Drawing and using footprints

Re: Drawing and using footprints

by Scott Johnson -
Number of replies: 4

Jenny and Lisa,

As a participant in Lisa's POTcert 12 and 13 courses I plan to do a "student" footprint. (My actual role was somewhat different). The course is free and open to anyone and focuses on introducing instructors to online teaching. This includes selection of online resources for presentation and activities for try-out and consideration. There are a lot of this type of course out there, I've investigated quite a few and found POTcert to be one of the best.

Two factors making the course successful. First, the group is supportive and the second, participants are allowed to be themselves. Agency is very strong in this course and it isn’t by chance that this happens. It might be that people self-select rather than having the course pushed at them but I felt everyone participating genuinely wanted to increase skills and teaching presence. That might sound obvious? Very many teachers I’ve encountered have their self-identification as educators pounded out of them by miss-handled training forced on them without explanation in a manner disrespectful of their identity as teachers.

Where I used to work, faculty meet on their own and avoid speaking freely at formal PD sessions. Their autonomy has been trashed by admin and government assuming the throne of director of necessary skills without knowing a thing about the profession. This lack of trust is to be found nowhere in the POTcert course and the progress made by participants I think is directly related to the insistence on autonomy in Lisa’s design.

And that autonomy leads to participants to remain intact in themselves. Many of these courses seem to require a person to re-invent discard pieces of themselves as if everything is done better and faster by software rather than by the accomplished, thoughtful people they are. In POTcert confidence and capability remain intact. This environment affords curiosity and the natural experimentation people learning new skills need. Especially if it is also expected they will be the ones selecting which technology works best for their purposes.

My question to Lisa: Does she feels confined by the prescriptive aspects she has to follow? If so, is there a way to soften required portions?

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Drawing and using footprints

by Jenny Mackness -

That's a great question Scott. As you know I am also familiar with Lisa's course and have had a few exchanges with her about it in the past. I don't want to say any more at the moment as I'm wondering what effect that might have on how you draw your own footprint. In fact I wonder whether having already seen Lisa's footprint of her design intentions, that might have an influence on your footprint.

It'll be very interesting to see your footprint and compare it with Lisa's when you have it ready. Let us know if you need any help.

Jenny

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Drawing and using footprints

by Roy Williams -

Scott, Lisa, devils advocate question: 

If you (Scott) can describe the course and its (many points of) value so elegantly, who needs footprints? 

On the other hand if you do create a footprint (each: Scott and Lisa?) and then share them with each other (and we would love to see them too, but only if you are comfortable with that) - how would that be different to just describing the course in text?  Would it prompt different conversations, and if so, how might they turn out? 

It's and empirical question, and I would love you (both), and Jenny and me, and the forum participants to be able to explore it together ... 

Scott, you do highlight what for me are the crucial points of emergent design and learning: identity, agency, presence, trust, and people 'remaining intact in themselves' (what a wonderful way to put it).  

We have recently revisited some of the Meyer and Land stuff on transformation and thresholds, and I was taken by their description of loss ('discarding a piece of themselves') and even mourning (if I remember correctly). But achieving growth of agency, identity, presence, within trust is would make for an infinitely more elegant design, and makes me question the underlying assumptions that I now see (?) in Meyer and Land's conception of learning - with 'loss' as a necessary condition for learning - unless I have that quite wrong. 

Lots of food for thought.  Thank you. 

 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Drawing and using footprints

by Scott Johnson -

Hi Roy and Jenny,

Though I know what I liked about the POTcert course it interests me to ask questions prepared by others to discover things I might have missed. Having observed first hand the failure of well-intentioned efforts to help instructors through the transition process I'm curious to know why Lisa's system works. It may be the footprint won't help but it interests me as a way to analyse in a manner that seems more genuine.

Not familiar with Meyer and Land though I've been through some significant transitions and wonder what they mean by 'loss'. To me the idea of being lost is a devastating unraveling of the self, not an affordance for learning at all. Will look at some of their things. Will do the footprint tomorrow.

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Drawing and using footprints

by Roy Williams -

Scott, the Meyer Land & Baillee (2010) is an updated on previous work on threshold concepts: 

They describe learning firstly as substantial epistemic shifts, or shifts in conceptual content, clustered around their notion of key threshold concepts, which are transformative, integrative, irreversible, and troublesome. They emphasise the disruption that this entails, when common sense frameworks are overturned (transformative); hidden relations are exposed (integrative): irreversibly - you may reject the learning, but you can never erase the learning experience: previous ideas – and learning - may have to be discarded (in a process of decay and even grieving), all of which is, not surprisingly, often troublesome

(from an article - still WIP -  on emegence and transformation) 

You have reminded me again - thank you - that "unravelling of the self is not an affordance for learning at all".

Learning can be a fragile business, indeed.  The market place approach to xMOOCs just doesnt do it for me for precisely that reason.