Computers, creativity and learning

Windows onto Learning

Over the last few months I have been collecting pictures of classrooms which I like. Let's call them learning spaces, as is the fashion. What I mean is the kind of place where students and lecturers feel comfortable, inspired, interested, playful, adventurous and studious. Somewhere which makes you want to work with other people. Somewhere which is humming with activity, but helps you focus.

My colleague Rob and I have been discussing how we can make the classroons in our department more suited to the kind of teaching we want to do in our nice new degree. In fact, it extends to the whole environment in the department, including the students' area which is known inexplicably as "the crush area". We are drawing up plans for it, which have the support of the right people in the dept (possibly only because they don't think it will ever happen, and possibly because it's hard to argue with the idea that students should be happy and comfortable in their work). At the moment we're looking for corporate sponsorship. I don't know whether it will ever happen, but it most certainly won't happen unless we give it a try.

Think of all the learning which goes on in a university department. Think of all the work that students do which remains silently in their note pads or in their computer screens. Think of all the classes which happen behind the closed doors of a lecture theatre or a tutorial room. I don't know what cool stuff my colleagues teach, and one class of students never finds out what another class is working on. We have great student projects happening in groups or individually but they almost never get shared. Why is it that all our VLE  material is locked away where only people signed up for a module can see it? Are we embarrassed about all this teaching or learning we do? The idea of "Windows onto Learning" is to bring this learning to light, to share it and celebrate it in public spaces throughout the department.

It's the crossover of several teaching ideas I like:

• The Gold Star teaching pattern.When I was in primary school we had a "Good Work" board. It was outside the gym hall, and teachers from the whole school would choose good stories, or drawings or projects by their pupils to be hung up there for a month. And you would get a sticker on your work. I got a bumble bee sticker which said "Excellent" once. Clearly this has some effect, if I recall it 25 years later. :-) With "Windows onto Learning", we'd be showing good student work dynamically and constantly on big screens e.g in the crush area or staff room. I'd keep the aspect of the primary school good work board where it wasn't the quality of the final product which mattered. It was the fact that the work represented a big learning step for that particular pupil. But I would change the rate material changed at. The screen might update every 10 minutes, for example, showing a selection of different work in a collage.
• Learner generated content/contexts. I believe students learn a lot from making things: arguments, presentations, podcasts, paper prototypes and programs. I also believe they should be consulted about issues which affect them, and should have ownership of their space. So something thing I would change about the good work board idea is that it wouldn't only be staff who put material on it. Students could choose to showcase their own work, or their friends' work if they thought it was good. They build something to help them learn, then they share it with others.
• Vicarious learning. This goes back to a project John Lee did a HCRC about what students learn from reading questions and answers from previous students. The "Windows onto Learning" could also show questions and answers texted by students, or snapshots of the VLE discussion forums (which had been tagged as public, as some students may prefer to learn in private).
• Ambient interfaces. This isn't teaching related, but it refers to technology which has blended into the background, giving users subtle cues about the state of the world. My favourite example is the Philips shaving mirror which has a mini display which tells you weather or news as you brush your teeth, or the ambient umbrella which lights up if rain is forecast. "Windows onto Learning" would be a way to show the activity of the department as it constantly changes. Of course, if you got the software right, it could be on every screen saver in the labs, and accessible on a web page for students to see on their phone. Hell, you could even go all new fangled and have it generate Twitter feeds.
• Data visualisation/ aggregation (the geeky bit). What on earth would it look like? How would you do this? You'd need to have some software which would prepare a series of views onto a store of learning bits and bobs, and then display them in a fascinating way. When students (or staff) uploaded their work onto the VLE, they could choose to tag it as displayable. We're going to encourage students to archive their group work (e.g diagrams, photos of whiteboards, paper prototypes) and upload it during classes by having scanners, graphics tablets and cameras they can use. There would also be a facility for uploading "good work" and questions or answers, funny b;og entries, and social (but decent :-) ) photos of students.  Now for the fun bit: ideally you'd be wading in content, so you want to find interesting ways to showcase it. Have a look at Digg Labs (http://labs.digg.com/swarm/), Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/color.php) or wefeelfine (http://wefeelfine.org/) to see the kind of thing I mean.

There are other aspects to the idea, particularly in the physical design of classrooms, but this is bit I am currently thinking about. The technology is all possible, if expensive. In fact, the last bullet point there about data visualisation I will turn into a fourth year project.

What now? Rob and I will keep plugging away at this. We need to consult the students when they come back and keep talking to colleagues. If you have any idea to add, please comment on this post! If you're one of our students, drop me an email or come and see me to chat, particularly if you fancy doing some programming. If you are a corporate sponsor, please give me a call. :-)

Bloopers reel as as assessment method?

Yesterday, while waiting for the principle to award the prizes, the programming competition winners showed us a "bloopers reel" of mistakes they made while they were working on their project. THis works for graphics programming because if you get some maths wrong you often get very weird looking objects drawn on screen as a result. I once got a lot of teasing by inadvertently creating a phallic tea pot for an assignment. I thought the pupils' presentation of these screen shots of mistakes was really interesting because it prompted them to say things like "Oh yes, and this problem was because we didn't realise that X and then we learned that Y. We worked out how to fix it by Z." It's a good way to understand the students' thought processes.  It makes them tell you what they found surprising, and often being surprised leads to learning. Your expectations aren't met (cognitive dissonance) and you wonder why, thus prompting you to find out more. My wise teacher friend Cathrin used to get her primary class together every day to talk about the mistakes they made that day. That way the learners know that everyone makes mistakes and they learn not to worry about it so much.I might get my first years to submit a bloopers reel for formative assessment. 

Student blogs - a window into the learner's mind

After being temporarily hijacked by other things I am once again wading through my students' SL portfolios. My students wrote blogs to document their learning in SL and I am amazed at how useful these are for getting a feel for what they've learned. It gives me some insight into which classes worked for them, or the problem solving strategies they use. What I particularly like is how it reminds you what it was like to be a student, what they find motivating or worrying.

As an example, have a look at http://learningsecondlife.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html which was written by a 4th year IT student.  I was particularly interested in his comments about scripting. Often our IT students lack confidence in programming (aka scripting) and quite a few blogs have mentioned this. Here the student discusses what motivates him to learn scripting skills:

"When I first started to learn about second life I really do not have any idea on how to create anything with scripts, I do have a very limited knowledge how to code anything even I am an IT student. Since I have try to build up our bit of the island, I have started to realise ideas is the main thing that motivate me to learn scripting properly. Once I've got an idea, I start building it, and search for the appropriate built-in function to achieve my goals". Earlier he wrote: ">I actually find that making things to interact with avatars had motivated me to code something. I have found that I have understand how to code a lot better than writing programs to say 'Hello world'". In a similar vein, another student who had been experimenting with scripting in his own time on projects which appealed to him wrote: "I got a big confidence boost after the scripting lab today, in which I was able to complete almost all of the tasks with relative ease".

Hopefully we will have similar results when we use SL with our first years. Often they are horrified by their introduction to programming.

EDIT: And a nice example of reflection about learning in general from a competent programmer:

"The main aspect I have gained from this experience has been developing a generic approach to learning. When first presented with the idea of having to learn about SL, I was apprehensive and put-off by the idea. By identifying what it was I required from SL, learning what I needed to know, and applying this learning, I have been able to create a portfolio which I am pleased with. This approach does not merely apply to learning SL. Such an approach could easily apply to the learning of any programming language, new technology or likewise. Learning and using SL, has therefore taught me a great deal about my own personal approach to learning which I can use to good effect in future tasks. Whether I actually log onto SL again is debatable!!"

This is actually what I was hoping the students would learn, and it does address the "employers don't need people who can program in Linden script" argument.

Creativity, groupwork and learning in Second Life

Flexible Learning pal and I did a talk for our university teaching conference just at the end of term there. It is the most colourful set of slides I have ever used - she makes much nicer slides than me. :-) There is some very interesting stuff in there about group work in SL based on Nicole's (aka FL pal) analysis of the students' learning logs. Peruse it at your leisure, and comments are welcome: Download HWTeachingConf2008Final.ppt  We were going to record the talk, but now I think about it I don't believe anyone pressed "record" on the camera. Ho-hum. We are now working on a paper based on the whole SL safari thing.

Student comic

This is one of my student (Tom)'s comic about SL. Rather nicely done, don't you think? He told me he was proud of it. I like it when students are proud of things. I don't recall being proud of my computer science projects very often when I was at uni.

Never work with computers, dogs or children

It's that stage of the party when I am blearily trying to tidy up empty bottles and take off my mascara. I am exhausted, but mostly because of the ordeal of the real life Oscars ceremony. I spent a lot of last week setting up a laptop suite in a teaching room with a projector so people could be in SL while attending the f2f lab. Naturally the network set up went wrong just at the last moment and so we were 20 minutes late arriving in SL. I tell you, no matter how long you spend checking all the details beforehand, computers will still go wrong. And if there are four professors including your head of school and head of department there, it just tempts fate. Who knows what these great and good professors made of the occasion? Maybe they are at this moment wondering if there is a discrete way to get rid of me.. ;-) Mind you, the HoD said he thought the money for the island was well spent and nobly said he would look into buying projectors for the labs, due to my waspish comment at the start of the class. 

There is a fun effect which happens when students are logged into SL while in the teaching room watching me in SL on the projector. Their avatars can come and join you so you see them on the big screen. So they can join in dancing, or fly past waving, or whatever. Some scope for comedy there, I am sure.

At any rate, the students gave their demos to much applause (and gold stars). Behrooz formally snipped the red ribbon on his pyramid and opened it to the world.  Mira won the Oscar for best undergraduate work for his games arcade games, and Hani won the Msc Oscar for his mad guitar dance floor. The tutors and I and one of the girls wore ball dresses in honour of the occasion. Looks particularly elegant when flying on a dragonfly, let me assure you.

Update: Flexible learning pal's account of the party is far more eloquent!

The Heriot-Watt island is now open

I have now opened the island ready for the party: http://slurl.com/secondlife/HeriotWatt%20University/94/139/28/

The party is from 11.15am - 1.15pm Uk time today. Please come along! The students have done excellent work. You will not believe what they have come up with! It will liven up your Monday morning. I may well close the island again after the party until Friday so the students can finished their portfolio work without distractions.

Clickers aka Personal Response Systems

Yesterday I went to a talk about personal response systems by  Tom Haffie. Also known as clickers, these are the remote control things that students can use to vote for multiple choice questions during lectures. According the Mike Sharples, these are the most successful example of mobile learning and have been around for 40 years. That, is of course, why my institution is reluctantly getting around to buying them now. My department just got a nice big box of them and I am going to make it my mission to make sure they don't languish in a dark cupboard for ever after.

Tom Haffie is an excellent speaker, and I agreed with a lot of what he said. He is used to teaching classes of 800 - 800 - first year biology students. That makes me feel quite faint. His main point was that the clicker technology facilitates instant, regular formative feedback to help the students direct their learning. His students get 5% of their grade for taking part in classes using their clicker. Each student buys a clicker at the start of the year and it is registered to them. This enables the lecturer to give them summary feedback on their correct responses every couple of weeks as well as the instant feedback in the classes themselves. However, the 5% for taking part is not related to whether their answers are correct or not. It is merely for engaging 80% of the time. According to Haffie, student revolt if you try to use the technology to police attendance, which I think it fair enough.

The pedagogy is based around bringing misconceptions to light as the first step in addressing them, an approach which is used in physics. It is based around asking mcq questions embedded in a diet of short lecture snippets, peer discussion and group discussion. Here are some interesting points from some of his research:

• Feedback doesn't have to be time intensive and one to one. Good news, that, given our student association campaign for better feedback.
• Students say it encourages them to attend, and most of them try to get the anwers right rather than clicking  randomly. (It bugs me when academics seriously suspect the students of random click sabotage.They are, after all, there to learn.)
• 70% of students feel it facilitated their learning.
• 85% reported having to increase their range of study strategies. Now that is an interesting consequence. He said the students needed some guidance in effective ways of studying which go beyond memorisation, and also in help seeking behaviour. This is exactly the kind of thing we need to be teaching first year students anyway. His point was that clickers promote metacognition. Students have to think about their own learning. They are confronted by their misconceptions regularly, and this encourages them to learn regularly.

He ended up by saying that students just plain like clickers. With clickers you get a class full of students in the palm of your hand. And so, he said, it's then up to you not to drop 'em.

Groovin' under the sea

Behold me and Flexible Learning Pal dancing in the under water disco which one of my students (Sally Jane) made. If you're wondering why we both have green balloons, it's because we were both so bad at another student's (Andrew) coconut shy that we got consolation prizes. Yes, this is what thirty-something academics do after work on Fridays.

Or at least it is when there is a Second Life Oscars ceremony coming up. We gotta judge it, doncha know?

Second Life Party invitation

We're having a Second Life party and Oscars ceremony for my Multimedia students on Monday 10th March (11.15am - 12.15 (4th years) then 12.15 - 1.15pm (MSc students)). While visitors come to the island in SL, the students and face to face visitors will be hearing presentations from the students and prizes for the best work will be awarded in Real Life.

Come to the island during the above time slots (UK time) to see what the students have been working on and visit each group's area. Students will be logged on to show you around and give you party hats. :-) Please note that the island is not open to visitors until 10th March to give the students a chance to finish off their works in progress.

Feel free to invite other SL educators or students who might like to come.

Hope to see you in SL!