If you have heard the backstory of the Kahn Academy, Kahn discovered the same thing Bloom noted several decades ago. The best instruction is provided by a tutor. Mastery learning originated about the same time (Bloom’s Group Based Mastery, Keller’s Personalized System of instruction). It took this long for technology to offer a way to approximate this at scale.
I am spending the day watching the ND Governor’s Technology Innovation Summit. One of the guests was Scott McNealy. McNealy (sun Microsystems) is one of the wealthy tech entrepreneurs turning his attention to education. One of his first ventures was the OER sharing site Curriki. His new venture is a content creation tool Curriki Studio [product access]. This is a free service. McNealy promotes the new design environment as promoting more immersive experiences and intends the content developed to be deliverable within any standard LMS.
I can’t say I support McNealy’s politics which were on display during this presentation, but the tool he offers at no cost will likely appeal to educators wanting to create their own learning resources.
Perusall offers an online environment (hosted by the company or through an LMS) that allows the annotation of pdfs and Word documents. The pdfs are either content the instructor has the rights to use in a course or digital textbooks from companies that sell their content through Perusall. By environment I mean that the service allows an instructor to create courses, assign readings to these courses, sign up students, and check on student use of the assigned readings linked to a grade book if desired.
I place Perusall in a unique category of the multiple layering services I have reviewed because of its collaboration with multiple textbook companies. The opportunity to assign a traditional textbook for layering activities is unique as far as I know. The examples I was able to locate indicate a focus on higher education. I also saw that some instructors had assigned journal articles with the copyright warning you see when you get the library to print a journal article for you. I am unclear on the copyright issues associated with the distribution of journal articles as pdfs which I always assumed was different from having each student using their own library account to download journal pdfs. Again, the opportunity to read a pdf and few the annotations of others requires a common source not available when each student works on their own pdf.
The environment provided by Perusall is similar to that of InsertLearning. Perusall has optimized the way the annotation tool works to encourage a more social form of reading. As a reader, you will see highlighted text (one color for the instructor and a different color for other students). Clicking on an existing colored segment will reveal questions or comments. As a reader looking at existing highlights, you can indicate that you also have a similar question. The count of such questions offers instructors a way to identify topics that could be the focus of a class discussion.
To create a question or comment, the reader highlights text and then enters text (also links to web sites, documents). The system has a unique capacity to determine if readers have satisfied requirements for an assigned number of comments with some type of AI determining the quality of the comment. These can result in entries in a grade book if desired.
Perusall is presently free. It is unclear if this is the long-term business model if Perusall gets a cut when instructors assign a digital book available from several publishers through the system. Setting up a course, adding personal pdfs or Word documents as reading content, and using the system is free at this time.
Additional information for educators from Perusall.
Kathy Schrock mentioned an interesting Google docs hack she (and I) had not encountered previously. She had discovered that you can open a Google doc, turn on transcription, and then play audio that will be transcribed to the doc. I first tried this with my iPad and could not get it to work. I was trying to play one of my YouTube tutorials and as soon as I clicked the mike button for the transcription the iPad would stop the existing audio. The transcription was working fine because it recorded my comments on the failed technique.
I tried the idea on a computer and found that it worked remarkably well. It does not punctuate, but the transcription is reasonably accurate even eliminating imperfections in my speech as such repeated words and UHs. Try it. The final product will require some editing, but it is at least acceptable.
[best guess to what I actually said which also would not be the quality of carefully written text] … to explain the basics of using an online service InsertLearning. InsertLearning is intended to be used by educators and students as a way to I would describe as add elements to online web pages and so the idea as used by an educator would be to prepare online resources as learning an activity for students. So you start with something that is already there. What I am using as a demonstration here is simply a blog post that I had. You add elements to this online existing resource ….
This EdSurge article attempted to make a distinction to help educators consider pandemic education. The article intended to draw some distinctions but was confusing because it began by describing our recent experiences with remote learning which the post described as a quick, low fidelity, mitigation strategy. I take this description to be a luke-warm evaluation.
However, the author goes on to describe online courses as typically instructionally designed, applied, asynchronous, and self-paced. Just when I expected the online option as the winner, the author then notes that they have a high rate of non-completers and lack engagement.
How about a combination? The author concludes with this summary:
“Will combining the best of remote learning and online learning rival a quality classroom experience? Magic 8-Ball says no. But it will be a lot better than virtually all of the learning currently conducted over the internet.”
My reaction – first, I think it is a conceptual challenge when practices are labeled using common terms. We tend to bring too many pre-existing associations that make an attempt to use such terms in a formal way confusing. I am still trying to decide if distance learning and correspondence study have been reborn as online and remote.
It seems logical to use aspects of both asynchronous and synchronous tactics when helping students learn remotely. I agree with the author’s assessment of not being required to take either the path of online or remote. This is hardly a novel approach as most classrooms combine teacher-dominated and independent learning.
What seems different about the way the EdSurge piece defines asynchronous online learning involves self-pacing. I take this to mean content has been prepackaged and sequenced with built-in assessments that determine when students advance. I tend to think of such approaches as some variant of mastery learning. Within such a system, students within a class would be at different points within the sequence of instruction and this would certainly be different from traditional teacher-paced approaches. If this is unfamiliar consider how it would work if students were to work independently using the math content of the Kahn Academy. I tend to think of the mix of student-paced and teacher-paced approaches within the same classroom as a flexed model. Again, flex learning as a variant of blended learning, and these descriptions drift into the weeds of vague terms that educators used in different ways.
If the EdSurge writer is encouraging educators to consider such a model, I would be in agreement. I am still predicting educators will be working with students in small groups face to face and online as a consequence of COVID this Fall. The flex model combining distance and remote learning seemed suited to this situation.
From time to time, it is important for educators to review the expectations for honoring copyright. Educators and their students use content prepared by others as part of the work of education and copyright expectations apply to this material.
Here is a great copyright info page from EduBlogger. The front page identifies multiple issues and refers the reader to content associated with each issue.
When I cover copyright with my students I always make sure they are aware of the TEACH act. To my knowledge, this is the most recent legislation addressing copyright and this act specifically concerns the use of content online. The intent of the act is to allow educators to serve online students with the same capabilities they have available in the classroom. I use the act to request that educators consider what might be a distinction between publishing and the intended use of content in an online setting. The key in the TEACH act is the expectation that educators offer content in a protected environment allowing access to students in classes presently served by that educator. If content is provided online to a more general audience, the content is being published and more restrictive expectations apply.
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