Since my last blog post a long time ago I have now successfully completed my MSc in Blended and Online Education with my final dissertation exploring student attitudes to the use of an app to learn vocabulary in English as a foreign language. I will maybe post something more detailed on that later but to sum it up, the students were very happy with the use of this tool and found it made learning more fun and less like hard work. Unfortunately the exam results for the vocabulary section showed no significant difference to previous ones but on the positive side there was no negative impact either. From what I have read and heard so far this seems to be a very typical result for this type of research.
Rather than discuss my findings, today I actually want to begin a series of posts on my experience at the 13th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning which is now taking place in Istanbul. This is my first ever time at a real conference and also my first ever time in Istanbul and Turkey so there has been a lot to take in. The official conference doesn't begin until tomorrow but today there was a range of pre-conference workshops on offer for interested participants.
The full details of the conference can be found here. The first workshop I attended was on "iPads in Higher Education" and was hosted by Nicos Souleles and Fernando Loizides. The two hosts were actually joined by a string of guest presenters in the UK, Australia and the United States who talked about research they had been involved in. I knew that some universities, especially in the US, had sponsored iPads for their students but I was not aware of the scales involved. One university in Australia already has 30,000 iPads and will buy another 15,000 soon! One question none of us were able to answer is what the true benefits of mobile learning are and how we are able to implement them. The session ended with more answers and questions but with plenty to think about, I especially liked the summary from one study participant that iPads gave teaching staff "A licence to thrill"!
The afternoon's session was on "Using Free Tools and a Pedagogical Framework to Promote Teacher Efficacy with mLearning". In this session Rob Power, Dean Cristol and Belinda Gimbert shared their experiences using the CSAM framework (Collaborative-Situated-Active-Mobile) and in particular while using a free LMS called Canvas and a mobile website creation tool called Winkspace. The tools
did indeed seem easy to use and it was an interesting model. Rob was especially interested in creating reusable learning objects which seems like a very good idea so I will be tries to use this model in my future development work.
The conference proper begins tomorrow when there will undoubtedly be a whole lot more good ideas and interesting insights to take in.
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Montag, 3. November 2014
Mittwoch, 2. Mai 2012
Mentoring with the GROW model
Mentoring is a support function which can be found in many environments, for example in a workplace, at a school or university, and in sports clubs and teams. It is however very important to distinguish between coaching and mentoring. According to the Management Mentors website (www.management-mentors.com) coaching is about specific functions whereas mentoring is a more personal relationship focussing on development as a whole. Another important distinction is that a mentor should not be someone's direct supervisor whereas a coach could well be. This is important as a mentor should be able to listen and give advice impartially and the mentee will also be more relaxed and open when not dealing with their direct supervisor. A mentor could therefore be a manager from a different department, someone outwith the direct chain of command. In actual fact, being mentored by an equal, in the form of peer mentoring, seems to have become a very popular trend. It was within this framework that I acted as a mentor for Nicky during her module Customised Study for Blended and Online Education.
Although I had no previous experience of mentoring I have had training in coaching in the past so I was therefore familiar with the basic concept. Kay and Hind's "A practical guide to mentoring" (2009) also provided a very clear overview of the subject which helped a great deal. As Nicky and I would never meet face-to-face during the trimester we had to carry out online or e-mentoring - mentoring which is conducted totally in a virtual environment. For our purposes we chose to experiement with a few virtual meeting products but ultimately decided that Skype was the simplest and most effective way to meet. Or initial plan was to meet online once a week on a Sunday evening and talk or chat for about 30 minutes. If more time was required and our schedules allowed the meetings could be extended. Sometimes the real mentoring was finished within the 30 minutes and the remaining time was filled with smalltalk or other non-mentoring related course activities.
In order to ensure some structure in the mentoring sessions, and at Keith's suggestion, I decided to mentor using Sir John Whitmore's GROW model. In this model GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will (or Wrap-up). This technique can be used either within one individual mentoring session or across several sessions. The first point, Goal, involves defining the objectives or topics the mentee wants to discuss. In the second stage, Reality, the present situation should be discussed. In the third stage, Options, the mentor and mentee should explore possible choices or options to address this situation and in the fourth stage, Will, the mentor and mentee should agree on the next steps to be taken. This is a very clear and straightforward model which is easy to follow. In reality however, my mentoring sessions sometimes were more unstructured and took more the form of a casual conversation over a virtual cup of tea. This however did not always seem to be a problem for Nicky and also added a missing social element to this trimester. I will leave it up to Nicky to confirm if the sessions did help but I certainly learnt from them and I hope they helped her too.
Sources:
Kay, D. & Hind, R. (2009). A Practical guide to mentoring: How to help others achieve their goals. (4th edition). Oxford: How To Books.
http://www.management-mentors.com/resources/corporate-mentoring-programs-faqs/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
http://www.msue.msu.edu/objects/content_revision/download.cfm/item_id.378012/workspace_id.298457/GROW_Model_?_Four-Step_Questioning_Approach_.pdf/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/cll/othercourses/wmcett/resources/practitionerarea/mentoring/planning/grow/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
Although I had no previous experience of mentoring I have had training in coaching in the past so I was therefore familiar with the basic concept. Kay and Hind's "A practical guide to mentoring" (2009) also provided a very clear overview of the subject which helped a great deal. As Nicky and I would never meet face-to-face during the trimester we had to carry out online or e-mentoring - mentoring which is conducted totally in a virtual environment. For our purposes we chose to experiement with a few virtual meeting products but ultimately decided that Skype was the simplest and most effective way to meet. Or initial plan was to meet online once a week on a Sunday evening and talk or chat for about 30 minutes. If more time was required and our schedules allowed the meetings could be extended. Sometimes the real mentoring was finished within the 30 minutes and the remaining time was filled with smalltalk or other non-mentoring related course activities.
In order to ensure some structure in the mentoring sessions, and at Keith's suggestion, I decided to mentor using Sir John Whitmore's GROW model. In this model GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will (or Wrap-up). This technique can be used either within one individual mentoring session or across several sessions. The first point, Goal, involves defining the objectives or topics the mentee wants to discuss. In the second stage, Reality, the present situation should be discussed. In the third stage, Options, the mentor and mentee should explore possible choices or options to address this situation and in the fourth stage, Will, the mentor and mentee should agree on the next steps to be taken. This is a very clear and straightforward model which is easy to follow. In reality however, my mentoring sessions sometimes were more unstructured and took more the form of a casual conversation over a virtual cup of tea. This however did not always seem to be a problem for Nicky and also added a missing social element to this trimester. I will leave it up to Nicky to confirm if the sessions did help but I certainly learnt from them and I hope they helped her too.
Sources:
Kay, D. & Hind, R. (2009). A Practical guide to mentoring: How to help others achieve their goals. (4th edition). Oxford: How To Books.
http://www.management-mentors.com/resources/corporate-mentoring-programs-faqs/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
http://www.msue.msu.edu/objects/content_revision/download.cfm/item_id.378012/workspace_id.298457/GROW_Model_?_Four-Step_Questioning_Approach_.pdf/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/cll/othercourses/wmcett/resources/practitionerarea/mentoring/planning/grow/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
Sonntag, 4. März 2012
Theoretical Models for (Peer) e-Mentoring
Last week we had an excellent Virtual Office Hours (VOH) session with myself, Marty and Julia in which we really got to grips with some of the theories which could be applied to the use of peer mentoring in a blended or online course. Marty has already posted on the subject in his blog:
http://limey76.blogspot.com/
but I think the issue is so important that, at the risk of repeating something Marty has already said, I would like to also share my thoughts here.
Before I begin that there is also some important background information I have gathered from Ormond Simpson's "Supporting Students in Online, Open and Distance Learning" (2002).
Simpson begins by dividing student support into two distinct areas - academic suport and non-academic support. Whilst academic support involved tasks like defining and explaining, non-academic support is concerned with advising and acting. As the peer support I am providing for Nicky is being done in a non-teaching role I therefore think it falls into the non-academic category. Simpson later lists the characteristics of non-academic support as empathy, stress management, listening, warmth and openness. This is hopefully exactly what Nicky has been receiving from me as a mentor so far.
Another interesting practical point that Simpson raises are the results of a study into which sources of support are most important for students. 32%, the largest amount, said that family and friends where the most important source of support followed by tutors in second place with 29%. The third most important source was other students with 21% and lastly support given by the institution was voted most important by only 17%. This result makes it clear that the majority of students find family and friends or fellow students to be the most important source of support. If this support is being provided informally then it should be encouraged by the institution, perhaps by facilitating ways for students to meet or pairing off mentors and mentees.
In our VOH session we talked about how Garrison et al's Community of Inquiry model can be applied to mentoring. Garrison breaks the Community of Inquiry down into three components which all need to be fulfilled in order to create a success learning environment: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. At first glance, it seems that mentoring can be order to the social presence area of the framework. Social presence is the ability of learners to be seen as real people whilst studying in a virtual environment. Having contact with another student in a mentor-mentee role will obviously allow this. In addition I think there is also an argument to include mentoring in the cognitive presence sector of this model. Cognitive presence is about being able to establish meaning and I think mentors can provide support in this role helping others to make sense of the information they receive. Although for this module we are purely concerned with peer mentoring, successful online teachers should also be providing a mentoring function to their students. In that case it would therefore be possible to also assign mentoring to the teaching presence sector and thereby place mentoring directly in the middle of the Community of Inquiry model - in other words, right at the centre of the educational experience.
In addition, we also briefly discussed the cybergogy model and in my research I also found that Palloff and Pratt have some interesting points to make regarding mentoring. To stop this post getting any longer I shall return to these in the near future.
Neil
Garrison et al (2000) Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. In The internet and higher education 2, (2-3): 87 - 105
Simpson, O., (2002) Supporting students in online, open and distance learning (2e), London: Kogan Page
http://communitiesofinquiry.com/welcome [Accessed 4.3.2012]
http://limey76.blogspot.com/
but I think the issue is so important that, at the risk of repeating something Marty has already said, I would like to also share my thoughts here.
Before I begin that there is also some important background information I have gathered from Ormond Simpson's "Supporting Students in Online, Open and Distance Learning" (2002).
Simpson begins by dividing student support into two distinct areas - academic suport and non-academic support. Whilst academic support involved tasks like defining and explaining, non-academic support is concerned with advising and acting. As the peer support I am providing for Nicky is being done in a non-teaching role I therefore think it falls into the non-academic category. Simpson later lists the characteristics of non-academic support as empathy, stress management, listening, warmth and openness. This is hopefully exactly what Nicky has been receiving from me as a mentor so far.
Another interesting practical point that Simpson raises are the results of a study into which sources of support are most important for students. 32%, the largest amount, said that family and friends where the most important source of support followed by tutors in second place with 29%. The third most important source was other students with 21% and lastly support given by the institution was voted most important by only 17%. This result makes it clear that the majority of students find family and friends or fellow students to be the most important source of support. If this support is being provided informally then it should be encouraged by the institution, perhaps by facilitating ways for students to meet or pairing off mentors and mentees.
In our VOH session we talked about how Garrison et al's Community of Inquiry model can be applied to mentoring. Garrison breaks the Community of Inquiry down into three components which all need to be fulfilled in order to create a success learning environment: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. At first glance, it seems that mentoring can be order to the social presence area of the framework. Social presence is the ability of learners to be seen as real people whilst studying in a virtual environment. Having contact with another student in a mentor-mentee role will obviously allow this. In addition I think there is also an argument to include mentoring in the cognitive presence sector of this model. Cognitive presence is about being able to establish meaning and I think mentors can provide support in this role helping others to make sense of the information they receive. Although for this module we are purely concerned with peer mentoring, successful online teachers should also be providing a mentoring function to their students. In that case it would therefore be possible to also assign mentoring to the teaching presence sector and thereby place mentoring directly in the middle of the Community of Inquiry model - in other words, right at the centre of the educational experience.
In addition, we also briefly discussed the cybergogy model and in my research I also found that Palloff and Pratt have some interesting points to make regarding mentoring. To stop this post getting any longer I shall return to these in the near future.
Neil
Garrison et al (2000) Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. In The internet and higher education 2, (2-3): 87 - 105
Simpson, O., (2002) Supporting students in online, open and distance learning (2e), London: Kogan Page
http://communitiesofinquiry.com/welcome [Accessed 4.3.2012]
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