design learning
environments that allow those behaviours to be expressed
freely. The ‘loosely coupled’
environments that weblogs provide are ideal for allowing learner-driven
change to occur and learner-centered communities to form.
Establishing teacher presence through a more centralized structure, as
in the Stacey
example, might increase participation, but I just wonder how much of that is surface-level?
It may appear to be a more successful learning event, but how
much of that increase in participation is just students going through
the motions for the purposes of evaluation and credit?
I think teacher presence and structure make it easier for students to surf
through the course. The beauty of using weblogs is
that the intrinsically motivated learners don’t need to depend on the
participation of the surfers OR the teacher; they can build community
outside the core
learning group. Even better, the flexibility of the
environment coupled with minimal teacher presence encourages surfers to
become learners by giving them the freedom to explore paths more
central to their interests - something that wasn’t possible in the
Stacey’s WebCt example. Teachers need to play the role of a
peer in a course where learner goals and paths are differentiated; an experienced learner who provides helpful feedback and
facilitates access to resources.
We ought to be continuously examining how our educational practices are shaping
society. When we emphasize assessment and use our authority
to exercise control over learner behaviour, what kind of conditioning
process are we implementing? What kind of people do we want to
see coming out of high schools and universities? Do we want
egotistical achievers who value results over procress, ends over
means? Do we want tired, disillusioned, frustrated people who
strike out at themselves and others in harmful ways? Do we want
bored, apathetic, lazy, consumers who borrow and spend and complain
they never have enough? Or
do we want a society of happy, balanced, knowledgable, and
aware people who take responsibility for their own actions and work for
the good of society? I suppose we have little control over
this, but we can ‘teach’ in ways that embody the very traits that we
wish to see our learners develop. We need to be
ready to back off, stop teaching, and just ‘leave them kids alone’, as Waters once sang.
The learning environments we design need to allow for
this, and the use of weblogs is a step in this direction.