Part Four: Asynchronous Apprenticeship

In the last three weeks, I’ve been writing about the changing paradigm of education. It used to be that all learning was done synchronously with the teacher and student at the same point in time and place, with one giving knowledge and the other receiving. This simple form of instruction was multiplied on the student side but the one teacher model was retained. Why was this?

In a way, it’s understandable. Teachers cost money. Teachers are normally employees requiring a salary, benefits, and all the care and feeding a person would require to function. So it was decided teachers could teach more than one student at a time. And now it has become ridiculous.

“Some of the more popular lectures can have class sizes of 300 or more.”
Read more: http://penn.stateuniversity.com/#ixzz28w0LOnZ7

Someone or a group of someones decided that a teacher could teach 300 students at a time. This is the polar opposite of a student-centered classroom.

At this point, you are probably thinking, “Wait a minute, some online classes have crazy numbers of students in them too, right?”

It’s true, the same someone or group of someones got it in their head that asynchronous teaching would be cheaper and allow for classes to be scaled even larger. This is a fallacy.

The best teaching is done using the oldest method ever used. Apprenticeship. One teacher – one student. Period.

What I’m advocating is not cramming an infinite number of students into an asynchronous situation handled by one teacher. What I’m suggesting is giving each student an infinite number of teachers.

The Internet allows knowledge to persist. Imagine a classroom where everything a teacher says or does could be captured. Think of it as “putting it in your pocket”, so each bit of information can be pocketed. Further, each time a student pockets a piece of information the original is replicated and persists for the next student to take. Now imagine an almost infinite number of classrooms where any single student can visit each one and pocket more information. Each student can feel like they are the only student while visiting each teacher. If a teacher’s teaching style doesn’t match a student’s learning style they are free to pick another.

Impossible you say? Au contraire mon ami – If you will pardon my French. Kids are already using this model to teach themselves anything they want to know.

A kid can easily go online and learn anything they set their mind to learn. A perfect example is the rarity of technical manuals for games, hand-held devices, etc. As a new generation grows up not relying on books to learn, the books needed to teach them will either change or disappear. A techno-savvy kid will learn whatever way is fastest for them to learn. It they need to know how to avoid a particular obstacle in a game they are playing, they will attempt it a few times themselves and then turn to the internet. Someone in the world has encountered the obstacle and found a way to beat it then so then they are excited to share their triumph posted on the Internet about it. I am not saying there has to be a formal site devoted to a particular game and a step-by-step guide posted there in order for our hypothetical kid to learn the information he/she needs. Remember the digital kid will go for the fastest way, social media.

Here’s the problem, anyone can post anything on the Internet. So information is infinite but knowledge is finite.

Think of it this way, our job as teacher is going to become the same as a filter in a fish tank.

Picture a large fish tank:

http://www.touropia.com/largest-aquariums-in-the-world/

The water is the information on the Internet. The bits a filter sifting through the water would find would be the amount of viable, usable, knowledge to be found. Our job, as teachers, is to sift and (here is the hard part) teach our students to sift that flood of information for knowledge. This is what a teacher does for an apprentice. The teacher focuses the apprentice on the knowledge they need to complete a task and shows them the right way (or the right knowledge) with which to accomplish their task.

Apprenticeship icons are from: Department for Employment and Learning  http://www.delni.gov.uk/apprenticeshipsni

Part Three: Asynchronous Education and the Birth of Exponential Apprenticeship

In the last two weeks I’ve been looking at the role asynchronous and synchronous methods of instruction have played in the development of online education. But how can asynchronous learning really pull ahead of the race with synchronous?

Have you ever heard someone say “If you need help with (insert technology here) then you should ask a kid”? How do these kids learn about technology and even more importantly how do they become so good at understanding it. Few if any of these whiz kids have attended a computer class. Yet, these kids can out tech their teachers and parents who may have gone to night school or a series of classes at the local electronics store. The solution I offer is a term I call: exponential apprenticeship.

What is exponential apprenticeship? You are doing it right now reading this blog. Put simply it is finding teachers to teach you what you want to know online. Since the invention and opening to the public of the internet people have been sharing information including their own expertise. With a few minutes to kill and a Google search you can find instruction on any subject you can think of. Go ahead, go try it, I’ll wait right here. Back so soon? By me sharing with you asynchronously it was like no time went by for me at all (because for me no time elapsed). You also probably found not one source of information but in some cases, depending on what you searched for, zillions (or at least millions). Every one of those sites you found is offering to teach you. Everyone is created by a teacher, either professional or amateur, who wants to teach sharing their expertise with the world.

So let’s get back to the whiz kid. He/she wants to build their own computer. Do they go and ask an adult. No way. They go to the internet. Out in cyberspace there are a million computer builders willing to take an eager whiz kid under their wing and teach them everything they’ve learned. And here is the asynchronous part, the kid can learn whenever they want, return to review anything they missed, learn at their own pace, and fit it all into their busy schedule. Every person, whiz kid or not, enters into an apprenticeship when they sign on to a website offering to teach them. You can learn by doing, learn by watching a master at work, and do it anytime. Not only are these mentors ready to accept apprentices, a new apprentice shopping for information can choose one, ten, a hundred, a thousand different mentors and apprentice with ALL of them. Furthermore, each student can go on and discuss the ideas they’ve learned with other students (millions of them). They can join groups of like minded individuals. They can follow their mentors to get their latest nuggets of wisdom. And then the students can become the teachers to other students. The cycle repeats endlessly.

Now just imagine if your child had a hundred math teachers or a thousand. Class size starts to not matter so much, huh? Imagine if a student could pick the teacher who teaches in the exact way they learn best. And imagine a student being able to learn whenever they felt most like learning.

This is asynchronous learning. This is exponential apprenticeship.

Are you ready to learn?

Part Two: Knowing When to Teach Synchronous or Asynchronous

Building upon the discussion we had last week concerning this article:

http://www-cdn.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0848.pdf

This week I want to start with the question: When is the right time to teach synchronously and when is the right time to teach asynchronously?

In the article he breaks down communication into three types which are represented in this table:

By examining the types of communication necessary to convey the information you are trying to teach you begin the decision making process of how to teach it. It has become a common misconception that e-learning has to be asynchronous. This is not true and forcing it to be so can be disastrous. Looking at the chart above you can see where an asynchronous e-learning approach might work best. Content-related communication is perfect for teaching without the constrains of time. Using discussion boards and other “leave a questions come back for an answer” solutions all three of the tasks listed as examples can be accomplished.

Even the planning of tasks form of communication can be adapted to an asynchronous environment, except possibly the last one. Negotiate and resolve conflicts is where the planning of task communications begins to be social. And until recently the social aspects of asynchronous learning have been limited at best.

E-learning like all forms of learning is greatly influenced by its relationship with time. Just by forcing a class to meet synchronously online you have created a sense of urgency not usually present. The time-boxed meeting also creates a social space that can encourage learning or in some cases inhibit it.

Some students are not social animals. Some students do not think quickly enough to respond rapidly in a chat room situation. Because of the quick give and take of a synchronous situation online you as a teacher will be restricted to the depth of subject matter you can cover. Students can also quickly become frustrated if they feel like they are not keeping up with their faster typing colleagues.

So when can a synchronous learning situation benefit online learning? It works best in limited doses dealing with less complex issues. Holding a chat at an appointed time can bring some of the social aspects of the face to face classroom into the online space. I don’t think it is necessary to meet face to face to achieve this social component.

When teaching online it is important to remember that many people today take online classes to learn asynchronously. This time crunched students will resist or even refuse to participate in synchronous activities. With this in mind, use synchronous as seldom as possible and keep the sessions as brief as possible.

When has a synchronous situation worked best for you as a teacher or as a student? Do you prefer online classes to be asynchronous only?

 

Help Change The World And Close The Digital Divide

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/en//id/288

Part One: Definitions and Changing the Social Dynamic of Learning

It’s funny to realize how quickly this argument has presented itself. For, literally, centuries there was no real choice. It is only with the advent of viable online education that an asynchronous classroom has become a possibility as well as a competitor to the more traditional synchronous classroom.

First, let’s examine the words themselves:

syn·chro·nous  \ˈsiŋ-krə-nəs\

1: happening, existing, or arising at precisely the same time

2: recurring or operating at exactly the same periods

3: involving or indicating synchronism

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synchronous

asyn·chro·nous  \ā-ˈsiŋ-krə-nəs\

1: not synchronous

2: of, used in, or being digital communication (as between computers) in which there is no timing requirement for transmission and in which the start of each character is individually signaled by the transmitting device

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asynchronous

Anyone who attended school of any kind prior to 1995 learned synchronously. The students and the teacher had to be present at the same place, at the same time, in order for it to be called a class. The closest thing to asynchronous learning we were able to participate in was studying.

The Internet and the advent of online classes have changed this paradigm completely. We can now attend a class while sitting miles away from the school’s location or the location of the teacher. We can also attend class at a different time than the teacher offering the instruction or any of the other students attending the class. However, the question still remains: “Is one method better than the other?”

The data collected on the effectiveness of the traditional synchronous classroom is vast simply because of the length of time it has had to accumulate. Studies on the use of asynchronous instruction are fewer and more recent plus further complicated by the changing technology, methods, and even definitions associated with online classrooms.

For the purposes of this article, I’d like to take at look at an example of one of these studies.

http://www-cdn.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0848.pdf

Let me preface my comments by pointing out the obvious fact that this is simply one example of one study. I chose it because it does draw on several sources to come to the conclusions reached.

Stefan Hrastinski presented his study as a way to help organizations choose between the two delivery systems examined.

“Asynchronous e-learning, commonly facilitated by media such as e-mail and discussion boards, supports work relations among learners and with teachers, even when participants cannot be online at the same time.”

The immediate obstacle presented in online education is restructuring the social aspect of learning. The exchange of ideas is a crucial component of the learning process. To achieve a truly asynchronous learning environment the give and take between teacher and student as well as between student and student has to change. It is still a subject of contention as to how successful online learning has been in this regard.

“Synchronous e-learning, commonly supported by media such as videoconferencing and chat, has the potential to support e-learners in the development of learning communities.”

One quick response to the shortcomings of the social aspect of asynchronous learning is to force synchronous learning back into the mix. Shoehorning synchronous learning into an asynchronous situation unfortunately, limits the appeal of the online learning option since many students choose online classes principally for its asynchronous nature. Online students can take classes at two in the morning or two in the afternoon as long as the class remains untethered to the clock. As soon as a time-boxed chat or teleconference is introduced the class once again becomes forced to meet at a specified moment in time.

“…in some instances e-mail is used near-synchronously when users remain logged in and monitor their e-mail continuously. Thus, the difference between asynchronous and synchronous e-learning is often a matter of degree.”

As an advocate for the future of online education I propose we remove the synchronous crutch from asynchronous education. The examples I offer of two completely asynchronous forms of social interaction are Twitter “https://twitter.com/” and Facebook “https://www.facebook.com/”. Having used both forms of social media and interacting with several participants regularly, I can anecdotally offer my observations to the effectiveness of these tools for asynchronous social interaction. Further evidence of the effectiveness of these options for social interaction is their continued popularity. If people were not getting their social needs met, they would move on to something else. The people at MySpace learned this the hard way.

The immediately obvious conclusion is that discussion boards are not the best solution. This type of interchange is an extinct dinosaur of the early Internet Age. Educators like the dinosaur are going to have to adapt to survive and thrive when it comes to interacting with their students.

So why isn’t the Facebook or Twitter model being applied to education? How would it work?

Teachers would need to become well versed in the uses of tools such as these to the point where they could be moderators as well as educators. Is this too much to ask from a potential online instructor?

Can a Facebook-like discussion be guided to stay on topic?

I invite you to join the discussion by commenting on this blog. I look forward to interacting with you and hearing your opinions or options for creating the next generation of online education.