Online Groups

Experience from an eTwinning Learning Event

March 2013

eTwinning conference, Lisbon

Brian Holmes, Lancaster University & The Executive Agency for Education, Audiovisual and Culture

with the support of Tiina Sarisalmi, Municipality of Orivesi, Finland

& European Schoolnet, Belgium

2 http://www.slideshare.net/holmebn

How active were the participants?

Plot showing participant messages over time

Frequency of messages related closely to activities and to the messages from the moderator

Participants less dependent on moderator towards the end

How active were the participants?

What the results suggest

•  Participants were very much focused on the activities: –  They posted messages when needed to achieve the goal of a shared

activity –  Little interaction when the online activity was finished or when they were

busy with activities in their own teaching practice

•  Participants’ initial interaction followed closely that of the moderator –  They responded to prompts from the moderator –  They responded to feedback

•  Participants became more autonomous over time –  Less influenced by messages from the moderator towards the end –  They seemed to be more proactive, supporting one another towards the

end

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Leading to autonomy

What about ‘lurkers’?

A ‘lurker’ is someone who passively participates in the online discussion forums, perhaps reading the messages of others, but not actively contributing themselves. Is lurking necessarily a bad thing?

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Let’s look at the example of Lantha ...

Leading to autonomy

The example of Lantha

•  Lantha is a teacher from Greece •  In the Learning Event, she posted very few messages •  When interviewed about her experience she said:

‘I made a seminar with my partners here in Greece and I transferred these tools to them, the main idea about them. It was very useful, I said that everyday that I am really grateful that I learned so much things.’

•  This suggests that Lantha may have been a lurker, however she was far from passive

•  She was using what she was learning from the online discussions to apply this with her colleagues in her school

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Leading to autonomy

Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Lurking in an online group may be a good thing. Lave and Wenger (1991) call this ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. They argue that participants often start at the edge of a community and gradual move to the centre as they become more confident and experienced. This may be the case for Lantha: in future Learning Events, she may be more active in her participation. The lurkers of today are the active participants of the future!

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Leading to autonomy

Critical thinking and competence development

Critical thinking is about ‘reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do’ (Ennis, 2002)

‘purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation … as well as explanation of the …considerations upon which that judgment is based’ (Facione, 2013)

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Critical thinking is important for competence development; it and helps teachers to prepare for the ill-defined problems of the future.

Leading to autonomy

Critical thinking: a theoretical model

8 (Garrison et al., 2001, p.99)

Initial phase, issues and problems emerge: asking questions

Linking private thoughts to real world, as ideas are explored: adding to what has been said

Constructing meaning, moving between reflection and discourse: integrating

ideas from different sources

Direct or vicarious action as solutions are implemented and

assessed: evaluating results, linking to wider context

Cognition Critical thinking

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Leading to autonomy

Critical thinking: a theoretical model

Example of Edita: illustrates the progression in cognition for a typical participant

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Messages  in  order  of  time  (first  to  last)

Cogn

itive  presence

Other

Triggeringevent

Exploration

Integration

Resolution

Cog

nitio

n C

ritic

al th

inki

ng

Analysis suggests critical thinking reached in later stages of the Learning Event

Leading to autonomy

Reflective practitioners

As a participant … ü  Give examples of what happened to you in practice, why you think it

happened and what you would recommend to others. ü  Encourage your colleagues to go into more detail, to explain their

reasoning. ü  Make suggestions to help colleagues express themselves. ü  Be critical but supportive of others. ü  Be sociable and share your feelings. ü  Be creative; sharing is fun J.

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Leading to autonomy

Encouraging critical thinking

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As a moderator … ü  Ask participants to try things out in their teaching practice ü  Allow time for reflection and get them to share their experience with

others in the forums ü  Encourage expressions of feeling: joy, pride, fear, confidence, etc ü  Prompt others to build upon this experience with other examples ü  Get them to suggest alternatives and talk about what might happen

in different contexts ü  Encourage participants to draw conclusions ü  Use creative forms of expression such as images

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Thank you

Brian.Holmes@skynet.be http://holmesbrian.blogspot.com/

References ENNIS, R. (2002). A Super-Streamlined Conception of Critical Thinking. http://faculty.education.illinois.edu/rhennis/index.html

GARRISON, D. R., ANDERSON, T. & ARCHER, W. (2001) ‘Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education’, American Journal of Distance Education, 15 (1), pp.7-23.

FACIONE, P.A. (2013) Critical Thinking: What It is and Why It Counts, p. 26, http://www.insightassessment.com/content/download/1176/7580/file/What%26why2013.pdf

LAVE, J. & WENGER, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.