eLearning 2.0: The Age of Interaction

Marist College has not only embraced the latest wave of Web 2.0 technologies that have come crashing into our lives and classrooms but has worked to strategically deploy these technologies in our online programs in ways that truly transform the learning experience.

The Dawn of the eLearning 2.0 Era

Marist College has not only embraced the latest wave of Web 2.0 technologies that have come crashing into our lives and classrooms but has worked to strategically deploy these technologies in our online programs in ways that truly transform the learning experience. Our voyage began in Fall 2005 with the launch of the IdentityQuest Project, which engaged online students from around the world in creating “social podcasts” that captured aspects of cultural identity. During our initial pilots, students were given an iPod with a microphone attachment and open-source audio editing software called Audacity. Each week they would record “on-the-street” interviews that investigated an aspect of cultural identity, such as language and idioms. Afterwards, they would edit the interview and insert their own commentary. This content was then combined to create a social podcast to which all students subscribed via iTunes or other free “podcatcher” software. Students then listened to the peer-created content from other countries and participated in an instructor-facilitated online discussion about the different global perspectives found in each.

This innovative instructional model for podcasts went well beyond the classic approach of audio lectures and was instrumental in Marist winning a 2006 Campus Technology Magazine Innovator Award; the only award given out that year for podcasting. More importantly, it demonstrated the power that Web 2.0 technologies hold to innovate the educational experience by allowing students to become active participants in the teaching and learning process.

Quote from the Trenches: "Podcasting is usually thought of as a teacher-centered activity in which the teacher sends lectures to the students," explains Dr. Kevin Gaugler, associate professor of modern languages in the School of Liberal Arts at Marist. "Our project is leveraging the collective intelligence of the students...combining cutting-edge, tasked-based pedagogical approaches with an approach to podcasting sometimes known as social podcasting or group podcasting."

Web 2.0 Innovations @ Marist College

At the present time, the College has several initiatives underway that are leveraging the power of Web 2.0 tools to create truly innovative educational experiences. These initiatives include: KnowledgeQuests, iNverse Distance Learning (iDL), and KnowledgeExchanges. Each of these initiatives has been tied closely with the goals set forth in our current strategic plan Building on Success with the overarching aim of supporting the College's mission of "helping students develop the intellect and character required for enlightened, ethical, and productive lives in the global community of the 21 st century." More specifically, these projects: (1) provide a high-quality and distinctive educational experience for all students (SG I); (2) create a diverse and international college community (SG II); (3) strengthen the sense of community among students, faculty, staff, and alumni (SG III); and (4) support our position as a recognized leader in using information technology to support teaching and learning in all environments (SG IV).

KnowledgeQuests, which build off of the experimental approaches used in the initial "IdentityQuest" project, amplify educational experiences taking place in distance education courses through engagement with communities, both real and virtual. We accomplish this by encouraging students to leave their formal online course environment and spend time engaging with real world communities as well as online social networks as part of their coursework. For example, Web 2.0 tools such as podcasts, blogs, and collaborative authoring tools (e.g. wikis), which are all available in our Sakai-based Collaborative Learning Environment called "iLearn", might be used by students to co-create content based on interviews they conduct in their local communities on topics such as ethics, cultural identity, or economics. This content can then be shared on a social network, such as Facebook or Ning, as means to engage a broader community on topics being studied in class. This approach to using Web 2.0 applications fundamentally shifts the learning process away from static interactions with content, such as reading a textbook, towards a much more student-centered process in which learners are actively contributing to and engaged with the content.

One of our more recent experiments, iNverse Distance Learning or iDL, attempts to turn the classical distance learning model upside down by placing the instructor or learning facilitator at-a-distance while the students remain more local. Such a model allows for the globalization of the educational experience, a key component of our current College strategic plan. For example, during the past year one of our political science professors, Dr. Shawn Shih-hung Shieh, who is living in Beijing, China, has been acting as a "roving professor". In this role, Dr. Shieh is using Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, podcasts, and Flickr, to enrich learning interactions taking place in classrooms on-the-ground on Marist campuses. Campus-based instructors work with Dr. Shieh in order to bring the "Chinese perspective" into their course. Last spring Dr. Shieh worked with Dr. Kristin Bayer, who is an assistant professor of history in our School of Liberal Arts, by arranging to interview women attorneys at Beijing University's Center for Women's Law Studies and Legal Services who work to defend women's rights in China. Students in the course helped draft questions that were asked during the interview which was distributed back to them via a podcast. The podcast was then used as the basis for an online discussion, facilitated from Beijing by Dr. Shieh and locally by Dr. Bayer, about the attorney's perspectives on women's rights and Chinese law.

Quote from the Trenches:"Despite my telling them, their reading of articles and memoirs, it was the active voices of women interviewed", says Dr. Bayer, "that drew and provided the environment for students to utilize the theory and apply their knowledge to the subject.

"After listening and responding to the podcasts on women's rights as related to land issues and the one child policy, students intellectually challenged their own conceptions of these issues (as they related to their own feelings ­- i.e., not historical analysis) and turned their view to include what was at stake for China and Chinese women."

Finally, KnowledgeExchanges focus on using Web 2.0 applications and other instructional technologies to enrich the opportunities students have to interact with subject matter experts. For centuries instructors have valued the occasional opportunity for a guest speaker to come into their classroom to interact with their students. Logistical limitations often mean that these events take place only once or twice a semester, if at all. Using blogs, discussion forums, and synchronous audio- and video-based collaboration technologies, such as Skype, Marist has created opportunities for our students to interact with subject matter experts on a regular basis as part of their coursework. Such KnowledgeExchanges range from students practicing their Spanish through live video conferences with native Guatemalans to weekly asynchronous online discussions between teacher education majors and master teachers to real time chats in online communications courses with reporters who specialize in war zone journalism.

eLearning 2.0 Strategy: Focus on Learning, Not Technology

All too often institutions will deploy Web 2.0 technologies to simply "digitize" current teaching practices, such as lecturing, just because something, such as podcasting, has become a "hot" technology. As a result, students, particularly adult learners, see these new technologies as an extra burden rather than something that enriches their learning experience.

From early successes over the past several years, such as the IdentityQuest project, Marist College has learned that effective use of Web 2.0 technologies requires a focus on learning, not technology, if true innovation is to be realized. We avoid jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon simply for technology sake and instead work to ensure that use of these technologies drives enhancements in the teaching and learning process.

A cornerstone of our eLearning 2.0 strategy is the utilization of emerging Web 2.0 applications to enrich what we refer to as "learning interactions" that are at the core of all fully online as well as face-to-face educational experiences. These learning interactions break down into three primary categories: interaction with content, interaction with subject matter experts (e.g. professors, guest speakers, etc.), and interactions with peers. Our strategy calls for initiatives which deploy Web 2.0 applications in ways that clearly enhance these learning interactions. As a result, we find that students in these courses develop a deeper understanding of the content as well as an ability to apply their new knowledge to authentic problems and situations. This ability to translate what they are learning in their courses to address novel real world problems is a critical skill for today's 21 st century workforce.

Quote from the Trenches:"It's easy to go out and just make a lot of friends and go out on the weekends and experience the culture that way, but it's different when you actually have to interview people and you're talking to them about the language or about their political status." - Marist IdentityQuest student (listen to more of this interview here).

The Medium is the Message (and the Lesson)

Web 2.0 tools, when deployed strategically, can clearly have a transformative effect on the teaching and learning processes and lead to significant benefits for the learner. Beyond this compelling reason to integrate these tools into the educational experience is the often overlooked benefit of the medium itself and the "hidden" lessons that it holds for today's working adults.

More and more organizations are realizing that Web 2.0 tools have tremendous potential in their enterprises yet are often unsure how to exploit them in ways that will increase productivity, distribute knowledge, and help their bottom line. One of the challenges they face is a workforce that is by-and-large still grappling with understanding how to best use Web 1.0 tools let alone the social networks of the YouTube generation. By integrating Web 2.0 tools into the online learning experience, we are exposing today's workforce to the power of this technology and providing them with invaluable learning experiences with this new medium. These "Web 2.0 lessons" will serve them well as they find themselves working in an increasingly "2.0 workplace".   

Quote from the Trenches: "According to Facebook official records, many organisational personnel are already subscribers - for example, 30,000 employees from Microsoft, 33,000 employees from IBM, and 20,000 employees from Accenture. So important is the impact of social networking tools, that a recent Gartner report concludes, "The failure to consider the impact of social enhancement technology on the performance of the enterprise is a big mistake." And what companies can afford these kinds of mistakes today?" (This comes from an HRM article).