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Laura chats with Clare Thomson & Mark Brown on all things CMC, and how it relates to our teaching and learning practice online then and now.
25 Years of Ed Tech is a serialized audio version of the book 25 Years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller of the Open University and published by AU Press. The audio version of the book is a collaborative project with a global community of volunteers contributing their voices to narrate a chapter of the book. Bonus episodes are a series of conversations called "Between the Chapters" to chat about these topics and more!
"In this lively and approachable volume based on his popular blog series, Martin Weller demonstrates a rich history of innovation and effective implementation of ed tech across higher education. From Bulletin Board Systems to blockchain, Weller follows the trajectory of education by focusing each chapter on a technology, theory, or concept that has influenced each year since 1994. Calling for both caution and enthusiasm, Weller advocates for a critical and research-based approach to new technologies, particularly in light of disinformation, the impact of social media on politics, and data surveillance trends. A concise and necessary retrospective, this book will be valuable to educators, ed tech practitioners, and higher education administrators, as well as students."
Credits:
Text in quotes from the book website published by Athabasca University Press CC-BY-NC-ND
BG music Abstract Corporate by Gribsound released under a CC-BY license. Track was edited for time.
Artwork X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licenced under CC-BY-SA.
Audio book chapters produced by Clint Lalonde.
Between the Chapters bonus podcast episodes produced by Laura Pasquini.
0:03
Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book 25 years of edtech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura pasquini.
0:18
Welcome to another episode. This is us talking about chapter 319 96. Computer media conversation with two guests, Claire Thompson and Mark Brown. Welcome.
0:29
Thank you so much for having us. Yes,
0:32
Mark. Welcome.
0:33
Well, hi. Delighted to be here and share some reflections should we say?
0:40
Alright, so the point of this podcast I told my guest today is we are going way back to talk about the things we knew they really make meaning to the things we do today. So let's start with some retrospective on this. We were used to situated back in the day Mark thinking about CMC.
0:59
Well, 9096 I was in Massey University in New Zealand. I think I was a relatively Junior lecturer at that time. But actually, I think for me, CMC sort of started, probably around 9093. And I appreciate these boundaries are quite soft. That's the year that Howard Rheingold published the seminal book on the virtual community. And it's also the same year when Linda Harrison published her book on computers and international community communication. And of course, then we learn in 1996 to publish learning networks. I feel guide for teaching and learning online. And in many respects, you know, it's a real flashback to the past, because we're still talking about networks, and CMC is the core of where this all began.
1:54
I think you're right, clear, what were you thinking about in terms of this chapter, because I know you had some love for the CMC computer media communication.
2:02
So my love's a little bit nostalgic in that I'll give away things by saying the 1986 was the year of my undergraduate graduation. So I'm coming at it from a point where my undergraduate studies in the University of Edinburgh didn't really have communication digitally. The focus for digital was about word processing and excel and more of that side of things. So email was really something we were experimenting with at the time of graduation and 96. And something that I then started to work on and gradually come into at that point. So it was nostalgia, really, that was bringing me to this chapter.
2:45
Yeah, it's something I've talked about. And having conversations about everything from the web and BBs, I have to remind folks that when most of us were working and or going to school at universities and colleges, that during this time, there wasn't a lot of connectivity, when it comes to where this communication goes, and how it's how it is mediated. And it was I thought of, I read this chapter as my audio book, I thought of, really the IRC. I thought about, like, things that in Canada we had at the time was very, like you said, one way or it wasn't, it was the bulletin board systems I talked to with Alan Levine on the first bonus episode. It wasn't what we thought it could be. But it's a really foundational chapters what I thought and I don't know what that meant for your work going forward for both of you. Well, for me,
3:34
I guess the power of the network is something that we mostly benefit from today that didn't exist in the same way those networks certainly weren't as digital then. I know in 1996, I was working with Professor bill Hunter from Calgary on a really quite innovative project with our student teachers, where they were involved in a virtual practicum with a school in vanderhoof, British Columbia, and anyone who knows Canada will know that's reasonably remote. At the time, they British Columbia government had made funding available for children being homeschooled to for their parents or caregivers to purchase a computer and network connection, internet connection. And homeschooling, as was at that time to come in quite a growth element more than area. And so what we took advantage of is the fact they were networked, suddenly, and of course, we're talking the years of where Netscape was the dominant browser and very recently introduced. So what the parents didn't have as the educational background to provide the curriculum if you like, in a way. So our student teachers in New Zealand, were paired up with the children. But initially they had to be vetted by the parents because there was also quite a conservative dimension, shall we say to the homeschooling, perhaps they display a religious aspect. And their parents were also concerned about what their children even back then might be doing on Netscape. So cut a long story short, we ran home lessons, which were packaged as units of work or things, they were very thematic based. The timezone difference tended to work quite well, the students even produced the children's work or students work into web pages, a lot of scavenger hunting type activities going on. And there was a real pioneering element to it. I mean, it's very important, I think, to emphasize that there was a deep theoretical framework informing our, what we were trying to do. In my own case, it was kind of what I described as a triadic perspective, a very strong view of the gods ski and dialogical view, literature around meta cognition was very important at that time, and the social nature of the origin of meta cognition. And then, sort of constructivist and connectivist, sort of thinking about connectivism wasn't really something articulated like that. But it was a pretty interesting experience. The students and the student teachers interacted by email, artifacts produced on the web and net space. So even HTML coding at the time, was all very new. And we all thought we were being pretty pioneering, to be honest, Bill and I presented at Boston's it media conference in 1996, on the results of this, but I cannot lay my hands now on the paper we produce, because that's the nature of the technology we're using, I cannot locate it. And even if I could, I probably couldn't open it. So more than half for me.
7:01
No, that's amazing. This is, I love to hear these stories on mark, because I think this is really the core of what what Martin talks about in this chapter. I love that we talked about things that are billing for now, like everything you said, is resonating in the 2020 world of learning. We know that things like remote learning is not new. We know that distance education is far older than we think and goes spans before the web. And it's Canadian, I can say that. There's like there's always been distance learning because we have remote areas in our pockets of population or not. Like many countries, we have sparsely populated areas, and then dense areas along the border in our country in Canada. And so I think about the ways that you were testing and experimenting and thinking about that, quote, unquote, infinite lecture hall that Martin wrote about really was like a kind of like a sandbox. We were playing and, and 96. That's quite early, but possible. And so if we could do it, then then what's going on today, like this is what did make me This is making me think of like, how can we do it better today and learn from the lessons of the past? Really,
8:12
if I just come in just one thing, the metaphor that really I think we might have used in one or two of the publications we produce was around borderless learning. And in some respects, I think if we look at what we have now we have more borders, not less, the borderless learning there that I've talked about the pioneering aspect to it. But also, because we didn't know what we didn't know, we were able to get away with things that perhaps we couldn't, in this case, because of the element of the parents and the homeschooling dimension. I'm always very drawn from Neil postman's book back was it in 1977 on teaching as a subversive activity, we were actually being quite subversive with these children in the kind of curriculum they were being introduced to that they probably wouldn't have received through their homeschooling. That didn't raise a few challenges further down the track in the project. But yeah, that kind of metaphor of borderless learning that we were talking about. I'm not sure we are quite as borderless now. And maybe it's because those borders are being removed. And we don't have that conception. But at the time, it was pretty amazing thing. We were able to span these boundaries that had historically geographically constrained us.
9:31
Interesting. We do still have borders and boundaries that we've set up. I wonder if it's not as open and thinking about that. That's something I still want to come back to because I think it's important to recognize that it was done, those boundaries were open. And are we always that open now. So some of this chapter does lead lend work to where future chapters go into open ness open education, textbooks, open education resources, open textbooks, MOOCs dare, I say Other things, but maybe we've also put those barriers up as well for I'm gonna call it out capitalism, I don't know, something like that. So that's it. That's just what I was thinking. I'm clear, what do you what have you thought about in reading back to this chapter and thinking about where you were at the time? Because you weren't? You may have just been starting your career, then?
10:21
Yeah, well, I think I was thinking more, because I did pick up on one of the later quotations of Martin's with them. edtech is not a game for the impatient. And I think that's really encapsulates exactly what we've just said. So we keep thinking, we keep pretending we're reinventing, we keep thinking we're moving fast. And we're not really at all. So I was thinking more about the borders, that the complexity of the later years have brought to us. So the geo did geography is one thing. But working students is quite another, working full time and studying as a mature student is quite another. And I think that's where CMC came into my later years, rather than the 1996 years is, really is professional development as well, for learning technologists. There's not many of us, we're growing in number, but we're still nothing compared to the number of teachers and number nurses, number doctors. And we need those dialogues, we need to make those connections. And even though sometimes, crossing the border is only a couple of 100 miles, it's still absolutely crucial to keep conversations going to share the work that Mark has talked about to share those things, at conferences that we can't physically get to, even though it's perhaps only 100 miles away. So I'm really thinking about the borders in a different way than just geography.
11:53
I think that that's a good call it clear. I do think you're right, we've put up our own little boundaries to ourselves, and, and we cannot wreck not talk about that it's a pandemic now. And we're going to be going back into lockdown some areas that and some folks I'm speaking to directly, we're hitting the second or third wave, or we've probably been the first wave in denial if you're like me and living in America. So there are some things that I think you're right, it does influence the domains that we've supported. And Ed Tech at the time, was like maybe education and bit of technology, or was we do distance or people separate them a little bit into what we practice. So now I think about the disciplines that are really creative. And getting into teaching in these ways with CMC. And your you said it wasn't healthcare is one, they're so cool, and how they train and teach technicians, to nurses to doctors. But um, were they always part of that conversation in the early 90s, mid 90s? I don't I don't know. And that was just the nature of, we're just figuring out right now with CMC and getting the mass distribution of what learning is, and how it's not just a broadcasts event
13:04
that kind of cues me into one of the lessons that we still carry with us today. I think that is even back then, is how people take their preconceptions of what education is and how you teach and bring it to the next wave of technology. So and this is referred to in the chapter when Martin calls out the difference between you know, x smokes and St. Luke's because the seeds of that were very clear, then the project that I described, we were not trying to replicate the virtual lecture hall. And Isn't it ironic that it wasn't very long after this period that Blackboard arose and the metaphor of Blackboard, which still exists today? So for me, there's this fundamental tension. And tension probably sees that too much on our binary. I think it's much more complex than that. But we still have this conception of the virtual lecture hall, which of course, emergency remote teaching has tried to replicate in a synchronous form, largely. But what we were trying to do in our project was have a match letter relationship, a co design experience, you could say more like the C MOOC. Because the student teachers were trying to co collaborate on projects and initiatives and produce authentic artifacts. They certainly weren't engaged in trying to deliver the content. And because suddenly, we had an unlimited amount of content, it was actually knowing what to do with that content and adding the dialogical dimension to
14:39
it. No, you make a good call out. And for listeners that don't know what a C MOOC is, that's the connectivist is the C and the nature was bringing together ideas like blogs and learning communities and different people around I almost think of them as a community of practice or community inquiry, where they've come together versus these other MOOCs that are have been putting Don't buy institutions for, let's call it marketing purposes. So yes, I do think, or like a curriculum based MOOC, I do think you've made a good call out that these earlier ways that you were kind of teaching was, let's congregate around this idea and topic and learn. And why can't we bring that back now that we've forgotten these things? And how, how much of a amnesia does ed tech have is what I was reading back in Martin's intro, like we forget that we've done these things before. And it's not all new. But it can be done in different ways. And your attentions you speak of Mark, I think it's like a spectrum. And you could be a different kind of learner, like teaching and learning online could look like x, y, z, depending on where you fall on the spectrum and your needs for the learners. And who says it has to be one way? And why do we let them do take it for us? Why did we let block or telephone to teach? That's my question. No, it's not that. But like, what are what are some other things we're thinking about? From this chapter?
16:00
Why I think I was reading it because I obviously came back to going through it again, at this point, after the pandemic, and as someone who's been supporting staff exactly on that. So my job is Blackboard, my job is collaborate, and just the conversations that we have had as a team, and all learning technologists have heard, again, and again, is something that comes back to this fact that we have been doing all these things for a lot of years. But who are we we're not the skill. We're not the mainstream number of educators. And it's really, I've really reflected on two things on that throughout the supporting of people. And it's really having that conversation. First, they want to come with a problem and they want a technical solution. And what they get is us querying them, why are you doing this? Have you thought about what's your design? Where's the communication points, and that is not what they expect for a start. And that then starts a whole other sort of possible tensions. But the other thing that comes out, and that I've really had to question and come back to again, and again, this whole time, is even in this little chapter, the number of technical things that we keep using. So in one chapter, we've got CMC, we've got MOOCs, BBs, we are x MC C, MOOC LMS, CBT m, feel IP, and there's just endless the things that trip off your tongue so easily. And that is just such a block in general, as we have the scaling conversations that we've had to have throughout the pandemic,
17:51
we're going to refute it for declares alphabet soup or rap call, it's the book, you can find it in there. And I'll put some links to our notes. I think you're absolutely right, Claire, I think I think you've also sparked an idea that maybe we need to have a revolution at Tech folks, and think about where do we bring it back to some of these initial questions on? I'm not always jumping to a platform because people have done that, like you said, LMS Learning Management System, or, dare I say, zoom. And it's kind of scary to me that we've just said, let's put her learning here without thinking about what those root questions you've just asked is, what do you want to be doing with it? And what's your purpose? And I don't, I'm glad that we still have whatever you're called a learning technologists or experienced designer, instructional technologist, instructional designer, someone who just cares about learning, period, no title, to ask those questions before you jump to the thing in the tech. Because I think those are some things I was really thinking about when we got to the end of the chapter and Martin Rees questions. Sometimes I want to ask him questions in these podcasts, which I told me you can answer later as he listens to them. But he raised questions around like, what should explicit direct communication be between students like these were early questions that I don't know if we've still answered resolve today, in all the ways we have learning showing up online, whether it's for emergency remote to honestly just online learning that I saw when I was a faculty member? What are your thoughts on that?
19:23
I'm not sure this is a quite a follow up. But as you were talking, what came to my mind was, how it's a bit cliche on the one hand, but it's also perhaps a truism that less is more. So when I was just thinking about the experience that we had, it was pretty low tech. But actually that low tech aspect, having to wait for the emails to return. Had a pedagogical dimension or learning element that are in design, if not by purpose by accident. That really supported quite deep Learning. So the fact that people had to write and respond and reflect before there wasn't instantaneous, we weren't having synchronous interaction. And we were just using two or three technologies. Whereas one of the challenges we now face is from a leading design perspective. Where do you start? What do you choose? Having said that this is not a popular argument. But another thing that came to my mind is technology matters. I say it's not a popular I can use, you'll hear people say it's the pedagogy. Not the technology matters, I kind of don't entirely subscribe to that view, I think it's much more interactive, or in twined, shall we say? So you know, the technologies, we now have available to us open up many new and different possibilities than we had back there in the period that I was describing. So we may have done things actually quite differently. But equally to many technologies, we are at risk of what I sometimes describe as the techno sophistication effects, trying to unpack what we really want to do. And you know, even those of us from a teaching and educational background, from time to time, get caught up in the thrill of the next big thing. And, you know, there's a few next big things now, the chapters that are going to go on over the next decade.
21:24
Yeah, and your technology matters, I'd say could go either way. It could be a positive or negative, or it doesn't matter. And so as you were talking about that threw me back to like Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message. And sometimes it is, and sometimes how we phrase things like how it carries is really important. And then the flip to that is, I really, I really like how you're thinking about, we have maybe too much choice. And so we have decision fatigue in some ways, or that shiny object syndrome, like, Oh, I want to play with that and see what that experiment that and who gets lost in that experiment? Is it the faculty we support, the students that we teach are confused, and when it could simply be a really good x? And you're right, what like, give them two things, share your learning materials this way and have one thing to interact. And that's it. But the other comment that I think is lost that what we aren't doing now from the 90s is there's more weights time, there's more space. So where's the weights, edge and spaces is what I'm thinking about, from what you just mentioned? No, I
22:30
thinking exactly that, that it's the caught in the headlights situation, because we're people have little confidence in technology. And we're convincing them that things are stable, and that is going to hold off while we're crossing our fingers and toes. And it is it's taking that piece of advice and saying use the thing you know, and use it well. Don't try and learn a thing that is going to stress you because that's going to come through so if you're stressed, you think it's going to break it is going to break you're doing it wrong, the students will pick up on that, and then it will just spiral out. So if we have been really coming back to that, it's like take what you know, use it really, really well and use it consistently. If you want to learn something, learn one thing, get it under your belt, then move on because I think people because it's such a swift move. And we're trying to catch up that some of those times things and some of those slower, asynchronous things don't hold as much, perhaps of the shine to them. But yeah, it's the thing that we would say, well, with first go with the forum's go with a synchronous slow everything down. The students want slower and I think the staff would like slower if they give themselves that space. Exactly. As you're talking about using the space constructively. Really.
23:58
Yeah, I wish we could slow it down. I would like the slow the slow roll of our lives. I think, yeah, a lot of folks are hitting a fatigue point for a lot of these technologies. And I, I don't know if that's the pressure to be. We've moved from CMC to that, which are building blocks for things we use now that are into synchronous video, to social media, to text to everything else that's really immediate. And maybe we need to set our own boundaries of how immediate they are. Because you don't have to get back to someone. I'm okay. If someone does respond for a couple of weeks, a couple days on email, text. That's fine with me. But other people feel that immediacy like it has to happen now. And maybe we've offered too many ways to just click do that.
24:44
I think that's a broader social issue we're facing. It's not a new issue. The embrace of slow movement has been around now for close to a decade and there is a risk of kind of Neo romanticism here because life has always been Busy, for busy people, just a different kind of business. But that's not to dismiss some of the challenges mental health challenges right now that people are the well being issues, as we're all under, you know, a lot of stress. But the two things that I really take from this chapter, my own personal reflections is back then communication in CMC was crucial. And I'm not sure we've still really understood just how that how important that communication aspect is, because we're still trying to deliver content. And for me, teaching has very little to do with delivering content. In fact, I'm almost at an anti thesis of teaching good teaching. For me. It's about building communities of learners. Because we co design that content, we co construct the content. And the idea that we can somehow deliver content to people is a very strong view of learning and a metaphor, if you like that continues to remain in whatever new technology are introducing, whether that be artificial intelligence now, or, you know, synchronous forms of teaching. The other thing that I take away, I have a personal note, there's God, I must be getting old. This was way back in 1996.
26:27
That's okay. Clear. What do you take from this chapter?
26:31
A little bit about? Good. Absolutely. It's the same thing. It's that we have been working hard on we are we've been working hard on student engagement and COO production. And it's ever talked about this earlier in our chat. And that is just again, changing that culture. So I think the thing that takes me back is that I was always interested in learning a different way and what's going on and exploring the new areas. But that's not something that everybody is comfortable with. And the Edinburgh manifesto launch this week, it's the same thing we were talking about. It's all those kind of challenging words about messiness and unexpectedness, and trying to change things up. And people just want to be able to do what they did before. But with technology, and I think it's not just CMC, it's not just how we look at it, it's really changing a culture. And I'm really, really interested to see if the pandemic and the situation is going to change that. It's not changed overnight. It didn't happen because of March, April, May and June. But it will be interesting to see if over the next year, things start to change and the communication and clear communication becomes more of the core of what we do, and what we expect from students and more of a dialogue. That's really what I'm hoping, kind of from the thesis of this chapter and everything we've been doing.
28:03
We've put that out in the world now. So that that's bound to happen. I love that you both said, the two things Mark Martin talked about was, we need to be explicit in our design of communication. And it doesn't just happen. So we should stop assuming it happens in creating spaces for community and conversation and nuances is going to look different. And it shouldn't be just like it is in face to face because there's so many other factors that come in when it's mediated online. And I love that you have joined me to talk about this today. Is there any questions we have for Martin are things are like I wish to include this Martin or critiques? And if not, then I won't include it. But I always asked this question or what are their thoughts? Do you think you would like to ask him and I like to give him homework sometimes too, or thoughts for him in general.
28:51
For me, there's probably a running theme here between an exam examples that I certainly shared, were cottage innovations of the time. The theme is how you take innovation from the edge and scale it and retain the innovation, that scale it where an institution or an organization is able to duplicate, replicate, and take it forward in a development sense. And so there's almost an oxymoron here because it was innovative because it was on the edge. We were pushing boundaries because we were able to at the time, I guess even at a personal level, I would not have had the agency or the toolset to know how to scale that in my institution. So I think we do have many more people now in roles. They didn't exist in those days in leadership roles, even organizations, units within universities, but at the same time, it's my sort of observation about I guess I use Blackboard as an example. But it could be any of the learning management systems or virtual learning environments depending upon what part of the world And that have been scaled quite successfully if there's one near real success story to chapter down the road, but have they been able to scale the innovation underneath the early initiatives? So that's a real question. We haven't I think yet fully grappled with an it's an ongoing tension, because of my own role and institutional leadership position, you do want the scale, but with that scale comes compromises because it kinda needs to work. And you have to have some confidence that certain things are going to work with them into work.
30:38
For me, I would say it's the culture aspects, which really just asking Martin where he thinks that we can use his work his book, our own work on the small cottage projects, and get them out and get the culture change, because in some ways, the innovation really is actually we need to go back to 1996. And the work on the CMC mediated communication, we need to grow that again. So it's almost we need to go back to go forward. So it's really asking Martin about how we really pushed back against the culture of innovation in the direction of LMSs versus innovation to look back and reflect on how we really use CMC. really well.
31:25
Yeah, he was prolific and thinking about this couple years ago, because he said, like, what do we have? If there's no if there's an alternative to face to face, if there is no alternative to face to face? It's posing some what's on the horizon. And I like that you too, have actually said like, it's up to us to be part of that dialogue, and still have conversations among our peers and our colleagues and our communities, our institutions, but even broader, because I think we probably can solve some of these problems. So thanks, Martin, for having us think on a Friday pondering your work. And thank you both Claire and mark for joining. I really appreciate the time. We hope that people listen to the episode and hey, maybe have a response or comments or thoughts of their own and whatever shape and form so thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.
32:12
Thank you so much for having us.
32:17
You've been listening to between the chapters with your host Laura pasquini. For more information for to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of ITT tech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca