The shift is accelerating

The highlights at Online Educa Berlin today included an inspiring presentation by futurist Simon Nelson, a session on the state and future of MOOCs, and a panel session on diffusion of online learning for vocation education in developing countries.

A common theme of the day was how to respond to the rapid changes in educational technology (where denial is no longer an option). David Price called for increased personal responsibility required in an open world of work and learning, including application of the 6 “Do-Its”:

• Do it yourself (Autonomy)

• Do it now (Immediacy)

• Do it with friends (Collegiality)

• Do it for fun (Playfulness)

• Do unto others (Generosity)

• Do it for the world to see (Visibility)

"Any lecturer that can be replaced by a YouTube video will be." Photo by June M. Brevik

Price also advocated for taking a hacker ethic (don't ask permission, do it yourself), and a Jugaad attitude (reuse what you have, make it good enough) in finding solutions. He advises us to cultivate innovation with the enthusiasts, to protect innovation as a precious asset, and to just allow those who are roadblocks to step aside. Also interesting was his reference to the fact that Google has decided to compete in the market for talented staff by no longer hiring on the basis of a college degree, but only on skills and competencies. It has been proven in a double blind study that this policy has had no impact on performance. Other companies are following this practice as well.

In a session titled, “MOOCs: Here to stay,” 5 managers in institutions offering MOOCs provided reasons for offering them and their strategies.  The conversation never hovered long around the question of “Are MOOCs effective?,” but quickly assumed that MOOCs are a powerful innovation and we simply need to make them work better. The way to do that is to move forward, try them out and do continuous improvements—and not try to imitate the classroom. The key area for improvement is in learning activities—getting people doing relevant and authentic tasks. MOOCs have a business stance, as well as a pedagogical one. Pierre Dillenbourg of EPFL, Lausanne said that MOOCs have doubled the reach of the school in 2 years. The CEO of FutureLearn, Simon Nelson, pointed out that they are making the criteria for offerings more stringent. Tens of thousands of students have given FutureLearn MOOCs the highest marks in satisfaction, and they are unwilling to compromise that. Dillenbourg offered that “if universities are not prepared to take risks (like offering MOOCs), they don’t deserve to be called universities.”

Finally, in a session on “Using technology to reduce the learning divide in vocational education,” representatives of UNESCO shared that in the UN sustainable development plan, it is directly stated that for human capacity development there is a need to leverage ICT as a critical ally. Donald Clark offered that fighting online learning infusion in education is futile, because the current costs of education are unsustainable, the demand too high, and because learners are using it already—via tools like Wikipedia and YouTube, at minimum. EVERYONE with a computer uses Wikipedia, even teachers who disallow their students to use it, because is it one of the most incredible innovations to come about in this century.

Note: Future Learn will be offering a MOOC on Blended Learning starting 1 February, 2016.

Patrick Parrish (WMO) and Maja Kuna (EUMETSAT)

Blended, Flexible, and Personalized

Maja and Patrick are attending the Online Educa Berlin Conference. One highlight today was the workshop, Knowledge Exchange on Technology for Education. In one breakout session, participants from throughout Europe and outside, from both university and corporate environments, discussed their experiences and challenges with implementing effective blended learning solutions. Sound familiar? Things we raised as common concerns included:

* Addressing the cultural change in the organizations (for both teachers and participants)
* Choosing technologies and tools
* Finding guidelines for designs for how to blend the modes
* Fighting perceptions that online learning is cheaper
* Fighting perceptions that only the content format needs to change
* Ensuring quality in the online and classroom phases
* Ensuring and measuring impacts

In another breakout session on creating Flexible Learning Environments for students (for example mobile), most of the same issues were raised, but additional ones included:
* Technical challenges, of creating useful mobile apps, for example
* Cultural challenges with the introduction of ubiquitous learning (and teaching!) opportunities
* Deciding how to use the extra context-of-use data that are generated (e.g., how to customize for a 2-hour train trip one learner needs to take, versus a 15-minute bus ride)
* Dealing with assessment and the potential need for peer/teacher interaction and feedback in a completely self-paced learning experience

Finally, we attended a session with Stephen Downes on developing personal learning environments (PLEs). In this approach, each learner is given the opportunity to collect data on learning resources used and activities engaged in (wherever they occur), as well as professional accomplishments, and to share data about these and the badges and certificates collected along the way. In addition, PLE's include ways for receiving recommendations for courses, resources, and learning paths, and ways to interact with other learners, content, and experts in your areas of your interest. You can think of it as having personal campus in the cloud that you define based on your needs and interests, a personal database of all things you do to learn and demonstrate your developing skills, and a way of sharing this to the level you want and need to with credit providers, employers, and anyone else who might need this information, including yourself. Workshop attendees worked to define the necessary capabilities of a PLE system, and prioritized the development phases.

Maja Kuna (EUMETSAT) & Patrick Parrish (WMO)

Games and Learning

“Anyone who  makes a distinction
between games and learning doesn’t know
the first thing about either.” --Marshal McLuhan

In a recent session of CALMet Online, Maja and Patrick led a game-based learning activity called Learnopoly. This session used a game structure to allow participants to practice developing active learning strategies on a  variety of topics related to meteorology and climate. One strategy that the participants were not asked to use, but which they experienced first hand, was Game-Based Learning itself. This post explores this popular but challenging active learning approach, and provides some references to explore the topic more.

Games have always been around us—in every human culture, and throughout time. In fact, even animals play at least simple games. Just watch dogs playing in the park and you’ll agree. What is it that gives games such universal appeal?

Well, for one, games create a comfortable competition—a competition that challenges us to push our limits, but that also presents no serious repercussions if we lose. In many ways, games are a warm up for everyday life. We are forced to learn new things, and even to master them if we stick with it. We play games for the fun of the challenge, for the focus, and the “flow state” of mind they create in us. Games are usually short (unless you are playing cricket :), and the boundaries of limited time and limited impact make game competition highly rewarding.  And some games let us compete in teams, which provides the social interaction most of us crave, and the practice working together that is essential in nearly all other aspects of life.

Games often challenge us to solve puzzles or generate solutions. They ask us to think rationally and
creatively to complete a task and to do our best to win. They make us work smarter, and in doing so they teach us thinking strategies we can apply elsewhere. They can challenge us physically as well, of course, as sports do. It‘s easy to see that games are a sort of practice field for life, a place where we learn basic thinking and survival skills. Games are all about learning.

All games have several general qualities in common. Players have tasks to complete, they have to play by the rules, and they have to work with the limited set of resources and tools provided. These constraints provide a unique opportunity. They make a game comfortable compared to most of life by defining a clear beginning and end, and by providing a level of fairness and equality.   

Recently, many educators have been intrigued by the overwhelming popularity of video games, in particular. They have taken a harder look at the strategies games can offer to educators and trainers for engaging students. The “gamification” of learning is in full swing. Below you will find several links to some useful resources about games. Take a look. They might intrigue you enough to try out a game in your teaching as well.

We would like to hear about your experiences with games. Can you share your thoughts about Games and Learning?

1. Think about the games (or sports) you have played in your life, maybe the ones you have played the most. What skills and lessons have they taught you that you still carry with you today?
2. Have you ever played learning games in school as a child? We suspect that you have. What did you learn? What was your experience in learning?
3. Have you ever played learning games as an adult learner? What was your experience in those situations?
4. Can you think of any applications for using Game-Based Learning in your training? What would you need to do to make that happen?

Resources:
Playing to Learn: "People play everywhere except in school" is a quote from Playing to learn: using games as an educational tool provides opportunities for deeper learning. This short article is written about the potential power of using games in public education for children, but it applies equally to adults.

Edutopia: Game-based Learning: This section of the Edutopia website is focused on games and learning. There are a large number of videos focused on the topic. We are particularly interested in the one by Kurt Squire, one of the leading authorities on games for learning, and the one by Kate Salen, on the program Quest to Learn, and the one by Constance Steinkuehler, on Interest-Driven Learning, and John Seely Brown on Motivating Learners. Again, don’t let the fact that these are primarily about school learning fool you. Adult learning theory is a myth. We all learn in the same ways and are motivated by the same things.

Games...and ...Learning: A free book chapter by three well-respected Florida State University professors. “Anyone who  makes a distinction between games and learning doesn’t know the first thing about either.” --Marshal McLuhan

Coursera course on Gamification: If you become really interested, check out this free course, which introduces the power of using game techniques applied to many aspects of life, beyond education and training, to business and social impact challenges.

CALMet Online 2014

October, 6  - November, 28

CALMet Online will gather together meteorological and hydrological trainers, as well as related disciplines facilitators, from around the world. As the event is totally online and free, you will not need a travel budget to participate.

During the sessions we will share experiences and innovations in training, mainly in the field of hydro-meteorology, and together find new approaches for improving our training activities and programmes.

This year’s topic ‘Diverse in Culture, United in Learning’ aims to highlight the fact that despite our various backgrounds, cultural differences and diverse organizational environments, we all share the same need to learn more about training and education in our disciplines, and become better professionals. 

We believe that CALMet Online will offer a channel for professional trainer in meteorological and related disciplines to equally participate and contribute in discussions and activities.

The goal of CALMet Online 2014 is to demonstrate a variety of learning approaches, suitable for application and adaptation across various institutions and practices.

To make taking part easy and flexible , the event will be based on several asynchronous sessions, each of them which will be accessible for one, or even several, weeks. Each session will be hosted by a leader or group from a specific WMO Regional Association, demonstrating a new learning solution, experiment or innovation. The participants will have an opportunity to discuss, test and give feedback about the learning solution. The resources are intended to be reusable after each session. Interest participants in the event should get a tangible benefit from the experiences they gained in each session.

The event will be hosted in English, but some sessions may contain parallel regional activities in other languages. 

Sessions

The event will consist of several sessions, each having 1-3 week duration. Some examples of sessions you can see in the list below. The complete schedule with confirmed list of sessions will be published by the end of June.

Briefing. Sarah Kimani (IMTR).

Learnopoly. Patrick Parrish (WMO) and Maja Kuna (EUMETSAT).

Webin@r Checklist. Maja Kuna (EUMETSAT), Luciane Veeck (VLab), Anna Ghelli (ECMWF), Ivan Smiljanic (EUMeTrain), Alessandro Chiariello (EUMETCAL). 

Preparing for a new satellite: new and old challenges mixed with opportunities. Bernadette  Connell (CIRA).

Teaching with Conceptual Models. Marianne Weingroff (COMET) and Bruce Muller (COMET).

Experience Zonda:  an example of a Conceptual Model  applied on a simulator - Experiencia Zonda: ejemplo de Modelos Conceptuales aplicando  Simuladores. Graciela Rolón (Servicio Meteorológico Nacional - Argentina).

Experience in Distance Learning in Meteorology - Experiencias en Enseñanza a Distancia. Moira Doyle, Elizabeth Castañeda, Leonor Bonan, Lorena Gonzalez and Ana Pittaro (Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires).

Succesful Online Learning : what strategies do we need? Roger Deslandes and Bodo Zeschke (Bureau of Meteorology, Australia).

Read more and join 

An Old Instructional Technology

An early instructional Wiki?

While in Florence to meet with the RTC Italy, we visited one of their facilities at the old Osservatorio Ximeniano, in the city center. In addition to the old telescope, they have a museum of many historic scientific instruments, including meteorological ones. They also they have a classroom that contains this very old desk designed for teaching.

Note that it hosts a rounded side and bench for students to sit around, and a straight side for the teacher. In the center is embedded a large piece of slate for writing with chalk. In this way, it could be used for collaborative writing and problem solving with the teacher. Of course, it was probably used mostly for the teacher to write out problems, equations, diagrams, or text (upside down?), but if students contributed their ideas and answers, as suggested by having the slate set within the desk surface within the reach of all, these would be for all to see, as in a discussion forum, Wiki or other online collaboration tools. I thought it was worth sharing, to remind us that the past provides many good models of teaching for today also.

Evaluation - a template for post course evaluation to discuss

Hello and thank you in advance for your help and comments!

There was a lot of discussion about course evaluation at the CALMET conference and the Symposium.Many people kindly shared the templates they are using. I am also looking at this for our evaluation. Specifically for post course evaluation at the level of student feedback (kirkpatrick model level 1)

I would love you feedback and thoughts on this current template.

Here are two version of the template:

• This is the current version - do you have any thoughts on how it can be better
• This is a version that can be edited by all of us - do add comments! 

This is an open resource - feel free to use it.  

I also wonder if it would be useful to have a template that is generic for all of us to use? What do you think?

Communities of Practice for forecasters as well as trainers ...

I love that we are setting this resource up to support us as a community of practice - i have a question .... how can we stimulate such communities in our organisations to help forecasters?

This I think is really important as we heard in Lee-Anne's presentation at CALMET that she want's more learning to come from the experienced forecasters to be shared with the newer forecasters. There was PhD thesis from a researcher in the US that explored how forecasters learn form each other and how important that exchange is ...

So what are the helpful interventions we can make?

I noticed from Maja's presentation that these communities are often informal, and the formal life of the organisation sometimes seems unaware of the importance of these informal structures in learning and proficiency development. As trainers we are involved in the formal side - how can we intentionally help? 

There are some trainers who are also operational forecasters ... so they may be part of the informal activities and communication. What do you think? How can we assist forecasters in a forecaster office  to develop their skill and there ability to critically reflect on their skill. 

One thing I think we can do is to develop the role of the student and student expertise in out courses. When people ask a question in a course there may be appropriate times as a teacher give the question back to the group. The idea being to get people used to the idea of sharing questions and answers with their peers. As a teacher we are a source of expertise in the classroom - what sources do the students have when they are back on the bench? During the course we can connect students to  resources and sources of expertise - that they can then use. 

This in one idea - from the perspective of a classroom course - what experiences and ideas do you have?

(I also wonder if thinking about what will work for forecasters we also think about what will help us as trainers develop) 

Analysis and then Forecasting? / meteorology as story telling

I am currently at a course with forecasters from around Africa. We have been exploring how people use data (and particularly satellite data) in their forecasting. During one session I asked people what process or route they follow when they forecast.

The response looked like:


>Understand what the client needs / what they are sensitive to
--> apply a local understanding of the meteorology
----> look at the current data (observations and NWP ) and develop a story about the current weather
------> look at the forecast NWP and generate a forecast




On the top of the image you may be able to see words that look like analysis and forecasting, above the word current weather story.

At the start of the discussion we made a difference between analysis and forecasting. As the conversation continued the participants made much less of a distinction. The story being dynamic representing what the atmosphere is doing now, how it got that way and where it might be going.

This concept of story has been very useful during the course, some of our stories are familiar and have familiar names (monsoon, mascarine high, ITCZ/ITD) and are also known as conceptual models. The stories have helped participants start to identify what to look for in different sources of data (in particular satellite data).

I notice how much enagement is generated by the particpants and instructors when people talk using "weather as story" over, for example, talking about what can be seen with a particular channel from Meteosat/MSG.

   
 

Active Learning Strategies and Tactics

How  do we get learners actively engaged and motivated to learn?

One way is to involve them in an inquiry learning process.
Inquiry-based learning is a broad category of instructional strategies that call for active learning and that develop higher level cognitive skills. In inquiry learning approaches, instead of lecturing, you pose questions, problems, or hypotheses that naturally engage students’ curiosity about the content and encourage them to follow a process of inquiry or research: to form a good question, hypothesis or problem space; to gather and analyze information; and to develop conclusions or solutions. The inquiry process should require students to gather the information you intend them to learn during the course anyway, but rather than just reading or hearing about it, they will be using it immediately for a meaningful purpose.

To read more about inquiry learning and other active learning strategies, go to Common Active Learning Strategies, or find this document from the Resources page. 

Patrick Parrish

WMO