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I recently put together a simple WordPress plugin whose main purpose was to entertain me while I was staring at my dashboard with writer’s block. The plugin (based on the familiar Hello Dolly) incorporates over 800 Scottish proverbs from a collection dating from 1663, and displays a random proverb on admin screens. While I’m still scratching my head over the meanings of some of the proverbs, I’ve found that others provide valuable words of wisdom for bloggers:

Fidlers, dogs and flies, come to the feast uncalled
This clearly refers to spammers, who will find your blog even though you think you’re writing on esoteric topics with limited readership.

It goes in at one ear, and out at the other
What ever you say, some readers will only see what they want to see.

He that speaks the things he should not, hears the things he would not
Inflammatory posts attract inflammatory comments.

Fair words brake never bane, foul words many ane
When posting or commenting, be positive about others and choose your words carefully: try to present criticism in a supportive and collegial manner.

Patience perforce
New bloggers, you won’t change the world (or get Technorati authority) overnight.

Oft counting makes good friends
Check your logs and stats daily – you’ll soon find out who your friends are.

Ye ride a bootlesse errand
Depressing? Yes – but it reflects how we may feel when we’ve finished reading the logs (see above)

All things helps quoth the Wran, when she pisht in the Sea
Take your pick, this could mean either:

• Have hope – if what you write reaches only a handful of readers, it’s still a contribution to the world of ideas and higher thought
• If you think you’re making a difference, you’re deluded.

Of course, the proverbs are not channeling some 17th century blogger: they’re just a great example of how such truisms can mean anything we want them to. And, perhaps, how many seemingly new ideas are just old ideas rephrased.

Image: Heures de Maréchal de Boucicaut (detail) C. 1410

The Connectivism & Connective Knowledge online course (CCK08) is now underway with close to 2,000 participants. I’ve wondered for some time about the usefulness and applicability of connectivism as a theory of learning, and enrolling in CCK08 seemed like a good opportunity to explore this issue in depth.

My first post is a response to one of the initial readings on connectivism, which states:

1. Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning. Knowledge is defined as a particular pattern of relationships and learning is defined as the creation of new connections and patterns as well as the ability to maneuver around existing networks/patterns.

This appears to suggest that learning involves ‘creating new patterns of knowledge’ and ‘developing skills in navigating knowledge’. This seems to me to be a very knowledge-focused model of learning, and the skills it does incorporate are self-referential – they are skills only in navigating the network which ‘defines knowledge’. If we imagine that the network is broken, then the only real skills developed are in navigating a faulty network.

For someone involved in professional development in education, concepts such as capability, self-efficacy and reflective practice don’t seem well-served by the connectivist definition of learning. This is not to say that ‘the network’ doesn’t have a role to play in supporting processes such as reflective practice (in fact, I think it has an important role) but it does seem limited in its ability to define learning in other than purely knowledge terms. I’m also not suggesting that ‘navigating patterns of knowledge’ is not an important part of learning, but it is just a part.

One of the problems with assessment is common to all forms of measurement: ”what is easy to measure may not be important, what is important is often hard to measure.” This is true of online assessment as well as more traditional forms.

The assessment dilemma

This dilemma can cause assessment developers to assess what is less important: they focus on easily quantifiable criteria or standards but neglect to include more important criteria because they are not so easily quantified or measured.

In assessment of online discussion, we see the effects of this dilemma when assessment criteria call for a quantifiable contribution from learners: ‘At least 3 contributions to the forum’ or ‘One forum thread started and responses to at least three others’. This can lead to lightweight discussion as learners post superficial responses to achieve their tally. And this of course is contagious – every lightweight posting says to everyone else: ‘Look, this is all you need to do’. Even worse, genuinely thoughtful postings can get lost in the tide of mediocre ones.

To avoid this, we need to focus on what really is important: usually, what we’d like to see each learner achieve is something like ‘Make a significant contribution to the development of ideas through the discussion forum‘. But since that is clearly more subjective and harder to measure, we need to spell out how this might occur and what it might look like:

• Contributes original ideas which are relevant and well-developed
• Provides significant insights into the existing body of literature
• Helps synthesise ideas and concepts
• Contributes detailed and relevant examples from their own practice
• Helps others to explore ideas in depth

Of course, such a list is still relatively subjective – but it does start to establish what is important to me as an educator. And since I’d rather see one ‘significant’ posting than ten which don’t really add anything substantial, I prefer to avoid the use of quantitative measures when developing rubrics and other assessment tools.

Teachers don’t always find it easy to analyse the assumptions about learning that underpin specific examples of learning technology. A simple scenario can be used in a professional development setting as a trigger for discussion of these assumptions and the links between technology and education theory.

In my professional development work with teachers, I love seeing them learn how to use the new tools and develop an enthusiasm for using these tools with learners. But skills and enthusiasm are not quite enough – to decide how and when to integrate technology tools, teachers also need to be able to understand the educational models on which the technology is based.

Even when a teacher ‘knows’ some education theory, it is not always easy for them to integrate theory and practice. So the theory often remains as ‘book learning’ and doesn’t fully inform their decision-making about planning and using technology.

I recently developed a simple scenario as an attempt to deal with this:

I incorporated the scenario into the session and used it to generate discussion around a few simple questions. On their own, the small groups touched on a few links to education theory, but the payoff came when reporting back – as a group, we identified lots of ideas about the sorts of assumptions about learning and the links with theory.

The fact that it was only a scenario and not hands-on I believe helped the participants because there was no ‘seduction’ factor – there was no possibility of being distracted by the technology and the fun of exploring its features. And it reinforced the concept that every application of technology in learning is based on implicit assumptions and theories about learning, and that informed teachers can make these explicit through dialogue and collaboration.