Over the years Penn State's involvement in the coalition has provided us with opportunities for moving thinking into action. Do we use our discussion and notes about integrative learning? Here is an example of where we are now:
"Integrative learners do not separate learning from life..."
The integrated learning experience presupposes purpose, involves reflection and personal connection, while at the same time implies an understanding of what the important attributes, values, understandings that are to be learned. From the beginning of our involvement NCEPR our goal at Penn State has been has been to find out whether a structured e-portfolio system, designed to communicate high expectations and intended learning outcomes could have an impact on student engagement and learning.
In other words, how do we share a 'big picture' of learning and then place our students within this picture such that this position serves as a scaffold for finding new understandings, promoting meaning making that leads to self-authorship, concepts that Kegan and Baxter-Magolda advocate. We know we need to invite prior experience to play an important part in shaping this experience but also realize that students bring messy pictures into this arena. The challenge lies in the gap between where students are and where our big picture implies they should be.
What is the developmental pattern for how students can be brought through this integrative process? A simple advanced organizer is not enough. How do we infuse structure while at the same time allow for a flexibility that cultivates students' becoming 'architects of their own education'?
We've moved through a variety of unsatisfactory solutions and frustration surrounding technology as 'a moving target' is getting old, but we are learning. Nonetheless, we are excited about our most recent deployment, MovableType4, to support Blogging as e-Portfolios. We don't think of this as a new service because of how nicely it integrates into the technology infrastructure already in place. Further, it has dramatically reduced any learning curve associated with online publishing, students are comfortable with its capabilities and convenience. But more importantly it allows us to 1) include templates that state program learning outcomes, 2) use tags to associate artifacts with these outcomes, 3) use tags to provide intellectual access to content previously not possible, and 4) aggregate and 'pack up' specific program outcome related evidence for assessment or evaluation purposes.
We are hopeful that this most recent exploration into the use of the MovableType blogging platform will help us in delivering the three curricula we have been talking about: the delivered (teachers' goals for students), the experienced (students' perceptions of the learning experience) and the lived (personalization of how this is experienced in life). The unobtrusiveness of this solution is perhaps it greatest feature because looking back at earlier solutions we've thought that perhaps the more we get out of the way, the better we'll serve our students.
As Kathleen Yancey noted at the Waterloo meetings, "Biggest take-way: be very intentional with communication."
Now that I have had a chance to play around in the Moveable Type environment for a while I am beginning to get glimpses of how this tool has the potential to change what we have been able to support in terms of online publishing behaviors here at Penn State.
For quite some time now Penn State faculty, students and staff have been able to apply for the web publishing option and then use this to publish information in their personal.psu web space. This has been wonderful and we can point to fantastic examples, (more piling in all the time), of how students have taken advantage of this in powerful ways to help leverage their collegiate evidence, experiences and newly formed values in order to support their own personal development.
What has been possible?
Penn State's web publishing options have been product oriented and the examples that we see are those that are primarily the finished product.
How has this changed?
1) Most obvious is the lack of required software. Anyone with a browser can publish products - easily.
2) Dated entries - blogs - allow for and encourage small, regular contributions to personal products.
3) Commenting on the work of others initiates and sustains conversation around these products.
What we can promote is more than publishing - we should promote participation.
We did a study a few years back asking students that were required to learn web publishing using a web editor if they valued these skills and how much they used them after the class was over, i.e., did these skills persist? Results showed that students did indeed value the skills but they did not update their web space as often as we had thought.
Discussion: Why? Perhaps it was not that easy. Perhaps they thought of those documents as static, one-time renditions, or 'assignments'. Enter Moveable Type >> The learning curve is demolished? Getting online and updating and adding to what is already there is not the effort it was before? Online materials as a result are more dynamic, changing and interesting to use as well as read?
Hmmm... smells like learning to me!
What if we could put this functionality into the hands of every user?
