Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Mind with a MOOC

This week I had a few things I could write about, but thought I'd share a little more about MOOCs from the point of view of a student/educator/researcher. I began studying Dynamic Earth offered by coursera.org about 2 weeks ago and am learning that not all MOOCs are created equally.

This one is offered by the American Museum of Natural History in New York and advertises as a course for educators. Compared to University of Illinois' Planet Earth... And You! it's a lot lighter on the time commitment needed to watch videos. I assume this is part of the appeal for educators. It's Term 2 in Australia and Term 4 in America - both very busy times in the school year.

The topics so far have been about Geologic Time and Earth's Early Atmosphere. I'm constantly struck by questions which, coming from a chemistry background, I'm surprised that I've never thought to consider. For example, when was oxygen created? And what caused it to build up in Earth's atmosphere? I knew what banded iron formations were, but had no idea they could be used as evidence that early Earth had no oxygen in its atmosphere... In fact, that seemed contradictory!

Not being particularly experienced in Earth Science, hence one of the reasons to take the course, the language is new to me. The facilitators mention Archean and Proterozoic Eons which have no meaning for someone interested in industrial chemistry - a long time for a reaction might be several hours. I find myself trawling Google to work out just how long ago these eons occurred. This isn't a criticism for the course, in fact, as an adult I feel a great sense of success when I can work it out. Let's teach our students about struggling to succeed.

The course facilitators not only provide interesting material about Earth Science but also link it to the American Next Generation Science Standards, giving me a professional learning opportunity which speaks to pedagogy. I find myself considering the Science strands for the National Curriculum in Australia while learning more about the American system. Of particular interest are 2 points from the 8 important practices for students outlined in these standards:

• Engaging in argument from evidence
• Using mathematics and computational thinking

I don't think it's a stretch to say that expert teachers agree these practices are essential, but from my experience, these 2 points are often tacit and perhaps not brought to the forefront when engaging students in Science. 

When visiting any Science class, there is always the student who occasionally laments 'Why are we doing Math now?' Let's pause and have a discussion about mathematics being the grammar of the language of Science. Similarly, you might hear students query about why we are taking measurements and others' responding 'To make a graph!' But, what do those graphs and other forms of data organisation tell us? How are we able to better contribute to society when we can form arguments from evidence? These are the conversations that need to happen in Science classrooms.

Finally, as a researcher, I find myself wondering what the best way is to pitch geological concepts. I've been reading a PhD thesis completed in 2010 in which different forms of thinking about Geoscience are highlighted in the lit review. On the one hand, there is a school of thought that believes a focus on the physical aspects are the most important. For example, rocks and minerals, plate tectonics and the structure of the Earth. On the other hand there is Earth Systems Science, of importance is understanding the interlinked processes related to Earth and surrounding atmosphere. Planet Earth...And You! fell into the former category whereas Dynamic Earth addresses the latter. Although learning about systems apparently requires cognitive stretches beyond those of studying physical structures, I find myself at a cross roads to deciding which I would rather study as part of my own research...

In conclusion, and a weak one at that - it is very late, it seems that although not all MOOCs are created equally, there is still much for the engaged student to think about.

Focusing Students' Research: Tips for Using Search Engines

This week, I want to offer a quick tip that came out of a surprising conversation I had with a student. My Year 9s were searching for information related to human body systems, some were daunted by the level of depth to go into. I'm sure that if you're teacher and reading this you may have come across parts of research projects where the language students use seems to indicate that they've been sitting in on university lectures!

For these students, I asked them to do their research using the Internet - no online library searches, either! The reason for this came about because search engines like Google, Safari and Firefox are generally students' first port of call when doing homework online. Research literature by Crook, among others, and my own experiences told me that students' skills in this area need to be developed.

The screenshots below show typical search results my students obtained when they typed search terms related to the project rubric.

Figure I: "Lymphocytes" - Students needed to report some of the specialised cells in their system

Figure II: "Specialized cells in the lymphatic system" 

Figure III: "What are liver cells?"

Notice the red squares? Apart from finding these links frustrating to read, the information can possibly have effects on students' self efficacy in Science. Articles that are cited by... refer to academic journals. Although students' search terms seem adequate for them, perhaps based on project rubrics or handouts from the teacher, if not taught to interpret the results of their searches critically, they are faced with information presented in a language that is beyond their grasp. How can I do well in Science, I don't understand the words used?

Here are 3 tips for getting students to think critically when doing web searches:

1) Use the students' original search terms, but add for kids or some other variation after. The students' prior research and scientific terms they have found is still valued and more accessible information is yielded.

Figure IV: "Lymphocytes for kids"

2) Look at the domain name in the web address, this is the end of the address (.org, .gov, .edu are some examples of domain names). You might have some discussion about what these stand for and whether the information can be trusted or not.

3) Don't discourage students from going further in their study if something that is interesting, but teach them a little about the nature of knowledge presented on the Internet. For my students, I projected some of their search results on the board. We talked about what cited by means and when using these links would or wouldn't be appropriate.

These tips are just 3 that were inspired by a conversation this week. I would love to hear more about other tips readers recommend for research projects. Please feel free to comment.

Thinking about MOOCs

If you are new to reading this blog, I am writing it to help me with my thoughts for a PhD study on students' perceptions of their use of technology in formal education. I am also working while doing the PhD so it is a little difficult to be engaged in the university setting during the day.

About a month ago I took my first MOOC - massive open online course - offered by coursera.org. I decided to take Planet Earth... And You! It was offered by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign coincidentally where one of my favourite qualitative research writers, Robert Stake, is also based. At the start of the course there were 28,000 people enrolled and I was excited by the different forms of engagement the online environment would offer. These included:

• Video lectures
• Quizzes
• Assignments
• Practical Activities
• Discussion Boards
• Student-to-student Assessment

I have to admit I enrolled for 2 reasons. Firstly, although I am a trained Science teacher, my knowledge in the field of Geology isn't a strength. I grew up in Ontario and despite having an excellent reputation for secondary education I can't remember much about my lessons in Geology. Unlike Biology, Chemistry and Physics, Geology wasn't offered at the senior high school level when I went to school and to be honest, I'm not sure that I would've taken it! The second reason follows the first, as a Science teacher in Australia, I am expected to deliver lessons in Geology! So, I signed up and logged in. 

The research on MOOCs suggests that perhaps only 1 in 10 students will complete their online course. For me, these numbers encouraged me to stick with it and try to learn how I might employ some of the online engagement strategies to my very real classroom. I won't focus on video lessons, you can see heaps of these by other educators on YouTube. I even have a daggy channel, too. 

I took away some lessons from Planet Earth that I would like to share with you:

1. Practical Activities
2. Discussion Boards
3. Student-to-student Assessment

Practical Activities: The course took us all over the world to study earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics and resources. As a teacher passionate about the regular use of pracs, I wondered how this would work online. We were provided with Google Earth files and data to take us to interesting formations on the Earth's surface. There, we took measurements, made observations, and used the data to make conclusions about what happened and will happen to these places over time. This was the part of the course that I liked the best! I was sceptical at first, but it opened my understanding to how Geology can be made very real by utilising a free software to travel virtually while employing the scientific method to complete the pracs. 

There are many programs that offer virtual experiments, but I think that as teachers we need to ask ourselves whether these are just a replacement for getting the equipment out and having students actually do the experiments. The Planet Earth staff designed the practical work in such a way that the technology was used to enhance our understanding and furthered our knowledge in an environment that would otherwise be inaccessible to learners. I have heard teachers lament that the only prac we can do in Geology is the Mohs scratch test... Not anymore! 

Discussion Boards: The 5 week course had a weekly discussion board that students needed to contribute to. I'll admit, I didn't really have the time to spend the allocated 2 hours on these, but that's not to say that I didn't learn anything from them. I participated every week, but what I needed to do as a learner was to participate earlier so that my posts could have been read and responded to. The discussions focused around debate style questions such as whether we should continue to use fossil fuels as usual or whether we would advise people living around a volcano to evacuate or not. I found that these types of questions allowed the learner to position themselves in the topic by providing them  a forum to showcase what they had learned but also to assume the role of a stakeholder. Learners had the opportunity to respond creatively to these prompts and my observations showed that many did!

I see potential for these types of discussions to happen in and outside my classroom online. By using something private like a GoogleDoc to do this, my students could make similar contributions to our collective knowledge or perhaps begin a project to structure discussion for debate preparation that would be enacted during class. 

Student-to-student Assessment: While taking Planet Earth, I was surprised that we were called on to grade the discussion posts from our peers. For 2 weeks, we needed to grade the work of 5 peers and ourselves. We were provided with a rubric and could choose to make comments on others' work. For the first week, I had heaps of marking for my own job. I graded the work, but didn't offer any comments... I admit when I received my peer graded work, I felt excited to see comments of encouragement and constructive criticism. I also felt a little guilty that I hadn't spent the time to encourage my peers in the same way! The next week, I spent more time on my peers' work and felt another sense of satisfaction by hopefully giving my peers the same encouragement. 

In the end, I not only learned heaps about Geology, I also learned about some interesting pedagogical approaches that I will build on in the future. I still feel a little apprehensive about teaching Geology, but I have come to appreciate that learning together is very powerful. This is something that I try to encourage my students to do... Funny how practicing what you preach is a little confronting.

Always looking for something to procrastinate with, I have signed up for another MOOC offered by courser.org: The Dynamic Earth: A Course for Educators. I'm looking forward to starting on Monday!