Activity 14: Conceptualise

Case studies

I reviewed:-

(1) A digital storytelling project in a multicultural education class for pre-service teachers (Kobayashi, 2012)

(2) Life Planning by Digital Storytelling in a Primary School in Rural Tanzania (Duveskog et al, 2010)

Patterns and principles I derived

(1) Avatar – enable learners to create avatars / wear masks if they are shy about expressing themselves of talking about sensitive issues.

(2) Glass Half Full – focus on aspirations / strengths / hopes/ dreams  - don’t focus on problems directly (this can be deenergising and disempowering)- focus on them indirectly. In the immigrant/refugee context, focus on what they want to achieve in their new lives, and how they can overcome any issues that are blocking them.

(3) Phasing and scaffolding – the need to structure the course to be highly scaffolded initially, and becoming much freer over time. As scaffolding reduces, empowerment increases. We move from a behaviourist pedagogy to a constructivist one.

Links with my team mates’ work

I reviewed

(1) ‘Reusing Peer Artefacts’ (design pattern – David);

(2) ‘The Immigrant and Refugee Voice’ (design pattern – John);

(3) ‘Empowerment’ (theoretical framework – David);

(4) ‘Learning Design’ (theoretical framework – David);

(5) ‘Participation’ (theoretical framework – David)

(6) ‘Design Pattern 1 DMcD’ (design pattern, David McDade)

(7) ‘Case study on digital storytelling for participation’ (case study – John)

(8) ‘Project-based community language learning in Canada’ (case study – John)

Links identified – and how they will affect our solution

Learning outcomes	·       We need to be clear on these in advance (7) ·       1 outcome could be ‘learning basic ICT skills’ (7) ·       I think one outcome could be to ‘create awareness of inherent power relationships’ – I read this phrase in David’s note on ‘empowerment’ (3) and I found it quite inspiring. By making ourselves aware of power relationships we may be unaware of, we can make better choices. E.g. in a teaching context, teachers may underestimate the influence that their subconscious biases have on their learners – assuming that boys want to discuss sports and girls want to discuss feelings for example, can unwittingly reinforce gender biases.
Teachers need to have sufficient digital literacy	·       as part of the course, and early on, we’ll need the teachers to be trained in some of the digital skills required for digital storytelling (7)
Coping with low-tech environments	·       We can incorporate oral and written storytelling activities too (8)
We need to decide how the stories will be shared once they have been created	·       Some of the topics will be very sensitive and personal (‘Avatar’ may help here) ·       A lot of learning opportunities will come from reflection on the stories – sharing them after they have been created (1), (3) ·       Note that publishing the stories may be very motivating to the learners ·       Note that younger learners may also be motivated if they can express some of their parents’ stories – involving parents in some way could be motivating (8) ·       There is a conflicting force at work here that we need to be careful of – we don’t want people to modify their stories to fit the expected audience. This will remove some of the benefit of truly empowering them and letting them express themselves. E.g. if a young learner knows that her story will be watched by her teacher or parents, she may repress a lot of the things she needs to say.
Assessment – how?	·       John commented in one case study there were no measures of success (7) ·       David (Appel) wrote of the possibility of using Peer Reviews / Reflective Dialogues (3) ·       David (McD) wrote of the possibility of using ePortfolios (6) ·       Also to focus on process, not just focus on the end-product when assessing (6)
Flexibility required – flexible approach to pedagogy, flexible approach to course design Broadly, we can design the course to start in a structured, directive way, and then relax and empower the learners over time. There will need to be a lot of initial scaffolding, and carefully phased activities (phased from directive to empowering, prescriptive to participative) – links to my ‘phasing and scaffolding’ principle.	·       We can design to accommodate different pedagogical backgrounds (3) ·       Some people will come from a rote learning/behaviourist background; some will be more comfortable with a constructivist approach ·       We can start with a highly directive, behaviourist approach, and gradually empower learners over time to take more control over their own learning ·       This links with David’s principle of ‘Empowerment’ – learners will be increasingly empowered ·       It also links with David’s principle of ‘participation’ – learners will be increasingly able to participate, and will therefore be increasingly engaging in constructivist learning. ·       It also links with John’s ideas that we can use known narratives as initial scaffolds (8) ·       Also links to John’s ideas in ‘the Immigrant and Refugee Voice’ (1) that we can use immigrants’ rich language resources as initial inputs – let them tell stories/sing songs in their own language first, to boost confidence. ·       Teachers may be surprised to see the different energy their learners have when they can use their own language and display some of their cultural folklore. ·       This in turn links with David’s principle of ‘reusing peer artefacts’ (1) – we can use stories produced by earlier cohorts, including some re-tellings of traditional folk stories, as initial scaffolding on our course. ·       It also helps address a common theme of learners needing to learn key digital literacies first (7) – they can be given the tools in a behaviourist way, and then as they get more comfortable with them the activities can become more constructivist in nature. ·       There is a link to the idea in ‘the Immigrant and Refugee Voice’ (2) that immigrants’ problems are universal – so we could structure the course to have some of these universal problems shared first and then narrow down to local issues. This would provide a larger pool of initial resources to draw on (immigrant stories from around the world), and also be reassuring to local refugees and immigrants, who would realise that other people all around the world share some of the same problems.
Don’t be dependent on technology	·       Patrick’s concerns about low-tech environments link up with John’s view that we can incorporate written and oral activities (8); this also links with David’s empowerment principle – he doesn’t think the learners should be dependent on the technology.
Ways to boost learner motivation	·       Let them know from the start that the stories they produce will be published and shared (subject to ensuring sufficient confidentiality) ·       With younger learners, involve parents in the sharing of the outputs
Avoiding negativity	·       Have a ‘glass half full’ approach – focus on aspirations and dreams, and elicit problems and dilemmas indirectly – how are the learners blocked from achieving their dreams, and what can they do about it. ·       My ‘glass half full’ principle links with David’s ‘empowerment’ framework. ·       Also links with my ‘avatar’ principle – that we consider allowing learners to use avatars so that they can de-link themselves directly from sensitive/personal isssues, and make meaning of them in a more objective way.

Learning Journal Week 15

[Activity 10: Reflection]

I’ve enjoyed this week. It was great to connect with the rest of the people in my group online at the end of week 14, albeit I could only hear voices, and at the end of week 15 we managed to connect by video as well (although one of the team was away so I have yet to properly connect with him).

My contribution to the group effort of articulating the context

Creating the personas was enjoyable – the simple act of attaching photos of faces gave them a whole depth of character in my mind that made describing them quite straightforward.

It was also great to comment on my team-mates personas – David’s were very interesting because they provided a whole immigrant perspective that was new to me and I found broadening. Asanka’s were so thoroughly researched that for a while I wondered whether she lived here in Malaysia as well.

We did the ‘factors and concerns’ document as a shared wiki – I think that went fine. Asanka did the first draft which was a very helpful foundation to add to. She focused specifically on her personas, but I found it easy to broaden these to categories of ‘learners’ and ‘teachers’, as we had all created one persona in each of these categories.

I found the ‘distilling the forces’ document harder to apply my mind to, I liked the visuals of the forces map more, and I enjoyed examining Asanka’s version and then printing off all the different documents and trying to sketch out by hand a ‘consolidating thought map’ which, for me at least, helped to make clear the different groups of people impacting on our context. We discussed this on our call on Tuesday and I think the others liked this too.

David did a very helpful first draft of ‘framing the challenge’ – I tried to draw out specifically the concerns we are trying to address and the tensions we are trying to resolve between different forces.

What have I found challenging in this process?

I very much like the fact that we are experimenting with a fairly freeform way of organizing ourselves, but it is also challenging as I am so used to organizational project management norms. I do want us to try ditching these norms, as I want to use H817 to experiment with new approaches.

That said, our weekly calls work fine when 2 people are on, work OK when 3 people are on, but start to work less well when all 4 of us are on, as we either talk over each other or we all stay silent for protracted periods out of courtesy – maybe when all of us are on a call we should think of having a rotating chairperson just to help make it run a bit more smoothly – especially if any of us are time-constrained and need to limit the call to less than an hour.

What have I learned from this process?

I can sense that a repeating theme of the experience of this block will just be the continuous reinforcement of the fact that more heads are better than one when you are creating new things or solving problems.

I ‘know’ this already, but I’m still surprised at just how refreshing, enriching and broadening it is to combine the views of many people – which suggests to me that in practise in my day-to-day work I may not solicit other people’s views and contributions as much as I should.

Learning Journal Week 14

Team Leader or No Team Leader?

I guess the main focus this week has been to consider the team dynamics around our project work for Module 3.

I felt disheartened by the section on analyzing the ‘Big 5’ of teamwork – particularly the ‘Team Leader’ role, and I’m surprised at how the notes are so predicated on the structure of teams with a Team Leader. It was encouraging to read many of the other people in the tutor group echoing the same sentiment – I think we were all pleasantly surprised by our spontaneous self-organisation in Activity 15, and the MOOC has reinforced the sense that H817 would be about new ways of utilizing Web 2.0 for learning and collaboration.

I know the principles of the Big 5 are tried and tested in traditional company structures, I just expected that H817 would try to let us discover new ways of doing things rather than advocating a seemingly old team model. Maybe there are good reasons the module designers have done this, and we will discover them along the way.

Meantime, we have the leeway to try different approaches, there’s just a rather disquieting sense that, by trying to work in a flatter structure, we are taking a risk.

I think it may also be worth having the conversation in a bit more detail about quite why so many of us feel uncomfortable having a Team Leader. In my case, it is simply that when I’m in creative/learning mode and feel able to experiment, I don’t wish to be in a team context that is in any way hierarchical, I want it to feel completely collegiate, a partnership in exploration.

That doesn’t mean the team doesn’t need to be highly-coordinated and well-organised, just that I would have thought a partnership can have mechanisms for being highly-coordinated and well-organised without needing to create hierarchical structures.

Anyway, we’ll experiment and see what happens. Either way, we’ll learn.

Choice of Project

We had to choose an initial shared vision of a project to work on – I think our team is quite well-aligned on this, and the idea of doing something around immigrants/refugees and digital storytelling feels like it could be very interesting and enjoyable, and also highly authentic.

Activity 2: Reflect on the ‘big 5’

The 'Big 5' of Teamwork are:-

• team leadership
• mutual performance monitoring
• back-up-behaviour
• adaptability
• team orientation

Supported by 3 coordinating mechanisms:-

• shared mental models
• mutual trust
• closed-loop communication

 Examples from my experience

Team Leadership – I’m surprised to see Kay et al define this as the ability to ‘direct’ and ‘coordinate’ – these are very different things. ‘Directing’ means ‘telling someone else what to do’ – that is needed in some situations (e.g. “call a doctor!”). But it is not needed in many situations – and not normally in professional, creative environments. 'Coordination' is a different skill, and can be a role performed by anyone in a team without labelling them as 'leader'.

For example, in an architecture practice, the ethos is one of partnership and flat management structures. For sure, there is still often some sort of hierarchy, but the 'shared mental model' is that everyone is a professional, and if someone tries to 'direct' others without their buy-in, cooperation is withdrawn from that person (herding cats). 

‘Coordination’ is valuable – and depending on the context may be assigned to one person (who can be a ‘junior’ or a ‘senior’) – but in some contexts there can be spontaneous coordination that is shared amongst the team. This is typically where the external situation makes the team goal obvious – neighbours fighting a fire will display a lot of spontaneous coordination, with the coordinating role naturally shifting from one person to another as required by the external situation. Our tutor group displayed a lot of spontaneous coordination in Activity 15, as others have commented.

How would I implement these guidelines in my group?

• I think the key thing is to have a lot of regular communication/updates and clarity around agreed deadlines and agreement on how tasks will be shared amongst the team members. 
• Is it necessary to have anyone to 'direct' others - in small groups of 4 can't we just discuss and agree amongst ourselves who will do what? 
• And can't we all be responsible for updating each other and offering assistance where needed? (Or is the task ahead so complex that we will only be able to focus on one bit of it - in which case more of a 'big 5' approach may be needed?).
• I'm sure we'll need someone in a 'coordinating' role (although that coordinating role needn't be attached to the same person for 7 weeks, it could rotate) - I would drop the title 'team leader' as for me this is a bit loaded with an ethos of hierarchy/command-and-control, which feels wrong for a creative, voluntary endeavour.
• For sure, for things like synchronous calls it helps if someone 'owns' arranging the call, thinking in advance of the points to be covered on the call, and chairing the call - but that responsibility can also be shared if we want to - rotating a different person each week.