Now That You Have Been Admitted, Will You Stay?...

When does the retention of a learner begin? Admissions, acceptance, enrollment, orientation, first semester... When?

For me this is one of the most fundamental questions I ask as an adult educator. In fact it consumes a lot of my time and is one of the most important things I do as an academic chair - how do we retain learners once they have been admitted into our programmes? Do we want to retain them if they don't want to stay? How do we create an environment where learners want to stay in their programme or if they do leave that they are making an informed decision, not just an "I quit!" impulse?

To answer the opening question, IMHO retention of learners begins before they apply - it starts in the development and delivery of our programmes and in the creation of the materials we use to inform prospective learners about what we have to offer them. Many of the learners that I see who are struggling tell me that the programme they are in wasn't what they expected - that it is different, or more difficult, or just not for them. So for them, they made an uninformed decision about their programme. In some cases we retain these learners as part-time learners over an extended period of time, but many just fade away...

We do some great things here at the College to try and inform learners before they commit to a programme - our College Prep folks are out in the high schools, we conduct "Test Drives" for prospective learners to come in and spend a day with a programme, "Jump Start" events for accepted learners to come in and have their questions answered, and "Parents as Career Coaches" sessions to involve parents, families, and friends in the learner's College experiences. All of these tools help learners make informed decisions.

Then why do we still have significant retention issues - some of my programmes have attrition rates approaching 30% at the end of the Fall semester. Almost without exception these lost learners are ones who enrolled in a programme, paid their tuition, showed up for orientation, attended classes for a few weeks, and then vanished. No attendance, no assignments or projects to evaluate, no grades. Why do they leave? Answer that question and our retention issues are solved. We have had little success getting these learners to tell us why they have left (can't find them in many cases), so their reasons for leaving are not clearly known. We can guess, but that's hardly accurate or useful.

So what can be done to help retain the learners that come through our doors in September having made a decision to be a College student? Here are some things that I think might work:

• Engage prospective learners early - get them in high school or very early in their admissions process
• Explain the reality of their programmes to them - workload, time committments, employment realities - get industry involved here too - expalin the realities of the work place
  
• Assign current learners as mentors. Look at assigning faculty or staff advisors
• Explore the option of pre-admissions testing - aptitude batteries etc. Not as a go/no go barrier, but as more information for prospective learners to decide if a programme is right for them
• Make Test Drives and Jump Starts compulsory components of the admissions/acceptance process wherever possible (develop virtual Test Drive and Jump Start sessions for distance and international learners)
• Do orientation before classes start - many institutions conduct orientaion "boot camps" for a week in August before classes begin. Again a virtual version would be needed for those learners who could not take a week to attend. Orientation would include all of the college/campus/programme "stuff" that are a necessary evil of post-secondary education - save class time for classes.
• Create flexible learning environments that meet the needs of learners - this may be the one best thing that can be done - we do a lot of this now, but need to be better - multiple entry and exit points, flexible deliveries etc.
• Post-admissions testing - see where learners are, what they are missing and offer them alternatives that will allow them to stay at the College
• College 101 - a credit course that will fill in the gaps - numeracy, literacy, study skills, time management - those topics that many learners tell us are factors of their failure. Has to be a credit course or learners will not take it.
• Regular contact with learners throughout the semester - I would suggest at least four manadatory meetings with an advisor - issue is one of time and resources - faculty and staff are very busy now - adding this to their worklod may not be feasile. Several colleges have created advisement and counselling centres that perform this function
• Cheerlead - keep lines of communication open with learners - be visible and engage learners in conversations about what they are up to and how they are doing. Engaged learners are in many cases retained learners
  

These are by no means the only things that can be done to help retention, and I'm not even convinced that they are feasible or would work in all cases. I firmly believe that the key to retention is information - information to prospective learners so they can make informed programme choices, information to current learners so they (and us) can manage their expectations, information to faculty and staff so they can adapt and adopt strategies that will assist learners in staying in their programmes, and information to the college leadership so that informed strategic decisions around retention and enrollment management can be made.

But most importantly remember that ulitimately the decision to stay or leave is that of the learner and that no matter what we do, some will leave...

Engaged? But We Just Met...

I've been involved in education, mostly adult education, for over 30 years now, and I have come to believe that the single most important thing we do as educators is the engage learners - get them to actively participate and take responsibility for their learning - without engagement there is no learning, just a lot of words being spoken, slides presented, work being done. So here is what I think of engagement and what we as educators can and must do...

As a faculty member, my world was the learning environments, both physical and virtual, that I created and delivered to my learners - my focus was "here they are, in the "room", now let's give them every opportunity to be a successful learner". The learners were already enrolled, they came to class, or didn't, they did the work, or didn't, and hopefully met the course standards and learned something along the way. In my experience engaged learners not only succeed themselves, they tend to engage their peers who otherwise might fall by the wayside. What I was concerned about was getting learners engaged in what they were doing when I was with them, I didn't worry about what happened outside of the classroom - my focus was on keeping learners engaged in their learning in the courses I was facilitating - a fairly micro look at adult education.

I am now in my second year as an academic chair, with 27 full and part-time faculty, and more than 500 learners spread across 16 full-time programmes and a large number of part-time, continuing education and online courses. I have a much more macro view of adult education.

Engagement is now part of the big picture for me and in my mind it begins long before a learner even comes to my College. We need to engage learners as early as possible in their post-secondary education (PSE) choices. Vincent Tinto (an absolutely amazing guy - you must read his books - "Leaving College" is an essential book for any educator's library) says that the first three weeks of a college student's career are the most important and those three weeks often happen before classes even start - it's the application process, the admissions process, orientation, and so on - making the learner feel part of the institution, in other words making them feel part of a community. Community is the key to engaged learners - simply stated our role as adult educators is to foster community, most everything else will take care of itself if a community exists.

So if community is the most important thing we can foster as educators (way more important than content in my opinion), how exactly can we create environments where community can flourish, engaging our learners? Here are some of the ways that I've been thinking about, using, and discussing with colleagues:

• Engage learners in high school, maybe even junior high school, let them know about your programmes, and career opportunities. To be successful this must be done in concert with industry - employers going into the schools with you to show the education-employment connection that is important to so many learners. At NSCC we have programmes like O2 (Options and Opportunities) and College Prep that help engage high school students early so they can consider the college as their PSE choice. We use Test Drives to show prospective learners a "day in the life" of a college learner.
  
• Research has shown that two of the most important influencers on making a PSE decision are teachers and mothers - engage both in the process. We do this through "parents as Career Coaches", and through our College Prep folks talkingto teachers and guidance counsellors.
• Once a learner is accepted into a programme, actively connect with them, let them know they have made an important (and correct) decision and that they are now part of a community - that they are not alone. This can be done through Admissions or the programme itself sending out information packages (or links to a wiki or Web site with the info) so that new learners arrive on the first day of college as informed learners.
• Have an orientation that fosters and develops community - team activities, getting to know each other and their environment. One activity that I have used is to ask everyone to tell one thing that they are an expert at (amazing what you hear), and add that expertise to the group knowledge base - make it clear to learners that they are each others' most important learning resource. Balance the amount of information handed out (and there is always so much at the beginning of the year) with learning activities that build community - the information can always get to learners later.
• Let learners know all of the services and supports available on your campus, that they are part of a larger learning community that is there to support them
• Maximize the use of problem-based, project-based, and team-based learning. Use projects and assignments that require learners to cooperate and collaborate, strengthening their sense of community
• Use learning technologies that learners like, not ones that you like. It's much easier for one of you to adapt than a whole class of learners. We have found in the last few years that e-mail is no longer the most efficient way to communicate with learners (they use e-mail to talk to "old folks") - so get to know, learn, and use current learning technologies - Web 2.0, Facebook, IM, Twitter, wikis, blogs, text messaging - go where your learners "are"
• Give up control of the content in your courses. This isn't quite as scary as it seems. As the facilitator you know the course outcomes - let learners find and share the content - they develop research and presentation skills, become expert in using the Internet and other resources, develop skills in information gathering, interpretation, and use, and develop their learning community.
• Give control of the learning environment to learners. As a facilitator you will still be responsible for classroom management, but what's wrong with letting learners decide on things like how the environment will look, when tests etc. are scheduled, what kinds of tests are used (meet all learning styles), how they organize themselves, and so on - the community will flourish if the learners are engaged and learners will be engaged if the community flourishes.

These are just some of the things that I have used to engage learners and to develop community. Once learning communities develop and take hold, they are the single most powerful thing you have to keep learners engaged. If you need evidence look at the military (I was in the Canadian Army for 28 years), and in particuar basic training - the individual is subsumed for the team, for the community - it really is Band of Brothers whether you are talking about a platoon of soldiers or a community of learners. Hmmm...

Learning Is A Team Sport...

I've been thinking a lot lately about how learning is changing (has changed?), influenced by paradigm shifts away from books and content towards the Internet, connections, and learning communities.

I chaired a round table discussion on "Learning Is a Team Sport" at our college's Festival of Learning. This post covers the highlights of that discussion and some of the thoughts we all came up with.

Here are my opening premises for the discussion:

• There is so much information out there and so many information sources, that it is becoming (or maybe already is) impossible to learn on your own, that as educators we need to be aware of this fundamental change and be prepared to teach and learn differently.
• This means more collaboration and cooperation between learners and between educators, an awareness of learning styles and a need to develop authentic curriculum and assessment
• Technology of all types will be increasingly important

With these points in mind we began our discussion. One of the first points raised is how different our learning environments were to the learning environments of our learners. When I went to school, individual learning was paramount - the term paper and tests were king. The main sources of my learning information were:

• Books
• Encyclopedia
• Newspapers
• Radio

Today's learners have a different set of information sources:

• Internet - Podcasts, RSS, Web sites, vidcasts...
  
• YouTube
• iTunes
• 24/7 500 Channel TV
• Books
• Newspapers
• Radio
• And more not yet even thought of...
  

The sheer volume of information is overwhelming - how do you make sense of it all? What is true and what is false? How do you apply context to all this "stuff"? (In this instance, "stuff" is a technical term...)

So what does all this information mean? It means that new approaches to learning are required:

• New approaches to information gathering
• Information evaluation, validation and interpretation - new literacy skills
• Collaboration and cooperation in information gathering and analysis
• “Skimming” or “Diving” the information sea - breadth or depth of knowledge

The rest of our discussions centred around the so whats - here are some of the highlights:

• Need to understand learners and how the not only learn but how they find information and what they do with it -“while N-Gens interact with the world through multimedia, online social networking, and routine multitasking, their professors tend to approach learning linearly, one task at a time, and as an individual activity that is centered largely around printed text…” - Innovate - Will Richardson

• When does collaboration become cheating?
  “Students see collaboration where their teachers see cheating. They're not even talking the same language. They don't have the same understanding of the world.” - NSCC Colleague

There was an awful lot of discussion around the second point as it is a current "hot button" topic. We encourage collaboration and cooperation and then we accuse learners of cheating. I personally think we need to re-invent exactly what we mean by cheating (plagiarism, copying, non-citing of sources, cutting and pasting from the Web...) so that we are on the same page as our learners (see the first bullet).

So what do we have to do as educators to engage in this new playing field?

• Be Tech savvy
• Understand our learners
• Use project and problem-based approaches to learning (connecting learners to their world)
• Stay in touch with industry
• Allow learners to learn how THEY learn, not how WE learn
• Emphasize collaboration and cooperation - know the new paradigm

These were the main points presented for discussion - there was a level of concern expressed about how to best do this - it's a work in progress for many educators who not only learned in the individual learning days, but have delivered that style of learning for many years. Most see the need to engage in team learning, the problem is we need to know the rules in order to play the game.

It was an interesting, informative, and somewhat passionate discussion that gave all of us lots to think about. The key from my perspective is that learning is now a team sport and we have to get on the field and into the game. If we don't we will be doing our learners a great disservice. Hmmm...

(If you want to see my presentation it's up on SlideShare)

"You Aren't Dumb - You Just Haven't Learned Yet"...

To paraphrase Art Linkletter, teens say the darndest things. I ride the bus to and from work (gave up my car four years ago - that's a whole other story...) and the other day coming home from the College there were two teenage girls of indeterminate age (13-17 or so) behind me carrying on an animated and loud conversation. Other than the fact that they mostly used words that would make a sailor blush, at one point in their conversation one said to the other "you aren't dumb, you just haven't learned yet" - WOW! What an amazing thing to say - talk about your AHA! moments.

As adult educators we deal all the time with earners who bring all sorts of challenges and baggage to their learning environments. One of those challenges is a feeling that they can't learn - someone, somewhere, at some time called them dumb or told them they couldn't learn - that's never true - anyone can learn if given the chance and support - and what a way to tell them - "you aren't dumb, you just haven't learned yet". What a lesson to carry into our learning environments and when dealing with our learners.

Thank you girls, and speaking of learning, about that language...

Engagement, Collaboration, Mobility, and Openness - The Future of Adult Education

There is an awful lot of talk and research being done in adult education - how to get learners to come to post-secondary education, how to get them to stay, how to best deliver education to them, and what are the best ways to ensure that learners are receiving the education that they have signed on for and that we as adult educators want them to have. What will we have to do in the future to address these concerns?

After listening to and reading about all of this adult education material I have come to the conclusion that there are four issues that we need to address. They are:

1. Engagement
2. Collaboration
3. Mobility
4. Openness

Engagement is getting learners to come to your institution, select a programme, actively involve themselves in it, and actively contribute to their learning. This may be the hardest part to do - being engaged is a personal, internalized activity and as educators we cannot force engagement - we must foster it in our learners. So how do we do that? It starts with allowing learners to make informed decisions as part of the Admissions process, and then keeping them involved in their learning once they are in a programme. In the Admissions process learners must be given the opportunity to learn exactly what their programmes are about and what the standards and expectations of the institution and faculty are. Tests drives or visits to the programme are a big part of this, along with good information materials.

Once in a programme, it is my opinion that the best way to engage learners is to actively involve them in their own learning process - and I believe that the best way to do that is the personal learning environment or PLE - get learners involved in deciding for themselves what works best for their particular learning style. maximize the use of of recognition of prior learning (RPL), and develop outcomes-based learning, and competency-based assessment models that allow for maximum flexibility.

Collaboration ties nicely into engagement - in a collaborative learning space, engagement is key for success and collaboration fosters engagement as learners develop relationships with each other. Collaboration is now, and will continue to be in the future, key to learning. There is simply too much information, too many sources, and it's all coming too fast for learners (and educators) to learn on their own anymore. Collaboration, and the development of information literacy skills used collaboratively for the sharing and assimilation of information are essential for learning. Collaboration also occurs when using project-based learning, something I have done with great success (information technology education) prparing learners for industry. Almost without exceptions employers demand graduates who are capable of working collaboratively and who are capable of learning (engaged in their profession).

There are two aspects to Mobility. Mobility is the lifestyle of a lot of our learners - IM, chat, text messaging using mobile devices is how they communicate. E-Mail is something they use to talk to old folks. Secondly, mobility is how we will have to meet learners where they are and how we will continue to grow our institutions. We need to develop materials and resources that can be used on mobile devices and online and in blended deliveries. As faculty and staff we must become expert at delivering engaging, collaborative learning opportunities to learners wherever they are using whatever tools and devices they have for access. We need to know what those tools and devices are and how to use them and how to develop resources for them. There is a huge professional development component here.

Institutionally we must all do more in the distance or mobile space - we cannot afford to increase physical infrastructure to increase enrollments and I'm not all that sure that physical spaces best fit the lifestyles of community college learners anyway - they are mobile, they live at distance in many case, they work and have families and the traditional Monday to Friday daytime only learning model is not working for many of them. If we want to capture these learners we must become mobile and meet them where they are - think way out of the box.

Openness means several things to me - it means limiting or eliminating barriers to learning - we can do that through the development of PLEs and readily accessible learning opportunities. It means faculty sharing with each other and their learners, maximizing the user of Creative Commons licenses when intellectual property is an issue, using and contributing to sites like the OER Commons, and engaging learners in their learning process. It means limiting barriers caused by the use of proprietary software and hardware and maximizing the use of open source and shareware/freeware that is operating system independent, allowing learners access to learning regardless of the technology they are using (while remembering that technology is only a tool). It's engaging everyone, all stakeholders, in the curriculum development and learning development processes to ensure that we deliver learning that works. An open education environment will be an effective learning environment.

To me this all seems fairly obvious now, but it has taken me some time to get here. It will be interesting to see if any of this will actually be relevant as we move forward. I am firmly convinced that it will be, but time will tell...



(Photo - School Photo From Tungelsta by Steffe)

CIT 2007 - Google Apps Education Edition

At CIT 2007 there were three themes that became clear to me - these themes were engagement, collaboration, and mobility. As educators we need to engage our learners across all of the generations - boomers, Gen Y, Gen X, millennials, and neo-millennials (a term used a lot at the conference - not sure if it's the same as millennials, or a new generation). To do that we have to go where they are at and technology will certainly help that. Secondly, modern learning has to be collaborative - there is just too much information and knowledge out there for one solitary learners to acquire, distill, and use. Collaborative knowledge is the future of learning, and finally we need to be mobile because our learners are mobile whether it be the devices they use, the places they live or how they consume learning (and they ARE consumers - for many learning and their education is just another product purchased for consumption).

One of the tools presented at CIT 2007 that helps meet the themes of engagement, collaboration, and mobility is Google Apps Education Edition. This online suite of tools includes the following Google tools:

• GMail
• Google Talk
• Google calendar
• Google Docs
• Page Creator
• Google Personalized Start (iGoogle)
• Access to other tools like Google Spreadsheets, Google Presentations, Google Notebook, and Google groups, along with extensibility APIs

Google apps are user-centric, collaborative and available wherever there is a Web browser (engaging, collaborative, and mobile). Google Apps Education edition is free for students, faculty, staff, and alumni of an institution and can be customized with an institution's domain. It is ads-optional for students, faculty, and staff. It comes with integration support and 24x7 administrator support.

Central Piedmont Community College has switched to Google Apps. It has been available for use at CPCC since May 2007.

Personally I think that Google Apps Education Edition is the perfect solution for today's post-secondary learning environment - it meets the needs of learners, faculty,a nd staff - it's available whereverthey are - classrooms, labs, home, coffee shops, anywhere ther is a browser. But there are issues - and those are issues of data sharing and privacy. In order for Google Apps to work and to have access to Google's search algorithms and "secret sauce" (everyone at CIT 2007 had a secret sauce - what's yours?) some data needs to be stored on Google servers loacted in the US and not located at the institution (a particular problem for Canadian Institutions due to PIPEDA, our personal information privacy legislation). This could cause issues because Google will share information when:

• With user consent
• Imminent harm
• 3rd Party processing
• Satisfy applicable laws
• Terms of Service
• Fraud

If the issues of data storage and access can be satisfactorily addressed then I would strongly encourage all institutions to use Google Apps Education edition - it is a suite of tools for the future of learning that is available now...

CIT 2007 - Opening General Session - Dr. Mark Milliron

Dr. Mark Milliron, president and CEO of Catalyze Learning International, was the opening general session keynote speaker. As such he is recognized as a leader in educational leadership and the use of technology in education. An extremely engaging speaker he talked about the changing face of learners and how technology and tools like social networking are going to change the face of community college education.

Community Colleges are preparing for multiple generations of learners and have to be prepared for all of them:

Baby Boomers (the family generation)
Gen X (the ME generation)
Net Gen (the WE generation, or as I have heard it coined, the "XBox generation")

Along with this we have to realize that there is an ongoing digital divide - broadband vs. dialup and that there are still dialup ghettos that will impact how and what technology can be delivered to learners.

Dr. Milliron talked about what is in store:

• Attract, Service, Retain and engage learners
• Visioning
• Planning
• Fund raising
• Capital
• Operational funds
• Maintenance funds
• Sustainable Learning Environments

We are going to see the following things influence how we will provide learning opportunities to our learners:

• Blurring and Blending
• Mobility Galore
• Gaming
• Social Networking
• High Impact Presentations/Engagement
• Analytics, Diagnostics, Evidence-based education
• The Human Touch
  

For blurring an blending we will see models of 20% of learners online, 20% face to face and the remainder taking a blended approach to their education. I know that this is something that I ned to take very seriously as an educator when looking at maintaining and developing curriculum and programmes.

Mobility galore - m-learning will be big - learners need access - the oasis effect - free wireless will keep learners engaged and on campus

Gaming - a whole different way to learn. Look at seriousgames.org and americasarmy.com for examples.

Social Networking is engaging and connecting - collaboration is key. Second Life - a bridge between gaming and education. Of the social networking sites Dr. Milliron compared MySpace as Bart and Facebook as Lisa (or Potsie and Ritchie depending on your generational analogies...). The OER Commons is social networking for faculty.

Take your work seriously and yourself lightly when dealing with net geners (makes sense and it works in my experience). Sixteen to twenty-year olds want IM or chat - not email or readings "EMails are whta old folks send me" - so true - just try getting learners to read their e-mails - Facebook a much faster way to communicate with them.

We need to build buildings with high impact presentation technologies and tools in them - retrofitting no longer working.

The use of analytics to determine the best use of resources is a critical process that we need to start using, just as the gaming industry has been doing for years.

On the Human Touch we need to have the courage to be open to opportunities, the courage to catalyze the conversation, and the courage to learn.

We need to engage all learners in this process, including the CAVE people - Colleagues Against Virtually Everything (and you know who you are..).

A great keynote to kick off CIT 2007 - what we need to do as we look forward and the good news for me is that I get it it. Can't wait to see what the rest of CIT 2007 brings...

CIT 2007 - Keeping Up With the Jetsons - Teaching and Learning With Web 2.0

This half-day workshop was presented by Shelley Rodrigo of Mesa Community College, part of the Maricopa Community Colleges system. Shelley has a background as an English instructor and us currently an instructional technologist and is involved with faculty development.

The workshop was focussed on Web 2.0 tools that will help both faculty and learners communicate better in today's Web 2.0 world.

The tools and technologies looked at were:

• Social bookmarking - del.icio.us (other tools were discussed
• Blogs
• RSS Feeds and aggregators (Google Reader)
• Wikis - Wetpaint and others
• Personal portals - iGoogle, Pageflakes, Netvibes

Here was also some discussion around Google apps, a technology very prominent at CIT 2007

The coolest part of this workshop was its collaborative and sharing nature. All of the materials, sites, tips, hints, and suggestions that we re talked about are posted onto the Jetsons wiki, developed for this workshop. Check out this wiki - it is full of great resources.

A really nice way for me to kick off CIT 2007. Shelley did a great job with this workshop, getting all of us engaged in the process. The participants left with great resources, in particular the wiki. The potential of Web 2.0 tools in community college education was clearly demonstrated. Even tough I have been fully immersed in Web 2.0 for a long time, I learned several things from the workshop (can teach new tricks after all...). Now I can't wait to take theme home, show others and use them myself...

Festival of Learning

I have the distinct privilege and honour of belonging to the most amazing learning organization - The Nova Scotia Community College. This past Thursday the most amazing event took place at our Truro campus. The College celebrated its first Festival of Learning, a day to share and celebrate the learning happening at the College. Colleagues presented on what they had learned, how they had learned and the transformations that occurred through their learning. The presentations were diverse and amazing in their power and quality.

I was asked to participate in a "Learning Market", where various presenters set up in a market stall sort of fashion and presented what they had done over lunch. My presentation was on my experience with conference blogging at STLHE 2007 (see my June posts).

What is conference blogging you say? Well it's blogging a conference while you are there - I find it to be a great reflective tool and a good way to share my conference experiences. When NSCC sends someone to an event or conference, they return to the College and share what they have learned - by blogging while at the conference, I find it more immediate and relevant, and the sharing begins before I even get home!

But enough about me - the festival was amazing - I have never seen so many engaged, energized, and passionate learners in one place - and the very cool thing is that as a presenter I learned more than most of the people who dropped by my display - I got to explain and contextualize what I did and got some great ideas on how to make it even better - so cool.

The other major event of the day was the graduation of the CCEDP (Community College Education Diploma Program) class. CCEDP is NSCC's staff and faculty development program and it is absolutely transformational. I have a MEd in Adult Education and Training and I learned more from the CCEDP program that I could actually use in the classroom than I ever did from grad school. There were 40 grads from the program. Here is a picture of those who attended the convocation. Congratulations to all of you!

New faculty orientation was also held this week in Truro, so 33 new faculty members from all across the College came together for a week of orientation and introductions. To all of you, welcome to NSCC, you have made a great choice - I look forward to working with all of you.

What an amazing day! As educators we so rarely get an opportunity to get together and share what we do, and what an opportunity the festival was, and perfect timing too - now we can take all of that energy and enthusiasm into a new academic year - the possibilities are endless!

I'd like to thank all of those who organized, setup, managed, ran, facilitated, presented, attended, and made the festival such a success, but I really want to thank my friend, my mentor, my colleague Libby for asking me to be a part of such an incredible day and Bobbi for all of her creativity and vision in making such an amazing day happen. Thanks Libby!! Thanks Bobbi!!...

Engage Me, Immerse Me, Learn Me?...

There have been a lot of posts lately on the SLED (Second Life Educators) mailing list on the subject of immersiveness.
The debate has been over the issue of if you are immersed in something, in this case Second Life, is learning necessarily happening? Also, if this immersive experience has engaged learners, are those learners actually learning anything?

To me the answers to these questions are critical - if we engage our learners, and they become immersed in their learning environments, yet no learning is occurring, where does that leave us as educators, and more importantly, what does it mean for out learners? As we explore and move towards PLEs, and other customized, individualized approaches to learning, we have to have the answers to these questions.

What is engagement, what is immersiveness, and what do either one have to do with learning? The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) defines engaging learners as:

"Engaging learners in the process of learning involves teachers adopting and fostering active, interactive and deep learning approaches so that learners can interact meaningfully with the concepts, materials, processes and people in a course." (the italics are mine)

As for immersing learners in their learning environments, one of the newest set of tools and technologies for doing this is Immersive Education. Immersive Education is an initiative of Media Grid. Media Grid (as defined on its Web site) is:

"The Media Grid is a computational grid platform that provides digital media delivery, storage and processing (compute) services for a new generation of networked applications. Built using Internet and Web standards, the Media Grid combines Quality of Service (QoS) and broadcast features with distributed parallel processing capabilities. Together these features create a unique software development platform designed specifically for networked applications that produce and consume massive quantities of digital media. The Media Grid is powered by service providers (such as rendering farms, clusters, high-performance computer systems, computational grids, and similar systems) that furnish on-demand services to Media Grid clients (users).

As an open and extensible software development and delivery platform the Media Grid is designed to enable a wide range of applications not possible with the traditional Internet and World Wide Web. Applications enabled by the Media Grid include: Immersive Education; on-demand digital cinema and interactive movies; distributed film and movie rendering; truly immersive multiplayer games and virtual reality; real-time visualization of complex data (weather, medical, engineering, and so forth); telepresence and telemedicine (remote surgery, medical imaging, drug design, etc.); vehicle and aircraft design and simulation; and similar high-performance media applications. The Media Grid is modeled after an improved national power grid, with added security and stability features that eliminate downtime and blackouts."

Media Grid defines Immersive Education (the tool) as:

"A novel learning platform that combines interactive 3D graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat (Voice over IP/VoIP), Web cameras (webcams) and rich digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms. Immersive Education gives participants a sense of "being there" even when attending a class or training session in person isn't possible, practical, or desirable, which in turn provides educators and students with the ability to connect and communicate in a way that greatly enhances the learning experience.

Unlike traditional computer-based learning systems, Immersive Education is designed to immerse and engage students in the same way that today’s best video games grab and keep the attention of players."

So if we use this information to define engaging and immersing learners, we now need to answer the question "does learning happen when learners are engaged and immersed?" In my mind the answer is a simple yes, if you are engaged and immersed in what you are doing them learning will occur, if only by "osmosis". But several people have raised some interesting issues on SLED. I'll summarize them here:

• Learners are different today (Presnsky - digital native/digital immigrant)
• Today's learners read few books
• They have shorter "sound bite" attention spans
• They lack literacy skills and information discrimination skills (good vs faulty data)
• They play video games and watch TV
• The old lecture, classroom style of learning is not reaching today's learners, but Nintendo is
• Many teachers and facilitators don't "get" their learners
  

So what are the implications for us as adult educators? As far as I am concerned in order for learning to happen there MUST be engagement - without engagement all the learner hears is a lot of noise. Now do learners also need to be immersed in their learning environments/opportunities for learning to happen? Probably not as long as they are engaged in learning, but I also think that the more immersive a learning experience is, the more learning occurs. Even taking in all of the points raised above engagement and immersion are key to learning happening, perhaps more now than ever. I think the big issue here is educators who don't see the engagement and immersion happening because they don't "get" their learners - that's the issue - understand who your learners are and how they learn - they learn through engaement and immersive environments.

So Engage me, Immerse Me, Learn Me? You bet, and these will only become more and more important for successful learning as we move towards "soft" classroom walls, alternate delivery, distance education, and methods not even thought of yet to bring more and more learners into our institutions.

Let the engagement, immersion and learning begin...

(Photo "Hopscotch" by Jan Tik)