Final entry?

My heart suddenly turns melancholic thinking if it would be my last entry to write for this blog. Time really flies fast. We have nearly come to the end of the semester. Well, for the purpose of fulfilling the requirement in my DE class, this probably be my last entry. However, I will maintain this blog to document any information with regard to distance teaching and learning that I would come across through my reading or my experience since I am very convinced with the power of writing a reflection. To me, sometimes I feel surprised on how I could see things from different perspectives when I put my understanding into writing.

Hmm... 2 or 3 most meaningful things I've learned in this class, huh? There are a lot, sincerely! Alright, first, I like best when Dr Tee brought the class to collectively understand the definition of Distance education (DE) to be used throughout the course so that everyone would refer to the same ideas of DE. To me it is very important because my preconceived ideas before the definition was clarified was DE is equal to PJJ(pendidikan jarak jauh). PJJ is carried out when classes are conducted once a month for four hours with a lecturer. Only assignments are done and submitted from a distance. Whereas, DE in our course context is the learning group is seperated and instructions and resources are given from a distance using interactive telecommunication system like Moodle. Dr Tee also emphasizes that the keys to successful DE are in the design, development and delivery of instruction. Therefore, I would always refer to these three key elements when I were to design a blended course with my students in the future.

Second, is the dynamic model of knowledge construction (SECI) by Nonaka & Takeuchi. I am attracted to the first layer of the cycle brought forward by SECI model which are socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. I am thinking of using the model as the theoretical framework of my project paper since I am going to look at the use of online forum among English language teachers in sharing their best practices and facilitating knowledge construction. I am interested to find out if the teachers go through all the four processes through their interactions and discussions in the online forum and see if they are able to document their tacit knowledge through shared experience.

Third is the journey I took in developing the first wiki with the whole class. The experience of feeling the frustration when trying to get everybody to chip in ideas was very meaningful. I got to actually put myself in the real situation of DE learners who are trying to collaborate in developing and producing a product. At least, I know the difficulties faced by DE learners out there. Then, the process we went through together as a whole class to figure out the problems and how Dr Tee came up with the second wiki are priceless. I would be aware of what to do and how to do it when I am going to use wiki as a platform for my students to collaborate in completing a certain task given to them. So much on the technical part of the wiki, I think the experience in developing the content gives me more impact especially in the second wiki. It opens my eyes that I have to understand how people learn in order to design an instruction which suits best their learning. All this while I took it for granted. I may be aware that I am a constructivist but I did not think along the line of the principles of learning by Driscoll, especially the fourth principle that learning is reflective.

Forth is the 5 learning environment foundations by Hannfin et al, 1997: psychological, pedagogical, technological, cultural and pragmatic. When Dr Tee first explained during class on 21st January 2009, it makes little sense to me. At that time I merely wrote down and read the notes. Then when problems in wiki occured, Dr Tee brought up the factors again. Together as a class we unpacked the obstacles which hindered us from progressing in the development of wiki.
Then only I was able to relate the meaning of those terms in actual context. Again, I will consider all these 5 learning environment foundations in designing instructions for my students.

Fifth is producing a prototype. It is actually my first experience since the classes I took before this did not require any prototype but storyboards instead. I realize that it is not easy to come up with an effective course design and assessment especially when it is done in DE environment. Another big difference is Iza and I used to be the SMEs in producing different learning courseware or web based learning modules since we were not in the same group. The other members of the group were the technical expert and instructional designer. Now, when we have to do most of the technical stuffs by ourselves, it took us quite a while to come up with a satisfactory design. Nevertheless, I really hope that both iza's and my students could benefit from the website we designed.


Well, the list could go further but I guess this would do. To me it is really an honour for me to be Dr Tee's student. You really have put a lot of thoughts in designing this course for us all and you have done a tremendously excellent job. Since the first class, I know I would learn a lot from this young chap... and nothing has proven me wrong. You have set the standard in yourself and for us all when we are able to feel and see the high expectations you have towards the class. Of course we experience some tense at one point or more but thank God, we pulled through...pheww... May God bless us all. Thank you Dr Tee.

Reflection of activity two: Wiki

My reflection of activity two will be concerning the development of two wikis. The first wiki which is pxgt6308.wikispaces.com started with a very slow pace and was half way done. Deciding the structure of the wiki took about four weeks and delegation of topics took another two weeks. It became quite a frustrating experience for me when collaboration of ideas was ineffective. Three weeks nearing the due date, Dr Tee came up with a more structured wiki for us to work on, which is learninghaven.wikispaces.com. After being informed verbally of the purpose for developing the wiki , then only I understood that I need to understand how people learn in order to design effective instructions. Indeed, some scaffolding was very much needed at that point of time especially when everyone was still in the dark of what to do and how to proceed in developing the wiki.

Have I contributed enough to the development of wiki? What was the quality of my contribution to the wiki? To answer the first question, I admit that I have not contributed enough in terms of the quantity of the content. If given the time, I would probably contribute more. Answering the second question is hard because culturally, we do not boast about our contributions. However, for the purpose of doing this assignment, I would say, the quality of my contribution is higher in the first wiki as compared to the second wiki.. The reason is simply because I was trying to let others play their part after I initiated the activity for the second wiki since I did not assume myself as the initiator unlike in the first wiki. Besides, it is not easy to measure quality unless you set some standards to match.

The next question is how I could have improved the quality of the content. To improve the quality of the content in the first wiki, I guess I have to look at the organisation of content deductively so that I could identify and understand the bigger picture of the topic before I could identify the smaller parts to work on. The problem then was, we were still unable to focus on the main issue on how people learn but instead roamed around the topic of distance learning. On the other hand, with regard to the new wiki, I guess I have to read more and cite others’ views and work especially in responding to the topics of discussions. Other than that, probably, more pages could be created to present and discuss the topic from the perspectives of different learning theorists namely behaviourist, cognitivist and constructivist. Moreover, another page could also be created to share reviews of research findings done by others with regard to how people learn. In-depth discussion on the research findings will add to the weight of the discussion threads.

Last but not least, what have I learned from this activity? First, I was able to experience how difficult it was to collaborate ideas and develop content from a distance involving a lot of heads. For example, to decide on the structure alone took around 5 weeks before we could finalize on the outline. Second, I am more aware about the principles of learning outlined by Driscoll (2002) that learning occurs in context, is active, is social and is reflective. Besides, I am also aware that people from different range of age share some common ground when it comes to learning. They learn best when we set a conducive environment for them to learn which are through actual daily context, through active learning (physically and cognitively), through social interaction with peers and through synthesizing what has been learned by reflecting. Therefore, I must assess my learners learning behaviour to help me identify the best matched instructional strategies to be applied.

I must say that I have actually undergone a contextual learning experience when I have gone through the process of developing the first wiki and participating in resorting to the development of the second wiki. The experience is priceless since I was able to actually go through the whole process of Rapid Prototyping on a contextual basis. Nevertheless, I still strongly believe that developing the wiki should not involve more than four heads. It would be difficult to collaborate since we have to wait for the others for feedback and responses.

To conclude, I gained 80% what I learned by personally experience it. I’ll top up another 20% by doing this reflection.

Web 3.0

I found this website which explain what web 3.0 is and compare it with web 1.0 and 2.0.
Web 3.0 is also called 'semantic web'. Below is a video which explains the differences among the three webs. The fact that technology grows so rapidly makes me wonder how are Malaysian teachers going to catch up with the existing technology when most of them are still at the entry level where application of ICT is concerned.

Feedbacks on my learning module

Let me just write the comments down while they are still fresh so that I could refer to them later.

I like Chun's question the most which is summarised as 'How do I justify - what is so unique about the learning module to be available online when students could actually print them out and do the activities on papers'. I like her way of thinking since she looks at the possible flaw(black hat thinking). My response to her was when the lesson is done in a digital environment, students will be able to get immediate feedback. Besides, learning could still be carried out outside the class.

Then Lim brought up the question on moderation. Will the moderator ask the students to do the activities in sequence? Could the students jump to the next activity without doing the previous one? Dr Tee added, how are we going to give feedback immediately when it involves around 40 students. True, 6 hats time 3 activities each is 18. 18 activities times 40 students, would the moderator be able to monitor and give prompt feedbacks to 720 posts.

When I use lesson function on Moodle, students would not be able to see each other's answers. The drawback is students won't be able see what others have posted and not able to do peer correction. After discussing with Iza and listening to input from Lim, I think we are going to change activites 1 and 2 to objective types of activity where the feedback would be immediate and students would know their score. We would leave activity 3 in a subjective format. Probably we will use wiki function so that students could do peer correction within the group before they submit their response to the moderator. Or we will design all the activities to be objective format and let the assessment part be in an essay format.

Many thinks that the page is too long for the students to scroll down. Probably a different platform could be used. When I showed them the website we prepared on freewebs and the prototype that Iza had worked on PPT, they like the one on freewebs better since the layout is website like and students will be more motivated to explore. We might want to change our target learners. Instead of using form 5 students as target learners, we are thinking of using our classmates in the DE class to be our clients since the Moodle feature is more suitable to adult learners.

I remember Dr Tee has asked us a question that forced me and Iza to give it a thought but I can't remember. He asked us to give a thought about it and come up with possible solution. I'll continue writing once I am able to recall what it was.

How people learn

I found this pdf file with a title: How people learn: Introduction to learning theory.

Below are the excerpts taken from the article.
How people learn was presented in three viewpoints: Philosophers, Psychologist and Educators.

Philosophers' viewpoint:

• Plato developed the belief that knowledge and truth can be discovered by self-reflection.
  
• Socrates also believed strongly that certain knowledge was only attainable through reason.
• Kant (1724–1804) refined and modernized Plato’s rationalist theory when he suggested that awareness of knowledge may begin with experience, but much knowledge exists prior to experience.

Psychologists' viewpoint:

1. Behaviourist
   

• Thorndike believed that learning was based on an association between sense impressions and an impulse to action. Thorndike favored students’ active learning and sought to structure the environment to ensure certain stimuli that would “produce” learning (Hilgard & Bower, 1975).
• B. F. Skinner behaviourist learning theory focuses on stimulus and response. He considered learning to be the production of desired behaviour and denied any influence of mental processes.

2. Cognitivist cum constructivist

• Jean Piaget recognized that students construct knowledge Based on their experiences.
• Vygotsky extended Piaget's theory and emphasized that learning occurs in a cultural context and involves social interaction.

The article summed up that research has found that

*the brain plays a role in learning,
• the way the learning environment is constructed makes a difference,
• learning is based on the associations or connections we make,
• learning occurs in particular social and cultural environments, and finally,
• the different ways people think and feel about their own learning affects their development as learners.

I definitely agree that the five factors above play important roles in the process of learning. Teachers need to understand how learners learn best in order to be able to design meaningful instructions which suit best different types of learners. Having good brain without conducive environment for the learners to learn will disappoint learners and this condition will contribute to unhealthy attitude of the learners. Unhealthy attitude here refers to students behaviour of not wanting to learn, hating certain subjects or teachers or going to school to hang out with friends.

Students learn best when they are able to relate what they learn with past experiences and apply them in a real environment or in a true context of their life. That is why school environment plays a very important role towards students' achievements.

People used to say 'Schools everywhere are just the same. It is up to the students to learn. If the student has good brain, he could excel no matter where he learns'. As a teacher of 19 years and as a mother of 5 school going children, I disagree with the opinion above. The environment of the school, the dedicated teachers, the working culture of the school definitely play important roles in determining the students' success. I do not know if others agree, but to me as a mother I want the best for my children and I would give the best to my students as if they are my own. After all I believe what goes round comes round...

Why 6 thinking hats?

Why did Izawany and I decide to design and develop a learning module for form 5 students using the idea created by Edward de Bono in training students to chunk their thinking using 6 different thinking hats? We are aiming:

1. to help them adopt a higher thinking order (able to analyze, synthesize and evaluate)
   
2. to help them think critically, constructively and creatively
3. to help them to see things deductively and inductively
4. to help them become alert towards their surroundings ( aware of possibilities, setbacks, alternatives and consequences).
   

Being both English teachers we found that majority of the students have a hard time to develop ideas. I sincerely think that the reason why their thinking scope is very limited because they don't read enough. For example, when I asked my form five students (the best class) to debate on the issue of the cancellation of building the crooked bridge to replace the existing Johor bridge, I ended up giving them all the information via newspaper cuttings and articles from the internet. They were not able to debate on the issue not because of language barrier but because they do not read enough. When students lack reading, they do not have substance. How could we train them to think when they have no ideas on what to think.

Iza and I hope by introducing Six Thinking Hats to students, they are able to train their thinking
in six different perspectives. The aim is not only for the students to use the skills in developing ideas in speaking and writing at secondary level but also to make them realize that people do think differently and they would need to be able to adopt and adapt as they merge into the mainstream in the society.

We use moodle http://www.nurulhana.com/course/view.php?id=3 for our website. This is version 0.02. The first feedback I received was from Lim last week when I showed him the first version. Lim commented that the layout was not interesting. He suggested that I put animated hats instead to capture students' attention. Up to now I still could not find any free animated hats yet. What I did instead was insert a row of 6 colours hats at the top of the web page.
Another alternative would be to use Joomla but I am afraid I would need to have more time to learn how to develop the content using Joomla.

Once the school reopens on Monday, Iza will ask her students to try out the learning activity and answer the evaluation part at the end of the lesson. Once that is done meaning we have gone through the second cycle of the Design->Develop->Evaluate of ADDIE Model. Before that, I think I still need to redesign the activities and break them into levels 1, 2 and 3 for beginner, intermediate and advanced.

Reflection on Normie's and Maryam's presentation

I agree with Dr Tee that both presenters had done a good job in interpreting and presenting dry topics of chapter 11 and 12 which are 'Copyright and distance education' and ' Managing and leading a distance education organisation' respectively. The issue of copyright is relevant to our current environment as learners but the second topic is quite a distant and does not relate to learners unless we would want to open up our own distance education later on. I pity Maryam for having to go through the pain of presenting something which does not interest the listener. I could actually see some of the audiences talking among themselves. However, I admire Maryam's courage in trying to complete the presentation.

My suggestion in presenting a topic like this is to involve the audience. Probably two scenarios involving managing distance education organisation could be given to us. Then, in groups, we are to point out the PMI (Plus, minus, interesting) and compare between the 2 scenarios. Another alternative would be, prepare a checklist and evaluate distance education organisations and compare the strengths and weaknesses. Some time we have to be selective in what we are presenting. Lay out the big picture but highlight only the relevant points.

Some time, we come to the end of the road and we see walls, turn around, look for familiar faces and seek help or advice. A lot of ideas would be coming in when we talk it out with our friends and lecturers. I believe at masters level, we don't compete among our classmates but we help, cooperate and collaborate so that every body are able to learn from one another. Every one has his/her own strengths. It must be pretty amazing when these strengths work together for the benefit of ourselves and our learners.

LearningHaven.wikispaces

Throughout his week, my classmates and I are supposed to 'play around' with the newly set up learninghaven.wikispaces and then answer the following questions in our blog.

• What do you think of the new "how people learn" wiki?
• What helps you learn?
• What gets in the way of your learning?

I think the new LearningHaven wiki is very much structured. It gives a very clear path of where Dr Tee would want to lead us to. He wants us to understand the process of how people learn by asking us to watch how people learn at primary, secondary and tertiary levels so that we are able to design instructions based on how learners learn. It is quite fun to be able to watch the videos and analyze how lessons are conducted in other parts of the world although Dr Tee could have asked us to find the videos instead. The process of watching and listing how the students learn fit the first two stages of Bloom's taxonomy which are knowledge and understanding. The following activities A-D involve application, analysis and synthesis of Bloom's taxonomy whereby we are to match and categorise the processes according to a template prepared. The reflection part of activity D fits the evaluation stage of Bloom's taxonomy. Therefore the content of the new wiki is designed and developed according to the stages involved in Bloom's taxonomy which is from easy to difficult.

Now that I have answered the first question, I'll move on to the second question. What helps me learn? A teacher's vivid explanation and instructions made it easier for me to learn. Listening to lectures alone will help me to retain maybe 40% of what is being taught, but involving in activities will engage me more in the learning process. I may be able to retain the lesson up to 90% or more. Being a hyperthyrotoxicosis patient for quite some time, I could not sit still and listen to lectures or mundane meetings for more than at most 20 minutes. I will either fall asleep or end up doing something else.

Move on to the third question, what gets in the way of my learning? Hmm... well I would say if I don't have a basic knowledge of what I am about to learn, I will feel lost especially when I was not able to connect my existing knowledge to the new acquired knowledge. I'll give an example, when I first entered Instructional Design and Development class last two semesters, I have zero knowledge on the subject since my first degree was in ESL/Pedagogy. When I walked out of the first three classes I fell like yelling and crying outloud. I did not know where to hook my worry and concern and where to start. Knowing that the reputation and expectation of the lecturer is high give me an ever greater pressure. What helped me most then were my teammates. Working collaboratively in completing assignments and projects help me to learn and grasp what is required of me. Besides, after three weeks, I began to see connections and relate the new acquired knowledge with the existing knowledge I have. Furthermore, the lecturer did give a little scaffolding when she prepared templates for learner analysis and guided questions to guide us in doing our project.

I've answerd all the three question, now let me write about my personal view of our new wiki.
I appreciate Dr Tee's effort in preparing all the materials and it is a lot easier for us to see what are required for us to do. Probably, realizing that we do not have much time left to complete the first wiki on our own besides not getting the outline and the content right, Dr Tee has gone to the extent of guiding the whole class every step of the way. Of course we would be delighted to have our weight lifted. Of course, we think and see things differently, that is why none of us could think and see the way Dr Tee sees how the wiki should be like :) It is as if Dr Tee is holding a torch light and has prepared for us the ladder. Now our job is to climb up the ladder one by one while Dr Tee holds the light and torch our way up.

Reflection and Reflective Practice

This week I indulged myself in deep thinking until I experienced cognitive overload. To unpack and chunk the thinking take sometimes. To do reflection, I would need to reflect and recollect the knowledge, the experience and the learning which transpired through out the process.

To understand how people learn, I need to understand how I learn. But of course how I learn may not be the same as other people learn. Therefore, I need to analyze the common ground, the common practice which could be generalized. To find the common ground, I have to do some research. See what others have written and found. What I have done so far, I park the relevant ideas and resources in wiki, hoping that others will take up from there and develop the content.

I would like to share what I found during my research:
Kolb (1984) outlined a descriptive model for adult learning process:

1. concrete experience
2. Reflective observation
3. absract conceptualisation
4. active experimentation.
   

Concrete experience is the learning process we experience in class during lesson. Reflective observation is when we analyze what we have learned and document them in our blog. Abstract conceptualisation is when we are able to understand the main ideas involved in the learning process. Active experimentation is when we are involved in completing the tasks, assignments and projects.




Right..so much sharing what is going on in my head, I will now write my response to Szarm's and Kuldip's presentation last week. The presentation was solely based on textbook. They did a good job in interpreting the content of chapter 10 and their presentation was able to consolidate my thinking and match the content with what I have read. I like the discussion on preventing cheating we had during the session. It is indeed difficult to prevent cheating in online examination unless the examination is done in a proctored environment.

I remember how Prof RM designed her examination questions for final exam for ID class last year. One of the question asked us to reflect on the problems we had in completing our final assignment and how we overcome them. Meaning, if you are just a passenger in doing your group assignment, you would not be able to answer the question. Therefore, in designing assessment question in distance education environment, the same approach could be applied. If you have gone through the whole process of learning without cheating, you would be able to reflect and answer the questions.

Assessment for DE

Notes from the textbook.

A. Role of assessment

• Acts as basis for instruction
• Acts as a tool to achieve the desired learning outcome
• Develop skills in learners (formative assessment).
• Report success or failure (summative assessment).
• Enhance motivation
• Reinforce confidence

B. Characteristics of several types of assessment

• Outcomes-based-assessment - (reflects mastery of skills identified in the objectives).
  
• Norm-referenced scoring - compare students with others who have completed the same assessment. (Report long term trends and comparisons of extremely large group of learners - should never be used to determine grades)
  
• Grading on the curve - reflects how well the learners perform as compared to one another. (not useful to see whether the students have mastered the content).
  
• Criterion referenced scoring - (reflects mastery of course content)

Characteristics of good assessment:

• Validity - provides an accurate estimate of learning gains.
• Reliability - refers to stability and consistency of an instrument despite occasion and frequency of the assessment taken.
• Clarity of expectations - learners could easily understand the instructions given for the assessment.

Note: A useful assessment reflects learners' progress, understanding, transferability of skills and knowledge.

C. Strategies for assessing learners' progress

• Objective measures: multiple choice, true or false, matching, etc.
• Short answer test item: graphic organiser, concept map, fill in the blanks, etc.
• Subjective measures: essay, projects, presentations,
• Alternative assessments: authentic assessment, performance based assessment and constructivist assessment.

Assessment for DE learners:

• Online tests and quizzes
• Asynchronous communication : thought provoking questions, discussion forum/ debate, questions generated from reading, blogs and wiki.
• Synchronous communication: audio conferencing, online chat, instant messaging
• Portfolios: compilation of work consist of variety of materials leading to development of standards.
• Papers and essay
• Presentations
• Problem-based activities
• Journal writing
• Concept map
• Simulation and games

Implementation Strategies:

• On going and non graded assessment measures
• Balancing flexibility and structure
• Using scoring rubrics
• Facilitating students collaboration
• Selecting appropriate assessment measures

D. Related issues to assessment

• Academic misconduct
• Plagiarism
• Cheating

What is ahead?

• evidence-centered design
• automated essay scoring
• accessibility
  

DE- Major issues and challenges by Najib Kofani and Nowduri Srinivas

The paper classified 3 major practical issues that distance learning system (DLS):

1. Seperation of instructor and learner
2. Use of educational media to carry course content
3. Provision of two-way communication between instructor and learner

Prominent issues outlined in the paper are based on the following questions:

1. What is different about teaching at a distance?
2. What are the reasons for teaching at a distance?
3. What are the different ways to improve planning and organisation of DLS?
4. What are the different ways to meet students' needs?
5. What are the guidelines on teaching skills?
6. What are the different methods for improving interaction and feedback?

Four challenging initiatives and required recommendations:

1. Make the university management support as wide as possible.
   
2. Special attention towards the course that have a rich job market.
3. Take a noble look towards the far- reaching academic courses.
4. Establish an attractive faculty/quality programmes for the university staffs

Recommendations to achieve the above target:

1. Improve the organizational (design), financial (productivity) and the physical structure(architecture) of the DLS.
2. Provide high quality student service.
3. Broaden the faculty reward system.

The paper proposed the following factors for an effective DLS:

1. The quality of course materials.
2. The quality of the instructor.
3. The quality of the students.
4. The quality and frequency of the interaction.
5. The quality of curricula preparations, assignments and solutions.

The paper presented a case study, comparing the five aspects of DLS in three universities.

Table: Comparative study among the several DLS

Nature of Functionality	The Technical University of Milano, Italy	Indiana University USA	Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
1. System Philosophy	Easily adoptable to the students with easy student/teacher interaction	Concern more towards establishing higher education and interaction with the software industry	Concern more towards engineering education with different curricula flexibility
2. System Architecture	Simulate the classroom scenario based on intercampus network	Integrate distributed education into mainstream of teaching with a robust design structure.
3. System Evaluation	Reduces teacher-student interaction as little as possible.	More of faculty driven	Comprehensive and flexible framework
4. Programs/Courses currently offered.	Lessons, seminars and tutoring along with graduates and below	Graduates and under graduates	Engineering education courses
5. Number of faculty and participants involved	Several thousands of students per faculty	Fixed number of students per faculty	Quality conscious with flexibility and adoptability

Reflection on Internet based distance education

My humble opinion of Pat's and Khor's presentation is the content covered are very comprehensive until there were too much information for me to digest. Frankly speaking, in trying to filling in the evaluation rubric, I had a hard time recalling the contents presented. What I remembered most would be ISG is not ajinomoto but interactive study guide instead, since it was repeatedly told by Pat during the presentation. After reviewing the slide presentation posted, then only I was able to unpack the whole idea. Indeed, the content covered was very wide, informative as well as very useful. I am able to know about Course management sytem and tools available to be embedded in CMS. The term ISG is new to me and the presentation made me aware of the types of ISG available and their usefulness to enhance learning.

However, I noticed that the presentation outlined 5 learning objectives only but the the content went on beyond 5 I guessed. Besides, comparing the 3 movies presented at the beginning of the presentation as the induction set were not quite relevant to the whole ideas of internet based education besides time consuming. A better idea would we comparing internet based distance education with educational tv programme or learning coursewares. Infact, presenting the statistics of the growth of internet users in charts could also be an eye opener for the presentation.

Proposal for Project

Last week during class, Iza and I discussed superficially the idea of teaching the upper form students to think using Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. We would use freewebs to create the website and use the blog function on freewebs for instructions and submission of writings. Our main objective is to train the students to think critically and be aware of differences in the way people think. By engaging the students in activities and situations using different thinking hats, educators would be able to enhance the students' thinking skills and writing skills as well as soft skills. We do hope to get some feedback to see whether or not our ideas could be accepted or not.

Pedagogical approaches and instructional strategies

Personally, I think Lim and Chun had done tremendously well both in the preparation and presentation of their topic. I respect their initiatives in the effort of presenting the gist of the content of the topic from a different angle to avoid redundancy of what have been covered by the textbook. The textbook gives an explicit guideline whereas Chun and Lim allowed the audience to share their tacit knowledge through the activity introduced such as debate.

Well, thinking of the debate, I would like to express my dissatisfaction towards the judges. No offence is meant but this is my fair and humble opinion. We were supposed to give our opinion with regard to the advantage and disadvantage of brainstorming in a distance learning environment. During the debate, the class was divided into 3 groups. I belonged to the pro, the other group was con and the middle group was supposed to judge our motion and justifications. What happened was, when both groups had presented and argued, the judges were supposed to tell which group won the battle. Instead, the judges took sides and expressed their own opinions. So the battle went to the con. Weren't the judges supposed to judge based on arguments and not on what they believe? After all it is just an activity..small matter though ;)

Reflection on the class presentation

I will break my reflection in two parts: before and after.

Before:
When Izawany and I paired up for the presentation, we decided to be the first..just to get over and done with so that we could focus on other on coming tasks. While preparing, we felt the tense and started wondering why on earth we volunteered to be the first presenters. The tension built up as the date for the presentation was approaching. Iza came to my house and we discussed the big picture of the presentation before we broke it into smaller ideas. Then, we discussed the flow of our presentation and decided on the delegation of work and roles. We created our own wiki as a platform for discussion.

Our main ideas were based on the graphic below as well as from wikieducator:

To be able to understand distance education learners, we need to do the analysis of the five areas. We need to answer the following questions:
1. What are the general characteristics of the learners (age, language ability, etc)?
2. What are their personal or physical characteristics?
3. What are their entry skills?
4. What are their affective characteristics?
5. What are their instructional preference?

In order to make what we are going to preach real, we decided to let our classmates find out about their own learning styles so that they have a hands on experience by giving them a link to VARK questionnaire. We thought of presenting the scores or the VARK questionnaire taken as our induction set for the presentation but later we switched to a quote instead and use the scores from the VARK questionnaire to explain about learning styles.

I realised, once we have completed the presentation successfully, we would be the at the highest level of the revised Bloom's taxonomy which is 'teach' on top of 'create'. We wanted our coursemates to realise that by teaching, we have learnt 95% of the subject matter.
We held on to Gagne's Nine events of instruction as a guide in preparing our presentation. Nevertheless, we found that the 8th event of instruction was not applicable during the 45 minutes presentation. How our flow of presentation fits into gagne's nine events of instruction is shown in the table below.

Gain Attention	Use quote
Inform the learner of objective	Present the outline of the presentation
Stimulate recall of prior knowledge	Bloom's taxonomy
Present new material	Learners' profile and prompt questions for open discussion.
Provide learning guidance	Prepare slides with answers.
Elicit the performance	Provide activities.
Provide feedback	Provide feedback and possible answers to the activities.
Assess performance	not applicable
Enhance retention and transfer	Recap contents

After:
Based on the constructive comments after the presentation that night, we realised that we ended the presentation too abruptly. What we did for the wrapping up was presenting a list of the next steps after understanding the distance education learners. We should have recap the main ideas we have covered to enhance retention and transfer. We even had forgotten to ask the audience for Q/A session since we were so eager to end the presentation.

Iza and I felt so relieved after the presentation ended. We thank our classmates for their moral support and cooperation throughout the presentation.

Epistemology

On 5th of February, Dr Tee mentioned the word epistemology in class and he talked about it. Since I am quite unfamiliar with the word I decided to look it up and explore its meanings.

Wikipedia defines Epistemology as the theory of knowledge and related to questions like:

• What is knowledge?
• How is knowledge acquired?
• What do people know?
• How do we know what we know.

I found a website that explains epistemology using simple explanation if anyone would like to read more about it.

Agree to Disagree

I personally think it takes wisdom and 'gentleman' demeanor for an individual to come to term and agree to disagree with an open heart. Recollecting the past experiences by putting myself in the situation where I agree to disagree, I saw myself in a role of an obedient wife. There are countless time when I disagree with my spouse's decisions, opinions or actions. Knowing his behaviour too well, I would just agree to disagree and accept the fact that he is the boss to avoid conflicts.

In the context of developing the wikispaces collaboratively, I always keep my mind, heart and options open. I accept differences in people's opinions, thoughts, creativity and beliefs. There is no one correct or best way of developing it. However, I do hope that the task could be accomplished on time.

While digging further on the topic, I stumble on a website (the link is given below) while searching for ideas to write about the topic.
Here are the 5 steps involved in how to agree to disagree.
How to agree to disagree

Step1

Be a good sport. In an argument or debate, keep a friendly mind-set. Though some issues may be incredibly important to you, like your religious beliefs, understand that everyone has the right to their own opinion. If everyone believed the same thing life would get boring.

Step2

Stay calm in the face of a debate. Agree to disagree with someone who is able to intelligently converse with you about tough subjects. Keep your cool and simply swap ideas with this person instead of letting it get ugly.

Step3

Use honesty above all. People will tend to throw up their hands and plead that there is no winning or losing the argument when they have clearly lost. This tends to happen to those who have not fully researched or thought out their opinion on the subject. If you find yourself in a situation like this, simply be honest with the other person and let them know you have to do some research before continuing.

Step4

Respect the other person. In a debate, friendly or otherwise, if the person states that you should just agree to disagree, accept it—even if you think they are saying so to avoid admitting defeat.

Step5

Understand that you can't change a mind that does not want to change. Some people will be open to new ways of thinking, and others are steadfast in their beliefs and cling to them as though their lives depended on it. Take this fact to heart, and it will help you be a better debater.

Intersubjectivity

The title is a difficult concept to grasp indeed. When I read my note on intersubjectivity, the definition given in class was 'context where learning from teaching occurs resulting in common understanding of something subjective.' Then , I read again and again while trying to figure out the examples in context of my own learning. Frustrated... I left the concept unattended until Dr Tee brought the title again in class last week on the 5th Feb. He knew that the concept did not transpired in our cognitive domain since nobody wrote about it in our reflection. I couldn't agree more...

So in this entry, I decided to explore the topic of intersubjectivity. Wikipaedia explains it as 'the sharing of subjective states by two or more individuals which is used in 3 ways: when it refers to agreement between people; when it refers to common sense shared by people; when it refers to share divergences of meaning'. Hmm... complicated?

I kept on browsing, then I found this definition of intersubjectivity under social constructivism: 'Intersubjectivity is a shared understanding among individuals whose interaction is based on common interests and assumptions that form the ground for their communication (Rogoff, 1990)'. The article further explains 'Intersubjectivity not only provides the grounds for communication but also supports people to extend their understanding of new information and activities among the group members (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1987)'. My understanding of intersubjectivity becomes clearer after I read this explanation: 'The construction of knowledge is also influenced by the intersubjectivity formed by cultural and historical factors of the community (Gredler, 1997; Prawat & Floden, 1994). When the members of the community are aware of their intersubjective meanings, it is easier for them to understand new information and activities that arise in the community'.

Let me put it in a situation based on real life context. For example, when I meet teachers from other school, we share common grounds. We could talk about students, education system, pedagogical problems and so forth since we have shared understanding of the matter discussed. On the other hand, if I were to meet a lawyer, singer, politician and the like, I could not share my thoughts, opinions or feelings toward the education system as a whole since there is no common grounds or understanding but if I talk to them (as a parent) about the issue on parenting, we might be able to share our worries and concerns about the our children and this involve intersubjectivity.

Understanding Distance Education Learners

Tonight, Iza and I are going to present the above topic. As outlined in the course syllabus, the aim for having us presenting is to let us deeply engaged with the content. I think Dr Tee has done a good job in designing the instructions which allow the learners to go through the process of Bloom's taxonomy and Anderson & Krathwohl's below.


I found that we will actually apply the highest stage of both taxonomies which is 'teach' since that is what we are going to do tonight. To be able to teach a content, we need to master and digest the different angles available with regard to the subject matter. After all we tend to remember 95% of what we teach to others. I do hope what we have planned for tonight will become a fruitful discussion.

Frankly speaking, Iza and I are a little bit skeptical about the presentation tonight. We are afraid if our delivery is not up to everyone's expectation.

ID Models

Different types of ID Models

1. ASSURE

Analyze learners
State objectives
Select instructional methods, media, and materials
Utilize media and materials
Require learner participation
Evaluate and revise

2. Kemp Design Model

3. Dick and Carey Model

4. Smith & Ragan

A few useful references on ID Models:

ID Models - Research Paper

ID Models _Powerpoint slides

There are a lot more ID models to choose from but the bottom line is we have to know why we choose to use a certain model.