I tried a bit of an experiment today in my MIS class (second semester first year) and I was asked to blog my thoughts on this class. I am (as my grandmother would say) betwixt and between as to what to say. This course attempts to introduce business students to information systems for managers mediated by information technology. This is not a technology course but one that uses technologies to assist managers as they make decisions in the modern workplace using information technologies. For second semester first-year business students with limited business experience the topic is obtuse and dense in the least and a tough one to get engagement from.
The last 2 chapters have been about understanding the IT department both from an operational stand point as well as looking at projects and the acquisition of systems through projects. OK so the stuff has the potential for the word pedantic to be a key descriptor but I was hoping to try some variations on a theme. I use my D2L site to make material available to my students and have attempted to encourage some use of the discussion forums but being that this is a face-to-face class this is a bit of a non-starter so I thought we could use technologies as communication tools to assist in the learning process. Instead of me lecturing on the content of the chapter I wanted to pass the responsibility for the content over to the class and let the class use Twitter as a way of broadcasting to each other and asking questions and adding to each others ideas and thoughts on the chapter material. Everyone was asked to create a Twitter account – we played with this in class the previous week and with the assistance of a few very eager and supportive students we used Tweet Grid along with some other tools to follow the hash-tagged conversations.
Well it was messy, somewhat chaotic, a bit of fun, a challenge for some, others I think just couldn’t see themselves either getting anything from the exercise or in contributing and yet when I go back and read the tweets I see some interesting and very respectful contributions to the discussion. It is too easy to be critical and to write off this messy experiment as having no value to one’s learning and I wonder about the larger issues at play. I will always question those who just won’t “play” but in this case I think they were in the minority. i was quite happy with the willingness of most to attempt to talk out their understandings of the chapter through the challenging medium of Twitter.
The tweets show engagement, struggles, frustration, and even just plain repetition from the text. Not everybody added to the discussion and it is clear that not everybody prepared for the class although having walked around the room during this exercise I was pleasantly surprised to see many trying to keep pace, trying to make sense of the environment and trying to find their meaning in the lesson. I was happy to see that a number took manual notes and others asked their questions or expressed their frustrations out loud. There was engagement and there was learning albeit not everything was spoken about and most were left to their own devices with respect to what should be considered relevant from the chapter.
In the future this type of exercise probably should be moderated, should have fewer focus points, and should be guided with specific questions or items needing attention – that was my responsibility and I did not do that. What I had hoped would happen (and to some degree it did happen) was that enough students would see this as an opportunity to push their understanding of the material and ask questions of each other while challenging what they were presented with through the fixed text material. I struggle as an educator because my interest is in ideas and how we might challenge our assumptions about what we have in front of us and what we might do to construct our worlds to allow us to move forward with new and exciting insights. I fail to recognize at times that many are not here for these altruistic broad-reaching reasons and that these courses are nothing more than tick marks in a path that leads very far from the content of the course at hand. It doesn’t matter – I harbour the belief that this type of class will stick in far greater ways than most can imagine.
There were a variety of neat aspects of today’s session such as students expressing concern about being very public (and permanent) and possibly being wrong or at least showing others their incorrect views. There is nothing wrong with this view – we hesitate because we want to only speak out when we have a certain belief in the veracity of our comments yet if we could find ways to phrase our understandings such that others might feel safe and supported then more might speak up.
Learning is a social activity. Knowledge is gained and developed as we interact with each other and share our ideas and beliefs. Granted we can read and view what others have said and gain insights in this way yet to be able to push and give in a shared environment enhances and helps to refine our understandings and ultimately our knowledge.
I am a social constructivist (some have suggested a constructionist but I still have not gotten my head around the difference) and I believe that not only do we construct our own meaning about the world around us but that if we do not regularly and purposefully engage our world in the process of building meaning we miss out on much of the richness that our rapidly changing world has to offer. Somewhere between the end of elementary school and into college/university our conscious engagement with the social construction of knowledge appears to be somehow lost. Many appear to arrive at the end of high school looking to be fed; looking for someone to tell them what to do, what to pay attention to, how to go about doing school work and when and where this work gets done. I know that this is a gross exaggeration but having been in the adult education business for the past 20 years I can’t help but question the struggles of my students as they attempt to figure things out for themselves. The work place is a world of “figure it out or fall by the wayside” so somehow in education we have to foster environments that encourage shared, social engagement, and collaborative knowledge building as we develop new understandings and push the paradigm of teaching and learning.
We need to allow for dynamic learning, using tools that may seem out of place for the current task but when rethought and/or re-purposed we may finally find that the lesson really is about the path and the journey and not the content. When I asked today about the whole concept of outsourcing in a business context, about what types of things we can walk away from in our business world today or into the future and what is it that we really need to focus on to stay competitive, I am not sure that enough really heard the big picture answer. Facts and figures – the black and white stuff in our lives is necessary but it can be automated; processes can be automated along with certain types of logic. What we most need are individuals who have the ability to talk to each other, to communicate, and to ask questions, and to challenge that which is in front of them on a daily basis. We need to find ways to continually use and reuse the stuff in our lives in new and creative ways. We all have access to the same stuff but we gain a competitive advantage when we are able to use this same stuff in ways that our competitors can’t or don’t and in ways that open doors to new opportunities.
What did I get from today’s class? I need to rethink the the use of the tool or find a different tool or just stay in the kitchen and keep pushing my students to find ways to engage the material and each other. What did my students get from today? The best time to ask this question would probably be 5 years from now but for today I hope one or two had fun and appreciated the journey.
As an impressionable new business student, keen on learning new concepts and applying them in innovative, relevant ways, it was intriguing to be a participant in the experiment mentioned in your post. Social media fascinates me with its implications on our society as a whole, in both our personal lives as well as in a business sense. Having very little experience in the workplace as far as business use of social media, and particularly the use of Twitter as a information system within a company, I have often found it difficult to apply Twitter-use in a professional manner. I have heard “folklore” and tales about the use of social media in a classroom to facilitate learning, and have often reflected on how it might affect learning outcomes or the classroom dynamic in general; never before have I gotten the opportunity to truly take part or personally experience this for myself.
Introducing Tweetgrid into the experiment served as an added challenge for me, having already been an avid tweeter. As a Gen X kid, I mistakenly assumed I would have no problem multitasking and following a variety of conversations at once. After being turned loose to begin what was to be viewed as complete Twitter chaos by some of my classmates, I, too, realized that I wasn’t able to keep up. But this is all part of the process, right? I allowed myself to step back. Instead of attempting to take in every conversation, every new thought, every tweet, I focused my energy first on only one thread. After grasping concepts, replying, and interacting within that hashtag, it was time to move on to another. And another. And another. Then return to the first. This system, which I had achieved through trial and error, seemed to work. The task turned quickly from being a complete information overload to an interesting approach to learning. Some of my classmates applied the concepts contained within the text to situations and experiences from the real world, whether it be personal or from current affairs. These comments I found to be the most valuable. Of course, there were glitches (even this can be applied to the material; should we have beta tested this “Twitter in the classroom” experience?) and some students were either uninterested in attempting to contribute, or became too overwhelmed and frustrated.
In response to your comment “it is too easy to be critical and to write off this messy experiment as having no value to one’s learning…”, I would say not to give up! The point I described earlier, the apex of my journey between confusion and understanding, came JUST at the point in time when the classroom was returned to a lecture hall – back into the comfortable. I would say, leave it uncomfortable! Allow more frustration! Allow more confusion! Allow more chaos! – – – Allow more learning.
To be honest, I have learned more in this class already than I would have ever imagined when I first started, however, the best part about it, is I don’t realize I’m learning. Participating in the conversation, whether it be listening to a lecture or posting 140-character phrases on Twitter, has stealthily taught me textbook concepts. Perhaps I’m predisposed for taking an added interest in the psychology behind education, having studied a few terms in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, but thus far, I’ve found this class, the underlying processes, and the technologies all very intriguing.
Thank you, Stu, for presenting me with an opportunity to experience your experiment first-hand; it has helped me tremendously in understanding the world in which I live and will certainly contribute to real applications in my future!
Thanks Annette, you make interesting comments on the challenges we all face today with technologies and learning and decision making. I tend to think that most things we do in our day-to-day lives are experiments. Granted we attempt to mitigate the risk of the unknown but the fun part of getting up every day should be the experimenting, and playing, and challenging. These daily exchanges should scare us a little (sometimes a lot) and through this process we become infused with energies that help us grow and innovate and keep alive a passionate spirit that helps each of us push forward through the taken-for-grantedness of our lives.
The class experiment using Twitter was really about just trying something different and allowing students an opportunity to fly free for a moment or two while using the course material as the base for the conversation. This was done within the confines of a relatively safe environment on the understanding that individuals would see value in the free-form exchange of ideas on the topic.
You comment on using social media as a facilitator of learning. Like almost anything used to facilitate social engagement, as long as we open ourselves to the conversation and engage it and each other with a clear understanding of the purpose and intent of the conversation then I believe great things can occur. We need to leave our egos and as much as possible, our biases about the content, outside of the conversation to allow the conversation to acquire a life of its own. Ideally there needs to be a guide or a facilitator but done right this individual should be far enough off stage as to not be seen and the participants are left to go where needed to gain the requisite knowledge and understanding.
You also talk about a multitasking challenge. I think that whether we can or cannot multitask and/or how well we do it has more to do with knowing our talents and our limitations and knowing how to thread these into the task at hand. We have to decide what it is that we wish to have as our “take away” and most of all we have to come to the table with a reasonable expectation of leaving with something new or different or beneficial but most of all we come with the intent of being engaged — to learn something and ultimately leave knowing there was growth as a result of the process.