Vygotsky and MOOCs

Last week I was chatting with a colleague, Edwin, who was finishing an intense MOOC in Bioscience. Edwin is trained in IT and a veteran MOOC student who enrols in a variety of courses out of interest. We often have conversations surrounding students' use of ICT, including our own experiences. The conversations from last week became the inspiration for this post.

Over the 8-9 weeks Edwin was enrolled in Boiscience we discussed a number of questions about people's motivations to take MOOCs. Boiscience seemed like a university subject with journal articles to read, practical work to be completed, exams and formal reports to be written. 'Is this course part of a degree?' I asked. It seemed more full on than the MOOCs I had already taken.

Edwin is always an active participant. He trawls the discussion forums and tries to add to his classmates' experiences. When submitting a draft of an experimental report for feedback the tutor penalised him for not citing secondary sources properly. While perusing the discussion forum another classmate asked what citing in proper format entailed. Edwin reached out and tried to direct the sixty-something grandmother, Alice, to the citation guide provided. On the last day to submit, late at night Alice was still seeking help in this area. With a subject as intense as this, where was the tutor? Out of thousands of people taking the course, why didn't anyone else help out? What is the significance of Alice reaching out?

Vygotsky's Mind in Society (1978) begins with 3 questions the work attempts to analyse. In this post I'd like to unpack his 3rd question and apply my understanding of Vygotsky* to Alice's situation:

     What is the nature of the relationship between the use of tools and the development of speech?

Here, the use of tools refers to Alice's use of the MOOC platform. In this context speech is not verbal but written. I am concerned with the social interactions between Alice and Edwin and practical activity. Vygotsky says that the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development is when speech and practical activity converge (p. 24). Furthermore 'speech not only accompanies practical activity but also plays a specific role in carrying it out' (p. 25). In this sense, speech is agentive in that it enables the participant to act and to do so with varying levels of autonomy.

In this first chapter, Vygotsky writes about children, but I'm not suggesting that Alice and Edwin's interaction is childlike. Perhaps a better word to describe Alice might be 'novice' - she is new to MOOCs and is learning how to be in them. Edwin is the 'expert.' Vygotsky describes speech/act patterns:

• initially speech, used to address an adult [expert], follows actions; and
• at a later stage the child [novice] uses speech to plan for action (p. 28)

Relating to the former, Alice has probably tried to understand what proper citations look like. She has accessed and read the tutor's report. Perhaps, she has looked at other discussion forums to see if there were any threads related to her issue. Yet, at this stage she seeks the help of an expert.

On the surface, the purpose of Edwin's conversation with Alice seems obvious, to help her find the structure for correct citations. But at a deeper level, Edwin was acting to scaffold Alice's future use of the MOOC platform, one in which real time social speech is absent. 'Last time, I had to .... so that I could ...' is the kind of egocentric speech that any instructor seeking to develop students' application skills would hope to inspire.

What does this mean for MOOCs and the students who use them? In my work, social constructivist in its approach, I'm constantly playing a tug of war asking myself which is more important: students learning the tech or students learning the subject? Not all tech is created equally and sometimes learning the tech will provide students with the skills to assert their own agency to learn the subject material.

In our last conversation, Edwin shared Alice's final plea. Ten minutes before the assignment was due, 11:50pm, Alice confessed that she still hadn't found how to correctly cite her sources and may as well just hand in her assignment. If we didn't know anything about Alice, it would be easy to chide her for not finding the citation guide on the platform or 'just Googling it.' What's sad about this case is that for someone trying to be a part of a wider community of learners that community failed to address to her needs: communication in the form of non-verbal speech to direct her to successfully cite her sources and scaffold her for future successful learning experiences.

It would also be easy to label Alice as an older person who just doesn't get the technology, but research shows that younger people who've grown up in the digital age also need to be scaffolded to use technology in formal educational environments. When I was in Boston I learned about a school that gave extra credit to students who successfully completed MOOCs. I wonder how these students have faired in these communities.

With the pressure of MOOC platforms to produce profit, one has to wonder that if some students are isolated in introductory courses, how to they expect enrolments in fee paying students to rise?


*It should be noted that I'm a novice Vygotskian 'scholar' and any feedback would be much appreciated if you happen upon this post.

Exploring EdTech @ the Melbourne Museum

Today 3 teachers and I took 75 Year 9 girls to the Melbourne Museum to explore Earth Science including the Earth's structure and early life. In addition, a colleague from the university who is interested in use of alternative educational spaces came along to see what we did. We visited 3 exhibitions: Dynamic Earth, Dinosaur Walk and 600 Million Years Victoria Evolves.

In this blog post, I'd like to comment on some observations I made while the students were exploring the exhibitions and using different technologies. I'm going to focus on 3 areas of discussion:

• Rio Tinto Cinema Volcanic 3D Movie
• Use of interactive screens
• Students' use of their own technology

It should be mentioned that there are many interactive digital technologies in these exhibits and that students were given activity books designed by me to guide them through their exploration. Given my interest in EdTech I tried to pay special attention to students' use and perceptions of the technology as they engaged with topics addressed in Year 8 and those that would be visited in Year 9. I won't address students' perceptions in this post, as this is a topic for later. 

Rio Tinto Cinema Volcanic 3D Movie

The 360 degree screen shows how Earth came into being from the Big Bang to the formation of the Hawaiian Islands. Students are taken from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the ocean. Images of formations resulting from tectonic plate movement are highlighted. 

Although the students were encouraged to explore Dynamic Earth in no particular order, it was interesting that the whole class seemed to come together at the same time to watch the movie. My Year 9s waited patiently for a class of primary students to leave the theatre before entering. As the movie was shown, I was delighted to hear squeals of excitement and comments of wonderment which illustrated a collective thinking in the act of watching. 

What's that? Is it the Moon? The Sun? That's Earth, it's [showing] the Big Bang! [Referring to a pyroclastic flow] It doesn't look like it's travelling that fast... Woah, it is! Hey, we've seen those minerals! Do animals like that really exist at the bottom of the ocean? How long did it take for the islands to form?

This made me think of the brain activity when watching TV versus sleeping. What would the brain activity look like while students engage in this way?

Use if Interactive Screens

Throughout the day, there were several interactive screens that students could engage with:

• A map showing where meteorites had struck the Earth at different locations, students could press on a location and learn about the meteorite and crater formed
•  Creatures of Victoria's geological past were illustrated and could be manipulated using a touch screen to gain an understanding of the anatomical structure
• A map showing places of interest where Victoria had undergone significant changes was projected onto a topographic map. Students could touch an area of interest to have information - photographs and text - overlay the map

It was interesting to watch the students engage with these technologies. The students at this school generally play along when the content is interesting and the tech easy to use. At some points I found myself using the grandmother approach (Sugata Mitra) to scaffold them when things didn't work quite like their phone or tablet technologies. 

For me, the most interesting thing coming from these interactives were the conversations as many of them only required the user to press a button and read. 

This animal has a beak like a...? Bird, octopus... 

What do the points on the map mean? Just places where meteorites landed. 

Why is that interesting? It's not... 

Students took more away from some interactives than others and I wondered whether there was competition between digital technologies within the exhibits. For example, the meteorite screen was almost opposite to the 3D movie and near an area where students'  weight in gold could be calculated. Students seemed to find these particularly engaging and probably more so than the touch screen.  

Students' Use of their own Technology

By the end of the day, the students were exhausted and, to be honest, so was I. I felt this way when I came to the museum last Sunday to design the activities for them to complete. My final stop was the 600 Million Years Victoria Evolves exhibition. I wanted to include this for students to have an idea of what Victoria's geological past would've been like. I settled on having the students explore 1 creature they found interesting. They needed to learn about the structural features enabling it to survive in the prehistoric environment. As a bit of fun, I asked that they take a photo of the fossil and a selfie with the model of what the organism would have looked like. 

To be honest, I was so exhausted that I totally forgot I had asked them do this. When I saw a student taking a selfie, I asked her why she was doing that! She said: Miss you asked us to! After a giggle, what was interesting was that the student confessed that she was enjoying taking the selfie! I have no idea why I asked them to take it in the first place other than perhaps to acknowledge a common practice that has evolved with the use of mobile technologies. What does it mean to youth to take nerdy selfies and does this alter their identities in any way? It would be interesting to see where these selfies end up whether they become part of their so-called personal brand or archived in a folder on their phones. Unpacking our trip to the museum might yield student feedback that's interesting in this regard. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading this musing! Any thoughts would be welcome!