Incorporating Web 2.0 tools in a Workshop on Web 2.0 tools for lifelong learning

Recently I organized a workshop for 1st year medical students on using Web 2.0 tools for lifelong learning.

Some educators have assumed that medical students are digital natives or early digital immigrants and thus just because of the year of their birth have an innate understanding of the Web and Web 2.0 tools.  This is an assumption that people are now questioning.

People currently in their 30s to 60's straddle the Web era having spent a significant portion of their "cognitive" lives prior to 1990.  They experienced "traditional education" and are in the unique position of understanding Social Media by activating their prior knowledge.

As I set about planning this workshop I had several questions:

• How could I gauge the students' prior experiences with these tools? (begin without assumptions of the students experience and understanding due to being early digital immigrants)


• How could I get them engaged in this topic?


• I did not want to use a traditional lecture format to help them understand Web 2.0 education tools.  How could I incorporate actual Web 2.0 use into the education experience?

This is how I set up the workshop:

Preparation:

1. Asked the class to create Google and Twitter accounts (could create an account that they could delete later if they did not want to share their real accounts with class).


2. Created a spreadsheet on our internal Sharepoint site for students to enter their names, Google account and Twitter handles


3. Invited the class to Google+ and put them all in one Circle.


4. Asked the students to include me in one of their Circles so they could see my post.


5. Asked students to follow each other on Twitter.  They did not have to follow everyone but maybe the colleagues from their PBL small groups.


6. Asked the students to go to Google Reader and subscribe to PLOS  One Alerts (http://www.plosone.org/article/feed).


7. Click on the drop down next to PLOS One Alerts and click on "More like this" and choose Science Current issue.
   I could also have asked them to do the following but did not think of this then:


8. In the search box type Google and Memory and see the results show the article we were discussing on Google+


9. Read any article they liked from the 2 feeds and send to Twitter.  

Pre-Workshop Activities:

1. Posted the Science article on how use of Google has changed the way we remember on Google+.  I limited this to the circle of students.  No one outside the Circle could see their comments.  Also disabled re-sharing of the post to keep the conversation private.


2. Put some guiding questions under the link to the article:


1. When you read information on the Internet/Web do you
   Remember the information or
   Remember how to find it or
   Both orNeither? 


2. How does this apply to how you study and learn medicine?


3. Asked the class to comment on the article and these questions.


4. I checked back and added comments to students' responses

At the Workshop:

1. This was a 2-hour session.  I planned to spend the time covering


1. Concept of Information Overload


2. Need to use Web 2.0 tools to create filters


3. Transactive and external memory


4. Use of Google Reader and Diigo as examples of creating a Web 2.0 external memory system


5. Define Social Media and types of SoMe


6. Community of Inquiry model (Randy Garrison et al)


7. Social Constructivism (Vygotsky) and how it relates to Social Media


2. What we actually did:


1. Audience response to gauge use of FB, Twitter, Google+ (could have used PollEverywhere.com but just went with our clickers)


2. ARS to see how many had tried the Google Reader exercise


3. Discussion on these 2 topics


4. Discussion on formal and informal learning and need to become life long learners


5. Demonstration of Google Reader and how I use it, including sharing articles and commenting on them with residents and students.


6. Demonstration of Diigo - especially the ability to highlight bookmarked pages and to take notes.


7. Ask them to log into Twitter and post what they thought about the use of Google Reader and Diigo using a specific hashtag


8. Break - I started Twitter Fountain and projected the posts with the hashtags on the screen.  As students came back into the classroom, they were able to see what everyone else had posted about what they had learned.


9. Reviewed the discussion on the post on Google+ on the Science article.


10. Examples of Twitter case discussions, Twitter journal clubs, Google Hangout


11. Discussion and close


3. What did I learn?


1. Awareness of Feed readers and social bookmarking tools was very low.


2. These were very enthusiastically received by the students.  A number of twitter posts were about how they planned to start using these.


3. Students felt use of Social Networks in education was more appropriate for later stages of their training when they were more scattered and in less formal settings e.g. during practice, during clinical rotations etc.

PowerPoint Bulleted List Theorem

Most of us associate PowerPoint with lectures in large darked halls with many slides of bulleted lists accompanied by a droning voicd.  So what is wrong with the bulleted lists in PowerPoint?  I was preparing to conduct a workshop on PowerPoint and Education and found some theoretical basis for why we should not use bulleted lists when presenting.  As you see, I do use them freely in documents.
[This is presented as a theorem just to make it interesting.  It is just my very simplistic interpretation of work done by many people and better presented elsewhere - see references at bottom.  Readers should refer to the Atkinson,Mayer reference below for an excellent and more detailed description of these concepts.  My hope here it to get readers interested both the cognitive theories related to this topic and the practical applications of these.]

Compare this:

A bulleted list in PowerPoint

To This:

Statement:
Using Bulleted lists while narrating during presentations is detrimental to students' learning.

Axioms:

• Working memory (formerly called short-term memory)
• Processes incoming data/information
• Connects it with existing knowledge/wisdom
• Encodes it into long-term memory
• Working memory has limited capacity to process information
• It has 2 separate channels 
• Verbal/auditory input
• Visual input
• Each channel has a limited processing capacity
• Text is processed by both visual and verbal channels (you know now where this is going right?)
• Meaningful learning requires substantial amount of cognitive processing in both channels 
• Select and pay attention to incoming data
• Organize the data
• Integrate it with prior knowledge

Argument:

Information presented in a manner that overloads the processing power of the Working Memory makes learning difficult.

Bulleted lists which are multiple concepts presented as text are processed by both the visual and verbal channels.

When you start talking around these lists, the words you speak are processed by the verbal channel.

The audience struggles 

• to correlate the text on the screen with the words you speak
• to grasp which bullet you are talking about
• to decide whether to just read the slide or listen to you talking

This struggle is not germane to getting a deeper understanding of the presented material.  It actually takes away from the learning process.

Conclusion:

Presenting (long) bulleted lists while narrating during presentations is detrimental to learning.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum!

Corollary1:

While narrating in a presentation, showing an appropriate image on the screen is better than showing a bulleted list.  This leverages the dual channels to facilitate learning.

Corollary 2:

Putting both an image and a lot of text on a single slide is detrimental to learning.  This can overwhelm the visual channel.

References:

1. Working memory (Baddley and Hitch) [PubMed][Wikipedia]
2. Dual Coding Theory (Paivio) [PDF article][Wikipedia]
3. Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller) [EduTech Wiki]
4. Select Organize Integrate Theory (Mayer)
5. Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (Mayer and Moreno)
6. List of learning theories at Learning-theories.com
7. Richard Mayer's full text article [PDF]
8. 5 ways to reduce PowerPoint overload (Atkinson and Mayer)

---

Some of the biggest advantages of using tools like PowerPoint are:

1. Use of Multimedia Elements
2. Integration with Audience Response Systems
3. Creating branching/non linear presentations based on audience needs
4. More legible text, clearer images
5. Ability to re-purpose/reuse material from other presentations (can be dangerous)
6. Options for distribution and sharing

Thus, it is quite obvious, why PowerPoint (and other technology) is used so much in education.  It is very important to remember the steps for using technology in learning:

1. Understand how people learn
2. Think about how educators can Facilitate this learning process
3. And only then think about how technology can help improve this facilitation process.  

When we keep these three steps in mind while designing our presentations, it will lead to better use of PowerPoint.  When the presentation "fails" it is most likely because we ignored one or both of the first 2 steps and jumped straight into the technology (PowerPoint).

Classroom Presenter

I was recently attending the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Euducators in the Health Professions. Robert Kegan was doing a masterful workshop and what got my attention was a his story of how he moved from using overheads to using a tablet PC.

Bob hates PowerPoint presentations because the content seems to be predefined and not responsive to audience needs or interests. He uses the Classroom Presenter on a tablet PC to help him keep his workshop interactive.

Once I got home I pulled out my old convertible PC (tablet/laptop) and loaded Classroom Presenter 3.1 which is a free software from the University of Washington. After playing around with it for a while, I was thrilled. I started pulling various unsuspecting colleagues into my room to show it off.

So what is so special about this software? Here are some features that stood out:

1. Instructor computer connected to student computer via network (wired or wireless LAN or via Internet)
2. Instructor can allow his/her slides to be displayed on student computer
3. Student can annotate these slides and save them on their compuers
4. Instructor can ask students to write answers to questions/label images etc and send back to Instructor
5. Instructor can do quick polls and display a histogram like report of responses.
6. Instructor can import PowerPoint slides or presentations into the software.
7. Instructor can keep toggle between several slide decks - the PowerPoint slides, whiteboard slides, student responses and quick polls.
8. While it would be best if the Instructor has a Tablet PC, the students can work with a regular desktop, laptop or tablet.
9. Can be used at a distance.

So how can this be used in a class? Here are 2 quick examples:

1. Think-pair-share: Instructor asks students to work on a question or problem in a small group and then each group writes/types its response into a slide and send back to instructor. The responses can be projected on a screen from the instructor's computer. This is the equivalent of using flip charts in small groups. The advantage is that as each group presents, their slide can be projected to the class, the slides created by all groups can be saved digitally and shared.

2. A histology instructor can share slides with the class and ask students to label specific cells or organelles and send back to the instuctor. This can be used to do needs analysis or assess cognition.

There must be many folks who have used this software in a creative manner. There are a ton of papers and presentations from the University of Washington. For example, there is a link to UCSD where they have developed the Ubiquitous Presenter, based on the Classroom Presenter. UP allows students to use any web enabled device like cell phones to link to the instructors presentation. It also appears to host the presentation and student annotations on a web server so students can review it later. Would love to hear of more examples.