NetLessons – On-line Learning
My presentation will be on a concept called NetLessons.
My name is Jim Fuller. I have been a secondary Computing teacher for the past 15 years. For 15 years prior to that I was a secondary science teacher. I am a member of the Educational Computing Association of Western Australia, or "ECAWA". I will be referring to "ECAWA" a number of times during this presentation. My main contribution to education, outside of my school, in recent years has been the provision of learning resources via my Web site.
My presentation is about an on-line learning strategy I developed over the past twelve months called "NetLessons". I see this topic as primarily addressing Competency five which relates to school leadership, curriculum planning and policy formation, but I believe it also touches on Competencies 1 and 2 which relate to innovation and assessment processes.
I have prepared a screen representing the main events I will cover.
<put on FlowLine OHP>
My story begins 12 months ago almost to the day at last year’s ECAWA conference. I am one of a group of ECAWA teachers promoting the use of the Logo programming language and Robotics in schools. We needed a means of providing basic electronics knowledge for teachers interested in making use of the interfaces we had developed. At the 1999 Conference the idea of on-line (Internet based) Professional Development ("PD") for teachers was suggested.
I took on the project and developed a series of Web-based "lessons" on basic electronics. My original intention was to restrict the scheme to teacher PD. I called the approach "WebPD".
A WebPD "lesson" consists of a few pages of text and diagrams followed by 5 to 10 "quiz" questions on the concepts covered. The key feature of the WebPD approach and subsequent "NetLessons" is that the answers to each "quiz" are automatically emailed back to a "mentor" for correction. The mentor provides feedback to the "student" as soon as possible. In this way the student establishes a direct "connection" to the mentor. They are not simply reading Web pages and completing quizzes. A "link" is developed between the student and the mentor.
I have a few screens from one of my latest lessons on the topic of Liquids to give you an idea of the structure.
< OHP of Liquids NetLesson >
Information about the WebPD lessons was posted on the ECAWA email "list" called "echalk". A few teachers have completed some of the lessons, but to date, no one has completed the entire course of seven lessons.
Earlier this year a call for help on echalk for ideas on how a school could make use of their "mini-lab" facilities prompted me to look at the WebPD approach in terms of students, rather limiting it to being a teacher PD tool. The school involved had a number of small groups of computers spread around the school. There was nowhere for an entire class to work together. It seemed to me that the WebPD approach could be one solution so I developed a series of lessons on introductory Chemistry and posted them on my Web site as examples. I decided to change the name from WebPD to the more generic title of "NetLessons". I emailed to echalk and invited members to have a look through the material
The next stage was to generate feedback from teachers. I developed a Web based survey and asked echalk members to complete it. Although I only received 20 completed forms the general thrust was that teachers believed there were problems in making good use of school networks (and the Internet) as a learning tool and that an approach like NetLessons could go part of the way to addressing those problems. An open-ended "feedback" section on the survey form invited general comments.
The results of the survey and the general comments were posted on my Web site and echalk members were invited to look through the findings.
To date only a small number of students have completed the Chemistry NetLessons via the Internet. The pattern of quiz results was very interesting and highlighted the importance of establishing a link between the student and the supervisor/teacher/mentor. Without that link, students tend to "fall away" and not complete the course, or they rush and don’t appear to learn a great deal.
I believe the results of this initial research shows that NetLessons have a place as part of the learning strategy of teachers, but I don’t personally see a time when teachers will be replaced by computer-based learning that has no link back to a real person.
A copy of the survey, the results and background material is available via my Web site or in booklet form if you would like to take a copy with you when you leave this afternoon. I have also included a floppy disk containing sample NetLessons.
During term 2 of this year I worked with a colleague at my school to set up an internal NetLessons structure using Microsoft Exchange Server to allow quiz results to be emailed from students in class back to the teacher. The teacher involved modified one of his assessment tasks to give students a choice between submitting answers on paper, or via email. Around half the class opted for the email approach. Unfortunately our "action research" ended when our "evaluation" copy of Exchange Server expired, but it showed the concept could work. I hope to set up a more permanent structure in my new school next year.
Having developed the material and posted samples on the Internet and invited teachers to become involved by developing their own NetLessons I am currently in the process of spreading the message to a wider audience and collecting ideas from as many teachers as I can.
The success, or otherwise, of the project will be determined by the number of people taking up the concept. Using NetLessons on the Internet is very straight forward. There are a few complications for schools wanting to set up the structure on their internal Intranets, the main one being that an internal email system must operating to allow the link between student and teacher. School staff must also be comfortable with creating Web pages and confident with basic HTML.
Well …. That sums up the history of NetLessons so far. My aim in creating NetLessons was to develop a strategy for providing "low-tech’ school-based online learning. How effective has the action been so far? Educators are beginning to take notice. I will be presenting a session on the concept at this afternoon’s ECAWA conference and I have also been invited to speak at the November Technology and Enterprise State Conference.
The biggest hurdle to overcome is the investment of personal time required to develop NetLessons. I don’t have an answer to that particular issue, except to say that NetLessons offers an alternative for those who want to take it.
The IT people in EDWA is looking at a scheme where teachers can submit sample items for inclusion on a central web site. Each item will address a particular Learning Outcome. The idea is that other teachers access the site and collect samples covering a range of outcomes for use in their own classes. The NetLesson concept would fit well into this strategy. It may be that in the future teachers will submit NetLessons to the site for sharing with others.
One of my concerns is that as a secondary IT teacher, my focus can be rather narrow. Hopefully our discussion session will provide comments, ideas and suggestions I can use in developing the concept into a really powerful learning tool applicable to a wide range of learning situations.
I would like to base the next 15 minutes on three "focus" questions aimed at getting as many ideas as I can from you. Some of your comments I will write down on the "brown paper" sheets at the front and I will also be asking you to write some down yourself. With your permission I will take your feedback away and incorporate it into the documentation I have already published.
The focus questions will try to do three things:
< Engage in 15 minute Group Reflective Review>
Five Minute Summary ….
Key Points raised by Group
What have I learnt?