Serendipity35

I was very pleased to see a post titled "Pedagogy – You Keep Using That Word… I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means" by Rolin Moe on his blog All MOOCs, All The Time. He bounced his response off Bryan Alexander's post about a MOOC course called CFHE12 (more later). Although Moe is focused on MOOCs, his question is one I often ask myself when dealing with the use of technology in classrooms.

People toss off the word "pedagogy" easily. I hear vendors use it when pitching products as a way to connect a tool with good teaching practices. I hear educators use it to mean that they have changed their classroom practice.

Using PowerPoint slides instead of writing on the board does not change your pedagogy. It probably doesn't change learning either- and don't tell me it addresses visual learners because those bullet points have some clip art next to them.

As Moe points out, "learning theory" is not pedagogy. Neither of those are topics that many teachers in higher education have ever studied, and that most have probably not even considered formally.

Learning theory is the study of the way people learn. They are conceptual frameworks to describe how information is taken in, processed, and retained. The big three are behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, but there are others like connectivism that come up in MOOC discussions.

Pedagogy is the blend of art and science and the way we teach.

CFHE12 (Current/Future State of Higher Education) is a course that started last week. It is an open online course to "evaluate the change pressures that face universities, and help universities prepare for the future state of higher education." That's a big mission. Good luck kids.

Some MOOC history: cMOOCs versus xMOOCs. Udadicty/Coursera/edX courses are referred to as examples of xMOOCs.  xMOOCs are based on the teaching model (instructivist) where the teacher teaches, and the students learn by consuming the knowledge from the course, and by doing activities such as watching/hearing a lecture. cMOOCs are based on connectivism.

It's not that no one in education is considering the possible pedagogical and learning theory possibilities and implications of MOOCs. And it's not that there aren't clear connections to online learning that has been researched for decades.

Moe's post references how Coursera courses are self-described as being "designed based on sound pedagogical foundations, to help you master new concepts quickly and effectively" but that those pedagogical foundations are not explained.

In most of these xMOOCs you watch a segmented video lecture, take a quiz during (embedded) or after viewing. There are discussion boards (perhaps with a facilitator) to discuss concepts and ask questions and share knowledge. There might be supplementary resources. There might be a written assignment, but that's hard to assess when there are thousands of students in a course, unless you use peer review.

Described in that way, a lot of people in higher ed might say, "That's new? It sounds like an online course that could have been offered ten years ago. And not even a great online course at that." 

Of course, in 2000, you wouldn't offer the course to 50,000 students. Or have it open to anyone. Or offer it for free. And a learning management system (more likely called a course management system back then) and the bandwidth would never has been able to sustain the activities.

So, is that what is new?

Take a learning theory like constructivism from educational psychology which came out of the work of Piaget and Bruner. It emphasizes the importance of active involvement of learners in constructing knowledge for themselves. It is top-down processing. Start with complex problems (problem-solving, problem based learning) and teach the basic skills while students solve the problems. If you believe in constructivism, you are less likely to believe students will learn deeply by experiencing a lecture or reading a textbook.

Connectivism is a learning theory and cMOOCs seem to rely on the networking of those thousands of students, personal learning networks, digital artifacts, and not much teacher involvement. No teacher, no pedagogy?

And xMOOCs emphasize content over teaching and are very student-centered. If the student utilizes the resources, they can learn, but that is up to the student.

Besides MOOCs, another very buzzy concept this year has been the flipped classrooms. Platforms like Coursera follow a similar model to Khan Academy’s flipped classroom.

Didn't we have flipped classrooms before this? Sort of. We didn't have HD quality video and that bandwidth to stream it. Sal Khan was asked about the research and learning theory behind his Academy, but he passed on the question and allows that others can do the research. Khan also expects his lectures to be used along with teachers to assist students. The "teacher" in a MOOC may be another struggling student.

So, when we talk about MOOCs are we also talking about pedagogy or learning theory? Not yet.  And don't let me get started about andragogy.